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The Sims Franchise is Repeating Past Mistakes and Expecting Better Results
netguysteve
Posts: 470 Member
Let's face it, to say nothing was lost between Sims 2 and Sims 3 is not actually a fair and accurate statement. Those who prefer rotational game play (of which I am not really one of), they found they could no longer play the game the way they wanted to play the game, the way they had become used to playing the game through both former incarnations.
To me, I enjoyed the idea of my sims being able to proceed on their own when I moved on to a new generation or a whole new family. Note, I said I like the idea of it, not that the idea had been well implemented. Regardless of this though, it was a bad move to force everyone to play this way. They somewhat corrected this by patching in the ability to disable story progression.
With The Sims 4, they once again allow people to play in a rotational gameplay style. They have chosen, however, to once again pigeon hole everyone into playing the same way. Rotational gameplay is now the only way for your sims or any sims in town to ever progress at all, beyond simply aging up until they die off. You can stop this by disabling global aging, but then the world around you is simply stagnant.
They haven't stopped there though. By all reports so far, the game is far less of an open sandbox and more of a goal oriented game. Every job (including school) has daily objectives you need to complete every single day in order to optimize performance. Add to this the time you actually spend at the job or class. Then there is making sure you have the required number of friends to earn that promotion, plus the skills, plus making sure your sim is in the optimum emotional state when they leave to go work or school.
With all of this, the game is going to be telling you what you should be doing at virtually all times. Sure, you're free to ignore it and do whatever you want instead, but your sim is never going to achieve happiness if you don't play exactly the way the developers have decided you should. This is a practice known as "nudging". They aren't technically "forcing" you to play in a particular way, but they are making it difficult to avoid if you want to actually move forward.
Here's an idea, how about they look at how people are playing, or ask how they want to play, and then try to come up with a way to enable as many different styles of play as possible. The Sims has always been a sandbox game. A game where players are in control and free to play however they want to play. It was a mistake to remove this ability when they moved from The Sims 2 to The Sims 3, and it's unbelievably stupid to repeat that mistake yet again.
We are the players. We are the customers. Make a product that meets our needs and stop trying to mold us into customers that meet your needs. I get the desire (and need) to keep a lid on products during early development, but it's not difficult to establish focus groups to probe into how people like to play and what they like and dislike without ever revealing a thing about what you are actually working on. I know they did a survey to try to collect this type of information, but I have a difficult time believing that the survey told them that this was the best product they could deliver.
By all appearances, the sampling of surveys they actually used was restricted to people who liked The Sims 2 but did not like The Sims 3. If you look at the people who strongly support The Sims 4, most of them strongly dislike The Sims 3. This is not a sampling which adequately represents the whole of the community.
To me, I enjoyed the idea of my sims being able to proceed on their own when I moved on to a new generation or a whole new family. Note, I said I like the idea of it, not that the idea had been well implemented. Regardless of this though, it was a bad move to force everyone to play this way. They somewhat corrected this by patching in the ability to disable story progression.
With The Sims 4, they once again allow people to play in a rotational gameplay style. They have chosen, however, to once again pigeon hole everyone into playing the same way. Rotational gameplay is now the only way for your sims or any sims in town to ever progress at all, beyond simply aging up until they die off. You can stop this by disabling global aging, but then the world around you is simply stagnant.
They haven't stopped there though. By all reports so far, the game is far less of an open sandbox and more of a goal oriented game. Every job (including school) has daily objectives you need to complete every single day in order to optimize performance. Add to this the time you actually spend at the job or class. Then there is making sure you have the required number of friends to earn that promotion, plus the skills, plus making sure your sim is in the optimum emotional state when they leave to go work or school.
With all of this, the game is going to be telling you what you should be doing at virtually all times. Sure, you're free to ignore it and do whatever you want instead, but your sim is never going to achieve happiness if you don't play exactly the way the developers have decided you should. This is a practice known as "nudging". They aren't technically "forcing" you to play in a particular way, but they are making it difficult to avoid if you want to actually move forward.
Here's an idea, how about they look at how people are playing, or ask how they want to play, and then try to come up with a way to enable as many different styles of play as possible. The Sims has always been a sandbox game. A game where players are in control and free to play however they want to play. It was a mistake to remove this ability when they moved from The Sims 2 to The Sims 3, and it's unbelievably stupid to repeat that mistake yet again.
We are the players. We are the customers. Make a product that meets our needs and stop trying to mold us into customers that meet your needs. I get the desire (and need) to keep a lid on products during early development, but it's not difficult to establish focus groups to probe into how people like to play and what they like and dislike without ever revealing a thing about what you are actually working on. I know they did a survey to try to collect this type of information, but I have a difficult time believing that the survey told them that this was the best product they could deliver.
By all appearances, the sampling of surveys they actually used was restricted to people who liked The Sims 2 but did not like The Sims 3. If you look at the people who strongly support The Sims 4, most of them strongly dislike The Sims 3. This is not a sampling which adequately represents the whole of the community.
"UR" is NOT a word, it's the sound stupid people make when they try to spell "You are".
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Comments
I love TS2 and rotational play and I don't even like what I heard coming out of Creator's Camp. Not that the reviews were even negative, because they weren't, but because of all the rpgness showing up in this game.
It's not sandbox to me, no matter if I can play in rotation again. (With more ease).
They have successfully alienated all type of gamers not just the TS3 players who did prefer an open world.
I said it earlier, I think all there generations of gamers here and other sites can agree, none of asked for a hybrid iPad game/console version for PC.
lol!
but totally if I wanna play sims on my computer I should be able to, not play some tablet version on my computer!!!!
All fairness aside though, the graphics look way better than Sims 3 in Sims 4, the models, skin, hair everything looks so much smoother and detailed! It looks so pretty, they obviously put time into it!! Just maybe too much time rather than in babies.
Adult sized Teens definitely makes a statement that EA is lazy though. But I suppose, this means more animations for adults as it will cover all 4 life stages. Especially as toddlers and babies are basically gone!! SO more things to do woohooo.... XD
I wholeheartedly agree with this statement (that's what I had kept trying to say on the Simcity forums as BarnacleSim).
I remember discussing this exact thing over there, with you. I remember our whole reboot semantics debate.
http://forum.ea.com/eaforum/posts/list/9267270.page
There are many people who want what it was - and built upon and EA's "vision" is more about, like you just said, "their needs" (which I take it to translate as their bottom line).
The good thing is, is that many of us still have our old games to enjoy.
So, it will be interesting to see what this one entails, and how it develops.
Agreed.
Not that they ever ended up doing it, but, with SimCity 2013, the maps are so ridiculously small compared to previous versions AND there were also no terrain tools (just like what they are doing with Sims 4).
No real feel of sandbox and all stripped. All to be dictated on how to play by their very confining setup.
So, no real creativity.
You have to pay extra for that.