Creating sims 4, I think it was a huge mistake knowing that sims 2 and sims 3 needs improvements and ideas of new SP and EP why developping a new sims game for money. Sims 3 particulary needs to be recoded and needs to be fixed.
Sorry I am rude but ts4 is the superfluous game.
Creating sims 4, I think it was a huge mistake knowing that sims 2 and sims 3 needs improvements and ideas of new SP and EP why developping a new sims game for money. Sims 3 particulary needs to be recoded and needs to be fixed.
Sorry I am rude but ts4 is the superfluous game.
I honestly can say 2 and 3 will never see improvements. There is no money in that. EA is a company that thrives on profit— Normal
For every company, really.
But I get the gist of what you’re saying. I think. It’s not selfish at all to wish for improvement. I also wish for it. Sadly. s4 does not hit the mark or anywhere near the mark. Seriously. Who’s flipping idea was it to introduce oversized objects on limited space anyway? It’s neither attractive nor wanted.
Dissatisfied with Sims 4 and hoping for a better Sims 5
Previous teens looked like actual teens. S4 teens look like young adults. Laziest move ever, Maxis. Good thing preteens are a possibility. I am sure they can make it to S4.
in terms of features is the lack of swimming in the ocean, lakes, rivers, etc... in terms of packs for me is Cool Kitchen Stuff, what a failure in my vision
Trying to make Sims 4 into an online game then changing their minds, and scrambling to try to re-create the game in such a short time. They needed to have gone through with their decision and make the online version the best they could have. Or not attempted to make an online version at all. They would have come out with a much more completed game than we have. Instead their decision costed what could have possibly been an incredible game. Some people have no expectations and will be happy with anything given to them. Good for them. I have standards. EA, did not just decide to omit a bunch of features that were with past Sims series because they thought it would make the game better (Obviously). Due to their incredible time constraints, they thought about all the features they could possibly go without, to be able to produce a game that still runs like the Sims. When they said they were omitting features to focus on other things. That was true. They could because they had such a short time to re-create the game they didn't have time to implement interactive worlds and roads (Instead it is just a backdrop), toddlers, pools, cars, ghosts, firefighters, newspapers, carpools, animations instead of going straight to a loading screen, story progression, terrain tools... and the list goes on.
It's great that they have added the things that fans were most raging about in patches. But 3 years down the track and we are still missing so many elements, some of which can not be added to the sims 4 without re-doing the entire system.
For the time they had to create the Sims 4, they did really well with it. It's comical to hear some people defend the game to no end, some saying it's the best game yet. That they like the closed world, the smaller EP's etc. But It's a worrying to me that people are giving this feedback. EA might think they can lesson the budget for Sims 5 and create the next game in the series with less quality and quantity, but on purpose next time. Because why bother putting in money to create a quality game that strives to be the best, when people will just buy the game anyway, in what ever state it comes. And then rave about it.
I hope they go all out with the Sims 5. I am excited in my hope for EA's redemption.
You know what else GTA 5 has? A massive amount of content! No gimped, half-baked, patch-in-later nonsense like TS4 (e.g., no toddler stage).
Part of the problem with The Sims is its niche, even if popular, position in the industry. I get the feeling a lot of the people that play The Sims don't really play other video games so they don't really have a good idea what to expect from a AAA video game. I can't really think of another series from any top tier developer that can release a game in a state that is most commonly described by game reviewers as "bare bones" and get away with it.
You can't release GTA 5 without cars, say absolutely nothing about their exclusion, then patch them in 2 1/2 years after release and still be praised for it. That kind of thing would be literally insane for any developer of another series to try because their fans would absolutely revolt and the franchise/developer would sink into oblivion.
But with The Sims it is treated as just one of those things. It is pretty mind boggling actually what sims players let Maxis get away with. Which of course is why we see the base game being released the way it is and the constant recycling of the same EP ideas. Because people keep buying it.
For me personally I doubt I'll buy anything else for TS4 and TS5 better be mind blowing or else I don't see any reason to try again. But I'm just one person, millions of others can continue being milked if they want, but I expect better from a AAA developer and a series that has been around this long.
Not expanding on the life stages (pre-teens) - Mistake. This was a huge market they just missed out on.. smh
Getting rid of the Infant age altogether? -Mistake
(I'm talking about the crawling around aspect... since toddlers release, all I have mainly seen for cc is how to make them look younger. Pacifiers, short hair, diapers, baby furniture- Simmers like having realistic babies.. and let's face it, the newborns that come with the game are more like baby dolls! The Sims 2 babies were perfect. That is what should have been in the Sims 4.. and the Toddlers were perfect too!
Making Teens so completely identical to Adults. - Mistake. it's not even like you're playing with a Teen now.. the ages are so messed up, that story play is extremely unrealistic.
Not having separate teen clothes? - Mistake. .. I mean your teens are wearing the same clothes as your elders.. did anyone think about that?
Chaining the infant back to its bed like the original Sims- Mistake. I know they were worried about Sims leaving their babies outside in the cold.. like in TS3- but they would have given us the option of chaining them to various other objects.. (A bouncer, a swing, a playpen. a playmat) How cute would it be for the baby to be placed in a bouncer that sits on the table, while mom cooks dinner.. or while the family eats. I don't even feel like my baby is a part of the family.. and usually skip that age immediately because of the lack of options when it comes to making that feel differently.
CULLING families- and not allowing the player to decide who goes? -BIG mistake. I lost a legacy family and didn't play for almost 6 months afterward because of this!
Not having Toddlers in the initial base game? - BIGGER mistake. - I almost didn't buy the game because of this. And when I did, it was only because it was discounted- the weekend after its release.
smh. Some questionable mistakes if you ask me. Although, they are coming around. They've made the game more playable, I will give them that. Although current play clock for me is just over 600 hours.. and with me STILL choosing TS3 over TS4- TS3 play clock is somewhere over 1,000 hours. - which lets be real, it should be MUCH higher. Had Origin been keeping track from the start, it would be well over 2,000 hours!
It is funny to see that you think that it was a mistake for EA to make the game more profitable
But let my rephrase your ideas:
“It was a mistake for EA not to use 3 times more money on the game and sell the game and its expansions for 3 times as high prices even though not many would then have bought the game.”
“It was a mistake for EA not to make the game much deeper and more challenging even though it would mean that the game then would have become too complicated for the young new simmers who usually buy most Sims games.”
“It was a mistake for EA to not target the game at the minority of simmers who also played the previous Sims games even though it most likely would have meant much lower sales numbers.”
“It was a mistake for EA to use a little resources on examining the online options for Sims games too even though it made the Sims Freeplay and the Sims Mobile possible too.”
But even so I agree with you though because I would have liked all that too. We would alas just have needed to live in another and very different world for it to have any chance of happening
“It was a mistake for EA not to use 3 times more money on the game and sell the game and its expansions for 3 times as high prices even though not many would then have bought the game.”
It's a mistake for EA to be greedy. The Sims 3 funded not only itself but multiple different projects during its running time. After cutting off a whole expansion studio transitioning from The Sims 3 to The Sims 4, EA is running the game on absolutely minimum expenses by trying to maximise profit. This is what we call a "cash cow". Unfortunately cash cow franchises tend to be run down to the ground after alienating their own player base by selling too little for too much.
“It was a mistake for EA not to make the game much deeper and more challenging even though it would mean that the game then would have become too complicated for the young new simmers who usually buy most Sims games.”
The Sims 4 is waaaaay more challenging than The Sims 3. I could have used The Sims 3 as my screensaver if I felt like it. Both pets and toddlers in The Sims 4 require a lot of attention from adult sims (similar to the level of attention required in The Sims 2) and careers are much harder to progress (you really need to push it to hit level 10 in a lifetime). Did this alienate the new player base?
“It was a mistake for EA to not target the game at the minority of simmers who also played the previous Sims games even though it most likely would have meant much lower sales numbers.”
If we believe the 5 million pin as being a sales pin, The Sims 4 would have sold around 40% of copies of what The Sims 3 has sold. If it had appealed exactly to the people that bought The Sims 3, it seems that they could have captured a larger audience.
@mirta000 Lyndsay Pearson confirmed that the sales number for TS4 was someway over 5 million copies in March 2017. We also know that TS2 was sold in 6 million copies and TS3 was sold in 7.7 million copies while TS1 was sold in more than 11 million copies. But there are more to it:
1. The sales numbers for the Sims 4 basegame will still increase until TS5 is released because new young simmers grow up all the time and buy the newest Sims game too.
2. It isn’t just about the sales numbers for the basegame. EA has released more SPs for TS4 than for any previous Sims games because SPs are cheap to make and sell better because they are more affordable for new very young simmers.
So everything points in the direction that TS4 has been at least as profitable for EA as TS3 (and probably more) even though we don’t have the exact sales numbers for neither the basegame nor for all the huge number of expansions.
@mirta000 Lyndsay Pearson confirmed that the sales number for TS4 was someway over 5 million copies in March 2017. We also know that TS2 was sold in 6 million copies and TS3 was sold in 7.7 million copies while TS1 was sold in more than 11 million copies. But there are more to it:
1. The sales numbers for the Sims 4 basegame will still increase until TS5 is released because new young simmers grow up all the time and buy the newest Sims game too.
2. It isn’t just about the sales numbers for the basegame. EA has released more SPs for TS4 than for any previous Sims games because SPs are cheap to make and sell better because they are more affordable for new very young simmers.
So everything points in the direction that TS4 has been at least as profitable for EA as TS3 (and probably more) even though we don’t have the exact sales numbers for neither the basegame nor for all the huge number of expansions.
"By March 22, 2002, The Sims had sold more than 11.3 million copies worldwide, surpassing Myst[5] as the best-selling PC game in history. "
"As of March 2012, The Sims 2 had sold 13 million across all platforms and six million on PC, making it one of the best-selling PC games of all-time."
"The Sims 3 sold 1.4 million copies in the first week, making it the largest release in PC gaming history at the time. The game has sold over 10 million copies worldwide since its release."
A few of your numbers were a bit off
I agree that The Sims 4 is probably just as profitable as previous iterations even with less copies sold, however that just cements the argument that they can afford to invest more into the franchise than they're investing, because with at least double the developers The Sims 3 was still churning so much profit that it funded multiple EA games at the time together with The Sims 4.
@mirta000 Your figures are a mixture of PC-only sales numbers and sales numbers for all platforms. TS3 sold 7.7 million copies for the PC but of course if you include sales numbers for other platforms.
If we want to compare sales numbers for TS4 with anything then IMO we have to only compare them with PC-only sales numbers because otherwise we would have to know TS4’s sales numbers for consoles too. But that version of TS4 hasn’t even been released yet. So who knows?
Besides that I don’t think that it is fair to include the sales numbers for the mobile versions of TS2 and TS3 anyway.
@Erpe, the console version for TS4 was released this week. For Xbox and PlayStation. I believe there were some expansions released also, with more coming soon.
Of course leaving toddlers out, was a big mistake. And they corrected it. But did they learn or listen ? I thought yes, but I was wrong.
So for me is the biggest mistake the restriction of player's freedom.
O.k., some might blame this "stable new engine" of the game. I don't know and I don't care. The sims games always used to be about the creativity and freedom of the players.
Not anymore, sadly. Look at all the creative tools we lost (in the build mode, CAW and Cast). As if that was not enough, they move on and put more and more restrictions in the game.
Latest rumors say an option menu is not possible, because of this "strong and solid engine" (maybe this engine was the first mistake ? Sounds like this....)
Anyway.
It doesn't matter, that you don't like the world that way, you can't change it anymore.....the devs decide, what it nice and what not.
It doesn't matter, that you don't like children in bars and nightclubs, because the devs are thinking is normal for children to hang out at night in bars and nightclubs, building up friendships with unknown adults.
They decide, not the player.
Apartments ? You want to build apartments ? NEVER ! Not in sims 4. The devs doing it for you.
You love the cas ?
Yes, the cas is great, but worthless now, because the game decide, what your sims should wear in nightclubs and the festival. (Preferably: socks, sandals, ridiculous hats and stupid glasses. And of course this looks so attractive and nice, that the sims stays this way and also show up in the friends list with this outfit.)
Again, THEY decide. The freedom is gone and I bet more going to follow.
The "you rule" slogan is nothing else, than bad joke in Sims 4.
@Erpe, the console version for TS4 was released this week. For Xbox and PlayStation. I believe there were some expansions released also, with more coming soon.
Correct. But those copies still weren’t a part of the more than 5 million copies which TS4 according to Lyndsay Pearson had sold already in March 2017.
Also the mobile versions of TS2 and TS3 were very different games and if people want to count them in the sold copies of those games then the sold copies of the games that now replaces them should of course have been counted as copies of TS4 too. But the problem is that those games now are free games and I don’t think that anybody would like the 200 million downloads of the Sims Freeplay to be counted as part of the sales numbers for TS4 too
My point just is that we should only count the PC games when we compare the sales numbers for TS2, TS3 and TS4 and even if we only do that TS4 seems to have done very well. But if we later add the sales numbers for consoles then I am sure that it will make he sales numbers for TS4 look even better because the just released console version of TS4 is by far the biggest Sims games for consoles that EA ever has released.
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Sorry I am rude but ts4 is the superfluous game.
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I honestly can say 2 and 3 will never see improvements. There is no money in that. EA is a company that thrives on profit— Normal
For every company, really.
But I get the gist of what you’re saying. I think. It’s not selfish at all to wish for improvement. I also wish for it. Sadly. s4 does not hit the mark or anywhere near the mark. Seriously. Who’s flipping idea was it to introduce oversized objects on limited space anyway? It’s neither attractive nor wanted.
Previous teens looked like actual teens. S4 teens look like young adults. Laziest move ever, Maxis. Good thing preteens are a possibility. I am sure they can make it to S4.
TODDLERS
Yep. No further explanation needed.
in terms of packs for me is Cool Kitchen Stuff, what a failure in my vision
It's great that they have added the things that fans were most raging about in patches. But 3 years down the track and we are still missing so many elements, some of which can not be added to the sims 4 without re-doing the entire system.
For the time they had to create the Sims 4, they did really well with it. It's comical to hear some people defend the game to no end, some saying it's the best game yet. That they like the closed world, the smaller EP's etc. But It's a worrying to me that people are giving this feedback. EA might think they can lesson the budget for Sims 5 and create the next game in the series with less quality and quantity, but on purpose next time. Because why bother putting in money to create a quality game that strives to be the best, when people will just buy the game anyway, in what ever state it comes. And then rave about it.
I hope they go all out with the Sims 5. I am excited in my hope for EA's redemption.
(This is my opinion)
You hit the nail on the head.
Getting rid of the Infant age altogether? -Mistake
(I'm talking about the crawling around aspect... since toddlers release, all I have mainly seen for cc is how to make them look younger. Pacifiers, short hair, diapers, baby furniture- Simmers like having realistic babies.. and let's face it, the newborns that come with the game are more like baby dolls!
Making Teens so completely identical to Adults. - Mistake. it's not even like you're playing with a Teen now.. the ages are so messed up, that story play is extremely unrealistic.
Not having separate teen clothes? - Mistake. .. I mean your teens are wearing the same clothes as your elders.. did anyone think about that?
Chaining the infant back to its bed like the original Sims- Mistake. I know they were worried about Sims leaving their babies outside in the cold.. like in TS3- but they would have given us the option of chaining them to various other objects.. (A bouncer, a swing, a playpen. a playmat) How cute would it be for the baby to be placed in a bouncer that sits on the table, while mom cooks dinner.. or while the family eats.
CULLING families- and not allowing the player to decide who goes? -BIG mistake. I lost a legacy family and didn't play for almost 6 months afterward because of this!
Not having Toddlers in the initial base game? - BIGGER mistake. - I almost didn't buy the game because of this. And when I did, it was only because it was discounted- the weekend after its release.
smh. Some questionable mistakes if you ask me. Although, they are coming around. They've made the game more playable, I will give them that. Although current play clock for me is just over 600 hours.. and with me STILL choosing TS3 over TS4- TS3 play clock is somewhere over 1,000 hours. - which lets be real, it should be MUCH higher. Had Origin been keeping track from the start, it would be well over 2,000 hours!
But let my rephrase your ideas:
“It was a mistake for EA not to use 3 times more money on the game and sell the game and its expansions for 3 times as high prices even though not many would then have bought the game.”
“It was a mistake for EA not to make the game much deeper and more challenging even though it would mean that the game then would have become too complicated for the young new simmers who usually buy most Sims games.”
“It was a mistake for EA to not target the game at the minority of simmers who also played the previous Sims games even though it most likely would have meant much lower sales numbers.”
“It was a mistake for EA to use a little resources on examining the online options for Sims games too even though it made the Sims Freeplay and the Sims Mobile possible too.”
But even so I agree with you though because I would have liked all that too. We would alas just have needed to live in another and very different world for it to have any chance of happening
It's a mistake for EA to be greedy. The Sims 3 funded not only itself but multiple different projects during its running time. After cutting off a whole expansion studio transitioning from The Sims 3 to The Sims 4, EA is running the game on absolutely minimum expenses by trying to maximise profit. This is what we call a "cash cow". Unfortunately cash cow franchises tend to be run down to the ground after alienating their own player base by selling too little for too much.
The Sims 4 is waaaaay more challenging than The Sims 3. I could have used The Sims 3 as my screensaver if I felt like it. Both pets and toddlers in The Sims 4 require a lot of attention from adult sims (similar to the level of attention required in The Sims 2) and careers are much harder to progress (you really need to push it to hit level 10 in a lifetime). Did this alienate the new player base?
If we believe the 5 million pin as being a sales pin, The Sims 4 would have sold around 40% of copies of what The Sims 3 has sold. If it had appealed exactly to the people that bought The Sims 3, it seems that they could have captured a larger audience.
1. The sales numbers for the Sims 4 basegame will still increase until TS5 is released because new young simmers grow up all the time and buy the newest Sims game too.
2. It isn’t just about the sales numbers for the basegame. EA has released more SPs for TS4 than for any previous Sims games because SPs are cheap to make and sell better because they are more affordable for new very young simmers.
So everything points in the direction that TS4 has been at least as profitable for EA as TS3 (and probably more) even though we don’t have the exact sales numbers for neither the basegame nor for all the huge number of expansions.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sims
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sims_2
"By March 22, 2002, The Sims had sold more than 11.3 million copies worldwide, surpassing Myst[5] as the best-selling PC game in history. "
"As of March 2012, The Sims 2 had sold 13 million across all platforms and six million on PC, making it one of the best-selling PC games of all-time."
"The Sims 3 sold 1.4 million copies in the first week, making it the largest release in PC gaming history at the time. The game has sold over 10 million copies worldwide since its release."
A few of your numbers were a bit off
I agree that The Sims 4 is probably just as profitable as previous iterations even with less copies sold, however that just cements the argument that they can afford to invest more into the franchise than they're investing, because with at least double the developers The Sims 3 was still churning so much profit that it funded multiple EA games at the time together with The Sims 4.
If we want to compare sales numbers for TS4 with anything then IMO we have to only compare them with PC-only sales numbers because otherwise we would have to know TS4’s sales numbers for consoles too. But that version of TS4 hasn’t even been released yet. So who knows?
Besides that I don’t think that it is fair to include the sales numbers for the mobile versions of TS2 and TS3 anyway.
Of course leaving toddlers out, was a big mistake. And they corrected it. But did they learn or listen ? I thought yes, but I was wrong.
So for me is the biggest mistake the restriction of player's freedom.
O.k., some might blame this "stable new engine" of the game. I don't know and I don't care. The sims games always used to be about the creativity and freedom of the players.
Not anymore, sadly. Look at all the creative tools we lost (in the build mode, CAW and Cast). As if that was not enough, they move on and put more and more restrictions in the game.
Latest rumors say an option menu is not possible, because of this "strong and solid engine" (maybe this engine was the first mistake ? Sounds like this....)
Anyway.
It doesn't matter, that you don't like the world that way, you can't change it anymore.....the devs decide, what it nice and what not.
It doesn't matter, that you don't like children in bars and nightclubs, because the devs are thinking is normal for children to hang out at night in bars and nightclubs, building up friendships with unknown adults.
They decide, not the player.
Apartments ? You want to build apartments ? NEVER ! Not in sims 4. The devs doing it for you.
You love the cas ?
Yes, the cas is great, but worthless now, because the game decide, what your sims should wear in nightclubs and the festival. (Preferably: socks, sandals, ridiculous hats and stupid glasses. And of course this looks so attractive and nice, that the sims stays this way and also show up in the friends list with this outfit.)
Again, THEY decide. The freedom is gone and I bet more going to follow.
The "you rule" slogan is nothing else, than bad joke in Sims 4.
Also the mobile versions of TS2 and TS3 were very different games and if people want to count them in the sold copies of those games then the sold copies of the games that now replaces them should of course have been counted as copies of TS4 too. But the problem is that those games now are free games and I don’t think that anybody would like the 200 million downloads of the Sims Freeplay to be counted as part of the sales numbers for TS4 too
My point just is that we should only count the PC games when we compare the sales numbers for TS2, TS3 and TS4 and even if we only do that TS4 seems to have done very well. But if we later add the sales numbers for consoles then I am sure that it will make he sales numbers for TS4 look even better because the just released console version of TS4 is by far the biggest Sims games for consoles that EA ever has released.