@kwanzaabot I have seen ALL of his reviews and they all have a negative sound in them. He is kinda whiny when it comes to cas and items tbh. It's like he doesn't like TS4(which he kinda doesn't like or that's what he said at his overall TS4 review).
I know that some people really like him and his reviews which is cool and I respect their opinion. But for me he is a negative Nancy.
"Two Years of Meh" was made before City Living, before Vampires, before the toddler patch, before Parenthood.
As I said. The packs reviewed since then have been far more even-handed, because they're actually *good*.
The first two years of TS4 were a hot mess. Of course he's going to point out those flaws. What kind of reviewer doesn't point out when something's done badly?
If you want sycophantic yes-men, watch Deligracy.
Pretty sure he didn't care much for CL either though. I like it a lot myself though so yes, I guess I just felt like pointing it out but I definitely agree with you that the quality of TS4's packs and also the communication with the customer base have dramatically increased since then. Even if LGR may not see it that way. Still, I watch every one of his reviews because he makes me laugh a lot, even if I don't really agree with some of his opinions (more now than before, although he didn't care much for supernaturals either for example).
I'll say this again and again even if it makes no difference but: sure he's "biased" (like every reviewer I guess, after all a big part of what they do is stating opinions and explaining why they have them), but he's funny and honest. I don't understand why people either hate on him for not liking TS4 or exalt him for it as if it somehow proved how bad this game is. I guess the latter group doesn't like Supernaturals either then and the first group must really have a hard time with liking anyone who sees things differently. In the end, both groups are probably a great source of traffic for him so who cares but really, I don't understand why people on these forums always have to spend endless pages arguing about him every single time. Always surprises me that there's still so much to be said about this haha
And yeah again, the ball pit is pretty ugly. I love the SP tons. Others don't. Buy it, don't but it. It's all the same, but I'm not sure it's necessary to keep trying convincing others they're wrong for not seeing things your own way.
Have a lovely rainy afternoon
ETA: edited to remove rambling. There might still be some in there, in which case, sorry
The ball pit is atrocious, but that can probably be reworked into something usable by a motivated creator and wouldn't have stopped me from buying this pack.
The thing I really dislike and 100% agree with LGR on are those useless, almost identical, tree stump things. I would pay money to keep that kind of functionless clutter out of my game, not to add it, and 4 obviously filler objects like those are stopping me from buying this pack.
It's one thing to have a single art statue of a ham sandwich or whatever silly thing to push up the total number of objects, but FOUR dumb tree stump statues? Haha no.
The fact is that all the people who really hate it kind of forget about something really important...
POLYGON COUNT.
And it's been fixed, for free. True, modders did it, like, THREE DAYS LATER, but that's because modders have the time to mod. Stuff Pack Teams have jobs.
Prepping a list of mods to add after Infants are placed into the game. Because real life isn't 'nice'.
and modders don't have jobs and families and lives. They are just sitting around waiting for EA to drop the ball so to speak and fix it for them. okie......no one knows what goes on behind the closed doors of ea/maxis except ea/maxis employees and some of those are probably in the dark. Has any guru, dev, ea whatever employee explained the epic fail on the pit? I haven't seen it. If you have post it here. Yes, other things were nice in the pack, but sometimes all it takes is one bad apple to spoil the whole bunch. That is why we don't have an lol button anymore. Oh...different soap box....never mind.
The problem is that if a mod can fix it after the fact, EA should be able to fix it prior to release. Mods should enhance the game. Not be expected to fix the game.
The ball pit is atrocious, but that can probably be reworked into something usable by a motivated creator and wouldn't have stopped me from buying this pack.
The thing I really dislike and 100% agree with LGR on are those useless, almost identical, tree stump things. I would pay money to keep that kind of functionless clutter out of my game, not to add it, and 4 obviously filler objects like those are stopping me from buying this pack.
It's one thing to have a single art statue of a ham sandwich or whatever silly thing to push up the total number of objects, but FOUR dumb tree stump statues? Haha no.
When I first saw the tree stumps, I was hoping the toddlers could at least climb on them. I guess that would've been too much animation for a stuff pack.
and modders don't have jobs and families and lives. They are just sitting around waiting for EA to drop the ball so to speak and fix it for them. okie......no one knows what goes on behind the closed doors of ea/maxis except ea/maxis employees and some of those are probably in the dark. Has any guru, dev, ea whatever employee explained the epic fail on the pit? I haven't seen it. If you have post it here. Yes, other things were nice in the pack, but sometimes all it takes is one bad apple to spoil the whole bunch. That is why we don't have an lol button anymore. Oh...different soap box....never mind.
The explanation is simple - polygon count. Even modders have explained that adding even a dozen more balls kicks up the polygon count of the pit something chronic. Toddlers also need to be animated to play in it. The size of that one item would be humungous on your pack.
So your pit might have more detail, but your kids couldn't do so much when they played in it. Looks, or gameplay?
Prepping a list of mods to add after Infants are placed into the game. Because real life isn't 'nice'.
Again, has anyone from EA/Maxis confirmed your theory? They would have been better off not making it then be made a laughing stock in the community and gaming world. That ball pit is laughable and you and others giving them excuses is just sad. No comment on modders having lives and jobs and families? If modders can do it, they could have done it or just shelved it.
Again, has anyone from EA/Maxis confirmed your theory? They would have been better off not making it then be made a laughing stock in the community and gaming world. That ball pit is laughable and you and others giving them excuses is just sad. No comment on modders having lives and jobs and families? If modders can do it, they could have done it or just shelved it.
There's a difference between excusing and explaining. Performance is likely the reason it happened the way it did. That doesn't necessarily mean they knew during the concept phase. From the stuff Graham has shared so far about how their process works, I don't think there's any indication of a fail-safe in their process, with regards to predicting performance issues. Though after this issue, if there isn't a concerted effort in that direction during the process, there may be more of one now.
I mean, basically, IF it was because of performance, there's more or less two general ways it went down:
1) They knew from confirmation of the concept that it would need to look how it does for performance reasons and greenlighted the concept anyway.
2) They didn't know performance would be an issue until development had already started (in which case, it was probably too late to go back and do some other kind of object).
If it was the first, that doesn't look good for them and only raises more questions; did they think it looks fine? Was it a marketing decision? (some research about ball pits and popularity?).
If it's the second, it's just an honest mistake; an oversight. I think the specs going up with Cats and Dogs possibly lends more weight to the second one; if there was any way for them to build Cats and Dogs in a way that kept the spec requirements the same, I'm sure they'd have aimed for that. But it may be that, like the ball pit, they were already deep in when they realized, in testing certain components, that it was going to up performance and no way around it, without hurting the features. Perhaps with the ball pit, they had a similar crossroads decision and went in the other direction because they don't want to up the requirements for a dinky little stuff pack.
As for modders, modders are great (though it feels weird to comment on them in any way, since I am one). But the ease with which modders did something with it only adds weight to the theory that performance was the reason, especially given the results and statements about performance from said modders.
If you're hoping for Maxis to make a statement on it, I don't think that's likely. No matter what way you spin it, they are only going to look worse and call more attention to it by acknowledging it. I mean, it's not like it's a bug, where they can just fix it. The ball pit is the product that was advertised and it's already finished and released.
Feel free to be mad about it though, of course. Not trying to invalidate anyone's feelings on the matter. And I don't mean that in a snarky way. I'm sure Maxis would rather have honest anger than pasted-on smiles.
EA doesn't do the programming. They sign things, set budgets, and make vague suggestions for the order things should be done in. The Community Pack shows how little influence they have on the end product. They are a business. If they can cut the budget and get the same quality, that means more money. They don't need me to stick up for them, and I generally don't.
The Gurus don't set out to make things bad. You don't keep your job by making bad games. Both Maxis and EA have learned that by painful experience. That's why we have all-new teams, and less of them. The Gurus are relatively normal people like you and me.
Unlike Game Packs and Expansion Packs, Stuff Packs aren't really given time or a lot of money because a large chunk of their content is now recycled. CHAIRS! SOFAS! TABLES! RUGS! You could get a chunk of that content off Modder sites for free and the Gurus know it. The budget really goes towards new gameplay objects and the animations and interactions they require. In this case, the playground pipes with multiple 'imagination' animations AS WELL AS the little ball-pit by the side.
Once the programming is done, it's easy to mod, as we've seen with the speed the mods turned out. But I bet you did't see any ball-pits for free before now.
Prepping a list of mods to add after Infants are placed into the game. Because real life isn't 'nice'.
@Triplis
"Each object has a specific polygon budget it has to adhere to, due to performance guidelines, depending on its size in the world." according to SimGuruMeatball, so they most likely knew about the constraints beforehand, though I don't know if that's enough to get a good grasp at how the end result will look like.
No worries. Art style has very little to do with the low polygon count though. Each object has a specific polygon budget it has to adhere to, due to performance guidelines, depending on its size in the world. If an object is very rounded by design, it unfortunately ends up tending to look a bit angular because of that. We usually try to have that in mind when we design things, but sometimes it's just the way it goes if you really want to do a lot of rounded curves in your object, like pots and pans
@Triplis
"Each object has a specific polygon budget it has to adhere to, due to performance guidelines, depending on its size in the world." according to SimGuruMeatball, so they most likely knew about the constraints beforehand, though I don't know if that's enough to get a good grasp at how the end result will look like.
No worries. Art style has very little to do with the low polygon count though. Each object has a specific polygon budget it has to adhere to, due to performance guidelines, depending on its size in the world. If an object is very rounded by design, it unfortunately ends up tending to look a bit angular because of that. We usually try to have that in mind when we design things, but sometimes it's just the way it goes if you really want to do a lot of rounded curves in your object, like pots and pans
"Polygon budget" ROFLMAO That's pathetic. Do they get yelled at by their bosses if they make the game look decent? The graphics settings are there for a reason, use it ffs. Or maybe, you know, don't make objects you know will contain a fair amount of balls that will be ROUND. Surprise, they usually are.
Allons-y!
---> Afterlife Game Pack Idea - improved ghosts, cemeteries and funerals, psychics, new skills, new career and more! <---
What do you mean ? Polygon budgets are pretty much a standard in the video game industry.
ROFL what I mean is that if they don't have a 'budget' enough to take balls in a ball pit into account, then they shouldn't be making the game.
And obviously the quality of the object has nothing to do with the amount of polygons, since it can be increased and decreased with settings. The objects cost the same amount to make, they just decreased the amount of balls so they hit the 'performance guideline'. What I mean is that they have different levels of graphics settings for a reason. What I mean is that they failed miserably with this object and it has nothing to do with 'polygon budgets'.
Allons-y!
---> Afterlife Game Pack Idea - improved ghosts, cemeteries and funerals, psychics, new skills, new career and more! <---
What do you mean ? Polygon budgets are pretty much a standard in the video game industry.
ROFL what I mean is that if they don't have a 'budget' enough to take balls in a ball pit into account, then they shouldn't be making the game.
And obviously the quality of the object has nothing to do with the amount of polygons, since it can be increased and decreased with settings. The objects cost the same amount to make, they just decreased the amount of balls so they hit the 'performance guideline'. What I mean is that they have different levels of graphics settings for a reason. What I mean is that they failed miserably with this object and it has nothing to do with 'polygon budgets'.
You do realize polygon budgets have nothing to do with money but is the max number of polygons an object can have ?
"Polygon budget" ROFLMAO That's pathetic. Do they get yelled at by their bosses if they make the game look decent? The graphics settings are there for a reason, use it ffs. Or maybe, you know, don't make objects you know will contain a fair amount of balls that will be ROUND. Surprise, they usually are.
Anything above a certain level of polygons will simply not be released. Yes, every game has a polygon budget per object. HOWEVER it is possible to make the object look better without increasing polygons and, if they really can't, they should not have released it.
Anything above a certain level of polygons will simply not be released. Yes, every game has a polygon budget per object. HOWEVER it is possible to make the object look better without increasing polygons and, if they really can't, they should not have released it.
They probably should have scrapped the idea tbh, but that's not my point, my point is that the whole idea of polygon budgets are really stupid if it's so low that you can't make decent objects. Then they shouldn't be making the game.
It means that the performance optimization and programming is crap, and they might aswell scrap the whole thing.
Allons-y!
---> Afterlife Game Pack Idea - improved ghosts, cemeteries and funerals, psychics, new skills, new career and more! <---
@Aine
It has been explained earlier in the thread that you'd need a huge amount of polygons to make it looks like real balls. And they have to take into account the fact that you can put hundreds of ball pits on your lot ! That makes it an insane number of polygons. Would you be ok with losing build mode for round balls ? I'd rather have my build mode.
What do you mean ? Polygon budgets are pretty much a standard in the video game industry.
ROFL what I mean is that if they don't have a 'budget' enough to take balls in a ball pit into account, then they shouldn't be making the game.
And obviously the quality of the object has nothing to do with the amount of polygons, since it can be increased and decreased with settings. The objects cost the same amount to make, they just decreased the amount of balls so they hit the 'performance guideline'. What I mean is that they have different levels of graphics settings for a reason. What I mean is that they failed miserably with this object and it has nothing to do with 'polygon budgets'.
You do realize polygon budgets have nothing to do with money but is the max number of polygons an object can have ?
@Aine
It has been explained earlier in the thread that you'd need a huge amount of polygons to make it looks like real balls. And they have to take into account the fact that you can put hundreds of ball pits on your lot ! That makes it an insane number of polygons. Would you be ok with losing build mode for round balls ? I'd rather have my build mode.
There were two different versions of the ball pit that modders have made that both had more balls, one with all the balls added, and one with just more balls. There's no such thing as all or nothing in this instance. IMO the object is badly designed. It's also clear from what the modders reported that even if you fill the pit with all the balls, and get the higher poly count, the newer gaming computers can render it fine without it affecting the rest of the gameplay. Optimizing the rendering of objects, and allowing for several settings for the object in the graphics, EA could have made people happier. Not to mention the flat surface with the weird texture on it and behaves like liquid. What even is that?
Not to mention that the engine doesn't take advantage of the possibility of rendering an object once and then making copies of that object.
I'd imagine that there would be no reason to have more than one ball pit per lot - a game of the Sims caliber should be able to render a single object, even if it has balls, without completely throwing quality out the window. It's just bad.
Allons-y!
---> Afterlife Game Pack Idea - improved ghosts, cemeteries and funerals, psychics, new skills, new career and more! <---
@Aine
It has been explained earlier in the thread that you'd need a huge amount of polygons to make it looks like real balls. And they have to take into account the fact that you can put hundreds of ball pits on your lot ! That makes it an insane number of polygons. Would you be ok with losing build mode for round balls ? I'd rather have my build mode.
There were two different versions of the ball pit that modders have made that both had more balls, one with all the balls added, and one with just more balls. There's no such thing as all or nothing in this instance. IMO the object is badly designed. It's also clear from what the modders reported that even if you fill the pit with all the balls, and get the higher poly count, the newer gaming computers can render it fine without it affecting the rest of the gameplay. Optimizing the rendering of objects, and allowing for several settings for the object in the graphics, EA could have made people happier. Not to mention the flat surface with the weird texture on it and behaves like liquid. What even is that?
Not to mention that the engine doesn't take advantage of the possibility of rendering an object once and then making copies of that object.
I'd imagine that there would be no reason to have more than one ball pit per lot - a game of the Sims caliber should be able to render a single object, even if it has balls, without completely throwing quality out the window. It's just bad.
What about a thousand of them ? Devs have explained they are testing limit cases like that (the example given was with chairs and pathfinding). If that's something you can do in-game, it has to work and some people are making crazy builds. That's why the polygon budget depends on the size of the object in the world, because that gives how many time this object can be put on a lot.
Like you said, a game of the Sims caliber should be able to render a single object, even if it has balls; and it is able to do so as shown by the modder versions that the game is perfectely able to render. But a game of the Sims caliber should be able to render a full lot of ball pits too. Or they can put a limit on the number of objects like they did with the mannequins, which was also a matter of rendering.
Rendering one and copying it ? How do you imagine that would work when the world is dynamic, some of the ball pits have different color, some are in use or not, they aren't all in the same direction, and don't all have the same lighting ?
@Aine
It has been explained earlier in the thread that you'd need a huge amount of polygons to make it looks like real balls. And they have to take into account the fact that you can put hundreds of ball pits on your lot ! That makes it an insane number of polygons. Would you be ok with losing build mode for round balls ? I'd rather have my build mode.
There were two different versions of the ball pit that modders have made that both had more balls, one with all the balls added, and one with just more balls. There's no such thing as all or nothing in this instance. IMO the object is badly designed. It's also clear from what the modders reported that even if you fill the pit with all the balls, and get the higher poly count, the newer gaming computers can render it fine without it affecting the rest of the gameplay. Optimizing the rendering of objects, and allowing for several settings for the object in the graphics, EA could have made people happier. Not to mention the flat surface with the weird texture on it and behaves like liquid. What even is that?
Not to mention that the engine doesn't take advantage of the possibility of rendering an object once and then making copies of that object.
I'd imagine that there would be no reason to have more than one ball pit per lot - a game of the Sims caliber should be able to render a single object, even if it has balls, without completely throwing quality out the window. It's just bad.
What about a thousand of them ? Devs have explained they are testing limit cases like that (the example given was with chairs and pathfinding). If that's something you can do in-game, it has to work and some people are making crazy builds. That's why the polygon budget depends on the size of the object in the world, because that gives how many time this object can be put on a lot.
Like you said, a game of the Sims caliber should be able to render a single object, even if it has balls; and it is able to do so as shown by the modder versions that the game is perfectely able to render. But a game of the Sims caliber should be able to render a full lot of ball pits too. Or they can put a limit on the number of objects like they did with the mannequins, which was also a matter of rendering.
Rendering one and copying it ? How do you imagine that would work when the world is dynamic, some of the ball pits have different color, some are in use or not, they aren't all in the same direction, and don't all have the same lighting ?
Yeah, I agree, the game should be able to render alot of ball pits, it depends on how the engine is programmed and how the object is rendered into the game. That's my whole point, that it is possible, and that the engine isn't optimized properly for what a sims game is, rendering alot of poly heavy objects, so they have to resort to having really low polygon budgets when they should push the genre towards expanding how many polygons the game can render at any time. This is a game that wasn't even 64 bit when it launched. It's just really bad, and the ball pit is the perfect example of what is wrong with how they approach the game. They should be at the cutting edge of rendering graphics and AI, but they seem to be stuck at this cheap level that just isn't good enough for alot of simmers. I'm happy for the simmers that are fine with the crappy looking ball pit, but I'm not one of them. I think the whole thing is pathetic.
Allons-y!
---> Afterlife Game Pack Idea - improved ghosts, cemeteries and funerals, psychics, new skills, new career and more! <---
Comments
Pretty sure he didn't care much for CL either though. I like it a lot myself though so yes, I guess I just felt like pointing it out
I'll say this again and again even if it makes no difference but: sure he's "biased" (like every reviewer I guess, after all a big part of what they do is stating opinions and explaining why they have them), but he's funny and honest. I don't understand why people either hate on him for not liking TS4 or exalt him for it as if it somehow proved how bad this game is. I guess the latter group doesn't like Supernaturals either then and the first group must really have a hard time with liking anyone who sees things differently. In the end, both groups are probably a great source of traffic for him so who cares but really, I don't understand why people on these forums always have to spend endless pages arguing about him every single time. Always surprises me that there's still so much to be said about this haha
And yeah again, the ball pit is pretty ugly. I love the SP tons. Others don't. Buy it, don't but it. It's all the same, but I'm not sure it's necessary to keep trying convincing others they're wrong for not seeing things your own way.
Have a lovely rainy afternoon
ETA: edited to remove rambling. There might still be some in there, in which case, sorry
The thing I really dislike and 100% agree with LGR on are those useless, almost identical, tree stump things. I would pay money to keep that kind of functionless clutter out of my game, not to add it, and 4 obviously filler objects like those are stopping me from buying this pack.
It's one thing to have a single art statue of a ham sandwich or whatever silly thing to push up the total number of objects, but FOUR dumb tree stump statues? Haha no.
EA really dropped their ball.....
too soon?
The fact is that all the people who really hate it kind of forget about something really important...
POLYGON COUNT.
And it's been fixed, for free. True, modders did it, like, THREE DAYS LATER, but that's because modders have the time to mod. Stuff Pack Teams have jobs.
The Cowboy and the Mermaid
When I first saw the tree stumps, I was hoping the toddlers could at least climb on them. I guess that would've been too much animation for a stuff pack.
The explanation is simple - polygon count. Even modders have explained that adding even a dozen more balls kicks up the polygon count of the pit something chronic. Toddlers also need to be animated to play in it. The size of that one item would be humungous on your pack.
So your pit might have more detail, but your kids couldn't do so much when they played in it. Looks, or gameplay?
The Cowboy and the Mermaid
I mean, basically, IF it was because of performance, there's more or less two general ways it went down:
1) They knew from confirmation of the concept that it would need to look how it does for performance reasons and greenlighted the concept anyway.
2) They didn't know performance would be an issue until development had already started (in which case, it was probably too late to go back and do some other kind of object).
If it was the first, that doesn't look good for them and only raises more questions; did they think it looks fine? Was it a marketing decision? (some research about ball pits and popularity?).
If it's the second, it's just an honest mistake; an oversight. I think the specs going up with Cats and Dogs possibly lends more weight to the second one; if there was any way for them to build Cats and Dogs in a way that kept the spec requirements the same, I'm sure they'd have aimed for that. But it may be that, like the ball pit, they were already deep in when they realized, in testing certain components, that it was going to up performance and no way around it, without hurting the features. Perhaps with the ball pit, they had a similar crossroads decision and went in the other direction because they don't want to up the requirements for a dinky little stuff pack.
As for modders, modders are great (though it feels weird to comment on them in any way, since I am one). But the ease with which modders did something with it only adds weight to the theory that performance was the reason, especially given the results and statements about performance from said modders.
If you're hoping for Maxis to make a statement on it, I don't think that's likely. No matter what way you spin it, they are only going to look worse and call more attention to it by acknowledging it. I mean, it's not like it's a bug, where they can just fix it. The ball pit is the product that was advertised and it's already finished and released.
Feel free to be mad about it though, of course. Not trying to invalidate anyone's feelings on the matter. And I don't mean that in a snarky way. I'm sure Maxis would rather have honest anger than pasted-on smiles.
The Gurus don't set out to make things bad. You don't keep your job by making bad games. Both Maxis and EA have learned that by painful experience. That's why we have all-new teams, and less of them. The Gurus are relatively normal people like you and me.
Unlike Game Packs and Expansion Packs, Stuff Packs aren't really given time or a lot of money because a large chunk of their content is now recycled. CHAIRS! SOFAS! TABLES! RUGS! You could get a chunk of that content off Modder sites for free and the Gurus know it. The budget really goes towards new gameplay objects and the animations and interactions they require. In this case, the playground pipes with multiple 'imagination' animations AS WELL AS the little ball-pit by the side.
Once the programming is done, it's easy to mod, as we've seen with the speed the mods turned out. But I bet you did't see any ball-pits for free before now.
"Each object has a specific polygon budget it has to adhere to, due to performance guidelines, depending on its size in the world." according to SimGuruMeatball, so they most likely knew about the constraints beforehand, though I don't know if that's enough to get a good grasp at how the end result will look like.
Full quote from SimGuruMeatball is below :
What do you mean ? Polygon budgets are pretty much a standard in the video game industry.
ROFL what I mean is that if they don't have a 'budget' enough to take balls in a ball pit into account, then they shouldn't be making the game.
And obviously the quality of the object has nothing to do with the amount of polygons, since it can be increased and decreased with settings. The objects cost the same amount to make, they just decreased the amount of balls so they hit the 'performance guideline'. What I mean is that they have different levels of graphics settings for a reason. What I mean is that they failed miserably with this object and it has nothing to do with 'polygon budgets'.
You do realize polygon budgets have nothing to do with money but is the max number of polygons an object can have ?
Anything above a certain level of polygons will simply not be released. Yes, every game has a polygon budget per object. HOWEVER it is possible to make the object look better without increasing polygons and, if they really can't, they should not have released it.
They probably should have scrapped the idea tbh, but that's not my point, my point is that the whole idea of polygon budgets are really stupid if it's so low that you can't make decent objects. Then they shouldn't be making the game.
It means that the performance optimization and programming is crap, and they might aswell scrap the whole thing.
It has been explained earlier in the thread that you'd need a huge amount of polygons to make it looks like real balls. And they have to take into account the fact that you can put hundreds of ball pits on your lot ! That makes it an insane number of polygons. Would you be ok with losing build mode for round balls ? I'd rather have my build mode.
And now we know why that is.
Not to mention that the engine doesn't take advantage of the possibility of rendering an object once and then making copies of that object.
I'd imagine that there would be no reason to have more than one ball pit per lot - a game of the Sims caliber should be able to render a single object, even if it has balls, without completely throwing quality out the window. It's just bad.
What about a thousand of them ? Devs have explained they are testing limit cases like that (the example given was with chairs and pathfinding). If that's something you can do in-game, it has to work and some people are making crazy builds. That's why the polygon budget depends on the size of the object in the world, because that gives how many time this object can be put on a lot.
Like you said, a game of the Sims caliber should be able to render a single object, even if it has balls; and it is able to do so as shown by the modder versions that the game is perfectely able to render. But a game of the Sims caliber should be able to render a full lot of ball pits too. Or they can put a limit on the number of objects like they did with the mannequins, which was also a matter of rendering.
Rendering one and copying it ? How do you imagine that would work when the world is dynamic, some of the ball pits have different color, some are in use or not, they aren't all in the same direction, and don't all have the same lighting ?