Polling what feature to include when is not the most important part - it's the ideas about how to implement features that they need to ask the community about. Just like when they had that giant idea thread about toddlers that then fed into their working on them. I believe that thread played a big part in why Sims 4 toddlers ended up being the best in the franchise. They should ask more often what simmers want from features and about ideas, to find out what we all find most important about them.
Allons-y!
---> Afterlife Game Pack Idea - improved ghosts, cemeteries and funerals, psychics, new skills, new career and more! <---
They do poll the community on features. There were a bunch of polls over the summer, but over on Twitter. The catch is, there are no guarantees, and the info is very generalized. The players don't get to choose the subjects. There are many reasons for this, and also why they could never exclusively let the community choose the work they do. I'll just state a few.
First of all, the game is not a commission. We don't pay up front with negotiations in place to make demands for exactly what we are receiving. So nothing is guaranteed to begin with. A fair share of people seem to misunderstand this. Yes, we are customers, and yes, we have freedom to give honest feedback or make a complaint when we deem it necessary, and quite often, that feedback is heard. But we don't reserve the right to dictate demands to the developers. In fact, many of the things we got that people wanted (and sometimes insisted on, like Toddlers,) were things that were going to be incorporated anyway. The feedback can and does often influence how something is done, and player input can inspire, but development is in no way obligated to carry out anyone's demands.
Second, the players are not Simulation game developers, so we have absolutely no idea what is possible and what isn't. We can speculate till the sun comes up and throw out all the long-winded theories we want, but the truth is, we are totally in the dark when it comes to understanding the game engine and the mechanics of simulation and its coding. We've still got people asking for things like open world and CaSt, which we have already been told are not even possible in this rendition because it wasn't built for those things. So without that understanding of development, we have no idea what is or isn't feasible to put into the game, especially concerning time and budget.
Third, the developers need to have creative liberty. Not just because their jobs require varieties of artistic talent and innovation, but also because the creation process of a game has so many varying states of metamorphosis and experimentation to see what works and what doesn't. So they have to be able to go with the flow of people from different areas and stages within development. Each piece has to click together to make the whole, and some features take a lot of departmental cooperation. Plus, the aim of Sims 4 is to be new and different from its predecessors. If they were at the mercy of the community, they'd be making the exact same features the exact same way from previous games and there would be no growth or newness, and no surprises. That, in itself, would be dull and predictable.
Lastly, EA capitalism. A lot of money can go into and come out of a Sims game and in order to be profitable, they have to stay on top of the content schedule, timelines, deadlines, and budget, and see that all of these are kept in balance. They pay for everything from development and marketing to telemetry and services to keep their industry running smoothly. If they had to constantly wait for community decisions on everything, nothing would get developed. **Just the Laundry Stuff Pack alone took three times the normal development time to complete because they had to cater to the community. And by the end of it, a lot of Simmers were still unsatisfied despite the success of the pack.
So there we are, full circle, back to where we started. Even when the community is included in the creation of content, we still have a lot of people grumping around the forums in discontent, claiming that popular opinions are being ignored. So the reality is, there is no magic solution to pleasing all players. It's actually impossible. And the devs already know this so they don't even attempt to. It's the Simmers who haven't really absorbed the truth yet. But that doesn't mean each player won't get something they enjoy at some point, it just might require some wait time. It takes much longer to cater to such a diverse player base, which is probably why so many people feel like they're waiting too long for content they really want. Because they essentially are.
I think the better solution is awareness. Players should keep in mind that not everything that releases will please them. Every Simmer does not like the same thing. If someone on Youtube is excited about an upcoming feature and thinks it's awesome, they have every right to their excitement. But there are never guarantees that we'll all feel the same way. So all I can say is, stay grounded. If you like to be hyped, then hype away. But keep in mind that your expectations may be way off and prepare yourself ahead of time for possible disappointment. It's not the end of the world...or the Sims 4. There's always next time.
**Edit: Just saw SimGuruGraham's post regarding Laundry Day Stuff so I'm adding a correction to my post. Apparently it did not take longer to create than a normal Stuff Pack. I thought I had seen a different statement from a Guru or dev somewhere that estimated it took three to four months to create the average Stuff Pack and it took ten for Laundry Day. But he said it takes about ten months for all Stuff Packs, although they work on a few at a time simultaneously and sometimes temporarily focus on one for its release.
If they are going to make an official poll, it's only going to satisfy a group of players and indirectly will set our expectations and perception. For now, we already have lots of polls on the packs or features that we want from the players in this forum.. Ideas and suggestions, which have been enough for the Dev team to gather the information from there..provided that they look at the discussion... I agree with @Aine.. It is much better to gather ideas on how to implement, execute or to change the feature, gameplay, etc. than asking what do we want next? There's so many answers in this forum..
I don't think they should poll presay. But it would be nice if they brought burglars back. I mean if they can make vampires break into your house then a burglar should be no problem.
Or the fact that you can drown your sim, starve them to death or cause them to be burned alive. There still isn't a justifiable reason for them to be added in yet.
Listening to users can be a good valuable thing, but developers need also to sort through the noise and have the guts to stick to their own vision and not trying to satisfy everyone. I prefer a well focused game with a clear vision rather than something incoherent that sticks in ten different directions at once. Especially because you end up only satisfying the loudest users in your community, not necessarily the majority.
Online polls don't speak for the whole community they only speak for the most vocal. I think ingame polls like a pop up once you start your game would be best but even then it doesn't speak for everyone as some players have limited data only using it to download patches and packs or prefer to play offline.
I don’t think so. It’s okay for consensus but not for deciding what should actually be the next pack. Like others said before, that’s why we got Laundry Day.
TBH, I don’t think LD was a bad pack, it’s just how came to be a SP was bad. How did we go from Eco Friendly living to washing machines, I don’t really know
I think the better solution is awareness. Players should keep in mind that not everything that releases will please them. But keep in mind that your expectations may be way off and prepare yourself ahead of time for possible disappointment.
This sentiment right here is why this community is so messed up and why The Sims 4 is still struggling four years after release.
Can you think of any other company that prefaces their product with finger wagging and admonishment to lower their potential customers’ expectations for something they ultimately want you to buy?
Why would a company that claims to believe in the quality of their product deliberately and continuously tell its customers these sorts of things...unless they actually don’t believe in the quality of their product at all?
Companies (especially big ones) don’t typically set out to make a product that purposely doesn’t satisfy the majority of its customer base. That’s a great way to get people to not buy your stuff. It seems the only things this studio has going for them anymore is The Sims name itself and no sight of a direct competitor anywhere.
Let’s imagine that there is a competitor that makes a life simulator comparable to The Sims. If they made a game that offered any or all of the things that The Sims 4 currently lacks, how many of you would still be playing TS4? How many of you can honestly say that you are willing to wait up to three or more years for missing features and mechanics if a competitor offered it to you now? Really think about that.
For me, if a company keeps telling me that their product isn’t for everyone and not worth getting excited over, or my personal favorite - trashes their own past products that they worked on and previously claimed to be proud of (looking at you, SimGuruGrant), I am going to assume that this company doesn’t want my money.
If you believed in your own product, you yourself would be excited about it, and you would certainly want your customers to be excited too. If it was truly fun and enjoyable, there would be no need to preface its release with a warning that there’s a chance you’re not going to like it, and as LiELF so poignantly stated:
I think the better solution is awareness. Players should keep in mind that not everything that releases will please them. But keep in mind that your expectations may be way off and prepare yourself ahead of time for possible disappointment.
This sentiment right here is why this community is so messed up and why The Sims 4 is still struggling four years after release.
Can you think of any other company that prefaces their product with finger wagging and admonishment to lower their potential customers’ expectations for something they ultimately want you to buy?
Why would a company that claims to believe in the quality of their product deliberately and continuously tell its customers these sorts of things...unless they actually don’t believe in the quality of their product at all?
Companies (especially big ones) don’t typically set out to make a product that purposely doesn’t satisfy the majority of its customer base. That’s a great way to get people to not buy your stuff. It seems the only things this studio has going for them anymore is The Sims name itself and no sight of a direct competitor anywhere.
Let’s imagine that there is a competitor that makes a life simulator comparable to The Sims. If they made a game that offered any or all of the things that The Sims 4 currently lacks, how many of you would still be playing TS4? How many of you can honestly say that you are willing to wait up to three or more years for missing features and mechanics if a competitor offered it to you now? Really think about that.
For me, if a company keeps telling me that their product isn’t for everyone and not worth getting excited over, or my personal favorite - trashes their own past products that they worked on and previously claimed to be proud of (looking at you, SimGuruGrant), I am going to assume that this company doesn’t want my money.
If you believed in your own product, you yourself would be excited about it, and you would certainly want your customers to be excited too. If it was truly fun and enjoyable, there would be no need to preface its release with a warning that there’s a chance you’re not going to like it, and as LiELF so poignantly stated:
...prepare yourself ahead of time for possible disappointment.
The fact that this community sees absolutely nothing wrong with this way of thinking is the ultimate disappointment.
Couldn't agree more.. Why should we have to be prepared to be disappointed. It's not a very wise positioning strategy by the EA. And why do we have to accept everything just because we are not satisfied? The differences in the players' interest should make this franchise to work better and take into consideration to polish the game towards perfection. I would rather not to compare EA with the other company, but there's one company is still in the process (like years!) to do a remake of a game so that the long time fan will not be disappointed.
It doesn't matter how many thousand people are demanding a particular feature, if it's going to be extremely time consuming to add, or extremely difficult, or doesn't fit with any other thing being planned, why would it be added? You don't want months of time, energy and money to be poured into a single feature, at the expense of more variety, especially since that one feature, when done, may not be exactly as a large chunk of the majority imagined it to be, leading to a lot of complaining that it wasn't done right.
There could be one unexciting, difficult to implement detail that thousands demand loudly, while there are a dozen quietly whispered good, unique, workable ideas that the majority ignore, or never even saw.
Yes, quality is often preferred over quantity, but there also needs to be a balance. Eg, putting too much time and effort into 'freeing babies' could mean that the babies won't end up like half of those wanting it done are imagining their little sprogs to be, they may end up unhappy with how it's done. Meanwhile, all the non-family players are feeling left out, because there's been not focus on the details they wanted fixed. There's a lot of people wanting more music related stuff, there's a lot of people wanting more supernatural related stuff, there's people wanting more life stages, while others want more life states. Some people want more little things improved, like newspapers, burglars, cops, firemen, etc. Some want hotels, while others want to live under the sea, and yet others would like to go skiing. Some want farms, some want cars, some want better interactions, emotions and memories. Some want to be able to leave a baby on the floor for sims to whine about being in the way.
I see a lot of people wanting things to be exactly as they were done in previous versions of the game. Put those things in a poll against totally new concepts, and they're likely to get the top votes, because most people will vote for something they are familiar with, regardless of whether it's a better idea or not.
Poll the community? No. They should just ask me personally. They need to hear my highly opinionated opinions on options.
I have quite a few thoughts outside of the box. Aside from my extreme desire to make a vampire band with a werewolf drummer, many of my other thoughts are for things not done before.
While I don't think they should constantly poll the community every time they release a pack or patch, I think that they should pay more attention to the criticism and requests of players. I definitely think they're getting better with much awaited Seasons as well as terrain tools, but they have a ways to go. One example is how they have blatantly stated that cars aren't being planned for although many simmers have listed them as one of their biggest wishes. In addition, their response to the lack of tropical content seems to be the base game Caribbean additions, which, while gorgeous and considerate, definitely don't give players the tropical world and abundance of items they wanted and suggests that it will be a long wait if they do expand on the theme at all.
More often than not the community suggestions that have been heard and acted on by the devs have resulted in the game improving. Pools, toddlers, terrain tools, less ugly maps, an empty world, a cease and desist order for stuff packs (looking at you, My First Pet Stuff...), and many other improvements were all fueled by feedback from us, the paying customers.
The only times I can think of where the community was divided over something that they had a direct say in are Laundry Day Stuff and the Gallery update. However, pretty much everyone loved being offered the option to choose their own theme, even if their theme wasn’t ultimately chosen. The devs even said afterward that the feedback they got for the polling events was extremely well received by participants.
As for the Gallery, many simmers have been asking for better ease of access and sorting options for years (some don’t even work, like sort by pack), and that’s what we thought we’d be getting in the update since those were the most requested changes. Unfortunately that didn’t happen, and those requests are still unfulfilled. So this is more of a “devs didn’t listen” issue than a “devs listened to the fans and now the gallery is garbage” issue.
The vast majority of popular suggestions coming from the community would make the game better, and they are things that simmers would absolutely want to play with and find fun. If it weren’t for the community speaking up about dumb design decisions and missing features, I highly doubt we’d have any of the ones I listed earlier. No pools, no toddlers, etc. Imagine if we still had none of these popular features that were missing and deemed “undoable” or low priority by the devs. Feedback from a large number of players fueled the return of those features, and has the ability to influence future content as well.
Listening to the community, and I do mean really listening, would be the best thing that the studio could do for this game.
Exactly! I think devs shouldn't just listen to us, but they should do it ultimately. As devs they need to have creative freedom as well and it's a requisite for their work, but without the community I think today this wouldn't even be a sims game. We probably wouldn't have a lot of features we do have, like the grilled cheese aspiration, gardeners, terrain tools, family trees etc.
In what comes to EP's I believe devs should have total creative freedom but I think patches should consider community input. It doesn't mean they necessarily need to create polls or reveal anything, but it's not hard to go into the forum and realize what are the most asked features or not. Burglars being an example, improved AI and sim personalities being another, and so on.
Playing it real, we all know that if would come up to the polls this game would become Sims 3 part 2.
Well and what if it did? That would actually show that TS3 was a beloved game by the community and that we would like an improved version of it or that we liked many of it's features. Also TS4 is a sims sequel, you can't make it 100% different either.
Playing it real, we all know that if would come up to the polls this game would become Sims 3 part 2.
Well and what if it did? That would actually show that TS3 was a beloved game by the community and that we would like an improved version of it or that we liked many of it's features. Also TS4 is a sims sequel, you can't make it 100% different either.
As a sequel it should be different, not just the same old contend recycled for the new art style.
I think the better solution is awareness. Players should keep in mind that not everything that releases will please them. But keep in mind that your expectations may be way off and prepare yourself ahead of time for possible disappointment.
This sentiment right here is why this community is so messed up and why The Sims 4 is still struggling four years after release.
Can you think of any other company that prefaces their product with finger wagging and admonishment to lower their potential customers’ expectations for something they ultimately want you to buy?
Why would a company that claims to believe in the quality of their product deliberately and continuously tell its customers these sorts of things...unless they actually don’t believe in the quality of their product at all?
Companies (especially big ones) don’t typically set out to make a product that purposely doesn’t satisfy the majority of its customer base. That’s a great way to get people to not buy your stuff. It seems the only things this studio has going for them anymore is The Sims name itself and no sight of a direct competitor anywhere.
Let’s imagine that there is a competitor that makes a life simulator comparable to The Sims. If they made a game that offered any or all of the things that The Sims 4 currently lacks, how many of you would still be playing TS4? How many of you can honestly say that you are willing to wait up to three or more years for missing features and mechanics if a competitor offered it to you now? Really think about that.
For me, if a company keeps telling me that their product isn’t for everyone and not worth getting excited over, or my personal favorite - trashes their own past products that they worked on and previously claimed to be proud of (looking at you, SimGuruGrant), I am going to assume that this company doesn’t want my money.
If you believed in your own product, you yourself would be excited about it, and you would certainly want your customers to be excited too. If it was truly fun and enjoyable, there would be no need to preface its release with a warning that there’s a chance you’re not going to like it, and as LiELF so poignantly stated:
...prepare yourself ahead of time for possible disappointment.
The fact that this community sees absolutely nothing wrong with this way of thinking is the ultimate disappointment.
Have you seen some fandoms lately? Maybe some developers would be better off with disclaimers like that. For example, a lot Diablo fans are furious about that new mobile game, and a lot of Pokemon fans are really angry about the “Let’s Go!” games for more casual fans. The devs are obviously trying to keep people from getting insanely hyped because they’ve seen how nasty backlash can get, especially when it’s something people are really passionate about.
I think the better solution is awareness. Players should keep in mind that not everything that releases will please them. But keep in mind that your expectations may be way off and prepare yourself ahead of time for possible disappointment.
This sentiment right here is why this community is so messed up and why The Sims 4 is still struggling four years after release.
Spitting venom at the community is unnecessary. The same statement could very well be turned back on you. But what would it accomplish? People are already too quick to divide into opposition and rail at each other with useless finger pointing. That is what's messed up.
Also, the Sims 4 is not struggling. You probably don't want to hear that, but it's actually pretty successful. Especially with new Simmers.
Can you think of any other company that prefaces their product with finger wagging and admonishment to lower their potential customers’ expectations for something they ultimately want you to buy?
Why would a company that claims to believe in the quality of their product deliberately and continuously tell its customers these sorts of things...unless they actually don’t believe in the quality of their product at all?
Come on now. "Finger wagging and admonishment?" Telling the community to not get overhyped, or reiterating that the next new thing is a small feature in order to avoid big expectations is not admonishment. (Unless you're referring to something else?) It's trying to put things in proper perspective so players don't let their wildest gaming dreams run away with them. It has nothing to do with not believing in their product. You kind of left out the part about how whenever the devs show genuine excitement over a release, a segment of people let their minds go immediately to the Thing They Want Most... and as soon as they find out it's something else, they're yelling atrocities and picking fights. But really, as we've recently seen, it doesn't seem to matter what the devs do or say to give us fair warning, there's always going to be some players who let their hype run rampant anyway.
And I'm not saying people shouldn't ever get hyped. It's fun to speculate and hope for something. But we are all responsible for ourselves. If we, the players, choose to ignore a friendly caution about an upcoming feature, then our epic level of disappointment is our own doing. That is reality, and that is what the Gurus are trying to prevent by giving us a heads-up when they see the speculations getting out of hand. What they're really trying to say is... Hype Responsibly. Lol.
Companies (especially big ones) don’t typically set out to make a product that purposely doesn’t satisfy the majority of its customer base. That’s a great way to get people to not buy your stuff. It seems the only things this studio has going for them anymore is The Sims name itself and no sight of a direct competitor anywhere.
This statement is weird to me so I'm not even sure if I understand it properly. If you are saying that the company is keeping players unsatisfied on purpose, that just doesn't make any sense to me. But I'm thinking you're referring to personal player requests for content that haven't been addressed yet. In this case, I don't even know where to begin and I really don't want to make this response excessively long. I'll try to keep it direct.
First, you can't claim anything of "the majority". None of us can. We don't have access to the right info to do so. But yes, there are people who played previous games who want features to return (including myself,) but if you played a previous game, then you should already be aware that not only does the completion of features actually take time, but they're not going to happen in the order you specifically want, nor are they necessarily going to appear in a format that is familiar enough to make you happy. On top of that, some of those features may not return at all. And you should probably prepare yourself for that because, like I said in my post, there are no guarantees. We are offered a product and we have the choice to buy it or not. The decision remains ours. That is the only thing we can control. We can also offer feedback and hope for the best. If it never gets addressed, then we have our answer.
Sims 4 has never pretended to be a clone of any of the previous games. It was always intended to be new and different. Some people who hold a particular love for a previous rendition have difficulty coming to terms with that, and it's unfortunate, but it's the reality of the game. Four years later and Sims 4 is still Sims 4. We can face it, or we can continuously prepare ourselves for disappointment.
Let’s imagine that there is a competitor that makes a life simulator comparable to The Sims. If they made a game that offered any or all of the things that The Sims 4 currently lacks, how many of you would still be playing TS4? How many of you can honestly say that you are willing to wait up to three or more years for missing features and mechanics if a competitor offered it to you now? Really think about that.
I'm sorry, but I find this so unlikely that I'm barely going to address it. You're asking us all to dream up our ideal features to put them together in this hypothetical idealized game. This is assuming that a (presumably) smaller game company than EA, with less money, would take on such a complicated life simulation and would be able to create a single game in a shorter time span that includes all of the features equivalent to a fully completed Sims game? On top of that, assuming that this content is done in exactly the way that players (which players, Sims 3? Sims 2? both?) want it to be done and still be affordable? All I can say is there's a reason that in eighteen years no one has even dared venture into this kind of project. If it were feasible, other game companies would have been all over it long ago. They do it with every other type of game out there. This is also probably why Sims 4 is intended to last longer and why Sims 5 wasn't a definite possibility. It's a huge undertaking.
For me, if a company keeps telling me that their product isn’t for everyone and not worth getting excited over, or my personal favorite - trashes their own past products that they worked on and previously claimed to be proud of (looking at you, SimGuruGrant), I am going to assume that this company doesn’t want my money.
They have never said their content was not worth getting excited over, they have cautioned the community to not overhype themselves. Because we've all seen what happens. Also, referring to errors in development in past products and having the hindsight to see where things were done badly is not "trashing their past products". I'd advise not to take it personally. Whether they get your money is entirely up to you now.
If you believed in your own product, you yourself would be excited about it, and you would certainly want your customers to be excited too. If it was truly fun and enjoyable, there would be no need to preface its release with a warning that there’s a chance you’re not going to like it, and as LiELF so poignantly stated:
...prepare yourself ahead of time for possible disappointment.
I've already addressed most of this. But I'll just add that "truly fun and enjoyable" is subjective to each player. And I've already pointed out that there is no such thing as pleasing the entire fan base because it is so diverse in preferences by now.
If you're truly not enjoying the game after four years, you might want to consider a simpler solution. But if you still think there are things in Sims 4 that might be worth hanging around for, even if you're watching with a cynical eye, then all I can say is....well...just see my quote above.
While I don't think they should constantly poll the community every time they release a pack or patch, I think that they should pay more attention to the criticism and requests of players. I definitely think they're getting better with much awaited Seasons as well as terrain tools, but they have a ways to go. One example is how they have blatantly stated that cars aren't being planned for although many simmers have listed them as one of their biggest wishes. In addition, their response to the lack of tropical content seems to be the base game Caribbean additions, which, while gorgeous and considerate, definitely don't give players the tropical world and abundance of items they wanted and suggests that it will be a long wait if they do expand on the theme at all.
I haven't heard that cars are "not being planned for", just that they haven't started working on them "yet". That could mean they'll never work on them, but they're vague. Deciding how to implement them in a closed world (loading screen) environment is an issue; even Sims 3 was less than perfect with cars going into Sims' inventories when they arrived at a venue that didn't have a parking lot. A similar situation would have to be developed for Sims 4; there are a few "parking lots" surrounding the lots in Oasis Springs near the waterfront, for example, but I don't think they're actually operational. I'm meh on the idea of cars, other than getting back the fix-it car from the Roaring Heights world pack; restoring/upgrading would be a fun way to build Handiness, especially if you could have two Sims working on it at the same time.
As for the Caribbean items, maybe they're working on a tropical vacation world but it's set in the Pacific (think Hawaii or something out of Tales from the South Pacific), and the Caribbean items wouldn't fit that pack so we got them as a freebee. (Free is good.)
If they did poll the community on new features, what happens if someone's favorite idea doesn't make the cut? Will we see a repeat of the complaints after the Community Stuff Pack polls where people said the results were "rigged"? They'd have to have the polls several places -- there are thousands of players who never come near these forums, but are active on social media like Facebook or Twitter.
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Companies (especially big ones) don’t typically set out to make a product that purposely doesn’t satisfy the majority of its customer base. That’s a great way to get people to not buy your stuff. It seems the only things this studio has going for them anymore is The Sims name itself and no sight of a direct competitor anywhere.
According to you, no video game in history has ever been disappointing. Every new AAA title becomes a fan-favorite and a cult classic.
Except The Sims. Right.
There is no such thing as "satisfy the majority", there is what execs think will make money, or will be the next big thing, and that's it.
Lbr this community has poor reading comprehension, a lot of rumors get started because someone jumped to the wrong conclusion, spread it, and the devs have to debunk it. At every announcement something will be misunderstood, repeatedly, now it's just expected.
The devs know it will happen, every forum user compiling available informations know it will happen.
We just have to roll with it.
"Hype responsibly" -LiELF 2018
And the community is not a hive mind. Stop assuming your small sample is representative of all sims players.
Especially since like-minded people find each other online.
*Longingly stares off into the distant in the horizon at the other packs that got voted over in favor of Laundry Day.*
Anyhoot~ I think developers have been asking the community on their opinions, since they did polls on twitter as well to get some insight and I believe they do look on the forums as well too, even if they aren't extremely active in posting. Don't think they need to always throw a poll out there almost like giving the community full permission to choose this or that feature, since everyone believes 'such and such feature is more important than____' Though there's always going to be people disappointed on either end be it on the community's end or the dev's anyway.
Seeing people hand out walls of texts at each other and all I see is the simple logic in this franchise, and many other franchises in gaming: Developers will make whatever they feel is best, whether they listen to their players or not, and you have the option to buy it or not.
Yes I might not be happy, but catering to the majority will only turn The Sims into a Legacy game for creating children and families; everything else is secondary. There'd probably be no occults or fancy vacation destinations or single party-lifestyles, or other alternative means of lifestyle playing if the majority all had its way. As a player who finds legacies boring, I'd be left out of the loop and would not have played Sims at all.
Playing it real, we all know that if would come up to the polls this game would become Sims 3 part 2.
Well and what if it did? That would actually show that TS3 was a beloved game by the community and that we would like an improved version of it or that we liked many of it's features. Also TS4 is a sims sequel, you can't make it 100% different either.
Needless to say there are people expecting something different.
Playing it real, we all know that if would come up to the polls this game would become Sims 3 part 2.
Well and what if it did? That would actually show that TS3 was a beloved game by the community and that we would like an improved version of it or that we liked many of it's features. Also TS4 is a sims sequel, you can't make it 100% different either.
Then again, there are many of us who felt let down by Sims 3 and never want to see it again because it strayed too far from Sims 2. As far as Sims sequels go, Sims 4 makes more sense as a successor to the first two. Sims 3 went off the beaten path, so to speak. I'm not denying that it was loved by many, but it certainly wasn't loved by all. It's the same with Sims 4 and also happened with Sims 2. But maybe that's a good enough reason to make sure that each new piece in the series has its own personality. You win some, you lose some.
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Legacy Photomode
First of all, the game is not a commission. We don't pay up front with negotiations in place to make demands for exactly what we are receiving. So nothing is guaranteed to begin with. A fair share of people seem to misunderstand this. Yes, we are customers, and yes, we have freedom to give honest feedback or make a complaint when we deem it necessary, and quite often, that feedback is heard. But we don't reserve the right to dictate demands to the developers. In fact, many of the things we got that people wanted (and sometimes insisted on, like Toddlers,) were things that were going to be incorporated anyway. The feedback can and does often influence how something is done, and player input can inspire, but development is in no way obligated to carry out anyone's demands.
Second, the players are not Simulation game developers, so we have absolutely no idea what is possible and what isn't. We can speculate till the sun comes up and throw out all the long-winded theories we want, but the truth is, we are totally in the dark when it comes to understanding the game engine and the mechanics of simulation and its coding. We've still got people asking for things like open world and CaSt, which we have already been told are not even possible in this rendition because it wasn't built for those things. So without that understanding of development, we have no idea what is or isn't feasible to put into the game, especially concerning time and budget.
Third, the developers need to have creative liberty. Not just because their jobs require varieties of artistic talent and innovation, but also because the creation process of a game has so many varying states of metamorphosis and experimentation to see what works and what doesn't. So they have to be able to go with the flow of people from different areas and stages within development. Each piece has to click together to make the whole, and some features take a lot of departmental cooperation. Plus, the aim of Sims 4 is to be new and different from its predecessors. If they were at the mercy of the community, they'd be making the exact same features the exact same way from previous games and there would be no growth or newness, and no surprises. That, in itself, would be dull and predictable.
Lastly, EA capitalism. A lot of money can go into and come out of a Sims game and in order to be profitable, they have to stay on top of the content schedule, timelines, deadlines, and budget, and see that all of these are kept in balance. They pay for everything from development and marketing to telemetry and services to keep their industry running smoothly. If they had to constantly wait for community decisions on everything, nothing would get developed. **Just the Laundry Stuff Pack alone took three times the normal development time to complete because they had to cater to the community. And by the end of it, a lot of Simmers were still unsatisfied despite the success of the pack.
So there we are, full circle, back to where we started. Even when the community is included in the creation of content, we still have a lot of people grumping around the forums in discontent, claiming that popular opinions are being ignored. So the reality is, there is no magic solution to pleasing all players. It's actually impossible. And the devs already know this so they don't even attempt to. It's the Simmers who haven't really absorbed the truth yet. But that doesn't mean each player won't get something they enjoy at some point, it just might require some wait time. It takes much longer to cater to such a diverse player base, which is probably why so many people feel like they're waiting too long for content they really want. Because they essentially are.
I think the better solution is awareness. Players should keep in mind that not everything that releases will please them. Every Simmer does not like the same thing. If someone on Youtube is excited about an upcoming feature and thinks it's awesome, they have every right to their excitement. But there are never guarantees that we'll all feel the same way. So all I can say is, stay grounded. If you like to be hyped, then hype away. But keep in mind that your expectations may be way off and prepare yourself ahead of time for possible disappointment. It's not the end of the world...or the Sims 4. There's always next time.
**Edit: Just saw SimGuruGraham's post regarding Laundry Day Stuff so I'm adding a correction to my post. Apparently it did not take longer to create than a normal Stuff Pack. I thought I had seen a different statement from a Guru or dev somewhere that estimated it took three to four months to create the average Stuff Pack and it took ten for Laundry Day. But he said it takes about ten months for all Stuff Packs, although they work on a few at a time simultaneously and sometimes temporarily focus on one for its release.
Or the fact that you can drown your sim, starve them to death or cause them to be burned alive. There still isn't a justifiable reason for them to be added in yet.
TBH, I don’t think LD was a bad pack, it’s just how came to be a SP was bad. How did we go from Eco Friendly living to washing machines, I don’t really know
This sentiment right here is why this community is so messed up and why The Sims 4 is still struggling four years after release.
Can you think of any other company that prefaces their product with finger wagging and admonishment to lower their potential customers’ expectations for something they ultimately want you to buy?
Why would a company that claims to believe in the quality of their product deliberately and continuously tell its customers these sorts of things...unless they actually don’t believe in the quality of their product at all?
Companies (especially big ones) don’t typically set out to make a product that purposely doesn’t satisfy the majority of its customer base. That’s a great way to get people to not buy your stuff. It seems the only things this studio has going for them anymore is The Sims name itself and no sight of a direct competitor anywhere.
Let’s imagine that there is a competitor that makes a life simulator comparable to The Sims. If they made a game that offered any or all of the things that The Sims 4 currently lacks, how many of you would still be playing TS4? How many of you can honestly say that you are willing to wait up to three or more years for missing features and mechanics if a competitor offered it to you now? Really think about that.
For me, if a company keeps telling me that their product isn’t for everyone and not worth getting excited over, or my personal favorite - trashes their own past products that they worked on and previously claimed to be proud of (looking at you, SimGuruGrant), I am going to assume that this company doesn’t want my money.
If you believed in your own product, you yourself would be excited about it, and you would certainly want your customers to be excited too. If it was truly fun and enjoyable, there would be no need to preface its release with a warning that there’s a chance you’re not going to like it, and as LiELF so poignantly stated:
The fact that this community sees absolutely nothing wrong with this way of thinking is the ultimate disappointment.
Couldn't agree more.. Why should we have to be prepared to be disappointed. It's not a very wise positioning strategy by the EA. And why do we have to accept everything just because we are not satisfied? The differences in the players' interest should make this franchise to work better and take into consideration to polish the game towards perfection. I would rather not to compare EA with the other company, but there's one company is still in the process (like years!) to do a remake of a game so that the long time fan will not be disappointed.
This is a good point.
It doesn't matter how many thousand people are demanding a particular feature, if it's going to be extremely time consuming to add, or extremely difficult, or doesn't fit with any other thing being planned, why would it be added? You don't want months of time, energy and money to be poured into a single feature, at the expense of more variety, especially since that one feature, when done, may not be exactly as a large chunk of the majority imagined it to be, leading to a lot of complaining that it wasn't done right.
There could be one unexciting, difficult to implement detail that thousands demand loudly, while there are a dozen quietly whispered good, unique, workable ideas that the majority ignore, or never even saw.
Yes, quality is often preferred over quantity, but there also needs to be a balance. Eg, putting too much time and effort into 'freeing babies' could mean that the babies won't end up like half of those wanting it done are imagining their little sprogs to be, they may end up unhappy with how it's done. Meanwhile, all the non-family players are feeling left out, because there's been not focus on the details they wanted fixed. There's a lot of people wanting more music related stuff, there's a lot of people wanting more supernatural related stuff, there's people wanting more life stages, while others want more life states. Some people want more little things improved, like newspapers, burglars, cops, firemen, etc. Some want hotels, while others want to live under the sea, and yet others would like to go skiing. Some want farms, some want cars, some want better interactions, emotions and memories. Some want to be able to leave a baby on the floor for sims to whine about being in the way.
I see a lot of people wanting things to be exactly as they were done in previous versions of the game. Put those things in a poll against totally new concepts, and they're likely to get the top votes, because most people will vote for something they are familiar with, regardless of whether it's a better idea or not.
I stand by my previous comment:
I have quite a few thoughts outside of the box. Aside from my extreme desire to make a vampire band with a werewolf drummer, many of my other thoughts are for things not done before.
Legacy Photomode
Exactly! I think devs shouldn't just listen to us, but they should do it ultimately. As devs they need to have creative freedom as well and it's a requisite for their work, but without the community I think today this wouldn't even be a sims game. We probably wouldn't have a lot of features we do have, like the grilled cheese aspiration, gardeners, terrain tools, family trees etc.
In what comes to EP's I believe devs should have total creative freedom but I think patches should consider community input. It doesn't mean they necessarily need to create polls or reveal anything, but it's not hard to go into the forum and realize what are the most asked features or not. Burglars being an example, improved AI and sim personalities being another, and so on.
Well and what if it did? That would actually show that TS3 was a beloved game by the community and that we would like an improved version of it or that we liked many of it's features. Also TS4 is a sims sequel, you can't make it 100% different either.
As a sequel it should be different, not just the same old contend recycled for the new art style.
Have you seen some fandoms lately? Maybe some developers would be better off with disclaimers like that. For example, a lot Diablo fans are furious about that new mobile game, and a lot of Pokemon fans are really angry about the “Let’s Go!” games for more casual fans. The devs are obviously trying to keep people from getting insanely hyped because they’ve seen how nasty backlash can get, especially when it’s something people are really passionate about.
Spitting venom at the community is unnecessary. The same statement could very well be turned back on you. But what would it accomplish? People are already too quick to divide into opposition and rail at each other with useless finger pointing. That is what's messed up.
Also, the Sims 4 is not struggling. You probably don't want to hear that, but it's actually pretty successful. Especially with new Simmers.
Come on now. "Finger wagging and admonishment?" Telling the community to not get overhyped, or reiterating that the next new thing is a small feature in order to avoid big expectations is not admonishment. (Unless you're referring to something else?) It's trying to put things in proper perspective so players don't let their wildest gaming dreams run away with them. It has nothing to do with not believing in their product. You kind of left out the part about how whenever the devs show genuine excitement over a release, a segment of people let their minds go immediately to the Thing They Want Most... and as soon as they find out it's something else, they're yelling atrocities and picking fights. But really, as we've recently seen, it doesn't seem to matter what the devs do or say to give us fair warning, there's always going to be some players who let their hype run rampant anyway.
And I'm not saying people shouldn't ever get hyped. It's fun to speculate and hope for something. But we are all responsible for ourselves. If we, the players, choose to ignore a friendly caution about an upcoming feature, then our epic level of disappointment is our own doing. That is reality, and that is what the Gurus are trying to prevent by giving us a heads-up when they see the speculations getting out of hand. What they're really trying to say is... Hype Responsibly. Lol.
This statement is weird to me so I'm not even sure if I understand it properly. If you are saying that the company is keeping players unsatisfied on purpose, that just doesn't make any sense to me. But I'm thinking you're referring to personal player requests for content that haven't been addressed yet. In this case, I don't even know where to begin and I really don't want to make this response excessively long. I'll try to keep it direct.
First, you can't claim anything of "the majority". None of us can. We don't have access to the right info to do so. But yes, there are people who played previous games who want features to return (including myself,) but if you played a previous game, then you should already be aware that not only does the completion of features actually take time, but they're not going to happen in the order you specifically want, nor are they necessarily going to appear in a format that is familiar enough to make you happy. On top of that, some of those features may not return at all. And you should probably prepare yourself for that because, like I said in my post, there are no guarantees. We are offered a product and we have the choice to buy it or not. The decision remains ours. That is the only thing we can control. We can also offer feedback and hope for the best. If it never gets addressed, then we have our answer.
Sims 4 has never pretended to be a clone of any of the previous games. It was always intended to be new and different. Some people who hold a particular love for a previous rendition have difficulty coming to terms with that, and it's unfortunate, but it's the reality of the game. Four years later and Sims 4 is still Sims 4. We can face it, or we can continuously prepare ourselves for disappointment.
I'm sorry, but I find this so unlikely that I'm barely going to address it. You're asking us all to dream up our ideal features to put them together in this hypothetical idealized game. This is assuming that a (presumably) smaller game company than EA, with less money, would take on such a complicated life simulation and would be able to create a single game in a shorter time span that includes all of the features equivalent to a fully completed Sims game? On top of that, assuming that this content is done in exactly the way that players (which players, Sims 3? Sims 2? both?) want it to be done and still be affordable? All I can say is there's a reason that in eighteen years no one has even dared venture into this kind of project. If it were feasible, other game companies would have been all over it long ago. They do it with every other type of game out there. This is also probably why Sims 4 is intended to last longer and why Sims 5 wasn't a definite possibility. It's a huge undertaking.
They have never said their content was not worth getting excited over, they have cautioned the community to not overhype themselves. Because we've all seen what happens. Also, referring to errors in development in past products and having the hindsight to see where things were done badly is not "trashing their past products". I'd advise not to take it personally. Whether they get your money is entirely up to you now.
I've already addressed most of this. But I'll just add that "truly fun and enjoyable" is subjective to each player. And I've already pointed out that there is no such thing as pleasing the entire fan base because it is so diverse in preferences by now.
If you're truly not enjoying the game after four years, you might want to consider a simpler solution. But if you still think there are things in Sims 4 that might be worth hanging around for, even if you're watching with a cynical eye, then all I can say is....well...just see my quote above.
You have pretty much exemplified my entire point in your post.
I haven't heard that cars are "not being planned for", just that they haven't started working on them "yet". That could mean they'll never work on them, but they're vague. Deciding how to implement them in a closed world (loading screen) environment is an issue; even Sims 3 was less than perfect with cars going into Sims' inventories when they arrived at a venue that didn't have a parking lot. A similar situation would have to be developed for Sims 4; there are a few "parking lots" surrounding the lots in Oasis Springs near the waterfront, for example, but I don't think they're actually operational. I'm meh on the idea of cars, other than getting back the fix-it car from the Roaring Heights world pack; restoring/upgrading would be a fun way to build Handiness, especially if you could have two Sims working on it at the same time.
As for the Caribbean items, maybe they're working on a tropical vacation world but it's set in the Pacific (think Hawaii or something out of Tales from the South Pacific), and the Caribbean items wouldn't fit that pack so we got them as a freebee. (Free is good.)
If they did poll the community on new features, what happens if someone's favorite idea doesn't make the cut? Will we see a repeat of the complaints after the Community Stuff Pack polls where people said the results were "rigged"? They'd have to have the polls several places -- there are thousands of players who never come near these forums, but are active on social media like Facebook or Twitter.
Fun must be always -- Tomas Hertl (San Jose Sharks hockey player)
Except The Sims. Right.
There is no such thing as "satisfy the majority", there is what execs think will make money, or will be the next big thing, and that's it.
Lbr this community has poor reading comprehension, a lot of rumors get started because someone jumped to the wrong conclusion, spread it, and the devs have to debunk it. At every announcement something will be misunderstood, repeatedly, now it's just expected.
The devs know it will happen, every forum user compiling available informations know it will happen.
We just have to roll with it.
"Hype responsibly" -LiELF 2018
And the community is not a hive mind. Stop assuming your small sample is representative of all sims players.
Especially since like-minded people find each other online.
Anyhoot~ I think developers have been asking the community on their opinions, since they did polls on twitter as well to get some insight and I believe they do look on the forums as well too, even if they aren't extremely active in posting. Don't think they need to always throw a poll out there almost like giving the community full permission to choose this or that feature, since everyone believes 'such and such feature is more important than____' Though there's always going to be people disappointed on either end be it on the community's end or the dev's anyway.
Yes I might not be happy, but catering to the majority will only turn The Sims into a Legacy game for creating children and families; everything else is secondary. There'd probably be no occults or fancy vacation destinations or single party-lifestyles, or other alternative means of lifestyle playing if the majority all had its way. As a player who finds legacies boring, I'd be left out of the loop and would not have played Sims at all.
Needless to say there are people expecting something different.
Legacy Photomode
Then again, there are many of us who felt let down by Sims 3 and never want to see it again because it strayed too far from Sims 2. As far as Sims sequels go, Sims 4 makes more sense as a successor to the first two. Sims 3 went off the beaten path, so to speak. I'm not denying that it was loved by many, but it certainly wasn't loved by all. It's the same with Sims 4 and also happened with Sims 2. But maybe that's a good enough reason to make sure that each new piece in the series has its own personality. You win some, you lose some.