An idea for a BETTER LOADING sequence

thatpinkcoconut

(Pardon my English, not my native language. Ty) Okay, I understand that loading screens in this game will never go away. Let's just accept that it is what it is and how it works in The Sims 4. There will be no open world in TS4 like there was in TS3 but at least what we have is better than TS2's. While the 20-30 secs boring loading screen doesn't bother me most of the time, it still takes me out of the immersion. It can get frustrating especially when I'm off to a specific world/lot only to get something and then come back immediately. This is fine, let's say 75% of the time. But I have an idea for a "seamless", creative, and an overall better loading screen... or way for the game to load stuff without the immersion-breaking boring blue loading screen sequence.

It's as simple as *drum rolls* ...hiding the loading screen.
I think this can create the feeling of seamlessness when it comes to switching lots (also without affecting EA's goal of being friendly to lower end systems, of course) which is very important if they want us to play the game a little longer, enjoy traveling the world (especially community lots) more, and just.. not get annoyed over and over again.

So how will it work?

1. Aside from the options that we currently have for travelling (phone, map view, bike, clicking the road, etc.) there will be a new interaction called "Call Taxi" or "Call Simber" (Uber, duh) or anything similar. This can be accessed through the phone or by clicking the road (will be next to the Travel interaction that we currently have at the moment). Then the active Sim as usual will do the phone call/text animation.
2. The usual travel/map screen will be shown from which you select which lot to travel to. After selecting, back to Live Mode where a notification will be shown that says something like, "Thank you for calling. Your taxi will arrive soon."
3. The system will then begin to load the next lot in the background. This here is the trick... not a trick really since a lot games nowadays use this way of loading. During this process, the gameplay is still available like nothing happened. Play the game as usual.
4. After the system finishes to load the next lot, boom.. your Sim is now in the new lot. (a 1-2 sec. transition will help) Then a notification will appear saying that you reached your destination or something just to finalize the travel process.
5. While you're in the new lot, the system will then clean the resources for the previous lot in the background for technical reasons, of course.

So that's it. I hope that my idea/suggestion is understandable enough. And oh, they should add a toggeable option of course in the Options menu to enable and disable this system like "Enable loading lots in the background" which will be disabled by default for lower end systems and enabled by default for higher end.

83bienchen

Sounds great. Thanks for sharing your idea.

Sk8rblaze

This is a great idea, for sure, and I would definitely prefer this over what we have in The Sims 4. However, I kind of feel like we're at a point where it's still not enough. The Sims needs an open world, or open neighborhoods (where multiple lots are accessible at once in a very large space) to feel fun again. Simulating one lot at a time, even if it's through loading screens that last only a few seconds at most, still feels too confining and redundant.