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Open worlds discussion
chocolatefrosting
Posts: 67 Member
It's been really hard for the Sims 4 to keep my attention for long periods of time because it's not an open world.
That is the sole issue with the game for me. I just hate the loading screens and more than anything, I hate that if I take one sim out, I have no control over the rest of the family.
This has hugely affected the amount of sims that I play with at a time as well as the amount of time that I spend on a game before getting tired of it.
Has anyone else experienced this?
Is there any hope for the Sims to become an open world again?
That is the sole issue with the game for me. I just hate the loading screens and more than anything, I hate that if I take one sim out, I have no control over the rest of the family.
This has hugely affected the amount of sims that I play with at a time as well as the amount of time that I spend on a game before getting tired of it.
Has anyone else experienced this?
Is there any hope for the Sims to become an open world again?
Post edited by EA_Cade on
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On top of that, it takes all the resources to keep track of all those sims at the same time, leading to sacrifices in other aspects of the game and/or performance issues. Without really adding anything at all other than "no loading screens". I'm sorry, I'll take the loading screens in my Sims game in that case.
I would like to see them implement open neighborhoods though, where all lots in one neighborhood are loaded when you have a sim there. And add seemless loading, rather than loading screens. Which is actually what games like Skyrim and World of Warcraft do. They have the appearance of being "open world" but the world is actually in grids, and only the grids closest to the player are loaded at any given time. The loading happens in the background as you move about, so you don't see loading screens.
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In summary - give me set piece and/or hand crafted 'levels' over open world anytime.
Tho not normally thought of open world, games like Crusader Kings are what is proper open world to me - a proper persistent changing world that responds to what I as a player does.
Now if Paradox and Maxis got together and made video game babies together - I'm in.
Shake dreams from your hair
My pretty child, my sweet one.
Choose the day and choose the sign of your day
The day's divinity....
The Ghost Song - Jim Morrison
Yes, you don't see the loading screens, but you see the textures loading, which to me is the same thing. TS3 was particularly annoying because they loaded visibly all the time whenever you moved the camera around and on very short distances. If I turned camera to the right, bam, loading textures, if I turned it the other way, again, more loading textures, and it was annoying having to always give it 5 seconds or so for the things to display properly. It also offered no benefit to play the entire neighbourhood because sims were usually occupied or stuck elsewhere and community venues were empty or simply rabbitholes.
one thing you can do to sort of feel more like its open world however is to build multipurpose lots in ts4 so you don't have to actually leave lot so often and you can take whole family with you when theres something for everyone to do
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For sims 4, it would have been nice to have open neighbourhood. It could be an open environment on a smaller scale with the option to travel to other neighbourhoods. A loading screen to load the lot across the street is annoying.
I'm not even too fussed about having open neighbourhoods anymore - unless it is a community area. It would be nice to be able to designate an area as community and have that be open so that all shops and entertainment could be visited without loading screens but I cannot see a way for them to do that unless it was EA-designated districts.
Not being able put at least a bench outside the lots is really frustrating.
You would have thought that would have been the obvious direction for the game to go after they made the connection from SimCity to The Sims 2 all those years ago. Wasn't to be, I guess.
Shake dreams from your hair
My pretty child, my sweet one.
Choose the day and choose the sign of your day
The day's divinity....
The Ghost Song - Jim Morrison
But I don't think open world is possible with TS4. I also don't mind the loading screen, they've never really bothered me guess that's from my TS1 and TS2 days. I will say that it would be nice if individual neighborhoods were open.
Then I could even take the Sim back home and the other one I left somewhere will eventually come home on their own. I really, really loved that about TS4 since I play large household most of the time in these games so yay, peace and quiet for a few hours. lol
Until .......
We discovered that was not really true.
It's open ONLY in the areas that EA has designated, not the player! An "open neighborhood" should not mean if I visit the store literally 5 tiles away from my sims house, that I need to hit a loading screen, if I want to visit my neighbor right next door I should not need to hit a loading screen in an "open neighborhood".
I'm fine with not having open world ...... IF we had true, open neighborhoods that I can modify how I want.
You can visit neighbours lots just fine. You get a loading screen only if you want to enter their houses. Maybe we should get an option to knock on door and call sim outside so we can talk and hang out with them in their yard without loading the lot.
nvm, I tested to see if it really was the no intro mod that did that but turns out I just have a very fast PC.
Sorry about that, at first I thought it was faster because of no intro but yea.
Took like less than 2 mins to get into game though.
*feels dumb* >.>
You could try the Lazy Dutches Smooth Patch though, it has said it reduces lag for in game + loading. It might help, I have not tried it myself since my PC is too fast.
But why else would I visit their house if it wasn't to visit with them and hang out in their house?
That's what I was meaning, I didn't realize I needed to literally spell out what "visiting my neighbor's lot" meant to me.
I would totally love seeing my neighbors out in their yards sitting in lawn chairs, or checking their mail, doing gardening/yard work, playing in the sprinkler, bathing their dog outside, sunbathing by the pool, coming home from work, going to work or school, seeing them take their trash out, etc.
That's what I was really hoping would happen in TS4's so-called open neighborhoods.
When you want to hang out in their house, you can do so with a loading screen. Without a loading screen you can visit them in their back yard, use their pool, BBQ, easel, etc. talk to them. If they are your next door neighbours, sims visit often, instead of asking them to come in, you can go to their places and hang out with them in their back yard. Depending on the neighbourhood, you can see other sims going about but most lots are too far away to actually see them doing random stuff around their house. And I must confess I was never curious enough to spy on my sims' neighbours in house lots but I've certainly seen my sim's neighbours in apartments coming home and throwing trash and getting their mail.
I'm tired of loading screens, I think the solution in the sims4 works when playing a single sim or when traveling with a few sims but if you want to play an entire household and have them do things while you are visiting another lot like a night club, the whole system falls apart. Sims will stay awake at night and will not have enough needs taken care of if you wanted to do something with them the next day.
The next sims game needs a better system in my opinion, we need a better system for people who want to play larger households and also allow us to visit community lots and other lots without having to reload the entire neighborhood.
It will be a very limited life simulator game otherwise.
Which is exactly what my original comment was regarding .... this "open neighborhood" we were told about, is not REALLY open because I can't go inside my neighbor's house without hitting a loading screen, I can't visit retail stores, restaurants, bars, lounges, libraries, pool venues and so on that is IN MY SIM'S NEIGHBORHOOD, sometimes right next door to their house, without hitting a loading screen.
I thought it was going to be, you know actually open, as in all of the areas, lots, houses, community venues, etc, etc I would have access to freely go visit without a loading screen until I ventured past that particular neighborhood.