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Do you think TS4 will be better than TS3?
Glic2003
Posts: 2,933 Member
Just curious what the prevailing sentiment is. Personally, I think it will be better, but in some very subtle ways. I also think we'll be left missing some of the features that TS3 did have.
"We've been attributing the state of The Sims 4 to greed but I think it's time to give sheer incompetence another look."
-Honeywell
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Sims3 was a builders/creators dream! Wish I was one of them, but I'm not. I'm hoping for their sake Sims4 will offer them an outlet for their creativity as well. But on the other hand I'm hoping EA's promise of going back to the roots will once again engage me.
Let me be blunt: The kind of emotions setup they're going for with this, from what I've seen, shows hints of being extremely, extremely advanced programming. We're talking prototype coding for true AIs. If they succeed... EA would have made a leap that even the best of computer scientists never managed, and they would have brought true AIs one step closer to actually existing.
It also is incredibly easy to screw up; note the fact that EA is potentially trying something that has been massively failed many times before.
In addition, it is incredibly easy to have the emotion side overpower everything and be the sole focus on the game. EA could very well, and extremely easily, cripple this game without even realizing it.
So... I really don't know. It has potential to be great. It also has potential to end the series.
Yes, but what if they do it? The leap that is, not the screw up. Or even take it one step closer. Can you imagine the depth the game will have if they can pull it off?
I think I'll be able to tolerate the graphics (I personally just don't like them very much) if the game has a lot of depth, comical writing, and ability for creativity.
I'm definitely not seeing that at all. As far as I can tell, emotions are just going to be Moodlets 2.0. Your Sim is angry, so he's slightly better at doing X. Your Sim is sad, he's slightly less inclined to do Y. There's nothing advanced about that at all.
I suppose there could be some nuance to it they haven't demonstrated yet, but I highly doubt it.
I'm more excited about improvements to routing, grouping and build tools.
"We've been attributing the state of The Sims 4 to greed but I think it's time to give sheer incompetence another look."
-Honeywell
Depth of emotions... but at what cost elsewhere? That is my main concern.
Considering no one has managed how nuanced EA is saying this to be and some magazines, such as PC Gamer, are saying it is... It would be a step forward. Actually simulating complex human emotion, on any level, has never been accomplished before. Even just an improved moodlet system would be a massive step forward... because it would be doing something never done before.
In any case, given the amount of focus on it... you can see why I state it could easily ruin the game by being the entire focus.
Well....We have already lost CASt, current style of graphics, and possibly an open world.
*disclaimer* the last part has in no way been confirmed by EA or affiliates, just my intuition based soley on EA's wording. ie: saying "neighbourhood" rather than world.
I'm not going to ask "what more can we lose?" because I've found when I throw that out the universe takes that as a challenge and will show me.
I agree with you. The emotion thing is what worries me about the game. I am afraid the game will be so full of different emotions it will be distressing to play. I don't want my sims crying and being depressed all the time because of something they have to wear or something that I put in their home. I am afraid this emotion thing will consume the game.
As far as building? Time will tell. I'm worried about decorating. I like to put a lot of time in my sims houses to make them look like HGTV designers have dropped by, lol. I'm worried if I use certain colors it will make my sims act in a way that I don't want them to. But time will tell that too.
I really hope it is a better game, but my big dream is that it's better than ts2!
I agree with that /\
Kinda OT but that comment made me think of something that happened not so long ago. A couple months back me and my sister were discussing the bible and she was saying how we should still fear God like they did in the Old Testament in particular. I laughed in her face and said that's a stupid comment to make as it's the 21st century and I respect and admire God but I don't fear him as I don't believe he's going to punish me or flood the earth any time soon. The subsequent weeks after I made that comment were probably the most unluckiest of my life
Anyway to answer the OP's question. I reckon that in terms of routing, functionality and simple everyday things that the Sims do, yes TS4 will be better than TS3 due to it being coded better.
However as we haven't seen much gameplay or how the UI works etc then I think it's difficult to gauge if the game will have any further improvements that will make TS4 better than TS3.
Anything has to be better than a game that was totally riddled in game breaking bugs they never addressed. TS3 has a very sad reputation. If it hadn't been for one guy TS3 would have died a long time ago. (Twallan)
I do recall 'everyone' on the TS3 forums raving about single dads in the base game when it was first released. I also recall thread after thread of how everyone's games were crashing...soon after release. The whole forums were full of nothing but complaints.
A few Simmers like Nicodemus saved EA from having to fix game breaking bugs that caused crashing....a patch was months away...and only he was able to help a lot of us....
Anything has to be better than that. But whether they actually spend a long time in quality control or not is another story.
Since when does EA not put out a patch to fix 'major' bugs..until the next EP? When they started the money grubing phase of production with TS3.
At least the team and lead producer of TS2 (before handing over The Sims to Sim Studio) did put out a patch about a month or so after EPs for things they broke etc...but with TS3 some things are still broken and no one gives a rat's smiley face. Check the loooooooooong bug threads....
Do I think they have learned their lesson? No..no way...cash cow for a younger generation..here comes TS4!...yay!! Milk it dry.
Agreed, if Twallan didn't make his mods, I would have stopped playing the sims after Late Night.
I also agree with your last sentence about them learning their lesson.
I absolutely agree. No AI. Just improved moodlets locking and unlocking interactions and refined animations.
Why are people assuming that "prototype code for true AIs" automatically equals "true AIs"?
Because people like reading what they want to read rather than what you actually wrote? How many times have you seen a thread saying that EA said X about the sims 4 and people have completely blown it up and are making extrapolations and claiming it says something it clearly doesn't. But then the extrapolations become 'confirmed' and you end up spending half your time correcting people.
In most ways I hope it is, in several I know it is, in some other ways I don't think it will be.