Hey, have a couple of friends that work over at EA Sports (I used to work at Relic Entertainment - Vancouver is a small programming community lol) and had lunch with two of them a couple hour ago. We ended up having a conversation I thought be fun to share with fellow simmers!
Are lunch conversation is a conversation. We also talked about women, bad french fries and the new hobbit movie (which was great fyi). You don't need to take what I'm saying as the gospel - I'm just sharing a conversation.
We were talking how Maxis has reintroduce DLC via "game packs" which lead to jokes about "map packs" which cost ruffly the same. Especially with EA's line "whats a game pack?" well its a map pack! ..lol...guess its kinda an inside joke...
Anywho, apparently the Maxis Studio has gained something of a rep around the coffee bars, because of the difficulty they've had not only with game releases (being that their cursed lol) but well kinda gained the "too many chiefs...." saying.
While its not clear exactly what will happen with Sims 4 expansions, what I do know is an expansion requires a large individual team to be put together and in the past often TWO expansions are worked on simultaneously at least in the case of the Sims 3.
So now we have game packs...which is basically as we gathered it to be "half" of an expansion pack. Half the content, half the price without the retail overhead.
EA does like shelf presence, but considering that 70%+ of all PC game sales now come from online its hard to say if they'll truly feel the need to release expansion packs like they used to. We guessed that they most likely will - but far fewer, with more resources pushed towards "game packs" which in turn can produce higher yield results by releasing content faster then it takes to produce an expansion. Honestly though Maxis will probably be waiting to see how they are received (financially) before committing to one path or another.
Whats clear to me is that game packs are replacing the store content and stuff packs. I personally believe they are combining them into "game packs" with expansion packs to follow every 6 months. The production cycle could go like this - release a game pack every two months and an expansion every 6. so basically new content every 2 months with a major expansion falling on the six month. Its hard to say though and really depends on how they spread their resources as Maxis and my above comment (about returns) on the game packs at such an early stage although I'm assuming from my experience they'd have something ruffly mapped out for the next 2 quarters unquestionably.
Then we mentioned toddlers, okay first off theres a running joke about how "simmers are crying like toddlers for toddlers".
Thats kinda funny metaphor if you think about it...I thought it was funny...kinda true. (The joke is better explained below) *HOWEVER Its more just a joke between people in a situation - not a joke by EA or the studio directed at you. Kinda like how one responds to a lot of criticism by joking about it in a friendly way to relief it. I'm fairly certain the whole toddler situation/feedback is pure stress for the producers.
Whats REALLY funny is why toddlers were cut - well part if not wholly of the reason is clearly to do with production assets but that interconnects into the second part which IS funny.
Having different life stages as they are represented in the Sims 4 (say child vs teen+adult+elder) each require a large portion of asset overhead to develop (aka people, time and money) and they clearly tried to streamline that for example by combining the assets of teen through to elders for the Sims 4 (beyond a few if any specific age related animations). As for babies they aren't relevant to this conversation (or their usage stats) due to minimal overhead to generate them - hence objects in S4 and therein would be evaluated differently from the other life stages as being a premium style object.
Toddlers require new assets and overhead to generate. At this stage their overhead need will have increased since the Sims 4 original development cycle has passed into whats basically an evolving maintenance stage (meaning the base game code is maintained/patched with new base content being developed, aka pools, ghosts) but with a smaller team. (I personally think it would be more worthwhile remaking the baby assets and combining them with the new toddlers assets. By doing so you could basically re-introduce toddlers and babies (vs babies as an object) to the game via a "family" generations type expansion pack! Complete with family tree lol)
Now since none of us work there who knows if toddlers were in the design stage of S4's redevelopment, but that kinda decision would have been made early or at least during the pre-alpha - especially after basically rebuilding the Sims 4 as an offline game after scrapping the previous version (hence time constraint for a 2014 release - although EA suits are on the record for allowing the game an open release date as clearly stated in their shareholders call for investors).
The FUNNY (and more probable/horrific reasoning as my friends sited) is because of sim gamers usage stats. YOUR USAGE STATS.
EA REALLY does keep track of your usage stats and they DO use them in multitude of situations for evaluation from developing dlc, to modifying content to removing content from games present and future for example.
So as long as you don't go unchecking the box in the Sims options settings and are online, millions of simmers have been sending their usage stats for the Sims 3 over the years to EA and guess what...
Toddlers? Yeah, they had the LOWEST rate of usage OF PLAYTIME over other age groups by COST, goes the gossip within EA studio's rumor mill. Hence the cry like a toddler joke - the joke being that toddlers try to get their way by crying for something they often don't really want but think they do - especially when its taken away. Get it? I somehow doubt your laughing but its kinda funny...probably more stressful for the folks over at Maxis now lol.
So the mentality while Maxis wasn't blind to the fact that there might be a backlash, was that it would be only a few loud voices like always. You see the problem for developers too, is that game forums are often filled with some VERY loud voices that gain a lot more attention then your common gamer/your average consumer who they don't always speak for. So when u compare those voices against the stats sometimes its hard to tell how much time you need to give it attention.
Its not to say there are not legitimate concerns but its hard to sometimes tell if your dealing with just some really negative individuals who think they deserve something from you/just trolling or if its the common opinion of the general forums/demand.
Now clearly toddlers are much in demand, and content for them has always BEEN in demand (even back when the Sims 3 store was actively producing new content, there was even petitions for it). Now that conversation has changed "when do we get toddlers" and at this point from a developers point of view you have to ask if introducing them into the base game would elevate its sales. While EA hasn't released specific sales numbers (no major game studio's really do anymore, just vague numbers) except in shareholder/investment reports/calls according to the NPD the Sims 4 has sold just over 1 million PHYSICAL units.
Considering that PC game sales are purchased overwhelmingly digitally now (much thanks to the trend Steam set with their massive digital holiday type sales that EA and others have followed suit with) its a good bet that the game has probably sold well between 2-4 million copies. Truthfully we won't really know until the end of this quarter when they have their next investor call/report.
Has S4 underperformed overall? Yes. Yet 2-4 million copies heck even a million copies (just therein counting PURE physical sales) is nothing to sneeze at - digital sales are even better because the only cost to the publisher is transaction and server costs but those are combined for their entire store (sales) so it doesn't really make sense to take into account.
So what does this mean for toddlers? Maxis clearly underestimated the demand for them (and how they implement them is yet to be seen) but because of production cost its more likely for them to show up in an expansion then a "game pack" BUT based on usage stats that also causes a problem because what if the expansion pack under performs as the usage stats suggest? Especially if people EXPECTED them in the base game to begin with, well these same people might not be willing to pay for it now.
Putting EA in the position of cost=return equation. Especially taking into account the above two points.
What we did (the three of us) agree on is that it if released with a price tag attached in whatever form - a toddlers themed pack will most likely be one of the most pirated pieces of dlc for the game.
Release it for free via a patch? Well that requires a large budget with minimal return vs an expansion (its not to say that EA doesn't have the money to spare or Maxis the good will) but try selling that to the suits...its certainly not a role I'd want.
(edited for grammar, probably edit later *again for more grammar lol...i think I'm done now...I clarified a few points today some people seemed to be misunderstanding.)
Addition:
So I've added a clarification to my post above - in that BY COST Toddlers had the lowest usage stats. Its a single word I left out but WAS alluded to in other parts of my original post as the development of toddlers required its own overhead vs other age groups in relation.
BABIES most likely had the LOWEST stats yes (which I pointed out) - BUT BY COST they had minimal production overhead. Elders were combined with t/y/a and babies are premium objects. Toddlers BY COST hence are a category to themselves as viewed as a stat for development purposes.
Game production is complicated. Its not just looking at one number and saying - hmmm, this has a low stat cut it. No its how you use those STATS in relation to other equations within development and production cycles.
To repeat what I said earlier - this is a conversation, based on rumors within EA with a bunch of friends - thats is. Its NOT gospel from Maxis, which I thought would be fun to share plus give some insight into how game development works in general.
Even having toddlers won't save this fail of a game. I have been a a die hard Sims fan since Sims 1. This is the first game in the series where I am completely bored and don't even want to load it up. I haven't played since before the pool patch. I am not even remotely interested. I'm taking my money elsewhere.
Some execudroid who never played a game in their life made seriously bad decisions and wrecked a good franchise. Giving us toddlers will do nothing if the game is flat, lifeless, and boring. Blech.
This is what I believe as well, because the whole "toddlers are unpopular that's why it was cut" idea seems a bit absurd to me ... if that was true then we can imagine that this would not have been applied to just toddlers ...
It is absurd.
You aren't making a point you're just spamming the thread.
This is what I believe as well, because the whole "toddlers are unpopular that's why it was cut" idea seems a bit absurd to me ... if that was true then we can imagine that this would not have been applied to just toddlers ...
It is absurd.
Frankly I think that is the biggest load of nonsense I've ever read. Someone further back said that Elders were probably the lifestage that was the least played, and I'd probably agree with that, and the fact that was also mentioned, the toddler stage was about 5 days long as default, so of course they weren't getting a lot of play time. It doesn't mean that they were unpopular.
From what I recall toddler items where one of the most requested things both for content in EPs and SPs and from the TS3 store. They certainly weren't as interesting as Sims 2 toddlers, or as fully fleshed out, but Sims 3 seems to be where EA began their move to pushing hard for Achievement and goal oriented play, and focusing on the single, YA and overly materialistic sim. If people were unhappy with them, then it's a cue for EA to improve them, not just strike an entire life stage from a life simulator. But, true to their track record, whatever doesn't work for them, or is too hard, or whatever they just ruin completely gets shoved into the "see ya later" bin, to sit there forgotten.
Thank you for the truth.
The notion that toddlers were cut because people did not play them makes no sense. What about everything else that didn't make it? It was cut due to data analysis showing people didn't use it? Or because The Sims 4 was rushed and mismanaged being\whatever they could put together in a year and a half because Project Olympus was cancelled?
Simmers are crying like toddlers for toddlers. There's not much misunderstanding over that. I'm already not too happy with EA so being made fun for not being satisfied with the game is just hilarious right?.... More like EA crying over toddlers like toddlers. They need to stop groveling and make this right.
Legit, it's like they're mad because people are asking them to do their job.
...or is creating a profitable, enjoyable, well-liked game not what EA has hired them to do? I'm sure EA doesn't fund Maxis with the directions: "Do a half-fast (see what i did there) job and create a game that causes half of your fan base to stray elsewhere!"
I don't feel sympathy knowing that this is how they view the people contributing to their paychecks.
I'm not gonna say I don't enjoy the game because I do But there's so much more that I'm concerned about even more so than toddlers like the lack of whether the size of the worlds and the lots and now I'm super concerned that they will no longer be creating expansion packs I'm not too hyped up about this Game pack business
I don't know if I would trust the information gathered by that method for many of the reasons listed before. I love Sims 3, but I'm not blind to its flaws, the Sims 2 sims in many aspects were much more popular and beloved where the Sims 3 is when things started to take a bit of a turn. There's also the fact that a lot of people cut off that option to have their data recorded and sent to EA and played offline.
I agree, if toddlers are on that list of least played, babies and probably elders are on there as well, but how would it look if they cut out those two? The first life stage and the last life stage? Well that would cause outrage and it would make absolutely no sense.
I personally rarely ever played elders. But I do agree, what else is on that list of data analysis? Does this also explain the careers that were cut (and ultimately the two they decided to bring back first)? Does this explain why no NPC's? CASt? Vehicles? I would not be surprised, but then again, that data wouldn't add up.
I feel the need to remind people of these two quotes. First from Graham on July/2nd of this year.
"You can’t weigh features by how much you want them in the game, you have to consider how many development resources it takes to create them. The tram? A couple of days from one of our FX guys and it’s finished… very low risk, very low complexity (using entirely existing tech), and adds a nice visual punch to the neighborhood. I can’t recall ever scoping against FX… they always have time to be adding more stuff. Our FX folks submitted their own long list of things they wanted to work on because there wasn’t enough for them to do. Now, you can’t take the FX team and ask them to add pools to the game. They don’t have the work skills to do it; neither do I. Pools, toddlers… they’re extremely complex features that require months of man hours of work across multiple disciplines and introduce significant risk. If we were to have added one of those to the game, there would have been two choices for us… cut many small features, or cut one other significantly large feature. And again, it isn’t equivalent - you can’t just cut a large feature and expect it to line up; you have to cut enough to get all the numbers for each discipline in the green, which means cutting extra to get to the point where the hardest hit discipline has enough time to do their necessary work for it. Now you’ve created free time for other disciplines who previously had work, but are left twiddling their thumbs… so you need to find work for them to do that only impacts the areas that you have time to spend in. If you look at one weird aspect of the game and wonder why it took priority over something that seemed important to you, it’s entirely possible it was something that the right people had time to work on without disrupting the busy people. Game development is a constant puzzle where you’re matching headcount and skill sets against features, schedule, and budget, and you’re trying to make everything fit just right with as few gaps as possible. Unfortunately time isn’t like money; you can’t go into debt on time and pay it back later."
And then from Rachel Franklin a few days later on July/7th of this year.
"Let me start with a bit more about the decision we made not to include pools and toddlers in The Sims 4, as we’ve seen some of you have concerns about this.
The fact is, we owe you a clearer explanation for why pools and toddlers will not be in The Sims 4 at launch, so here goes. It begins with new technology and systems that we built for this new base game for The Sims – a new AI system, new animation system, new audio positioning tools, new locomotion logic, new routing intelligence and much more are all entirely new in this game. The vision for The Sims 4 is a new experience that brings your Sims to life in deeper and uniquely personal ways – through emotions, personality traits, behaviors and interactions. To do that, our technology base needed a major upgrade.
So the bottom line is that when we sat down and looked at everything we wanted to do for this game, all the new tech we wanted to build into it, the fact was that there would be trade-offs, and these would disappoint some of our fans. Hard pill to swallow, believe me, but delivering on the vision set out for The Sims 4 required focus. Focus on revolutionizing the Sims themselves. So, rather than include toddlers, we chose to go deeper on the features that make Sims come alive: meaningful and often amusing emotions; more believable motion and interactions; more tools in Create A Sim, and more realistic (and sometimes weird!) Sim behavior. Instead of pools, we chose to develop key new features in Build Mode: direct manipulation, building a house room-by-room and being able to exchange your custom rooms easily, to make the immediate environment even more relatable and interactive for your Sim.”
And then when you consider the Olympus "rumors"...
It's more than just data analysis. It's money and time wasted on a game majority of us didn't want. Then add to that the little money gathered and saved (after layoffs, and decisions made probably using that questionable data) to save what the could and try to polish the game up. But not enough money to hire enough appropriate staff needed and/or no time to let who they did have who could implement major things like toddlers.
And when you consider the layoffs... I mean I don't know what department everyone they laid off came from or what their jobs were but think about it... they'd save money by laying people off, wouldn't they? But depending on where these people worked and what they specifically were working on when it came to the game, well, "trade-offs" and "many small features" or the big feature?
The more that comes out officially and unofficially the more it starts to make sense... It's just a lot of mismanagement it seems.
That's just my opinion based off all official and unofficial information I've read though.
Simmers are crying like toddlers for toddlers. There's not much misunderstanding over that. I'm already not too happy with EA so being made fun for not being satisfied with the game is just hilarious right?.... More like EA crying over toddlers like toddlers. They need to stop groveling and make this right.
Legit, it's like they're mad because people are asking them to do their job.
...or is creating a profitable, enjoyable, well-liked game not what EA has hired them to do? I'm sure EA doesn't fund Maxis with the directions: "Do a half-fast (see what i did there) job and create a game that causes half of your fan base to stray elsewhere!"
I don't feel sympathy knowing that this is how they view the people contributing to their paychecks.
"Half-fast" (I saw what you did there!) indeed.
EA and their employees might want to be more mindful of their flippant attitude about "simmers crying like toddlers for toddlers." They might be laughing now, but they could be the ones crying later. They need to keep their customers happy above all else--and if they don't believe that, they can just Google "EA Layoffs" and see how much they feel like laughing then...
I don't know if I would trust the information gathered by that method for many of the reasons listed before. I love Sims 3, but I'm not blind to its flaws, the Sims 2 sims in many aspects were much more popular and beloved where the Sims 3 is when things started to take a bit of a turn. There's also the fact that a lot of people cut off that option to have their data recorded and sent to EA and played offline.
I agree, if toddlers are on that list of least played, babies and probably elders are on there as well, but how would it look if they cut out those two? The first life stage and the last life stage? Well that would cause outrage and it would make absolutely no sense.
I personally rarely ever played elders. But I do agree, what else is on that list of data analysis? Does this also explain the careers that were cut (and ultimately the two they decided to bring back first)? Does this explain why no NPC's? CASt? Vehicles? I would not be surprised, but then again, that data wouldn't add up.
I feel the need to remind people of these two quotes. First from Graham on July/2nd of this year.
"You can’t weigh features by how much you want them in the game, you have to consider how many development resources it takes to create them. The tram? A couple of days from one of our FX guys and it’s finished… very low risk, very low complexity (using entirely existing tech), and adds a nice visual punch to the neighborhood. I can’t recall ever scoping against FX… they always have time to be adding more stuff. Our FX folks submitted their own long list of things they wanted to work on because there wasn’t enough for them to do. Now, you can’t take the FX team and ask them to add pools to the game. They don’t have the work skills to do it; neither do I. Pools, toddlers… they’re extremely complex features that require months of man hours of work across multiple disciplines and introduce significant risk. If we were to have added one of those to the game, there would have been two choices for us… cut many small features, or cut one other significantly large feature. And again, it isn’t equivalent - you can’t just cut a large feature and expect it to line up; you have to cut enough to get all the numbers for each discipline in the green, which means cutting extra to get to the point where the hardest hit discipline has enough time to do their necessary work for it. Now you’ve created free time for other disciplines who previously had work, but are left twiddling their thumbs… so you need to find work for them to do that only impacts the areas that you have time to spend in. If you look at one weird aspect of the game and wonder why it took priority over something that seemed important to you, it’s entirely possible it was something that the right people had time to work on without disrupting the busy people. Game development is a constant puzzle where you’re matching headcount and skill sets against features, schedule, and budget, and you’re trying to make everything fit just right with as few gaps as possible. Unfortunately time isn’t like money; you can’t go into debt on time and pay it back later."
And then from Rachel Franklin a few days later on July/7th of this year.
"Let me start with a bit more about the decision we made not to include pools and toddlers in The Sims 4, as we’ve seen some of you have concerns about this.
The fact is, we owe you a clearer explanation for why pools and toddlers will not be in The Sims 4 at launch, so here goes. It begins with new technology and systems that we built for this new base game for The Sims – a new AI system, new animation system, new audio positioning tools, new locomotion logic, new routing intelligence and much more are all entirely new in this game. The vision for The Sims 4 is a new experience that brings your Sims to life in deeper and uniquely personal ways – through emotions, personality traits, behaviors and interactions. To do that, our technology base needed a major upgrade.
So the bottom line is that when we sat down and looked at everything we wanted to do for this game, all the new tech we wanted to build into it, the fact was that there would be trade-offs, and these would disappoint some of our fans. Hard pill to swallow, believe me, but delivering on the vision set out for The Sims 4 required focus. Focus on revolutionizing the Sims themselves. So, rather than include toddlers, we chose to go deeper on the features that make Sims come alive: meaningful and often amusing emotions; more believable motion and interactions; more tools in Create A Sim, and more realistic (and sometimes weird!) Sim behavior. Instead of pools, we chose to develop key new features in Build Mode: direct manipulation, building a house room-by-room and being able to exchange your custom rooms easily, to make the immediate environment even more relatable and interactive for your Sim.”
And then when you consider the Olympus "rumors"...
It's more than just data analysis. It's money and time wasted on a game majority of us didn't want. Then add to that the little money gathered and saved (after layoffs, and decisions made probably using that questionable data) to save what the could and try to polish the game up. But not enough money to hire enough appropriate staff needed and/or no time to let who they did have who could implement major things like toddlers.
And when you consider the layoffs... I mean I don't know what department everyone they laid off came from or what their jobs were but think about it... they'd save money by laying people off, wouldn't they? But depending on where these people worked and what they specifically were working on when it came to the game, well, "trade-offs" and "many small features" or the big feature?
The more that comes out officially and unofficially the more it starts to make sense... It's just a lot of mismanagement it seems.
That's just my opinion based off all official and unofficial information I've read though.
Doesn't the fact that they were able to "solve" the "incredibly complex" puzzle of pools and patch them in in the first (sorry- third) month pretty much say: "we are full of 🐸🐸🐸🐸 and were saying anything we could think of that we thought you would swallow to deflect and make an excuse for the fact that we made about 8,000 mistakes and the game wasn't ready for launch..."
I don't know if I would trust the information gathered by that method for many of the reasons listed before. I love Sims 3, but I'm not blind to its flaws, the Sims 2 sims in many aspects were much more popular and beloved where the Sims 3 is when things started to take a bit of a turn. There's also the fact that a lot of people cut off that option to have their data recorded and sent to EA and played offline.
I agree, if toddlers are on that list of least played, babies and probably elders are on there as well, but how would it look if they cut out those two? The first life stage and the last life stage? Well that would cause outrage and it would make absolutely no sense.
I personally rarely ever played elders. But I do agree, what else is on that list of data analysis? Does this also explain the careers that were cut (and ultimately the two they decided to bring back first)? Does this explain why no NPC's? CASt? Vehicles? I would not be surprised, but then again, that data wouldn't add up.
I feel the need to remind people of these two quotes. First from Graham on July/2nd of this year.
"You can’t weigh features by how much you want them in the game, you have to consider how many development resources it takes to create them. The tram? A couple of days from one of our FX guys and it’s finished… very low risk, very low complexity (using entirely existing tech), and adds a nice visual punch to the neighborhood. I can’t recall ever scoping against FX… they always have time to be adding more stuff. Our FX folks submitted their own long list of things they wanted to work on because there wasn’t enough for them to do. Now, you can’t take the FX team and ask them to add pools to the game. They don’t have the work skills to do it; neither do I. Pools, toddlers… they’re extremely complex features that require months of man hours of work across multiple disciplines and introduce significant risk. If we were to have added one of those to the game, there would have been two choices for us… cut many small features, or cut one other significantly large feature. And again, it isn’t equivalent - you can’t just cut a large feature and expect it to line up; you have to cut enough to get all the numbers for each discipline in the green, which means cutting extra to get to the point where the hardest hit discipline has enough time to do their necessary work for it. Now you’ve created free time for other disciplines who previously had work, but are left twiddling their thumbs… so you need to find work for them to do that only impacts the areas that you have time to spend in. If you look at one weird aspect of the game and wonder why it took priority over something that seemed important to you, it’s entirely possible it was something that the right people had time to work on without disrupting the busy people. Game development is a constant puzzle where you’re matching headcount and skill sets against features, schedule, and budget, and you’re trying to make everything fit just right with as few gaps as possible. Unfortunately time isn’t like money; you can’t go into debt on time and pay it back later."
And then from Rachel Franklin a few days later on July/7th of this year.
"Let me start with a bit more about the decision we made not to include pools and toddlers in The Sims 4, as we’ve seen some of you have concerns about this.
The fact is, we owe you a clearer explanation for why pools and toddlers will not be in The Sims 4 at launch, so here goes. It begins with new technology and systems that we built for this new base game for The Sims – a new AI system, new animation system, new audio positioning tools, new locomotion logic, new routing intelligence and much more are all entirely new in this game. The vision for The Sims 4 is a new experience that brings your Sims to life in deeper and uniquely personal ways – through emotions, personality traits, behaviors and interactions. To do that, our technology base needed a major upgrade.
So the bottom line is that when we sat down and looked at everything we wanted to do for this game, all the new tech we wanted to build into it, the fact was that there would be trade-offs, and these would disappoint some of our fans. Hard pill to swallow, believe me, but delivering on the vision set out for The Sims 4 required focus. Focus on revolutionizing the Sims themselves. So, rather than include toddlers, we chose to go deeper on the features that make Sims come alive: meaningful and often amusing emotions; more believable motion and interactions; more tools in Create A Sim, and more realistic (and sometimes weird!) Sim behavior. Instead of pools, we chose to develop key new features in Build Mode: direct manipulation, building a house room-by-room and being able to exchange your custom rooms easily, to make the immediate environment even more relatable and interactive for your Sim.”
And then when you consider the Olympus "rumors"...
It's more than just data analysis. It's money and time wasted on a game majority of us didn't want. Then add to that the little money gathered and saved (after layoffs, and decisions made probably using that questionable data) to save what the could and try to polish the game up. But not enough money to hire enough appropriate staff needed and/or no time to let who they did have who could implement major things like toddlers.
And when you consider the layoffs... I mean I don't know what department everyone they laid off came from or what their jobs were but think about it... they'd save money by laying people off, wouldn't they? But depending on where these people worked and what they specifically were working on when it came to the game, well, "trade-offs" and "many small features" or the big feature?
The more that comes out officially and unofficially the more it starts to make sense... It's just a lot of mismanagement it seems.
That's just my opinion based off all official and unofficial information I've read though.
See the added caveat no toddlers *at launch*. Do they even realise that encouraged many customers to buy in anticipation of the base game getting finished and now it looks like we are seeing furious back peddling on ever seeing that happen?
I agree with you wholeheartedly. I think the failure of olympus is being visited on us fans and that is grossly unfair. EA made that mistake and we should not be made to suffer over some poor decisions-they need to dedicate proper investment to sims4 to rescue it. It's not the fault of sims 4 that so many are so disillusioned-it's the higher ups at EA who should shoulder that responsibility. But sadly we know that will never happen given the track record :-( it's so tragic to see!
I'm not being rude or anything, but I hated toddlers. People hardly even used toddlers, so what the actual crap? Seriously, people are whining about it, but if we get toddlers back everyone's just gonna be like "K toddlers yep bye" and find more things to complain about. <br />
<br />
I think the people complaining about toddlers are being quite idiotic, you don't just complain about things and expect it to come back, especially if you're being impolite about everything.<br />
<br />
They were never really useful, and they were just there. IMO, I'm glad toddlers were cut. They were just a load of useless content. But that's my opinion, and I'll respect other opinions if they disagree, because I don't spend half my time being a negative person.<br />
<br />
(Sorry for random waffling on)
Au contraire, I consider the toddler stage the most useful stage. This is how life works. If a child is nurtured and taught during the toddler stage, he/she has a far better chance of achieving success during childhood and all other life stages. Children who are ignored or abused during that formative stage are likely to have difficulties throughout their life.
Of course, I recognize that the toddler stage in the game requires time and effort. Surely there are ways to create options for players. In "gameplay" let players choose (a) skip toddler stage, (b) limited toddler stage (with limited effort required to raise them), or (c) complete toddler stage with the child's future traits and abilities dependent, in part, at least, upon interactions with parents and others during the toddler stage.
I don't know if I would trust the information gathered by that method for many of the reasons listed before. I love Sims 3, but I'm not blind to its flaws, the Sims 2 sims in many aspects were much more popular and beloved where the Sims 3 is when things started to take a bit of a turn. There's also the fact that a lot of people cut off that option to have their data recorded and sent to EA and played offline.
I agree, if toddlers are on that list of least played, babies and probably elders are on there as well, but how would it look if they cut out those two? The first life stage and the last life stage? Well that would cause outrage and it would make absolutely no sense.
I personally rarely ever played elders. But I do agree, what else is on that list of data analysis? Does this also explain the careers that were cut (and ultimately the two they decided to bring back first)? Does this explain why no NPC's? CASt? Vehicles? I would not be surprised, but then again, that data wouldn't add up.
I feel the need to remind people of these two quotes. First from Graham on July/2nd of this year.
"You can’t weigh features by how much you want them in the game, you have to consider how many development resources it takes to create them. The tram? A couple of days from one of our FX guys and it’s finished… very low risk, very low complexity (using entirely existing tech), and adds a nice visual punch to the neighborhood. I can’t recall ever scoping against FX… they always have time to be adding more stuff. Our FX folks submitted their own long list of things they wanted to work on because there wasn’t enough for them to do. Now, you can’t take the FX team and ask them to add pools to the game. They don’t have the work skills to do it; neither do I. Pools, toddlers… they’re extremely complex features that require months of man hours of work across multiple disciplines and introduce significant risk. If we were to have added one of those to the game, there would have been two choices for us… cut many small features, or cut one other significantly large feature. And again, it isn’t equivalent - you can’t just cut a large feature and expect it to line up; you have to cut enough to get all the numbers for each discipline in the green, which means cutting extra to get to the point where the hardest hit discipline has enough time to do their necessary work for it. Now you’ve created free time for other disciplines who previously had work, but are left twiddling their thumbs… so you need to find work for them to do that only impacts the areas that you have time to spend in. If you look at one weird aspect of the game and wonder why it took priority over something that seemed important to you, it’s entirely possible it was something that the right people had time to work on without disrupting the busy people. Game development is a constant puzzle where you’re matching headcount and skill sets against features, schedule, and budget, and you’re trying to make everything fit just right with as few gaps as possible. Unfortunately time isn’t like money; you can’t go into debt on time and pay it back later."
And then from Rachel Franklin a few days later on July/7th of this year.
"Let me start with a bit more about the decision we made not to include pools and toddlers in The Sims 4, as we’ve seen some of you have concerns about this.
The fact is, we owe you a clearer explanation for why pools and toddlers will not be in The Sims 4 at launch, so here goes. It begins with new technology and systems that we built for this new base game for The Sims – a new AI system, new animation system, new audio positioning tools, new locomotion logic, new routing intelligence and much more are all entirely new in this game. The vision for The Sims 4 is a new experience that brings your Sims to life in deeper and uniquely personal ways – through emotions, personality traits, behaviors and interactions. To do that, our technology base needed a major upgrade.
So the bottom line is that when we sat down and looked at everything we wanted to do for this game, all the new tech we wanted to build into it, the fact was that there would be trade-offs, and these would disappoint some of our fans. Hard pill to swallow, believe me, but delivering on the vision set out for The Sims 4 required focus. Focus on revolutionizing the Sims themselves. So, rather than include toddlers, we chose to go deeper on the features that make Sims come alive: meaningful and often amusing emotions; more believable motion and interactions; more tools in Create A Sim, and more realistic (and sometimes weird!) Sim behavior. Instead of pools, we chose to develop key new features in Build Mode: direct manipulation, building a house room-by-room and being able to exchange your custom rooms easily, to make the immediate environment even more relatable and interactive for your Sim.”
And then when you consider the Olympus "rumors"...
It's more than just data analysis. It's money and time wasted on a game majority of us didn't want. Then add to that the little money gathered and saved (after layoffs, and decisions made probably using that questionable data) to save what the could and try to polish the game up. But not enough money to hire enough appropriate staff needed and/or no time to let who they did have who could implement major things like toddlers.
And when you consider the layoffs... I mean I don't know what department everyone they laid off came from or what their jobs were but think about it... they'd save money by laying people off, wouldn't they? But depending on where these people worked and what they specifically were working on when it came to the game, well, "trade-offs" and "many small features" or the big feature?
The more that comes out officially and unofficially the more it starts to make sense... It's just a lot of mismanagement it seems.
That's just my opinion based off all official and unofficial information I've read though.
Thank you for posting what has been said by those over at Maxis. Which as I pointed out their reasons flies in the face of the 'telemetry theory', which I have already said that theory is pure hog wash. Concerning what Graham stated (which I have read many times) I can only walk away with the perception of total mismanagement. Concerning what Rachel Franklin said ( which I have read many times) that mismanagement is magnified ten times greater and their statements can only lead me to think Mismanagement with time and resources. But tend to believe them more that two guys from EA Sports and the OP theorizing it was simply the telemetry...and or cost effectiveness...yes, I'm sure the cost played a huge part in it, since they had already spent the entire budget on the TS4 Olympus but I doubt the telemetry (which I have already stated early on) had one iota to do with these decisions this time around.
"Games Are Not The Place To Tell Stories, Games Are Meant To Let People Tell Their Own Stories"...Will Wright.
Ah where to start...
EA, you wonder why you have the worst company of the year award, this is why. You constantly lie to your fans, you cut features to sell as dlc, you look down on us, laugh at us when we're unhappy, laugh at us because we were oh so stupid to actually fall for your lies and buy the game anyway. How stupid of us. I love how its so funny to call us names just because we want something in a game that you charge $60+ for. Not everyone has the high life, some of us actually work our a-sses off to get somewhere in life. We don't use money to wipe our bu-tts when we take a dump, i'm sorry we don't have it as easy as you guys do.
You wonder why Valve will always be ahead of you, maybe its because Valve treats us as real people, because without your fans you are NOTHING. Valve at least knows if a game isn't making money that means they weren't listening. That's the math, can you comprehend it or are you too busy sniffing your money.
This game is a massive failure, not only have you let your fans down, you have let your employees down by forcing them to release a piece of rubbish that's not even close to finished. The way this game was made anyone with eyes can see almost every single interaction, facial expression, movement whatever is forced beyond belief. Every single bit of backlash you are getting is thoroughly deserved for your despicable tactics you have been using over the years. Shame on you.
As for toddlers, you guys are too thick to even comprehend that maybe they were used the least because they have the SHORTEST LIFESPAN.Your fans want toddlers back, now i don't care how you do it but i'd recommend you get them in this game and they are done PROPERLY if you don't want to continue losing money on this game. But don't mind me, I'm just a whining toddler
Anyone with a brain knows this game has made far less money than you all expected. Its because you cut everything that made TS3 a success. From a business point of view i can't understand why you do that, but maybe whoever is managing the cuts needs to be reevaluated. I highly doubt its too much money to add the features we want in the game, you guys have been making tons of money by your greed so i'm pretty sure you can make a plan.
We NEVER wanted an online game so why you guys went in that direction only you will know. But whoever decided that it should go online, needs to be fired or be given another position because that person has costed you A LOT of money.
This game is by far the worst game i have ever played in my entire life, and its because you have failed to listen to your fan base.
Thank you for posting what has been said by those over at Maxis. Which as I pointed out their reasons flies in the face of the 'telemetry theory', which I have already said that theory is pure hog wash. Concerning what Graham stated (which I have read many times) I can only walk away with the perception of total mismanagement. Concerning what Rachel Franklin said ( which I have read many times) that mismanagement is magnified ten times greater and their statements can only lead me to think Mismanagement with time and resources. But tend to believe them more that two guys from EA Sports and the OP theorizing it was simply the telemetry...and or cost effectiveness...yes, I'm sure the cost played a huge part in it, since they had already spent the entire budget on the TS4 Olympus but I doubt the telemetry (which I have already stated early on) had one iota to do with these decisions this time around.
We NEVER wanted an online game so why you guys went in that direction only you will know. But whoever decided that it should go online, needs to be fired or be given another position because that person has costed you A LOT of money.
This game is by far the worst game i have ever played in my entire life, and its because you have failed to listen to your fan base.
Good Day. I have saved this post.
I think the person who was behind the decision was a high-ranking person (was it the CEO?) at EA who was pushing all of their games to be more online and social. He stepped down shortly after the simcity fiasco, I'm pretty sure.
People seem to forget, or just want to ignore that TS4 and everyone who worked on it are just as much victims of this terrible decision as those who hate or have negative feelings for this game, so thank you for pointing that out in your post. This decision happened. There's no taking it back. But I think the Sims team did an INCREDIBLE job with the time and resources they had. I can only imagine the amount of stress and work that went into getting this game out by deadline.
The fact that they are still rolling out content to flesh out the base game for FREE is something that I see getting a lot of flack for reasons I don't understand. So many people were screaming for the release to be pushed back and seemed so upset that they didn't listen and released an “unfinished" game. What is the difference between waiting an extra year or so for a game, and getting it on time and having content slowly added over a year or so at not cost to us? Why is that a bad thing? I genuinely am trying to wrap my head around that one.
Mind you, my support will dry up the second major features that were omitted for time are given back with a price tag... *pokes at EA* *pokes one more time for emphasis*
Also, this game isn't trash in my opinion. Despite things missing this game is probably my favourite in the series. But that's just me. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, and these games usually tend to polarize fans a bit. I think it's wrong to say this game is garbage. Just like it'd be wrong to say it's the perfect Sims game as well. It isn't.
But then, how do you make the perfect Sims game for millions of obsessive control freaks who all want a game designed specifically around the way they play?
I think the person who was behind the decision was a high-ranking person (was it the CEO?) at EA who was pushing all of their games to be more online and social. He stepped down shortly after the simcity fiasco, I'm pretty sure.
People seem to forget, or just want to ignore that TS4 and everyone who worked on it are just as much victims of this terrible decision as those who hate or have negative feelings for this game, so thank you for pointing that out in your post. This decision happened. There's no taking it back. But I think the Sims team did an INCREDIBLE job with the time and resources they had. I can only imagine the amount of stress and work that went into getting this game out by deadline.
The fact that they are still rolling out content to flesh out the base game for FREE is something that I see getting a lot of flack for reasons I don't understand. So many people were screaming for the release to be pushed back and seemed so upset that they didn't listen and released an “unfinished" game. What is the difference between waiting an extra year or so for a game, and getting it on time and having content slowly added over a year or so at not cost to us? Why is that a bad thing? I genuinely am trying to wrap my head around that one.
Mind you, my support will dry up the second major features that were omitted for time are given back with a price tag... *pokes at EA* *pokes one more time for emphasis*
Also, this game isn't trash in my opinion. Despite things missing this game is probably my favourite in the series. But that's just me. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, and these games usually tend to polarize fans a bit. I think it's wrong to say this game is garbage. Just like it'd be wrong to say it's the perfect Sims game as well. It isn't.
But then, how do you make the perfect Sims game for millions of obsessive control freaks who all want a game designed specifically around the way they play?
With all of the back and forth comments in this thread.....I finally chose to sit back and read it but stopped participating. Doesn't seem to matter if a post is for or against, the backlash is astronomical! I do however agree with this post.
I, too, sat here thinking about the point of the timing of the game's release. I recall surfing around a couple years ago and people were wanting information on Sims 4 well before EA even announced it would be released never mind when. When news did start leaking out, players were outraged that it was an online game and of course EA had to take that into account, so they changed the mode of play to satisfy that outcry.
I don't know if that in itself has anything to do with Sims 4 being released early or late, or whether it had toddlers and pools or not, but I also recall reading threads in the forums and players were impatient. They didn't want to wait until whatever future date was stated for its release. Now we see pools added in a patch a few months after release. To me, this is saying it is something they were working on, it may have originally been planned for the base game but because they had to release earlier than they might have been ready to it was added after release.
Regardless of who mismanaged what, who made what mistakes, layoffs, telemetry, production costs/time the end result is a video game, not online, and possibly released earlier than originally planned for. Are all players happy? No. But a lot are. The world is a huge place and there are just too many people playing and you can't please everyone all the time.
I think the person who was behind the decision was a high-ranking person (was it the CEO?) at EA who was pushing all of their games to be more online and social. He stepped down shortly after the simcity fiasco, I'm pretty sure.
People seem to forget, or just want to ignore that TS4 and everyone who worked on it are just as much victims of this terrible decision as those who hate or have negative feelings for this game, so thank you for pointing that out in your post. This decision happened. There's no taking it back. But I think the Sims team did an INCREDIBLE job with the time and resources they had. I can only imagine the amount of stress and work that went into getting this game out by deadline.
The fact that they are still rolling out content to flesh out the base game for FREE is something that I see getting a lot of flack for reasons I don't understand. So many people were screaming for the release to be pushed back and seemed so upset that they didn't listen and released an “unfinished" game. What is the difference between waiting an extra year or so for a game, and getting it on time and having content slowly added over a year or so at not cost to us? Why is that a bad thing? I genuinely am trying to wrap my head around that one.
Mind you, my support will dry up the second major features that were omitted for time are given back with a price tag... *pokes at EA* *pokes one more time for emphasis*
Also, this game isn't trash in my opinion. Despite things missing this game is probably my favourite in the series. But that's just me. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, and these games usually tend to polarize fans a bit. I think it's wrong to say this game is garbage. Just like it'd be wrong to say it's the perfect Sims game as well. It isn't.
But then, how do you make the perfect Sims game for millions of obsessive control freaks who all want a game designed specifically around the way they play?
With all of the back and forth comments in this thread.....I finally chose to sit back and read it but stopped participating. Doesn't seem to matter if a post is for or against, the backlash is astronomical! I do however agree with this post.
I, too, sat here thinking about the point of the timing of the game's release. I recall surfing around a couple years ago and people were wanting information on Sims 4 well before EA even announced it would be released never mind when. When news did start leaking out, players were outraged that it was an online game and of course EA had to take that into account, so they changed the mode of play to satisfy that outcry.
I don't know if that in itself has anything to do with Sims 4 being released early or late, or whether it had toddlers and pools or not, but I also recall reading threads in the forums and players were impatient. They didn't want to wait until whatever future date was stated for its release. Now we see pools added in a patch a few months after release. To me, this is saying it is something they were working on, it may have originally been planned for the base game but because they had to release earlier than they might have been ready to it was added after release.
Regardless of who mismanaged what, who made what mistakes, layoffs, telemetry, production costs/time the end result is a video game, not online, and possibly released earlier than originally planned for. Are all players happy? No. But a lot are. The world is a huge place and there are just too many people playing and you can't please everyone all the time.
A lot? I don't think A lot are happy. This is the only sims forum to actually have a few people liking the game. Any other forum is full of negativity. A trip to MTS will show you just how many hate the game. The reviews speak for itself even. A 3.7 score hardly tells me that a lot of simmers are happy.
Comments
Yeah that bit made me cry too
PoppySims Archive
InnaLisa Pose Archive
Devolution of Sims - a once customisable open world sandbox which has become a DLC Party catalog in a shoebox
I ♡ Pudding
> Seriously take a pill.
Wow, way to be rude!
I apologize and have removed said offense.
I cleaned up that post.
I'm just really hungry, my apologies.
Awfully kind'a ya!
In my opinion, the only time a players data should be collected are when improvements are needed, because of faults/issues when playing the game.
Super cute sim in avi!!
Some execudroid who never played a game in their life made seriously bad decisions and wrecked a good franchise. Giving us toddlers will do nothing if the game is flat, lifeless, and boring. Blech.
Hi, Pot. I'm Kettle.
Thank you for the truth.
The notion that toddlers were cut because people did not play them makes no sense. What about everything else that didn't make it? It was cut due to data analysis showing people didn't use it? Or because The Sims 4 was rushed and mismanaged being\whatever they could put together in a year and a half because Project Olympus was cancelled?
Legit, it's like they're mad because people are asking them to do their job.
...or is creating a profitable, enjoyable, well-liked game not what EA has hired them to do? I'm sure EA doesn't fund Maxis with the directions: "Do a half-fast (see what i did there) job and create a game that causes half of your fan base to stray elsewhere!"
I don't feel sympathy knowing that this is how they view the people contributing to their paychecks.
I agree, if toddlers are on that list of least played, babies and probably elders are on there as well, but how would it look if they cut out those two? The first life stage and the last life stage? Well that would cause outrage and it would make absolutely no sense.
I personally rarely ever played elders. But I do agree, what else is on that list of data analysis? Does this also explain the careers that were cut (and ultimately the two they decided to bring back first)? Does this explain why no NPC's? CASt? Vehicles? I would not be surprised, but then again, that data wouldn't add up.
I feel the need to remind people of these two quotes. First from Graham on July/2nd of this year.
And then from Rachel Franklin a few days later on July/7th of this year.
And then when you consider the Olympus "rumors"...
It's more than just data analysis. It's money and time wasted on a game majority of us didn't want. Then add to that the little money gathered and saved (after layoffs, and decisions made probably using that questionable data) to save what the could and try to polish the game up. But not enough money to hire enough appropriate staff needed and/or no time to let who they did have who could implement major things like toddlers.
And when you consider the layoffs... I mean I don't know what department everyone they laid off came from or what their jobs were but think about it... they'd save money by laying people off, wouldn't they? But depending on where these people worked and what they specifically were working on when it came to the game, well, "trade-offs" and "many small features" or the big feature?
The more that comes out officially and unofficially the more it starts to make sense... It's just a lot of mismanagement it seems.
That's just my opinion based off all official and unofficial information I've read though.
"Half-fast" (I saw what you did there!) indeed.
EA and their employees might want to be more mindful of their flippant attitude about "simmers crying like toddlers for toddlers." They might be laughing now, but they could be the ones crying later. They need to keep their customers happy above all else--and if they don't believe that, they can just Google "EA Layoffs" and see how much they feel like laughing then...
Doesn't the fact that they were able to "solve" the "incredibly complex" puzzle of pools and patch them in in the first (sorry- third) month pretty much say: "we are full of 🐸🐸🐸🐸 and were saying anything we could think of that we thought you would swallow to deflect and make an excuse for the fact that we made about 8,000 mistakes and the game wasn't ready for launch..."
Spy Games - A Sims 4 Story
Parker's Way - A Sims 4 Story
See the added caveat no toddlers *at launch*. Do they even realise that encouraged many customers to buy in anticipation of the base game getting finished and now it looks like we are seeing furious back peddling on ever seeing that happen?
I agree with you wholeheartedly. I think the failure of olympus is being visited on us fans and that is grossly unfair. EA made that mistake and we should not be made to suffer over some poor decisions-they need to dedicate proper investment to sims4 to rescue it. It's not the fault of sims 4 that so many are so disillusioned-it's the higher ups at EA who should shoulder that responsibility. But sadly we know that will never happen given the track record :-( it's so tragic to see!
https://twitter.com/sparkfairy1
Au contraire, I consider the toddler stage the most useful stage. This is how life works. If a child is nurtured and taught during the toddler stage, he/she has a far better chance of achieving success during childhood and all other life stages. Children who are ignored or abused during that formative stage are likely to have difficulties throughout their life.
Of course, I recognize that the toddler stage in the game requires time and effort. Surely there are ways to create options for players. In "gameplay" let players choose (a) skip toddler stage, (b) limited toddler stage (with limited effort required to raise them), or (c) complete toddler stage with the child's future traits and abilities dependent, in part, at least, upon interactions with parents and others during the toddler stage.
Thank you for posting what has been said by those over at Maxis. Which as I pointed out their reasons flies in the face of the 'telemetry theory', which I have already said that theory is pure hog wash. Concerning what Graham stated (which I have read many times) I can only walk away with the perception of total mismanagement. Concerning what Rachel Franklin said ( which I have read many times) that mismanagement is magnified ten times greater and their statements can only lead me to think Mismanagement with time and resources. But tend to believe them more that two guys from EA Sports and the OP theorizing it was simply the telemetry...and or cost effectiveness...yes, I'm sure the cost played a huge part in it, since they had already spent the entire budget on the TS4 Olympus but I doubt the telemetry (which I have already stated early on) had one iota to do with these decisions this time around.
EA, you wonder why you have the worst company of the year award, this is why. You constantly lie to your fans, you cut features to sell as dlc, you look down on us, laugh at us when we're unhappy, laugh at us because we were oh so stupid to actually fall for your lies and buy the game anyway. How stupid of us. I love how its so funny to call us names just because we want something in a game that you charge $60+ for. Not everyone has the high life, some of us actually work our a-sses off to get somewhere in life. We don't use money to wipe our bu-tts when we take a dump, i'm sorry we don't have it as easy as you guys do.
You wonder why Valve will always be ahead of you, maybe its because Valve treats us as real people, because without your fans you are NOTHING. Valve at least knows if a game isn't making money that means they weren't listening. That's the math, can you comprehend it or are you too busy sniffing your money.
This game is a massive failure, not only have you let your fans down, you have let your employees down by forcing them to release a piece of rubbish that's not even close to finished. The way this game was made anyone with eyes can see almost every single interaction, facial expression, movement whatever is forced beyond belief. Every single bit of backlash you are getting is thoroughly deserved for your despicable tactics you have been using over the years. Shame on you.
As for toddlers, you guys are too thick to even comprehend that maybe they were used the least because they have the SHORTEST LIFESPAN.Your fans want toddlers back, now i don't care how you do it but i'd recommend you get them in this game and they are done PROPERLY if you don't want to continue losing money on this game. But don't mind me, I'm just a whining toddler
Anyone with a brain knows this game has made far less money than you all expected. Its because you cut everything that made TS3 a success. From a business point of view i can't understand why you do that, but maybe whoever is managing the cuts needs to be reevaluated. I highly doubt its too much money to add the features we want in the game, you guys have been making tons of money by your greed so i'm pretty sure you can make a plan.
We NEVER wanted an online game so why you guys went in that direction only you will know. But whoever decided that it should go online, needs to be fired or be given another position because that person has costed you A LOT of money.
This game is by far the worst game i have ever played in my entire life, and its because you have failed to listen to your fan base.
Good Day. I have saved this post.
Perfectly put.
I think the person who was behind the decision was a high-ranking person (was it the CEO?) at EA who was pushing all of their games to be more online and social. He stepped down shortly after the simcity fiasco, I'm pretty sure.
People seem to forget, or just want to ignore that TS4 and everyone who worked on it are just as much victims of this terrible decision as those who hate or have negative feelings for this game, so thank you for pointing that out in your post. This decision happened. There's no taking it back. But I think the Sims team did an INCREDIBLE job with the time and resources they had. I can only imagine the amount of stress and work that went into getting this game out by deadline.
The fact that they are still rolling out content to flesh out the base game for FREE is something that I see getting a lot of flack for reasons I don't understand. So many people were screaming for the release to be pushed back and seemed so upset that they didn't listen and released an “unfinished" game. What is the difference between waiting an extra year or so for a game, and getting it on time and having content slowly added over a year or so at not cost to us? Why is that a bad thing? I genuinely am trying to wrap my head around that one.
Mind you, my support will dry up the second major features that were omitted for time are given back with a price tag... *pokes at EA* *pokes one more time for emphasis*
Also, this game isn't trash in my opinion. Despite things missing this game is probably my favourite in the series. But that's just me. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, and these games usually tend to polarize fans a bit. I think it's wrong to say this game is garbage. Just like it'd be wrong to say it's the perfect Sims game as well. It isn't.
But then, how do you make the perfect Sims game for millions of obsessive control freaks who all want a game designed specifically around the way they play?
With all of the back and forth comments in this thread.....I finally chose to sit back and read it but stopped participating. Doesn't seem to matter if a post is for or against, the backlash is astronomical! I do however agree with this post.
I, too, sat here thinking about the point of the timing of the game's release. I recall surfing around a couple years ago and people were wanting information on Sims 4 well before EA even announced it would be released never mind when. When news did start leaking out, players were outraged that it was an online game and of course EA had to take that into account, so they changed the mode of play to satisfy that outcry.
I don't know if that in itself has anything to do with Sims 4 being released early or late, or whether it had toddlers and pools or not, but I also recall reading threads in the forums and players were impatient. They didn't want to wait until whatever future date was stated for its release. Now we see pools added in a patch a few months after release. To me, this is saying it is something they were working on, it may have originally been planned for the base game but because they had to release earlier than they might have been ready to it was added after release.
Regardless of who mismanaged what, who made what mistakes, layoffs, telemetry, production costs/time the end result is a video game, not online, and possibly released earlier than originally planned for. Are all players happy? No. But a lot are. The world is a huge place and there are just too many people playing and you can't please everyone all the time.
A lot? I don't think A lot are happy. This is the only sims forum to actually have a few people liking the game. Any other forum is full of negativity. A trip to MTS will show you just how many hate the game. The reviews speak for itself even. A 3.7 score hardly tells me that a lot of simmers are happy.
I saw a bit of MTS, and it's not pretty to see XD
Yup, a lot aren't happy, and are telling it on the forums and social medias, and that's without counting those who don't post