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Feedback on the hidden changes in patch 1.3.18.1010
dethdukk
Posts: 11 New Member
Hey Sims Team! First off, I want to say that I love this game. It is one of the best games I've had the pleasure of playing in quite a while, and I can't wait to see where it goes from here. It's the first Sims game I've played, and as a new player I really like the way the mood system works. Very intuitive.
Now for the feedback, some good, some bad.
Good Feedback:
- I like most of the aspiration changes. Getting rid of the 5BFF requirement from Friend of the World is amazing, thank you. Getting rid of that irritating "beat writer's block" requirement is even more so. I also love that you lowered the number of romantic interactions on Soulmate, and got rid of the neighbor requirements from FotW and Public Enemy. There's a ton more that I liked (tech guru comes to mind) but I won't list them all here.
- I love the new fitness careers, its so nice to have careers for Fitness sims now! Also, very nice to have more focused-centric careers as well.
- I love your patch notes style, it's very fun to read and provides a lot of useful info.
- I love the new X-mas items! Thank you so much for adding these in.
Bad Feedback:
- You don't mention in the notes that you changed Never Weary. This was a huge mistake, finding out about it in-game wasn't fun. I thought I had run into some sort of glitch at first, till I saw that the description had changed and someone on Carl's site looked into the tuning file and found that it was reduced to a 50% slower degrade. It's never a good idea to leave notes out, especially when they relate to what is probably the most popular (and previously the most powerful) purchasable reward.
- You didn't lower the price of Never Weary after nerfing it. It's not worth 4000 points if it only lowers the sleep requirement by half instead of removing it. My choice would have been to either: Change the cost to 5000 or even 6000 points, but leave it the same, OR: lower the degrade speed by 75% instead of 50%, OR: do what you did, but lower the cost to 3000 points. Reducing the effectiveness by more than half (I say more than half because 50% slower degrade is infinitely worse than no degrade at all) and then not balancing the point cost was silly.
- You removed both the unique interaction and the enabled aura of the Centerpiece reward from the Silver reward wedding, and again, didn't mention it in the patch notes. I really do hate these ninja-nerfs. I can understand they need to happen especially since the item was fairly powerful, as it was both unique in its function and very cheap, but not noting these things shouldn't happen. I don't know how many people will have noticed this change as it was a rather obscure item, but it was very vexing to get into my game and find out that all my emotional auras were gone, and the item I liked most in the game had gone from a good quality "Happy Painting" equivalent, to a environment 4 useless item.
- The aspirations are too easy now. I'd say that on average, you lowered the difficulty of the aspirations by half or better. Part of this I assume was in response to the Never Weary nerf, but now the child aspirations and school grades requirements are WAY too easy, and the adult aspirations aren't much better. I love that you got rid of the "impossible" requirements, but I don't like how little challenge there is in the aspirations now.
- The performance bar fills way too slowly now. I have a world in which my Sim is at level 7 of the Criminal - Oracle Path career, he has finished his requirements. He is using a Wedding Arch to get the 48 hour +3 boost, and "hack mainframe" to get a +1 focused for 8 hours just before he goes to work. With the new +3 from eating a garden vegetable, and +2 from a modded game, he's staying in Very Focused for the first half of the day, and Focused for the rest of it. He has the Entrepreneurial reward. He is losing performance, or not going anywhere. This seems like a ridiculous change. Maybe I'm just unlucky, but still, that seems like it shouldn't ever happen.
Sorry if this whole post seems like a huge bash to the patch, I want to say that it isn't. I love 90% of the patch, and I think you are doing a fantastic job adding new and interesting things to the game at a steady rate, while also killing off bugs.
Thank you again for putting out such a wonderful game, and I can't wait for the new game pack!
Edit: I cleaned up some grammar, and also removed a sentence that a friend told me was too "god-mode". I don't want to make it seem like EA is doing anything wrong, I feel like they have done fantastically in the 3 months since the game was released. This post is just to point out that leaving info out of the patch notes is bad, and also to give MY opinion on the changes.
Now for the feedback, some good, some bad.
Good Feedback:
- I like most of the aspiration changes. Getting rid of the 5BFF requirement from Friend of the World is amazing, thank you. Getting rid of that irritating "beat writer's block" requirement is even more so. I also love that you lowered the number of romantic interactions on Soulmate, and got rid of the neighbor requirements from FotW and Public Enemy. There's a ton more that I liked (tech guru comes to mind) but I won't list them all here.
- I love the new fitness careers, its so nice to have careers for Fitness sims now! Also, very nice to have more focused-centric careers as well.
- I love your patch notes style, it's very fun to read and provides a lot of useful info.
- I love the new X-mas items! Thank you so much for adding these in.
Bad Feedback:
- You don't mention in the notes that you changed Never Weary. This was a huge mistake, finding out about it in-game wasn't fun. I thought I had run into some sort of glitch at first, till I saw that the description had changed and someone on Carl's site looked into the tuning file and found that it was reduced to a 50% slower degrade. It's never a good idea to leave notes out, especially when they relate to what is probably the most popular (and previously the most powerful) purchasable reward.
- You didn't lower the price of Never Weary after nerfing it. It's not worth 4000 points if it only lowers the sleep requirement by half instead of removing it. My choice would have been to either: Change the cost to 5000 or even 6000 points, but leave it the same, OR: lower the degrade speed by 75% instead of 50%, OR: do what you did, but lower the cost to 3000 points. Reducing the effectiveness by more than half (I say more than half because 50% slower degrade is infinitely worse than no degrade at all) and then not balancing the point cost was silly.
- You removed both the unique interaction and the enabled aura of the Centerpiece reward from the Silver reward wedding, and again, didn't mention it in the patch notes. I really do hate these ninja-nerfs. I can understand they need to happen especially since the item was fairly powerful, as it was both unique in its function and very cheap, but not noting these things shouldn't happen. I don't know how many people will have noticed this change as it was a rather obscure item, but it was very vexing to get into my game and find out that all my emotional auras were gone, and the item I liked most in the game had gone from a good quality "Happy Painting" equivalent, to a environment 4 useless item.
- The aspirations are too easy now. I'd say that on average, you lowered the difficulty of the aspirations by half or better. Part of this I assume was in response to the Never Weary nerf, but now the child aspirations and school grades requirements are WAY too easy, and the adult aspirations aren't much better. I love that you got rid of the "impossible" requirements, but I don't like how little challenge there is in the aspirations now.
- The performance bar fills way too slowly now. I have a world in which my Sim is at level 7 of the Criminal - Oracle Path career, he has finished his requirements. He is using a Wedding Arch to get the 48 hour +3 boost, and "hack mainframe" to get a +1 focused for 8 hours just before he goes to work. With the new +3 from eating a garden vegetable, and +2 from a modded game, he's staying in Very Focused for the first half of the day, and Focused for the rest of it. He has the Entrepreneurial reward. He is losing performance, or not going anywhere. This seems like a ridiculous change. Maybe I'm just unlucky, but still, that seems like it shouldn't ever happen.
Sorry if this whole post seems like a huge bash to the patch, I want to say that it isn't. I love 90% of the patch, and I think you are doing a fantastic job adding new and interesting things to the game at a steady rate, while also killing off bugs.
Thank you again for putting out such a wonderful game, and I can't wait for the new game pack!
Edit: I cleaned up some grammar, and also removed a sentence that a friend told me was too "god-mode". I don't want to make it seem like EA is doing anything wrong, I feel like they have done fantastically in the 3 months since the game was released. This post is just to point out that leaving info out of the patch notes is bad, and also to give MY opinion on the changes.
Post edited by dethdukk on
7
Comments
It was literally the first thing I noticed when I gave my new Sims a career. It's really slow now!
> The patch is bad! Game doesn't work properly anymore!!
This isn't true, the patch is actually full of very good things. If your game isn't working after the patch, try uninstalling and reinstalling it. You might also want to try cleaning out your cache files, you can look up how to do that through google.
Just because a game has bugs doesn't mean that it's bad, and my point in posting this isn't to point out things that they did wrong, it's to give them my opinion on what I feel they could have done better, so that they can improve in the future. That doesn't mean that what I say is right, nor that everyone agrees with me. I do enjoy this game a lot, and I want to see it succeed.
> @Joylynn417 said:
> I would have refused to download the patch completely if I had known about the changes to Never Weary. I'm actually on here instead of playing due to frustrations about that and some glitches that started AFTER I downloaded the patch.
Same as above, reinstalling and clearing the cache files can fix a lot of issues. Make sure to copy them to a backup first, so you can put them back if necessary.
Never Weary was easily the most powerful reward in the game, and needed to be balanced. Admittedly, my preference would have been a cost increase rather than a lowering of the effectiveness, but I'm not the maker of the game.
My Sims actually took a huge performance hit in their careers due to the patch. Three were very close to promotion, and their performance meter got knocked back to midway. I thought it was my imagination that they're taking an awfully long time to get back there. It's reassuring to know I'm not the only one who's noticed it, but I have to say, it doesn't make me happy.
> I would have refused to download the patch completely if I had known about the changes to Never Weary. I'm actually on here instead of playing due to frustrations about that and some glitches that started AFTER I downloaded the patch.
Same here. I was kind of hooked to Sims4, spending an unhealthy amount of hours playing. But I suddenly stopped playing because never weary changed. Before in the night I could actually play with the Sims. Now all I can do is watch them sleep. Nothing fun about that.
I like about the update that some achievements are repaired and some new are added.
(except for the 400 babies achievement I had all non-bugged that could be achieved).
But I just can't get myself playing again.
It's okay to lose an addiction. Thanks for that.
INFJ -A/-T
Point is, one shouldn't have to. They should have left it alone so it could be an earned, enjoyed reward instead of having to resort to a "cheat" to accomplish the same thing. I don't use never weary, myself, but I can relate to the feeling of those who do/did.
You know I have been giving this some thought and not only did they decrease the effectiveness but actually changed the name which I was unaware of until you mentioned it the other day. Here's my thoughts....this would 'seem' to open the door for another trait and or object you would have to earn etc. somewhere down the line. There had to be a logical reason why they would actually change it's name. And that does seem to be to open the door for something else that players would have to earn. Of course, my train of thought goes in a logical assumption, but I'm not sure EA always follows through with that logic and therefore if that is Not the reason, then why they did is then just silly.
Fixed a sentence