@Jessa_Dakkar
Would you want them to say they have made 🐸🐸🐸🐸 tools that makes everything more complicated and installed plenty of expensive and useless softwares because they like to pour money down the drain ?
That would be worrying, using money wisely is not.
Why do you think I would want them to say their tools are.. uhh.. 'poopy'? I didn't even remotely allude to such a thing.
I simply copy/pasted the gurus own words that things will be easier and cheaper this time around. That is a GOOD thing, is it not?!
I've got plenty of words in my mouth, I sure don't need you trying to put yours in there, so keep them to yourself, thanks.
How my re-posting guru tweets came down to what you have posted, I don't know.
I sure wish I could give you an awesome and an LOL - as you were cracking me up something fierce - so I settled on an awesome and an explanation, that's some funny stuff there. (The second to the last line - glad I swallowed my water before I read it.)
"Games Are Not The Place To Tell Stories, Games Are Meant To Let People Tell Their Own Stories"...Will Wright.
In dreams - I LIVE!
In REALITY, I simply exist.....
Whats the appeal of Seasons? Spring and fall are great in real life but what do they add to Sims 4? Spring ...lots of rain (I love the sound of storms but in Sims 3 it seemed like it was always raining) Fall = raking leaves! Not fun. Next you guys will want to make sims mow the grass. Winter had a little more to it but you couldn't garden anymore. Summer... you got some sunburns. I'd be ok adding some weather effects but seasons doesn't really fit this version of the sims
@Jessa_Dakkar
Would you want them to say they have made 🐸🐸🐸🐸 tools that makes everything more complicated and installed plenty of expensive and useless softwares because they like to pour money down the drain ?
That would be worrying, using money wisely is not.
Why do you think I would want them to say their tools are.. uhh.. 'poopy'? I didn't even remotely allude to such a thing.
I simply copy/pasted the gurus own words that things will be easier and cheaper this time around. That is a GOOD thing, is it not?!
I've got plenty of words in my mouth, I sure don't need you trying to put yours in there, so keep them to yourself, thanks.
How my re-posting guru tweets came down to what you have posted, I don't know.
It wasn't meant personally, the "worrying" part is in one of the tweet you posted. I wanted to share how I agree with the Gurus that it was a good thing for the player ultimately, in a tongue in cheek manner. I'm sorry if that's not how it came accross. I see how the tagging could be confusing though, I added it because MolliMontana posted in the meantime and I thought it would be more confusing without, but apparently not
It takes so much more time and effort to creat good and fluid/smooth animations nowadays if you want them to play out naturally (like in The Sims 4). It is much more complex (and harder) than it was for example 10 years ago because the transitions must be extremly flexible + you have much more frames to work with (this is what I meant with technology btw.). Back then games were primitive compared to those we have today. Making everyhting work right is extremly hard. Especially with a game like The Sims.
If you don't believe me you can try it out for yourselves! Since blender is a freeware tool everybody can grab it. To creat one (!) good (!) animation (with as much frames as possible) which is 5 seconds long it can take days! How do I know it? Because I myself have already created some kinky animations for The Sims 3, it took me so much time and they still sucked in the end.
However making an animation is just the beginning(the easiest part to be honest). Coding an AI (routing, logic, behavior) which at least acts authentically is much more complicated. Game companies get bigger and not smaller. That's the point guys. I think 500 people were involved in the process of creating Destiny (just one example). In the 90's you needed 5 people to creat AAA games xD
This discussion is so useless and dumb, it almost makes me angry
Then you never played Sims 2 - now they were Sims and actually acted like humans UNLIKE Sims 4. That is a lot of Hooey IN MY VIEW!!! They played together, went bird watching, Played jump rope, shoot they had way more playground equipment - seesaws, swings, hopscotch, playground merry go round, sit and spin, dug for treasure, flew kites they also created, played in water toy sprinklers that they created with the toy machine - they made things like with a sewing machine and looked like they were doing it, they made a number of different bots that did things from water plants to pick up trash to being sentry guards - was especially useful if one had their own Greek house to keep out troublemakers. LOl. But Sims 2 is an example of what the Devs could do and choose not to. But boy they can talk, play musical chairs, and talk, and dance by them selves, and talk, and eat, and talk - wait - my sims talk and eat and they go out to real restaurants and eat and talk. My sims feed each other bites of cake over dinner, while eating and talking, and they hold hands, they even toast each other - tell me how real Sims 4 is when they even remotely remind you of human behavior or even come close to all the things they can do in Sims 2 - when the devs actually cared what simmers - all simmers wanted. I also do not call heavy duty clipping as proper routing. The thing is in the AI it was told when sims hit into something to stop - find a way around the object - which I admit they were not always all that bright and did not always find a way around without pitching a fit - but in Sims 4 when they see they are going to hit something they just keep on walking or sitting right into another sims. It is all about programming, so you can't blame the Sims or the AI for not routing around the object because it was not instructed for the next step to not go through things including other sims.
It was the lesser of all evils I guess to the devs so simmers did not constantly complain of the sims foot tapping (that was to let another sims move out of their path) or the hand waving - so they just go on their merry way oblivious to anything in their path. (There were lots of other alternatives though, they just choose the simplest.) Now if the routing was any better sims would not be able to occupy the same space at the same time - the game would sense it if a space was occupied if programmed to see that and make them alter their path. I see they used this kind of routing which is very human like in a number of games - but of course many of these games have been given plenty of time to be made right with much smaller numbers of devs and engineers than Maxis has - Maxis has 1500 employees, but what can I say. Also EA itself is showing a lot of games with beautiful routing - games they gave an extra year or more - or in the case of Dragon Age IQ only a few more months - well it paid off - Take a look at star wars - same company - same darn campus - makes no sense to me. I know in Sims 2 they brought in people from the other EA studios for ep and other work - several whole EP were done By Sam Player - part of the EA Sports people - so I just don't get why none of this kind of thing was not done in Sims 4. (Probably because of EA's blockbuster games they did delay most likely).
People playing this game a long time knows this is not done as well as it should have been - and in fact does far less - so it actually should have been much better with so little to animate compared to past Sims games. Of course sometimes it is very hard for some people to find fault in their fav game - I know as it used to be my fav game too for the last 15 years. LOL.
You are so full of anger and bitterness, overall just negativity... even if I explained to you what exactly the difference is between TS2 and TS4 technic-wise (and why TS4 is a huge improvement in routing, animations etc.) you would not listen to me. So I better save me some time and try not to.
And the comparison between AI in other EA Games' games and The Sims is really inappropriate and simply false. It's like: Hey, EA, you have Need for Speed in your portfolio. We want to control our sims' cars like we do in Need for Speed. And since you have proofen that coding a racing game is doable you have no excuses anymore! I am afraid this is not how an engine works.
My last words to this topic: I know TS4 could have been a much better game if only it was not for olympus after all. But take in mind: They only had 2 years to make this, please don't raise your expectations at a level which they can't comply with. In the end you end up being angry about a videogame many people enjoy (me included). This is not worth it.
Edit: But to comment on your statement at the beginning: Of course I played TS2 and Iiked it a lot. Like I liked all the Sims games to begin with. Every one is unique on it's own and has it's advantages (and disadvantages) over the other.
Post edited by HalloMolli on
"[...] and everything will be okay in the end. If it's not okay, then it's not the end."
You all do realize that updated technology doesn't make object creation more difficult, right? It actually makes it less difficult and much quicker to accomplish. We're not talking about animating movies, we're talking about animating an NPC to have a couple few animations, using the logic and tools that they already built.
The thing that would make it more difficult to make a bear (lolololololol because as @Jarsie9 said above, it's a matter of sticking the bear costume on a sim and making 2-3 unique animations - which would take about an afternoon for a professional to accomplish), is lack of people. If there aren't the human resources to do spread out the work, then yes, it would become more difficult to divert resources to anything beyond what is planned out in stone.
Again, that falls into the "not my problem or concern" category. If EA doesn't feel like properly staffing their dev department, I'm not giving them my money so they can continue the pattern and I can continue getting subpar games. I'm not fond of companies trying to reprogram me into accepting their "new visions" when their "new visions" are totally based on giving the customer less in favor of making more money.
Exactly. How did animating a bear suddenly become this huge complex process pushing the envelope of technological advancement costing untold amounts of money and man hours? I mean seriously, its a frickin' bear. It shouldn't be that hard.
Now if Maxis had just said "look we had to let all our animators go due to cost cutting", at least that would make sense. As you said though, that's really their problem, not mine. All I want to see is a quality product, but at least it would have made more sense than saying "oh yeah, animating a bear is just like super hard and expensive dude, sorry".
It's insultingly funny. If technology makes these things so much harder, then we would never ever have new technology. What would be the point? "Oh no boss lady/man, it took me a week last year to create this thing, but since they upgraded photoshop, visual studio and blender, it's now going to take me a month because of progress. And I'll be taking a long lunch today to go pick up my new iphone that promises to increase the time for text delivery between users and cap the download speeds because of progress!"
Yep advanced technology is supposed to make things easier not harder. The Sims 4 developers are the only game developers who make technological advancement sound like going backwards and the sad thing that some players agree with them too, as if they are not playing other games to see what can be done!
Just throwing out a few comments made by gurus about difficulty and cost and how it relates to TS4.
June 26th, 2014
One of the really big changes with Sims 4 and something that was an early directive for the game was to put powerful tools in designer's hands so that they could focus on adding content and increasing the depth of the content in the game without needing an engineer to implement or iterate on new functionality and new interactions every time we wanted something. ~ Graham Nardone
January 30, 2015
Maxis is having us downgrade some software to a more cost effective version, which means I'm playing the Progress Bar game this morning!
@ RosiaMia_ Worried? Nope, it's just dev tools & the cheaper version is quite sufficient. Heck, it saves money so we can spend elsewhere! ~Steve Lansing
So yeah, they themselves said it would be easier and less expensive.
Yep all is EA thinking about this game how to make its building cost "CHEAPER"
That was the case since the release of the game and until now.
This game is never going to get better with this kind of mentality.
The more people boycott the game and its packs, the less their revenues will be so the cheaper they would want to go and cut things more harshly.
This will be a continuous cycle and the game will suffer big time in the coming months because of this strategy.
Everything I post is an opinion here and I think every post of others is as well.
It takes so much more time and effort to creat good and fluid/smooth animations nowadays if you want them to play out naturally (like in The Sims 4). It is much more complex (and harder) than it was for example 10 years ago because the transitions must be extremly flexible + you have much more frames to work with (this is what I meant with technology btw.). Back then games were primitive compared to those we have today. Making everyhting work right is extremly hard. Especially with a game like The Sims.
If you don't believe me you can try it out for yourselves! Since blender is a freeware tool everybody can grab it. To creat one (!) good (!) animation (with as much frames as possible) which is 5 seconds long it can take days! How do I know it? Because I myself have already created some kinky animations for The Sims 3, it took me so much time and they still sucked in the end.
However making an animation is just the beginning(the easiest part to be honest). Coding an AI (routing, logic, behavior) which at least acts authentically is much more complicated. Game companies get bigger and not smaller. That's the point guys. I think 500 people were involved in the process of creating Destiny (just one example). In the 90's you needed 5 people to creat AAA games xD
This discussion is so useless and dumb, it almost makes me angry
The discussion is so dumb and useless yet you have participated in it!
Technology gets advanced, gets easier because of the past experience and the new technological tools. It will be difficult for someone like you who have no background but for experts it gets easier.
If technology was to get difficult no company would invest in it. Why they should?
I guess you have not read what the gurus posted about the tools they have! Read then comment.
Everything I post is an opinion here and I think every post of others is as well.
It takes so much more time and effort to creat good and fluid/smooth animations nowadays if you want them to play out naturally (like in The Sims 4). It is much more complex (and harder) than it was for example 10 years ago because the transitions must be extremly flexible + you have much more frames to work with (this is what I meant with technology btw.). Back then games were primitive compared to those we have today. Making everyhting work right is extremly hard. Especially with a game like The Sims.
If you don't believe me you can try it out for yourselves! Since blender is a freeware tool everybody can grab it. To creat one (!) good (!) animation (with as much frames as possible) which is 5 seconds long it can take days! How do I know it? Because I myself have already created some kinky animations for The Sims 3, it took me so much time and they still sucked in the end.
However making an animation is just the beginning(the easiest part to be honest). Coding an AI (routing, logic, behavior) which at least acts authentically is much more complicated. Game companies get bigger and not smaller. That's the point guys. I think 500 people were involved in the process of creating Destiny (just one example). In the 90's you needed 5 people to creat AAA games xD
This discussion is so useless and dumb, it almost makes me angry
People playing this game a long time knows this is not done as well as it should have been - and in fact does far less - so it actually should have been much better with so little to animate compared to past Sims games. Of course sometimes it is very hard for some people to find fault in their fav game - I know as it used to be my fav game too for the last 15 years. LOL.
Yep that is the exact thing. Having played past games and also having played other games in the market just shows how technology is advancing. EA has all the tools to make good stuff but they dont want to do it because the budget allocated to this game is a joke.
Everything I post is an opinion here and I think every post of others is as well.
It takes so much more time and effort to creat good and fluid/smooth animations nowadays if you want them to play out naturally (like in The Sims 4). It is much more complex (and harder) than it was for example 10 years ago because the transitions must be extremly flexible + you have much more frames to work with (this is what I meant with technology btw.). Back then games were primitive compared to those we have today. Making everyhting work right is extremly hard. Especially with a game like The Sims.
If you don't believe me you can try it out for yourselves! Since blender is a freeware tool everybody can grab it. To creat one (!) good (!) animation (with as much frames as possible) which is 5 seconds long it can take days! How do I know it? Because I myself have already created some kinky animations for The Sims 3, it took me so much time and they still sucked in the end.
However making an animation is just the beginning(the easiest part to be honest). Coding an AI (routing, logic, behavior) which at least acts authentically is much more complicated. Game companies get bigger and not smaller. That's the point guys. I think 500 people were involved in the process of creating Destiny (just one example). In the 90's you needed 5 people to creat AAA games xD
This discussion is so useless and dumb, it almost makes me angry
Then you never played Sims 2 - now they were Sims and actually acted like humans UNLIKE Sims 4. That is a lot of Hooey IN MY VIEW!!! They played together, went bird watching, Played jump rope, shoot they had way more playground equipment - seesaws, swings, hopscotch, playground merry go round, sit and spin, dug for treasure, flew kites they also created, played in water toy sprinklers that they created with the toy machine - they made things like with a sewing machine and looked like they were doing it, they made a number of different bots that did things from water plants to pick up trash to being sentry guards - was especially useful if one had their own Greek house to keep out troublemakers. LOl. But Sims 2 is an example of what the Devs could do and choose not to. But boy they can talk, play musical chairs, and talk, and dance by them selves, and talk, and eat, and talk - wait - my sims talk and eat and they go out to real restaurants and eat and talk. My sims feed each other bites of cake over dinner, while eating and talking, and they hold hands, they even toast each other - tell me how real Sims 4 is when they even remotely remind you of human behavior or even come close to all the things they can do in Sims 2 - when the devs actually cared what simmers - all simmers wanted. I also do not call heavy duty clipping as proper routing. The thing is in the AI it was told when sims hit into something to stop - find a way around the object - which I admit they were not always all that bright and did not always find a way around without pitching a fit - but in Sims 4 when they see they are going to hit something they just keep on walking or sitting right into another sims. It is all about programming, so you can't blame the Sims or the AI for not routing around the object because it was not instructed for the next step to not go through things including other sims.
It was the lesser of all evils I guess to the devs so simmers did not constantly complain of the sims foot tapping (that was to let another sims move out of their path) or the hand waving - so they just go on their merry way oblivious to anything in their path. (There were lots of other alternatives though, they just choose the simplest.) Now if the routing was any better sims would not be able to occupy the same space at the same time - the game would sense it if a space was occupied if programmed to see that and make them alter their path. I see they used this kind of routing which is very human like in a number of games - but of course many of these games have been given plenty of time to be made right with much smaller numbers of devs and engineers than Maxis has - Maxis has 1500 employees, but what can I say. Also EA itself is showing a lot of games with beautiful routing - games they gave an extra year or more - or in the case of Dragon Age IQ only a few more months - well it paid off - Take a look at star wars - same company - same darn campus - makes no sense to me. I know in Sims 2 they brought in people from the other EA studios for ep and other work - several whole EP were done By Sam Player - part of the EA Sports people - so I just don't get why none of this kind of thing was not done in Sims 4. (Probably because of EA's blockbuster games they did delay most likely).
People playing this game a long time knows this is not done as well as it should have been - and in fact does far less - so it actually should have been much better with so little to animate compared to past Sims games. Of course sometimes it is very hard for some people to find fault in their fav game - I know as it used to be my fav game too for the last 15 years. LOL.
You are so full of anger and bitterness... even if I explained you what exactly the difference is between TS2 and TS4 technic-wise (and why TS4 is a huge improvement in routing, animations etc.) you would not listen to me. So I better save me so time.
And the comparison between AI in other EA Games' games and The Sims is really inappropriate and simply false. It's like: Hey, EA, you have Need for Speed in your portfolio. We want to control our sims' cars like we do in Need for Speed. And since you have proofen that coding a racing game is doable you have no excuses anymore! I am afraid this is not how an engine works.
My last words to this topic: I know TS4 could have become a much better game if only it was not for olympus after all. But take in mind: They only had 2 years to make this, please don't raise your expectations at a level which they can't comply with. In the end you end up being mad about a videogame many people enjoy (me included). This is not worth it.
Edit: But to comment on your statement at the beginning: Of course I played TS2 and Iiked it a lot. Like I liked all the Sims games to begin with. Every one is unique on it's own and has it's advantages (and disadvantages) over the other.
We are not just talking about the base game here but all the rushed up stuff they are releasing. If they have the excuse for the base game they dont have it for the packs!
And why should we give EA the excuse for rushing a game to the market? They did not prevent a catastrophe or something by rushing the release to give them the excuse! They did not save the world from collapsing or something. They did it for their own profit. They did it because they wanted money!
Dishwasher was just a recent example! where is the animation? A simple animation of a sim opening it like past games?
As I said this awful practice of cutting animations will continue in all future packs. It is a shame
Everything I post is an opinion here and I think every post of others is as well.
Whats the appeal of Seasons? Spring and fall are great in real life but what do they add to Sims 4? Spring ...lots of rain (I love the sound of storms but in Sims 3 it seemed like it was always raining) Fall = raking leaves! Not fun. Next you guys will want to make sims mow the grass. Winter had a little more to it but you couldn't garden anymore. Summer... you got some sunburns. I'd be ok adding some weather effects but seasons doesn't really fit this version of the sims
I think the biggest impact of seasons is the weather actually. Depending on where you live, sunny may not be the most common weather, so the always-sunny-sims-weather become far less relatable. It's a bit like if it was always daytime, does the night add something ? In my mind yes, relatability. I'm currently using Dani Paradise early automn's mod for a change of scenery, because constant summer was feeling odd.
I never played TS3 so I can't really comment on what it added gameplay wise. In TS2, there was the weather, a bonus during each seasons (summer = friends, fall = skills, winter = family, spring = romance), and a bunch of activities, in particular gardening and fishing, but also weather-related activities : raking leaves, sunbathing, snowmen, snowball battles. And temperatures.
What could Seasons look like in TS4 ?
Weather, that's pretty much a given : rain, snow, hail, fog, thunder, etc. I don't think wind would work (awfully complicated to animate hair/clothes). Perhaps patch of ice ? With townies falling, with a cute/silly/funny/cartoony animation of Sims making pointless arm movements to try to keep their balance. Does someone think of some weather they could add ?
Seasons, preferably highly customizable ones. I wish we could choose automatic or manual passing of seasons. I would like to choose 4 seasons for each world (like it was in TS2, so you can decide whether your Oasis Spring has winter or not). I think it would be interesting if we could choose between multiple pattern for each seasons : harsh/mild winter, wet/dry summer, that would makes things more relatable in my mind.
Improved lighting : I would love if daytime could vary with seasons. It's one thing that has always broken my immersion when daytime is so long in winter. Personal dream : each world having its own latitude/longitude, so Oasis Spring can have longer daytime and Granite Falls shorter one. I think it would makes the world feel even more different too.
Outdoor activities : it would be the perfect time to introduce outdoor activities that would use the public spaces. Building snowmen with other children, snowball or water bomb battles, new sports activites maybe, bicycle/roller skating.
I suppose seasons could give a bonus like in TS2, though it would perhaps be redundant with the emotion bonus. I wonder how they will manage temperatures. It's something that could be improved in my mind, it was always a bit difficult to see how cold/hot it was outside, and with the exception of hot summer and cold winter, it had almost no impact on our Sims at all. Perhaps they could do something fun with it.
You all do realize that updated technology doesn't make object creation more difficult, right? It actually makes it less difficult and much quicker to accomplish. We're not talking about animating movies, we're talking about animating an NPC to have a couple few animations, using the logic and tools that they already built.
The thing that would make it more difficult to make a bear (lolololololol because as @Jarsie9 said above, it's a matter of sticking the bear costume on a sim and making 2-3 unique animations - which would take about an afternoon for a professional to accomplish), is lack of people. If there aren't the human resources to do spread out the work, then yes, it would become more difficult to divert resources to anything beyond what is planned out in stone.
Again, that falls into the "not my problem or concern" category. If EA doesn't feel like properly staffing their dev department, I'm not giving them my money so they can continue the pattern and I can continue getting subpar games. I'm not fond of companies trying to reprogram me into accepting their "new visions" when their "new visions" are totally based on giving the customer less in favor of making more money.
Exactly. How did animating a bear suddenly become this huge complex process pushing the envelope of technological advancement costing untold amounts of money and man hours? I mean seriously, its a frickin' bear. It shouldn't be that hard.
Now if Maxis had just said "look we had to let all our animators go due to cost cutting", at least that would make sense. As you said though, that's really their problem, not mine. All I want to see is a quality product, but at least it would have made more sense than saying "oh yeah, animating a bear is just like super hard and expensive dude, sorry".
It's insultingly funny. If technology makes these things so much harder, then we would never ever have new technology. What would be the point? "Oh no boss lady/man, it took me a week last year to create this thing, but since they upgraded photoshop, visual studio and blender, it's now going to take me a month because of progress. And I'll be taking a long lunch today to go pick up my new iphone that promises to increase the time for text delivery between users and cap the download speeds because of progress!"
Yep advanced technology is supposed to make things easier not harder. The Sims 4 developers are the only game developers who make technological advancement sound like going backwards and the sad thing that some players agree with them too, as if they are not playing other games to see what can be done!
Just throwing out a few comments made by gurus about difficulty and cost and how it relates to TS4.
June 26th, 2014
One of the really big changes with Sims 4 and something that was an early directive for the game was to put powerful tools in designer's hands so that they could focus on adding content and increasing the depth of the content in the game without needing an engineer to implement or iterate on new functionality and new interactions every time we wanted something. ~ Graham Nardone
January 30, 2015
Maxis is having us downgrade some software to a more cost effective version, which means I'm playing the Progress Bar game this morning!
@ RosiaMia_ Worried? Nope, it's just dev tools & the cheaper version is quite sufficient. Heck, it saves money so we can spend elsewhere! ~Steve Lansing
So yeah, they themselves said it would be easier and less expensive.
Yep all is EA thinking about this game how to make its building cost "CHEAPER"
That was the case since the release of the game and until now.
This game is never going to get better with this kind of mentality.
The more people boycott the game and its packs, the less their revenues will be so the cheaper they would want to go and cut things more harshly.
This will be a continuous cycle and the game will suffer big time in the coming months because of this strategy.
You only want to see this the negative way. But even though I agree with you on the fact that EA will use less money on the game the more people who boycott it or just stop buying it - the opposite is also true: The more games EA sells the more money EA will use on the game.
The Sims 1 was actually a cheap game for EA to make. They just gave that game very cheap outdated graphics and the basegame was very small. Then the game sold surprisingly well. So more and more expansions were released and they became bigger and bigger. The game wasn't really prepared for all those expansions. So only if they're were installed in the correct order there was a chance that they would work. But even if the order was correct something often went wrong anyway so we would have to start over.
But then the Sims 2 was released and this time EA didn't make it cheap because the SIms 1 had sold so exstremely and surprisingly well. The graphics was suddenly not outdated anymore, the game was very big and it was from the start prepared to get a lot of expansions later because now EA knew that it probably would sell extremely well if it was made this way.
Therefore I am also quite sure that the sales numbers for the Sims 4 will be the deciding factor for EA when EA determins the size of the budget for the Sims 5. People should boycott TS4 only if they want TS5 to be a smaller and cheaper game.
Therefore I am also quite sure that the sales numbers for the Sims 4 will be the deciding factor for EA when EA determins the size of the budget for the Sims 5. People should boycott TS4 only if they want TS5 to be a smaller and cheaper game.
Just NOPE. If TS5 comes around and it stinks, it is by no means the fault of those who found disappointment enough with TS4 to cease purchasing. All of that fault will lie at the feet of those who create and develop the game. If TS4 is to fund TS5, then wouldn't TS3 STILL be funding TS4? TS4 by rights should have had an enormous budget if that was the case, even after the Olympus fiasco. But I don't think it works that way and suggesting that people buy TS4 even if they are unhappy with it just to make a better TS5 is wrong.
@Erpe, that's a load of bull hockey and you know it. People are still spending money on The Sims 4, and the game is still boring. The problem with the Sims 4 is that the game play mostly appeals to those who like their hand held, don't mind having to jump through hoops by systematically checking tasks off a mandated list, and who will try to tell us that they can play the game sandbox style and simply ignore the tasks lists. Except, they can't when it comes to building a community lot, because there is a mandatory list of what all needs to go into the lot before the game recognizes it as a certain type of lot.
The bottom line is that, yes, this *could* have been a better game *if* they'd left off the angry poops, pee like a champion, over-the-top emotions, and focused more on the small details that made the game what it was in the past iterations. I've maintained that it was unnecessary to leave toddlers out; all they had to do was stick the toddler in the playpen (the one that comes with Aurora Skies comes to mind. That one had things for skilling), and a walker; it wouldn't have been great, but it would have given the family players *something*.
As it is, @MolliMontana, if you're annoyed by the tone of this discussion, I'm annoyed by your continued attempts to excuse the development team for their unprofessional style, and please...stop wasting your time with "Well, if you think it's easy, *you* try making this game" attitude, typical of many of the Sims 4 defenders. I'm going to say it one more time:
The development team is supposed to be made up of professionals with college degrees of various disciplines, mostly having to do with computer programming and graphic design; they are supposed to have had x number of years of experience working for other software companies, developing various programs, and things of that nature. And that's the real world marketplace where skills matter. So, for people to say we should feel sorry for them for whatever reason is irritating. I'm sure that there are workarounds that would have made the game more detailed and more interesting that would not have required the huge amounts of time and investment that the Sims 4 defenders keep using as a defense for the team's overall poor performance.
That's why I keep bringing up that bear as an example. And the chipmunks and other life in Outdoor Retreat s. u. c.k too...even on high resolution. Are you going to tell me that it was too costly, too expensive, to make a proper looking chipmunk? Seriously?
Oh, and one last thing....just because a SimGuru says it's not impossible to do Seasons in The Sims 4...that doesn't mean that when they do it....it won't end up being just another half-baked job due to the "limitations of the tech and the engine"....(their words, not mine).
EA Marketing Department Motto:
"We Don't Care If You LIKE The Game, Just As Long As You BUY The Game!"
I Disapprove (Naturally) I Took The Pledge!
Therefore I am also quite sure that the sales numbers for the Sims 4 will be the deciding factor for EA when EA determins the size of the budget for the Sims 5. People should boycott TS4 only if they want TS5 to be a smaller and cheaper game.
Just NOPE. If TS5 comes around and it stinks, it is by no means the fault of those who found disappointment enough with TS4 to cease purchasing. All of that fault will lie at the feet of those who create and develop the game. If TS4 is to fund TS5, then wouldn't TS3 STILL be funding TS4? TS4 by rights should have had an enormous budget if that was the case, even after the Olympus fiasco. But I don't think it works that way and suggesting that people buy TS4 even if they are unhappy with it just to make a better TS5 is wrong.
As I have written elsewhere the way a game like TS4 is made is not something the development decides exclusively as it would have been if the head of of the development team had owned the company. When a game company has been bought by EA then there are restrictions on the way the team can make the game. Therefore we have many times seen a game series deteriorate after EA had bought the company which made the series.
We don't know those restrictions because they are only known to the employees in the studios. But for TS4 I think that they were:
1. The head of the team was required to find something new which could sell the game before the team was allowed to develop the game very much. She also had to negotiate the main new things with EA's top until her proposals were accepted. Those negotiations then resulted in the new emotions, the multitasking and the new build mode which satisfied EA's demands.
2. The budget for the development was also decided by EA who decided it in such a way that EA didn't risk anything from an economical viewpoint.
3. The game should still have low minimum requirements because EA wanted it to be bought also by people who didn't have top computers.
This meant that there were limits on both the number of employees which could be used for the development and the time which could be spend on the game development. (Yes the team could have gotten more time if absolutely necessary - but this wouldn't have made especially the head of the team very popular in EA and even her job could then be in danger.)
So the emotions, the multitasking and the new build mode couldn't be avoided and the other requirements from EA probably gave problems. To keep the minimum requirements as low as EA had required would be much easier without the open world from TS3. So they decided to make a compromise and only have a semi-open world.
The time restrictions and also made it impossible to make all the game as detailed as the team had wanted. So toddlers had to go and they had to simplify babies and teens too.
I am therefore not so angry at Rachel for her remark about omitting toddlers being a good decisions because I think the reason was that they would have been forced to omit even more important parts of the game otherwise. (Rachel was probably just misunderstood because she didn't tell the reason.)
@Erpe, that's a load of bull hockey and you know it. People are still spending money on The Sims 4, and the game is still boring. The problem with the Sims 4 is that the game play mostly appeals to those who like their hand held, don't mind having to jump through hoops by systematically checking tasks off a mandated list, and who will try to tell us that they can play the game sandbox style and simply ignore the tasks lists. Except, they can't when it comes to building a community lot, because there is a mandatory list of what all needs to go into the lot before the game recognizes it as a certain type of lot.
The bottom line is that, yes, this *could* have been a better game *if* they'd left off the angry poops, pee like a champion, over-the-top emotions, and focused more on the small details that made the game what it was in the past iterations. I've maintained that it was unnecessary to leave toddlers out; all they had to do was stick the toddler in the playpen (the one that comes with Aurora Skies comes to mind. That one had things for skilling), and a walker; it wouldn't have been great, but it would have given the family players *something*.
As it is, @MolliMontana, if you're annoyed by the tone of this discussion, I'm annoyed by your continued attempts to excuse the development team for their unprofessional style, and please...stop wasting your time with "Well, if you think it's easy, *you* try making this game" attitude, typical of many of the Sims 4 defenders. I'm going to say it one more time:
The development team is supposed to be made up of professionals with college degrees of various disciplines, mostly having to do with computer programming and graphic design; they are supposed to have had x number of years of experience working for other software companies, developing various programs, and things of that nature. And that's the real world marketplace where skills matter. So, for people to say we should feel sorry for them for whatever reason is irritating. I'm sure that there are workarounds that would have made the game more detailed and more interesting that would not have required the huge amounts of time and investment that the Sims 4 defenders keep using as a defense for the team's overall poor performance.
That's why I keep bringing up that bear as an example. And the chipmunks and other life in Outdoor Retreat s. u. c.k too...even on high resolution. Are you going to tell me that it was too costly, too expensive, to make a proper looking chipmunk? Seriously?
Oh, and one last thing....just because a SimGuru says it's not impossible to do Seasons in The Sims 4...that doesn't mean that when they do it....it won't end up being just another half-baked job due to the "limitations of the tech and the engine"....(their words, not mine).
I agree. The devs have low expectations on their own job. I honestly think its pathetic that some gurus are saying "we don't like complucated" to me that just says "quality doesn't matter as long as we release some new content monthly.
I also think its sad that when they patch in simple stuff like locking doors or dishwashers ppl get that excited. I had dishwashers in the sims 1 base game. I wouldn't make an endless thread about dishwashers...
Lastly that interview by Rachel Franklin was just disrespectful. How can we trust a team that doesn't even regret their bad calls. It amazed me that she said that not puting toddlers in was the best thing they could have done at the moment.
Yeah as soon as insults are thrown it, credibility of posts go right out the window. Honestly when will people learn they can make their "opinions" known without resulting in name calling? It is seriously like watching elementary school fights in forums sometimes. There are no sides to the Sims, yet sadly some want to create their own personal Berlin wall between themselves and others. I just feel sad for them.
“Although the world is full of suffering, it is full also of the overcoming of it.” –Helen Keller
@Erpe with your take on what may have happened, it still doesn't make sense to ask the consumer to continue to buy into the series. It's actually a convincing argument to not bother with the Sims franchise until they get their act together ( either EA, Maxis or both). EA can only blame themselves for dimishing profits because it's only right consumers accustomed to a certain standard from Maxis zip their wallets where TS4 is concerned because standards have dropped.
@Orchid13 They have to keep adding new content because replayablity is poor. A neighbourhood editor or world editor will fix this easy, and other features. Even something as simple as terrain tools will be exciting at this point. I was also amazed at the excitement over dishwashers. It's like we're expected to want less so we get excited over mundane releases.
I've been following this thread for awhile but haven't really said anything because... well... sometimes you guys make me want to add Bailey's to my coffee. No offense intended. lol
Anyway, my take on the whole boycotting vs not boycotting issue is this.
If you hate TS4... boycott it and find something that makes you happy. Let your $'s speak for you but for the love of plumbobs don't let it turn you toxic.
If you like TS4... buy it. Let your $'s speak for you and remember to provide feedback on what you liked and what needs improvements.
If there is no TS5, then so be it. I am going to buy the things I like in TS4, and I don't rightly care how that affects TS5, whether it's negative or positive, because that's like comparing apples to oranges. If Maxis is unable to make TS4 stand on its own, then it has no business taking on TS5, from my point of view.
I know some of you might be thinking "I wish the Sims had never come to me. I wish none of this had happened." so you wouldn't have to suffer this disappointment you feel, and to that I say in my best Gandalf impersonation "So do all who live to see such times, but that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us. There are other forces at work in this world, Sime friends, besides the will of evil."
Go forth to thy favorite sim titles fellow simmers, and SIM ON! Whether with blocky pixels, pudding faces, clay hair, or games fraught with babies inside dishwashers. I wish thee joy and I kind of hope the toddlers throw up on you.
I've been following this thread for awhile but haven't really said anything because... well... sometimes you guys make me want to add Bailey's to my coffee. No offense intended. lol
Anyway, my take on the whole boycotting vs not boycotting issue is this.
If you hate TS4... boycott it and find something that makes you happy. Let your $'s speak for you but for the love of plumbobs don't let it turn you toxic.
If you like TS4... buy it. Let your $'s speak for you and remember to provide feedback on what you liked and what needs improvements.
If there is no TS5, then so be it. I am going to buy the things I like in TS4, and I don't rightly care how that affects TS5, whether it's negative or positive, because that's like comparing apples to oranges. If Maxis is unable to make TS4 stand on its own, then it has no business taking on TS5, from my point of view.
I know some of you might be thinking "I wish the Sims had never come to me. I wish none of this had happened." so you wouldn't have to suffer this disappointment you feel, and to that I say in my best Gandalf impersonation "So do all who live to see such times, but that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us. There are other forces at work in this world, Sime friends, besides the will of evil."
Go forth to thy favorite sim titles fellow simmers, and SIM ON! Whether with blocky pixels, pudding faces, clay hair, or games fraught with babies inside dishwashers. I wish thee joy and I kind of hope the toddlers throw up on you.
LOL this post made me chuckle, but very good. I do have another thread in OT for those that want to enjoy the Paradox sale going on now. So there are other entertainment choices. The Sims as hard as it may be at times isn't the only simulation game out there. There are many others.
Bailey's does sound really good right now. But ugh that is something I miss and should do again. I always thought it was funny babies and toddlers throwing up on my Sims for some reason. It made it feel more realistic. At the end of the day whatever happens to the Sims I agree is Maxis' decision.
Anyway what are you favorite seasons and what would you like to see? My favorite season is fall. I just love all the boots and coats and watching children and toddlers playing in puddles. The thunder storms and trees catching on fire can be quite entertaining too especially when the rain puts it out right away.
“Although the world is full of suffering, it is full also of the overcoming of it.” –Helen Keller
Anyway what are you favorite seasons and what would you like to see? My favorite season is fall. I just love all the boots and coats and watching children and toddlers playing in puddles. The thunder storms and trees catching on fire can be quite entertaining too especially when the rain puts it out right away.
For me it's a tie between fall and winter because it's the two that are the most visually distinctive in my mind. I love the snow and I love the fallen leaves and autumn colors, I can't choose
Anyway what are you favorite seasons and what would you like to see? My favorite season is fall. I just love all the boots and coats and watching children and toddlers playing in puddles. The thunder storms and trees catching on fire can be quite entertaining too especially when the rain puts it out right away.
For me it's a tie between fall and winter because it's the two that are the most visually distinctive in my mind. I love the snow and I love the fallen leaves and autumn colors, I can't choose
Awesome. They are fun seasons. I actually didn't really experience a real winter until I moved, so I never saw falling snow before. It is so quiet and peaceful when it snows. It didn't snow last year, but hopefully it will this year. We sled down the hill in an old tire or on the sled. It is pretty fun. We've used freebies before too. Snow fights and making snowmen/women are always fun to do too. Our pond tends to freeze over as well and one time the ice was thick enough, my dad stood on it. Leaves are already turning here, so it is pretty seeing all the autumn colors. Sadly leaves don't last for very long.
“Although the world is full of suffering, it is full also of the overcoming of it.” –Helen Keller
You all do realize that updated technology doesn't make object creation more difficult, right? It actually makes it less difficult and much quicker to accomplish. We're not talking about animating movies, we're talking about animating an NPC to have a couple few animations, using the logic and tools that they already built.
The thing that would make it more difficult to make a bear (lolololololol because as @Jarsie9 said above, it's a matter of sticking the bear costume on a sim and making 2-3 unique animations - which would take about an afternoon for a professional to accomplish), is lack of people. If there aren't the human resources to do spread out the work, then yes, it would become more difficult to divert resources to anything beyond what is planned out in stone.
Again, that falls into the "not my problem or concern" category. If EA doesn't feel like properly staffing their dev department, I'm not giving them my money so they can continue the pattern and I can continue getting subpar games. I'm not fond of companies trying to reprogram me into accepting their "new visions" when their "new visions" are totally based on giving the customer less in favor of making more money.
Exactly. How did animating a bear suddenly become this huge complex process pushing the envelope of technological advancement costing untold amounts of money and man hours? I mean seriously, its a frickin' bear. It shouldn't be that hard.
Now if Maxis had just said "look we had to let all our animators go due to cost cutting", at least that would make sense. As you said though, that's really their problem, not mine. All I want to see is a quality product, but at least it would have made more sense than saying "oh yeah, animating a bear is just like super hard and expensive dude, sorry".
It's insultingly funny. If technology makes these things so much harder, then we would never ever have new technology. What would be the point? "Oh no boss lady/man, it took me a week last year to create this thing, but since they upgraded photoshop, visual studio and blender, it's now going to take me a month because of progress. And I'll be taking a long lunch today to go pick up my new iphone that promises to increase the time for text delivery between users and cap the download speeds because of progress!"
Yep advanced technology is supposed to make things easier not harder. The Sims 4 developers are the only game developers who make technological advancement sound like going backwards and the sad thing that some players agree with them too, as if they are not playing other games to see what can be done!
Just throwing out a few comments made by gurus about difficulty and cost and how it relates to TS4.
June 26th, 2014
One of the really big changes with Sims 4 and something that was an early directive for the game was to put powerful tools in designer's hands so that they could focus on adding content and increasing the depth of the content in the game without needing an engineer to implement or iterate on new functionality and new interactions every time we wanted something. ~ Graham Nardone
January 30, 2015
Maxis is having us downgrade some software to a more cost effective version, which means I'm playing the Progress Bar game this morning!
@ RosiaMia_ Worried? Nope, it's just dev tools & the cheaper version is quite sufficient. Heck, it saves money so we can spend elsewhere! ~Steve Lansing
So yeah, they themselves said it would be easier and less expensive.
Yep all is EA thinking about this game how to make its building cost "CHEAPER"
That was the case since the release of the game and until now.
This game is never going to get better with this kind of mentality.
The more people boycott the game and its packs, the less their revenues will be so the cheaper they would want to go and cut things more harshly.
This will be a continuous cycle and the game will suffer big time in the coming months because of this strategy.
Therefore I am also quite sure that the sales numbers for the Sims 4 will be the deciding factor for EA when EA determins the size of the budget for the Sims 5. People should boycott TS4 only if they want TS5 to be a smaller and cheaper game.
TS5 will be a mobile game. That has been decided already. It will be a cross platform game if it will be made.
I don't care about if there will be TS5 or not. I am done with that and got over it already. All I know is that I will support any game that gives me the value of my money.
I am not going to support a game that is going backwards in its development.
Everything I post is an opinion here and I think every post of others is as well.
Anyway what are you favorite seasons and what would you like to see? My favorite season is fall. I just love all the boots and coats and watching children and toddlers playing in puddles. The thunder storms and trees catching on fire can be quite entertaining too especially when the rain puts it out right away.
My favorite Season is definitely Fall! Unfortunately, I live in an area where the trees do not change color for fall. : My game has no mods right now, but oh man... that Fall mod I have seen floating around is looking mighty tempting. ::insert googly eyes:: I miss the "Woohoo in leaf pile" it never failed to make me shake my head and crack up laughing. While Fall is my favorite, I enjoy all 4 and I'll be tweeting at the sims each week to make sure my point gets across on that key word of FOUR Seasons. LOL
I hope to see a Seasons EP soon. Weather adds so much immersion to a Sims game. It's nice to have those atmospheric changes.
In real-life, summer is my favourite season. In Sims, though, it's always been fall and winter - I love the dramatic shifts in the weather and the way they change so much of what I can see. I'd love to have even more immersive weather/seasons in Sims, with wind and indoor air changes!
EA CREATOR NETWORK MEMBER — Want to be notified of patches, new Broken Mods threads, and urgent Sims 4 news? Follow me at https://www.patreon.com/luthienrising.
Anyway what are you favorite seasons and what would you like to see? My favorite season is fall. I just love all the boots and coats and watching children and toddlers playing in puddles. The thunder storms and trees catching on fire can be quite entertaining too especially when the rain puts it out right away.
My favorite Season is definitely Fall! Unfortunately, I live in an area where the trees do not change color for fall. : My game has no mods right now, but oh man... that Fall mod I have seen floating around is looking mighty tempting. ::insert googly eyes:: I miss the "Woohoo in leaf pile" it never failed to make me shake my head and crack up laughing. While Fall is my favorite, I enjoy all 4 and I'll be tweeting at the sims each week to make sure my point gets across on that key word of FOUR Seasons. LOL
I hope to see a Seasons EP soon. Weather adds so much immersion to a Sims game. It's nice to have those atmospheric changes.
Yeah I used to live in an area where it seemed there were only two seasons. Nice you live somewhere warm though. Yeah there is a fall mod and a winter mod. Woohoo in leaf pile I actually liked too. It made me laugh as much as the haystack one.
That's awesome you will be tweeting them for it. I know the Sims 2 and 3, Seasons didn't come until half way through the life cycle, so you may have to wait a little while, but it will be worth it. Seasons is one of the EPs along with Pets that is good that the team spends a lot of time on. In Sims 3, you could pick which seasons you wanted and how long you wanted them to last. It was really nice. So hopefully they allow customization with that again. I really hope natural disasters are expanded on more too with the seasons. I don't know why I want a volcanic eruption to occur in the Sims.
“Although the world is full of suffering, it is full also of the overcoming of it.” –Helen Keller
Anyway what are you favorite seasons and what would you like to see? My favorite season is fall. I just love all the boots and coats and watching children and toddlers playing in puddles. The thunder storms and trees catching on fire can be quite entertaining too especially when the rain puts it out right away.
For me it's a tie between fall and winter because it's the two that are the most visually distinctive in my mind. I love the snow and I love the fallen leaves and autumn colors, I can't choose
Awesome. They are fun seasons. I actually didn't really experience a real winter until I moved, so I never saw falling snow before. It is so quiet and peaceful when it snows. It didn't snow last year, but hopefully it will this year. We sled down the hill in an old tire or on the sled. It is pretty fun. We've used freebies before too. Snow fights and making snowmen/women are always fun to do too. Our pond tends to freeze over as well and one time the ice was thick enough, my dad stood on it. Leaves are already turning here, so it is pretty seeing all the autumn colors. Sadly leaves don't last for very long.
Oh perhaps they could do something like attenuate sound effects when it snows ! I can't remember if it worked that way in previous Sims games. I love when you wake up and discover the snow has fallen all night, obviously in a Sims game, I know the snow is falling far before as I usually don't spend the night zoom in closely in the house, so no morning surprise.
Now that I think about it, children and toddlers should have a Playful moodlet (or Energized ?) when they see the snow outside, that would be cute !
Comments
I sure wish I could give you an awesome and an LOL - as you were cracking me up something fierce - so I settled on an awesome and an explanation, that's some funny stuff there. (The second to the last line - glad I swallowed my water before I read it.)
"Games Are Not The Place To Tell Stories, Games Are Meant To Let People Tell Their Own Stories"...Will Wright.
In dreams - I LIVE!
In REALITY, I simply exist.....
It wasn't meant personally, the "worrying" part is in one of the tweet you posted. I wanted to share how I agree with the Gurus that it was a good thing for the player ultimately, in a tongue in cheek manner. I'm sorry if that's not how it came accross. I see how the tagging could be confusing though, I added it because MolliMontana posted in the meantime and I thought it would be more confusing without, but apparently not
You are so full of anger and bitterness, overall just negativity... even if I explained to you what exactly the difference is between TS2 and TS4 technic-wise (and why TS4 is a huge improvement in routing, animations etc.) you would not listen to me. So I better save me some time and try not to.
And the comparison between AI in other EA Games' games and The Sims is really inappropriate and simply false. It's like: Hey, EA, you have Need for Speed in your portfolio. We want to control our sims' cars like we do in Need for Speed. And since you have proofen that coding a racing game is doable you have no excuses anymore! I am afraid this is not how an engine works.
My last words to this topic: I know TS4 could have been a much better game if only it was not for olympus after all. But take in mind: They only had 2 years to make this, please don't raise your expectations at a level which they can't comply with. In the end you end up being angry about a videogame many people enjoy (me included). This is not worth it.
Edit: But to comment on your statement at the beginning: Of course I played TS2 and Iiked it a lot. Like I liked all the Sims games to begin with. Every one is unique on it's own and has it's advantages (and disadvantages) over the other.
Yep all is EA thinking about this game how to make its building cost "CHEAPER"
That was the case since the release of the game and until now.
This game is never going to get better with this kind of mentality.
The more people boycott the game and its packs, the less their revenues will be so the cheaper they would want to go and cut things more harshly.
This will be a continuous cycle and the game will suffer big time in the coming months because of this strategy.
The discussion is so dumb and useless yet you have participated in it!
Technology gets advanced, gets easier because of the past experience and the new technological tools. It will be difficult for someone like you who have no background but for experts it gets easier.
If technology was to get difficult no company would invest in it. Why they should?
I guess you have not read what the gurus posted about the tools they have! Read then comment.
Yep that is the exact thing. Having played past games and also having played other games in the market just shows how technology is advancing. EA has all the tools to make good stuff but they dont want to do it because the budget allocated to this game is a joke.
We are not just talking about the base game here but all the rushed up stuff they are releasing. If they have the excuse for the base game they dont have it for the packs!
And why should we give EA the excuse for rushing a game to the market? They did not prevent a catastrophe or something by rushing the release to give them the excuse! They did not save the world from collapsing or something. They did it for their own profit. They did it because they wanted money!
Dishwasher was just a recent example! where is the animation? A simple animation of a sim opening it like past games?
As I said this awful practice of cutting animations will continue in all future packs. It is a shame
I think the biggest impact of seasons is the weather actually. Depending on where you live, sunny may not be the most common weather, so the always-sunny-sims-weather become far less relatable. It's a bit like if it was always daytime, does the night add something ? In my mind yes, relatability. I'm currently using Dani Paradise early automn's mod for a change of scenery, because constant summer was feeling odd.
I never played TS3 so I can't really comment on what it added gameplay wise. In TS2, there was the weather, a bonus during each seasons (summer = friends, fall = skills, winter = family, spring = romance), and a bunch of activities, in particular gardening and fishing, but also weather-related activities : raking leaves, sunbathing, snowmen, snowball battles. And temperatures.
What could Seasons look like in TS4 ?
Weather, that's pretty much a given : rain, snow, hail, fog, thunder, etc. I don't think wind would work (awfully complicated to animate hair/clothes). Perhaps patch of ice ? With townies falling, with a cute/silly/funny/cartoony animation of Sims making pointless arm movements to try to keep their balance. Does someone think of some weather they could add ?
Seasons, preferably highly customizable ones. I wish we could choose automatic or manual passing of seasons. I would like to choose 4 seasons for each world (like it was in TS2, so you can decide whether your Oasis Spring has winter or not). I think it would be interesting if we could choose between multiple pattern for each seasons : harsh/mild winter, wet/dry summer, that would makes things more relatable in my mind.
Improved lighting : I would love if daytime could vary with seasons. It's one thing that has always broken my immersion when daytime is so long in winter. Personal dream : each world having its own latitude/longitude, so Oasis Spring can have longer daytime and Granite Falls shorter one. I think it would makes the world feel even more different too.
Outdoor activities : it would be the perfect time to introduce outdoor activities that would use the public spaces. Building snowmen with other children, snowball or water bomb battles, new sports activites maybe, bicycle/roller skating.
I suppose seasons could give a bonus like in TS2, though it would perhaps be redundant with the emotion bonus. I wonder how they will manage temperatures. It's something that could be improved in my mind, it was always a bit difficult to see how cold/hot it was outside, and with the exception of hot summer and cold winter, it had almost no impact on our Sims at all. Perhaps they could do something fun with it.
The Sims 1 was actually a cheap game for EA to make. They just gave that game very cheap outdated graphics and the basegame was very small. Then the game sold surprisingly well. So more and more expansions were released and they became bigger and bigger. The game wasn't really prepared for all those expansions. So only if they're were installed in the correct order there was a chance that they would work. But even if the order was correct something often went wrong anyway so we would have to start over.
But then the Sims 2 was released and this time EA didn't make it cheap because the SIms 1 had sold so exstremely and surprisingly well. The graphics was suddenly not outdated anymore, the game was very big and it was from the start prepared to get a lot of expansions later because now EA knew that it probably would sell extremely well if it was made this way.
Therefore I am also quite sure that the sales numbers for the Sims 4 will be the deciding factor for EA when EA determins the size of the budget for the Sims 5. People should boycott TS4 only if they want TS5 to be a smaller and cheaper game.
Just NOPE. If TS5 comes around and it stinks, it is by no means the fault of those who found disappointment enough with TS4 to cease purchasing. All of that fault will lie at the feet of those who create and develop the game. If TS4 is to fund TS5, then wouldn't TS3 STILL be funding TS4? TS4 by rights should have had an enormous budget if that was the case, even after the Olympus fiasco. But I don't think it works that way and suggesting that people buy TS4 even if they are unhappy with it just to make a better TS5 is wrong.
The bottom line is that, yes, this *could* have been a better game *if* they'd left off the angry poops, pee like a champion, over-the-top emotions, and focused more on the small details that made the game what it was in the past iterations. I've maintained that it was unnecessary to leave toddlers out; all they had to do was stick the toddler in the playpen (the one that comes with Aurora Skies comes to mind. That one had things for skilling), and a walker; it wouldn't have been great, but it would have given the family players *something*.
As it is, @MolliMontana, if you're annoyed by the tone of this discussion, I'm annoyed by your continued attempts to excuse the development team for their unprofessional style, and please...stop wasting your time with "Well, if you think it's easy, *you* try making this game" attitude, typical of many of the Sims 4 defenders. I'm going to say it one more time:
The development team is supposed to be made up of professionals with college degrees of various disciplines, mostly having to do with computer programming and graphic design; they are supposed to have had x number of years of experience working for other software companies, developing various programs, and things of that nature. And that's the real world marketplace where skills matter. So, for people to say we should feel sorry for them for whatever reason is irritating. I'm sure that there are workarounds that would have made the game more detailed and more interesting that would not have required the huge amounts of time and investment that the Sims 4 defenders keep using as a defense for the team's overall poor performance.
That's why I keep bringing up that bear as an example. And the chipmunks and other life in Outdoor Retreat s. u. c.k too...even on high resolution. Are you going to tell me that it was too costly, too expensive, to make a proper looking chipmunk? Seriously?
Oh, and one last thing....just because a SimGuru says it's not impossible to do Seasons in The Sims 4...that doesn't mean that when they do it....it won't end up being just another half-baked job due to the "limitations of the tech and the engine"....(their words, not mine).
"We Don't Care If You LIKE The Game, Just As Long As You BUY The Game!"
I Disapprove (Naturally)
I Took The Pledge!
We don't know those restrictions because they are only known to the employees in the studios. But for TS4 I think that they were:
1. The head of the team was required to find something new which could sell the game before the team was allowed to develop the game very much. She also had to negotiate the main new things with EA's top until her proposals were accepted. Those negotiations then resulted in the new emotions, the multitasking and the new build mode which satisfied EA's demands.
2. The budget for the development was also decided by EA who decided it in such a way that EA didn't risk anything from an economical viewpoint.
3. The game should still have low minimum requirements because EA wanted it to be bought also by people who didn't have top computers.
This meant that there were limits on both the number of employees which could be used for the development and the time which could be spend on the game development. (Yes the team could have gotten more time if absolutely necessary - but this wouldn't have made especially the head of the team very popular in EA and even her job could then be in danger.)
So the emotions, the multitasking and the new build mode couldn't be avoided and the other requirements from EA probably gave problems. To keep the minimum requirements as low as EA had required would be much easier without the open world from TS3. So they decided to make a compromise and only have a semi-open world.
The time restrictions and also made it impossible to make all the game as detailed as the team had wanted. So toddlers had to go and they had to simplify babies and teens too.
I am therefore not so angry at Rachel for her remark about omitting toddlers being a good decisions because I think the reason was that they would have been forced to omit even more important parts of the game otherwise. (Rachel was probably just misunderstood because she didn't tell the reason.)
I agree. The devs have low expectations on their own job. I honestly think its pathetic that some gurus are saying "we don't like complucated" to me that just says "quality doesn't matter as long as we release some new content monthly.
I also think its sad that when they patch in simple stuff like locking doors or dishwashers ppl get that excited. I had dishwashers in the sims 1 base game. I wouldn't make an endless thread about dishwashers...
Lastly that interview by Rachel Franklin was just disrespectful. How can we trust a team that doesn't even regret their bad calls. It amazed me that she said that not puting toddlers in was the best thing they could have done at the moment.
This team is just an embarrassment.
@Orchid13 They have to keep adding new content because replayablity is poor. A neighbourhood editor or world editor will fix this easy, and other features. Even something as simple as terrain tools will be exciting at this point. I was also amazed at the excitement over dishwashers. It's like we're expected to want less so we get excited over mundane releases.
Anyway, my take on the whole boycotting vs not boycotting issue is this.
If you hate TS4... boycott it and find something that makes you happy. Let your $'s speak for you but for the love of plumbobs don't let it turn you toxic.
If you like TS4... buy it. Let your $'s speak for you and remember to provide feedback on what you liked and what needs improvements.
If there is no TS5, then so be it. I am going to buy the things I like in TS4, and I don't rightly care how that affects TS5, whether it's negative or positive, because that's like comparing apples to oranges. If Maxis is unable to make TS4 stand on its own, then it has no business taking on TS5, from my point of view.
I know some of you might be thinking "I wish the Sims had never come to me. I wish none of this had happened." so you wouldn't have to suffer this disappointment you feel, and to that I say in my best Gandalf impersonation "So do all who live to see such times, but that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us. There are other forces at work in this world, Sime friends, besides the will of evil."
Go forth to thy favorite sim titles fellow simmers, and SIM ON! Whether with blocky pixels, pudding faces, clay hair, or games fraught with babies inside dishwashers. I wish thee joy and I kind of hope the toddlers throw up on you.
Bailey's does sound really good right now. But ugh that is something I miss and should do again. I always thought it was funny babies and toddlers throwing up on my Sims for some reason. It made it feel more realistic. At the end of the day whatever happens to the Sims I agree is Maxis' decision.
Anyway what are you favorite seasons and what would you like to see? My favorite season is fall. I just love all the boots and coats and watching children and toddlers playing in puddles. The thunder storms and trees catching on fire can be quite entertaining too especially when the rain puts it out right away.
For me it's a tie between fall and winter because it's the two that are the most visually distinctive in my mind. I love the snow and I love the fallen leaves and autumn colors, I can't choose
TS5 will be a mobile game. That has been decided already. It will be a cross platform game if it will be made.
I don't care about if there will be TS5 or not. I am done with that and got over it already. All I know is that I will support any game that gives me the value of my money.
I am not going to support a game that is going backwards in its development.
My favorite Season is definitely Fall! Unfortunately, I live in an area where the trees do not change color for fall.
I hope to see a Seasons EP soon. Weather adds so much immersion to a Sims game. It's nice to have those atmospheric changes.
That's awesome you will be tweeting them for it. I know the Sims 2 and 3, Seasons didn't come until half way through the life cycle, so you may have to wait a little while, but it will be worth it. Seasons is one of the EPs along with Pets that is good that the team spends a lot of time on. In Sims 3, you could pick which seasons you wanted and how long you wanted them to last. It was really nice. So hopefully they allow customization with that again. I really hope natural disasters are expanded on more too with the seasons. I don't know why I want a volcanic eruption to occur in the Sims.
Oh perhaps they could do something like attenuate sound effects when it snows ! I can't remember if it worked that way in previous Sims games. I love when you wake up and discover the snow has fallen all night, obviously in a Sims game, I know the snow is falling far before as I usually don't spend the night zoom in closely in the house, so no morning surprise.
Now that I think about it, children and toddlers should have a Playful moodlet (or Energized ?) when they see the snow outside, that would be cute !