All I can say if that was someones physician they were going to who looked at them and whined they were too hard or too expensive to fix - first of all the doctor would be in trouble by the medical board and second why would anyone keep going to that doctor. Maxis needs to be held accountable after all isn't making games, in particular Sims games their actual job and duty? If it was not too hard or too expensive to do the same thing before it surely is not harder now with the last 15 years of technological advancements. If it is too hard then maybe they need replaced by newer graduates then. But it makes no sense for anyone to say something they do for a living everyday is suddenly too hard. That is beyond bogus!!!!
Generally experience makes one more competent at ones job, not less. The job should be easier the more you do it or else they are doing it wrong.
"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.....
@Writin_Reg well said! If a huge company like EA find it too hard and expensive to make games with all the resources and access to the best and brightest staff that comes with their position in the market then they are in serious trouble.
But look at their other games-they aren't doing this elsewhere!
I mean if they can hand on heart say this is the best they are capable of for the sims I feel sorry for them. Fact is we've seen some of the same staff doing much better things when they were new to the job! Something is preventing them from greatness. Don't care what it is. Just want it fixed. And I do not want to hear any more excuses. If all you have are excuses EA I think it's time you offered refunds to those of us who bought under promises you've been incapable of fulfilling.
Quite frankly @Erpe, If you deem it so hopeless I don't even know why you're wasting everyone's time by posting these inane novella's if you believe it's all useless and EA will never listen etc etc. Why don't you simply just wash your hands of the entire affair? It isn't your duty to campaign to change everyone's mind if they believe that standing up for their principles is important, whether it works or not.
For some people, the Sims 4 IS their first sims game. That's not assuming anything.
And they don't realise what wonderful and precious things have been lost from the older versions, to try to cater to the silly selfie, social media, bro party crowd. I think this article speaks for many people and I think more of the same needs to be written and said, until the developers realise that their telemetry is just useless at conveying the wide array of diverse playstyles that the Sims has always had.
As for supporting family players, well... there are certain users on this board that have never supported anything except their own ideals or adjustments to the game unless it has suited themselves.
As kremesch pointed out, there are other people who are also missing out on their playstyles besides the family players. I appreciate players like simgirl1010 who are willing to go to the lengths of refusing to buy an EP or whatever, as a stand, to drive home the point that everyone should be able to enjoy the game, not just a select few.
Agreed, and especially with the part I bolded.
You don't know what you don't know and you can't miss what you've never had. What irks me is when first-time players dismiss my frustrations over missing or watered down features when they have no idea of what the true breathe and scope of the previous games were. I always hope, somehow, they'll get their hands on one of the other games and finally be able to speak from a place of true experience instead of regurgitating what they've been told by others.
When you know better, you do better--you demand better.
That's why they spend so much time trying to rubbish their previous body of work. Because they are well aware of the regression. I find that distasteful though because they still sell the previous games and obviously are making a bundle, they never fixed the issues they programmed in and it's their own work! They should have real pride for everything they've done-not excuse themselves from pushing themselves by trashing the previous games.
In principle I completely agree with you. But finding bugs in old games and the way correct them - and also other improvements will take a lot of time and money to pay the wages for the programmers doing it. It is also a job they could continue working on forever. So if EA did that it would take most of the profit on the games away unless somebody else would pay for the improvements.
Writing about how much you want EA to use hundreds of millions of dollars to do that for all their earlier released games won't do any good or convince EA at all. So maybe you should start collecting money you could offer EA instead? I am sure that if you could offer EA to pay the wages for the programmers who should make the improvements then EA would be happy to let somebody do it until the offered money was used up. But do you really think that anybody would help you to collect the needed money? Or would you prefer just to go on claiming that EA shouldn't care about making a profit at all and instead just fire some more of their employees if they won't do the work for free?
My mama taught me that if you do something right the first time, you won't have to fix it. If you do it wrong, you fix it!
EA needs to learn that they should do it right the first time and fix it when it is broken. Sims3 was fixed sorta by mods, enuff to make it playable. If they can fix it, the staff should have been able to fix it. Same goes for Sims 4. It needs fixing desperately and most of the players who I've seen post are in agreement that it is not perfect, even if they still like and enjoy playing it. It is no excuse for them to continue provided poor product and not fixing issues. Players have spent good money and expect good play and not be frustrated with all the issues trying to play a game to relax with. EA is off my buy list until things improve and that includes any and all titles in future. I also have quite a few gaming friends who are in agreement and boycott all EA products because of their rep.
EA didn't chose 2, there are not more features in Sims4, they took most of the base features out. Go back and check that list that was made way back last year.
If you knew anything about programming then you would know that it isn't possible to make big programs without bugs - and you would also know that there are almost no limit to the amount of time that you could use on finding those bugs and fix them. Remember that Microsoft still finds bugs in Windows which have to be fixed even years after the version of Windows has been released. The same is the case with programs like browsers etc.
So if all bugs in a game like TS4 should be fixed before the game was released then EA should probably use a hundred programmers in many months to do it. This would make the whole game unprofitable for EA unless they could double the price - which wouldn't work anyway because then the game wouldn't sell very well.
I don't agree in the way TS4 was made though and I especially don't think that omitting toddlers or simplifying teens were good ideas because this meant that the game can't really be played in the same way as many simmers played the previous games. But I actually don't know what they should have done instead without making TS4 so similar to TS3 that people would have postponed their decision to buy TS4 at least until several expansions had been released too?
The problem was to give TS4 some exiting new content which could make people curious enough to buy the basegame at once. The team couldn't find anything better than the new build mode, the emotions and the multitasking. But we know that a guru told us that especially the multitasking had been very tricky to make. So they ran out of time and money and had to release the game without toddlers and with simplified teens.
Those problems were severe. I agree that they should have found a better solution. But precisely what that solution should have been I just don't know. Unless they are able to find something better for TS5 then maybe they should just consider to stop the Sims series? Would we prefer that? Probably not...
There are testing processes that will identify bugs if done properly.
When bugs are identified by testing they can then be fixed and go back to the start of the testing process to see if the fix actually fixed the problem, and to find out if the fix caused a different problem elsewhere.
This is an iterative process and should happen throughout the software development cycle.
If you want to feel so hopeless that's fine @Erpe but I'm very much of the belief that customers at least *trying* to stand up for themselves is vitally important. If no one says anything EA has no hope of knowing what exactly is wrong (short of having to employ expensive research consultants). The very people who try so hard to get through to them do so in hope for better in the future whether that's TS4 or not. EA should be grateful because it's all information that costs a fortune to collect through surveys and investigations.
You seem to be very black and white about issues-that's fine, it's your prerogative but actually there are so many shades of grey between what happens, what's possible and what's reasonable for every party involved you often advocate for EA against your own interests as a customer and that's fine but I'm not letting them off the hook that way.
Personally I believe that in the situation with the Sims currently that the balance needs to tip towards the customers favour because right now everything is about how hard it is for the company and they don't seem to have any concept of how much damage they've done to the sims reputation, good loyal customer relationships and to the belief people can put in anything they say. Some of what they have done has made a lot of customers feel genuinely ripped off. There's never an excuse for that.
I don't say that people shouldn't tell the developers what they think because of course they should! So this isn't the problem!
But you seem to think that the developers need to hear the same things from the same persons day after day, month after month and probably even year after year. Why do you think that you can "win" against a billion dollar company like EA just by repeating yourself?
Do you really think that EA is so easy to "scare"?
Let me then tell you what I see as most likely to have happened:
The developers tried for months to explain themselves and to discuss things with us in this forum. But they couldn't talk about future stuff because they had signed a contract with EA about not doing it. But they tried hard anyway. But finally they gave up and left the forum because a few people just wouldn't understand what they were trying to do.
Rachel Franklin probably discussed the problems with the top of EA. But they wouldn't listen to her report "about a few people in the forum attempting to threaten EA by not buying the next expansions unless EA used a few million dollars on giving them toddlers and a few other things for free" which is the most likely way that it was discussed on EA's board of directors. Instead they just see it as their own decision and that their job is to listen to EA's sales department who has much more knowledge about all the people who buys EA's games. EA's board knows that only a fraction of a percent of the customers for Sims games ever visit this forum. So they don't care too much about "a few people threatening EA in the forum in a futile attempt about getting toddlers and other omitted stuff for free just because those things were in some of the earlier Sims games".
But you seem to think that even though you have been telling EA the same things for months that they don't know them yet - or that they will finally give in if you just continue with the same daily writings for a few more months. My claim is that both the development team and EA's board already know everything they need to know. They have already made their decisions about the next EPs and GPs. They just (as usual) don't want to tell us yet because they still want us to be curious. But if toddlers still isn't part of their plans then toddlers won't return until TS5 is released anyway.
And no. You can't "threaten EA's board to use more money on bug fixing for this games than they already have decided as their general policy for all EA games". Some of the developers may agree with you about making more bug fixes and adjustments for TS4 than EA will pay for. But even the developers can't do a thing about it because EA's board won't "waste" a lot of millions of dollars on bug fixing and making other adjustments for already released games because they see this as only a way to lose most of EA's profits for the games. They just don't believe that wasting all those millions would increase sales numbers in any significant way at all. So they won't do it.
@erpe if we shut up you may not see toddlers or anything in Sims5. Sheesh. It is our time to 'waste'. Quit reading if it upsets you so much. Why do you think they are fixing the upcoming EP? Player complaints....maybe? Maybe not. My vote is for yes.
I and others don't need you telling us we are beating our heads against a brick wall....we know that and yet, we still have hope that it might chip after chip break through that wall. If you don't want to join, cool. But, quit telling us we are wasting our time. I see the same argument from you time after time and we give the same responses. It really is getting tiresome. I will tell them daily if I think it will take one 🐸🐸🐸🐸 out of that wall.
You are a very vocal person and have great arguments, but, I sure wish you would take a 🐸🐸🐸🐸 or two out of their wall instead of defending them. Other developers do listen to their fans and fix things. We are certainly entitled to hope, pray and 🐸🐸🐸🐸 away at EA in the hopes that they will too. Join us with your arguments instead of telling us we are wasting our time. Waste some time telling EA/Maxis and the PTB's what you would like fixed, what you want in the future so they don't make the same mistakes. Tell them daily so it will sink in. Join us!
Players who insist, with varying degrees of rudeness, on telling others to shut up and go away are nothing new and I just completely ignore their comments.
They don't like reading our "futile" complaints and I don't like being stuck with a busted, watered down game. When I get what I want, a game that is worthy of me spending time and money on, then they can get what they want, an end to the "complaint" threads and posts.
But until then everyone is just going to have to suck it up and deal with things they don't like.
@Erpe with respect I don't care if it's pointless. I'm entitled to stand up for my interests as a consumer and I do so without breaking rules and respectfully.
I do not tell others they aren't allowed to like the game, or call people names, tell people what they do is pointless or how they feel isn't ever worth considering. Even when I advocated for EA I didn't tell people that they weren't allowed to feel ripped off or that EA doesn't care. None of us talk for EA. None of us know what's going on in their meeting rooms or what the developers feel when they see things. The devs may see things the way some of us do-but their job requires they do as they are told. I've never told a dev to step outside their contract and speak without authority agreeing to it. The reason I say something is because I am addressing EA the entity-not an individual person.
If you find me annoying please feel free to press that ignore button. But no amount of pressure from others to shut up will work. I'm respectful and I'm not telling others what to do. I appreciate the same courtesy from others. Thank you.
Erpe, EA's top management isn't oblivious to everything that is going on. There already have been consequences, Maxis Emeryville shut down and Lucy Bradshaw forced out. I think EA hears the customers loud and clear, but the main problem is that they can't do anything about it. They have a bad game engine that isn't very flexible and can't do what we customers want it to do. So they can't do anything to improve the game in a way that matters. The only option for them is to put on a happy face and party it up. Hopefully they'll learn their lesson and make a Sims 5 game that is worthy of the title. If I were EA, I'd already be in the beginning stages for Sims 5.
@erpe if we shut up you may not see toddlers or anything in Sims5. Sheesh. It is our time to 'waste'. Quit reading if it upsets you so much. Why do you think they are fixing the upcoming EP? Player complaints....maybe? Maybe not. My vote is for yes.
I and others don't need you telling us we are beating our heads against a brick wall....we know that and yet, we still have hope that it might chip after chip break through that wall. If you don't want to join, cool. But, quit telling us we are wasting our time. I see the same argument from you time after time and we give the same responses. It really is getting tiresome. I will tell them daily if I think it will take one 🐸🐸🐸🐸 out of that wall.
You are a very vocal person and have great arguments, but, I sure wish you would take a 🐸🐸🐸🐸 or two out of their wall instead of defending them. Other developers do listen to their fans and fix things. We are certainly entitled to hope, pray and 🐸🐸🐸🐸 away at EA in the hopes that they will too. Join us with your arguments instead of telling us we are wasting our time. Waste some time telling EA/Maxis and the PTB's what you would like fixed, what you want in the future so they don't make the same mistakes. Tell them daily so it will sink in. Join us!
I don't fear that TS5 won't have toddlers either because I am sure that the sales numbers for TS4 have been a little disappointing and because the developers and EA already know that they can't expect good sales numbers for TS5 if that game too is released without toddlers and with simplified babies and simplified teens. The danger is more that the sales numbers for TS4 will become so low that EA will consider to postpone TS5 or make it with a much lower budget.
I think "a little disappointing" is an understatement. There were massive layoffs and the division rolled into another. Had sales been overwhelming (which I think is what they had been expecting which probably is why they didn't lay off the employees in the Sim City branch of Maxis until quite awhile after support for Sim City ended), they would have stayed an independent studio and had more people working on pumping out that Sims 4 content.
The only thing is, I expect they're going to try to broaden the market further by watering down the game even more rather than spend resources and make a game that appeals to a broad category of people due to it being completely outstanding.
Erpe, EA's top management isn't oblivious to everything that is going on. There already have been consequences, Maxis Emeryville shut down and Lucy Bradshaw forced out. I think EA hears the customers loud and clear, but the main problem is that they can't do anything about it. They have a bad game engine that isn't very flexible and can't do what we customers want it to do. So they can't do anything to improve the game in a way that matters. The only option for them is to put on a happy face and party it up. Hopefully they'll learn their lesson and make a Sims 5 game that is worthy of the title. If I were EA, I'd already be in the beginning stages for Sims 5.
The studio in Emeryville mainly made the Spore games while Maxis made the Sims games in EA's headquarters in Redwood. So the closure of the studio in Emeryville probably only mean that EA won't make more games like Spore and Darkspore.
You still have to distinguish between Maxis who makes the games and EA which is the parent company and who only publishes and sell the Sims games. Maxis is EA's subsidiary who makes games for EA. But EA decides which games Maxis can make. EA also decides how much money Maxis is allowed to use on each game. So Maxis can't just ignore EA.
If you want to feel so hopeless that's fine @Erpe but I'm very much of the belief that customers at least *trying* to stand up for themselves is vitally important. If no one says anything EA has no hope of knowing what exactly is wrong (short of having to employ expensive research consultants). The very people who try so hard to get through to them do so in hope for better in the future whether that's TS4 or not. EA should be grateful because it's all information that costs a fortune to collect through surveys and investigations.
You seem to be very black and white about issues-that's fine, it's your prerogative but actually there are so many shades of grey between what happens, what's possible and what's reasonable for every party involved you often advocate for EA against your own interests as a customer and that's fine but I'm not letting them off the hook that way.
Personally I believe that in the situation with the Sims currently that the balance needs to tip towards the customers favour because right now everything is about how hard it is for the company and they don't seem to have any concept of how much damage they've done to the sims reputation, good loyal customer relationships and to the belief people can put in anything they say. Some of what they have done has made a lot of customers feel genuinely ripped off. There's never an excuse for that.
I don't say that people shouldn't tell the developers what they think because of course they should! So this isn't the problem!
But you seem to think that the developers need to hear the same things from the same persons day after day, month after month and probably even year after year. Why do you think that you can "win" against a billion dollar company like EA just by repeating yourself?
Do you really think that EA is so easy to "scare"?
Let me then tell you what I see as most likely to have happened:
The developers tried for months to explain themselves and to discuss things with us in this forum. But they couldn't talk about future stuff because they had signed a contract with EA about not doing it. But they tried hard anyway. But finally they gave up and left the forum because a few people just wouldn't understand what they were trying to do.
Rachel Franklin probably discussed the problems with the top of EA. But they wouldn't listen to her report "about a few people in the forum attempting to threaten EA by not buying the next expansions unless EA used a few million dollars on giving them toddlers and a few other things for free" which is the most likely way that it was discussed on EA's board of directors. Instead they just see it as their own decision and that their job is to listen to EA's sales department who has much more knowledge about all the people who buys EA's games. EA's board knows that only a fraction of a percent of the customers for Sims games ever visit this forum. So they don't care too much about "a few people threatening EA in the forum in a futile attempt about getting toddlers and other omitted stuff for free just because those things were in some of the earlier Sims games".
But you seem to think that even though you have been telling EA the same things for months that they don't know them yet - or that they will finally give in if you just continue with the same daily writings for a few more months. My claim is that both the development team and EA's board already know everything they need to know. They have already made their decisions about the next EPs and GPs. They just (as usual) don't want to tell us yet because they still want us to be curious. But if toddlers still isn't part of their plans then toddlers won't return until TS5 is released anyway.
And no. You can't "threaten EA's board to use more money on bug fixing for this games than they already have decided as their general policy for all EA games". Some of the developers may agree with you about making more bug fixes and adjustments for TS4 than EA will pay for. But even the developers can't do a thing about it because EA's board won't "waste" a lot of millions of dollars on bug fixing and making other adjustments for already released games because they see this as only a way to lose most of EA's profits for the games. They just don't believe that wasting all those millions would increase sales numbers in any significant way at all. So they won't do it.
I think "a little disappointing" is an understatement. There were massive layoffs and the division rolled into another. Had sales been overwhelming (which I think is what they had been expecting which probably is why they didn't lay off the employees in the Sim City branch of Maxis until quite awhile after support for Sim City ended), they would have stayed an independent studio and had more people working on pumping out that Sims 4 content.
The only thing is, I expect they're going to try to broaden the market further by watering down the game even more rather than spend resources and make a game that appeals to a broad category of people due to it being completely outstanding.
I agree. But SimCity isn't dead and the mobile version SimCity BuildIt even seem to do unusual well. So I don't think that we have seen the last SimCity game yet.
Spore and Darkspore is another matter because I don't think that EA will finance more of those games.
The Sims series for PC is in danger because TS4 seems to be much less popular than the previous games. The cause is of course the missing open world, the missing toddlers and the simplified babies and teens which the new emotions, the multitasking and the new build mode was meant replace and compensate for. But they didn't do that in a very convincing way.
The problem now is that the decision isn't up to the developers or Maxis. Instead it is EA's top who will decide what to do if the sales numbers for TS4 disappoints them. But EA's top aren't simmers and they don't care much about this forum because they only see TS4 as one of many EA games. Their principle is that all EA games have to be profitable. So if they think that TS4 isn't or they for some other reason don't think that TS5 will be profitable then their reaction won't be to attempt to make a better game. Instead they will only discuss if TS5 can be made for less money or if TS5 just shouldn't be made at all.
Erpe, EA's top management isn't oblivious to everything that is going on. There already have been consequences, Maxis Emeryville shut down and Lucy Bradshaw forced out. I think EA hears the customers loud and clear, but the main problem is that they can't do anything about it. They have a bad game engine that isn't very flexible and can't do what we customers want it to do. So they can't do anything to improve the game in a way that matters. The only option for them is to put on a happy face and party it up. Hopefully they'll learn their lesson and make a Sims 5 game that is worthy of the title. If I were EA, I'd already be in the beginning stages for Sims 5.
Definitely agree with this. Customer feedback can be a huge driver of change. I think in the case of TS4 there just isn't much room for the devs to implement that change, whether because of poor engine design, poor management, poor creative vision, or whatever the case may be. I would agree that the best thing for everyone at this point would be to jump start TS5 development but that is likely more dependent on how the EP's are selling and if EA thinks it is worthwhile to milk this cow dry.
Or @Erpe someone at EA who has a good logical mind can educate themselves about what went wrong and how to learn from it.
Companies like EA pay thousands to research consultants and people who create surveys to understand their customers. But they have a good wide variety of opinions and positions within their own sites. All it requires is someone to pay attention, note the important threads of common feelings and actually think about what damage they caused by trying to salvage a base which wasn't built from the ground up specifically for the offline single player sims experience.
I dont believe EA are that dim to overlook that 'salvaging' the base from Olympus has had a huge impact on the success of TS4. They have access to the best and brightest staff-if they aren't utilising that then they've got a big problem.
Of course this could have been an exercise in trying to transition sims fans into a 'cross platform' ideal they have which much less depth to accommodate the other platforms working well alongside a PC game.
If EA haven't learnt lessons from SC2013 and TS4 then they are extremely foolish.
Erpe, EA's top management isn't oblivious to everything that is going on. There already have been consequences, Maxis Emeryville shut down and Lucy Bradshaw forced out. I think EA hears the customers loud and clear, but the main problem is that they can't do anything about it. They have a bad game engine that isn't very flexible and can't do what we customers want it to do. So they can't do anything to improve the game in a way that matters. The only option for them is to put on a happy face and party it up. Hopefully they'll learn their lesson and make a Sims 5 game that is worthy of the title. If I were EA, I'd already be in the beginning stages for Sims 5.
Definitely agree with this. Customer feedback can be a huge driver of change. I think in the case of TS4 there just isn't much room for the devs to implement that change, whether because of poor engine design, poor management, poor creative vision, or whatever the case may be. I would agree that the best thing for everyone at this point would be to jump start TS5 development but that is likely more dependent on how the EP's are selling and if EA thinks it is worthwhile to milk this cow dry.
Or @Erpe someone at EA who has a good logical mind can educate themselves about what went wrong and how to learn from it.
Companies like EA pay thousands to research consultants and people who create surveys to understand their customers. But they have a good wide variety of opinions and positions within their own sites. All it requires is someone to pay attention, note the important threads of common feelings and actually think about what damage they caused by trying to salvage a base which wasn't built from the ground up specifically for the offline single player sims experience.
I dont believe EA are that dim to overlook that 'salvaging' the base from Olympus has had a huge impact on the success of TS4. They have access to the best and brightest staff-if they aren't utilising that then they've got a big problem.
Of course this could have been an exercise in trying to transition sims fans into a 'cross platform' ideal they have which much less depth to accommodate the other platforms working well alongside a PC game.
If EA haven't learnt lessons from SC2013 and TS4 then they are extremely foolish.
I partly agree in this. But don't forget that nearly everybody on EA's board are from other departments of EA. They may work on EA's sports games or RPG games. So they aren't very interested in EA's Sims games.
That the Sims games have less and less attention from EA's board can also be seen in EA's financial reports where the Sims games usually aren't even mentioned anymore. EA's main attention now seem to be the mobile platforms and apparently they just see the Sims games as something which once gave EA the biggest income - but now just seems to be a concept which won't pay many of EA's bills in the future.
PS: So don't count on EA's board as your ally. There doesn't seem to be any of the persons who earlier worked with the Sims games left on EA's board. Just look at the descriptions on http://investors.ea.com/directors.cfm Who of those persons do you think would ever care about the Sims games (unless they still see a big profit coming from those games)?
I think "a little disappointing" is an understatement. There were massive layoffs and the division rolled into another. Had sales been overwhelming (which I think is what they had been expecting which probably is why they didn't lay off the employees in the Sim City branch of Maxis until quite awhile after support for Sim City ended), they would have stayed an independent studio and had more people working on pumping out that Sims 4 content.
The only thing is, I expect they're going to try to broaden the market further by watering down the game even more rather than spend resources and make a game that appeals to a broad category of people due to it being completely outstanding.
I agree. But SimCity isn't dead and the mobile version SimCity BuildIt even seem to do unusual well. So I don't think that we have seen the last SimCity game yet.
Spore and Darkspore is another matter because I don't think that EA will finance more of those games.
The Sims series for PC is in danger because TS4 seems to be much less popular than the previous games. The cause is of course the missing open world, the missing toddlers and the simplified babies and teens which the new emotions, the multitasking and the new build mode was meant replace and compensate for. But they didn't do that in a very convincing way.
The problem now is that the decision isn't up to the developers or Maxis. Instead it is EA's top who will decide what to do if the sales numbers for TS4 disappoints them. But EA's top aren't simmers and they don't care much about this forum because they only see TS4 as one of many EA games. Their principle is that all EA games have to be profitable. So if they think that TS4 isn't or they for some other reason don't think that TS5 will be profitable then their reaction won't be to attempt to make a better game. Instead they will only discuss if TS5 can be made for less money or if TS5 just shouldn't be made at all.
Simcity Buildit is not Maxis. EA owns the name and gave it to the mobile division long before Maxis was rolled into the mobile division. I have no doubt that the Sims will live on in mobile. At the last shareholder report I read, Sims 4 and Freeplay were discussed in the same sentence when talking about the success of the Sims series.
EA is not the ones making the little decisions about the game, though. That's what they pay the developers to do. They give the budget and then expect the developers to make them money with it. A game doesn't do well? They're not going to care so much why as what they can do to recover. And if they think mobile is the way to go (and given the decision of putting a mobile person in charge of the sims and then putting in a mobile division this seems likely) they will try that.
Sims 4 problem was that they started on line then changed. So there were just not enough resources to develop as good of an offline game as it needed to be to be an overwhelming success. It does not help that the person who oversees the game is from a mobile, not Sims background who from interviews doesn't seem to know what she doesn't know.
I have to disagree with that, @johnny49. They took away the feeling of sims being part of a larger community but they left in continuous time passing and added random events (a rudimentary form of Story Progression) that can affect your non-active households. So to me this is less than ideal; there is no community to simulate but they left in story actions that can affect your sims in undesirable ways.
Besides, the reason there are loading screens between every lot is due to the game starting off as an online, social game. I think the fact that people can rotate is just a happy accident after they decided to take the game offline. But as I said, it's a strange hybrid that is not ideal. If they are going to attempt to simulate a community around your sim household with SP, then there needs to actually be a community to simulate.
The Sims
Where are we going, and why am I in this hand basket?!
Remember when they announced there would be no rabbit holes? That was listening to consumers. Remember when they said that babies had legs? That was listening to consumers.
So they do listen. They just seem incapable of understanding.
Remember when they announced there would be no rabbit holes? That was listening to consumers. Remember when they said that babies had legs? That was listening to consumers.
So they do listen. They just seem incapable of understanding.
Heh, except they do have rabbit holes. Or do they think leaving out the actual building and just having the sims go *poof* means that there are no rabbit holes? Heck, even the rocket is a rabbit hole as are the short trips to hidden lots.
Edit: Gah, I do miss the LOL button though. You post genuinely made me laugh. I gave you an awesome instead.
I think "a little disappointing" is an understatement. There were massive layoffs and the division rolled into another. Had sales been overwhelming (which I think is what they had been expecting which probably is why they didn't lay off the employees in the Sim City branch of Maxis until quite awhile after support for Sim City ended), they would have stayed an independent studio and had more people working on pumping out that Sims 4 content.
The only thing is, I expect they're going to try to broaden the market further by watering down the game even more rather than spend resources and make a game that appeals to a broad category of people due to it being completely outstanding.
I agree. But SimCity isn't dead and the mobile version SimCity BuildIt even seem to do unusual well. So I don't think that we have seen the last SimCity game yet.
Spore and Darkspore is another matter because I don't think that EA will finance more of those games.
The Sims series for PC is in danger because TS4 seems to be much less popular than the previous games. The cause is of course the missing open world, the missing toddlers and the simplified babies and teens which the new emotions, the multitasking and the new build mode was meant replace and compensate for. But they didn't do that in a very convincing way.
The problem now is that the decision isn't up to the developers or Maxis. Instead it is EA's top who will decide what to do if the sales numbers for TS4 disappoints them. But EA's top aren't simmers and they don't care much about this forum because they only see TS4 as one of many EA games. Their principle is that all EA games have to be profitable. So if they think that TS4 isn't or they for some other reason don't think that TS5 will be profitable then their reaction won't be to attempt to make a better game. Instead they will only discuss if TS5 can be made for less money or if TS5 just shouldn't be made at all.
Simcity Buildit is not Maxis. EA owns the name and gave it to the mobile division long before Maxis was rolled into the mobile division. I have no doubt that the Sims will live on in mobile. At the last shareholder report I read, Sims 4 and Freeplay were discussed in the same sentence when talking about the success of the Sims series.
EA is not the ones making the little decisions about the game, though. That's what they pay the developers to do. They give the budget and then expect the developers to make them money with it. A game doesn't do well? They're not going to care so much why as what they can do to recover. And if they think mobile is the way to go (and given the decision of putting a mobile person in charge of the sims and then putting in a mobile division this seems likely) they will try that.
Sims 4 problem was that they started on line then changed. So there were just not enough resources to develop as good of an offline game as it needed to be to be an overwhelming success. It does not help that the person who oversees the game is from a mobile, not Sims background who from interviews doesn't seem to know what she doesn't know.
You are right that SimCity BuildIt is made by Tracktwenty also known as EA Helsinki in Finland. But it is still a SimCity game.
I don't know if "EA is not the ones making the little decisions about the game" as you wrote because it depends on the kind of decisions. Most small details are decided by the developers without consulting EA. But EA also has details which they want to discuss with the developers.
The problem for EA is that the developers otherwise just could decide to make the new Sims game nearly identical to the previous one - like you actually can see some other game companies do with their game series. This isn't something that EA would accept because EA knows that we all then would postpone our purchase of the new game and on playing the previous one - at least until several expansions were released too. But we even could decide never to buy the new game in the end. This would of corse be completely unacceptable for EA even though the developers might not care very much about it.
Therefore I am quite sure that EA has conditions when they ask a development team to make a new Sims game and my guess is that EA requires the team to tell EA in advance what they plan to include of main new things in the game. Then EA will discuss this with EA's sales and marketing people to hear if they think that this will be suitable to make people decide to buy the new basegame immediately when it is released. Only if EA gets a positive evaluation on this will EA then give the development a green light to start making the game.
In the Sims 4 case it should be obvious that those main new things were the new emotions, the multitasking and the new build mode which probably were the things that convinced EA to give the development team a green light to start making the game. But then the team couldn't omit any of those things instead of toddlers when they got problems with the deadline and therefore had to omit some other things instead. So it had to be toddlers instead of any of the mentioned things that the team omitted.
Comments
Generally experience makes one more competent at ones job, not less. The job should be easier the more you do it or else they are doing it wrong.
"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.....
But look at their other games-they aren't doing this elsewhere!
I mean if they can hand on heart say this is the best they are capable of for the sims I feel sorry for them. Fact is we've seen some of the same staff doing much better things when they were new to the job! Something is preventing them from greatness. Don't care what it is. Just want it fixed. And I do not want to hear any more excuses. If all you have are excuses EA I think it's time you offered refunds to those of us who bought under promises you've been incapable of fulfilling.
https://twitter.com/sparkfairy1
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
There are testing processes that will identify bugs if done properly.
When bugs are identified by testing they can then be fixed and go back to the start of the testing process to see if the fix actually fixed the problem, and to find out if the fix caused a different problem elsewhere.
This is an iterative process and should happen throughout the software development cycle.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCuW44b3uCMtCSaq4gwC8EZg
But you seem to think that the developers need to hear the same things from the same persons day after day, month after month and probably even year after year. Why do you think that you can "win" against a billion dollar company like EA just by repeating yourself?
Do you really think that EA is so easy to "scare"?
Let me then tell you what I see as most likely to have happened:
The developers tried for months to explain themselves and to discuss things with us in this forum. But they couldn't talk about future stuff because they had signed a contract with EA about not doing it. But they tried hard anyway. But finally they gave up and left the forum because a few people just wouldn't understand what they were trying to do.
Rachel Franklin probably discussed the problems with the top of EA. But they wouldn't listen to her report "about a few people in the forum attempting to threaten EA by not buying the next expansions unless EA used a few million dollars on giving them toddlers and a few other things for free" which is the most likely way that it was discussed on EA's board of directors. Instead they just see it as their own decision and that their job is to listen to EA's sales department who has much more knowledge about all the people who buys EA's games. EA's board knows that only a fraction of a percent of the customers for Sims games ever visit this forum. So they don't care too much about "a few people threatening EA in the forum in a futile attempt about getting toddlers and other omitted stuff for free just because those things were in some of the earlier Sims games".
But you seem to think that even though you have been telling EA the same things for months that they don't know them yet - or that they will finally give in if you just continue with the same daily writings for a few more months. My claim is that both the development team and EA's board already know everything they need to know. They have already made their decisions about the next EPs and GPs. They just (as usual) don't want to tell us yet because they still want us to be curious. But if toddlers still isn't part of their plans then toddlers won't return until TS5 is released anyway.
And no. You can't "threaten EA's board to use more money on bug fixing for this games than they already have decided as their general policy for all EA games". Some of the developers may agree with you about making more bug fixes and adjustments for TS4 than EA will pay for. But even the developers can't do a thing about it because EA's board won't "waste" a lot of millions of dollars on bug fixing and making other adjustments for already released games because they see this as only a way to lose most of EA's profits for the games. They just don't believe that wasting all those millions would increase sales numbers in any significant way at all. So they won't do it.
I and others don't need you telling us we are beating our heads against a brick wall....we know that and yet, we still have hope that it might chip after chip break through that wall. If you don't want to join, cool. But, quit telling us we are wasting our time. I see the same argument from you time after time and we give the same responses. It really is getting tiresome. I will tell them daily if I think it will take one 🐸🐸🐸🐸 out of that wall.
You are a very vocal person and have great arguments, but, I sure wish you would take a 🐸🐸🐸🐸 or two out of their wall instead of defending them. Other developers do listen to their fans and fix things. We are certainly entitled to hope, pray and 🐸🐸🐸🐸 away at EA in the hopes that they will too. Join us with your arguments instead of telling us we are wasting our time. Waste some time telling EA/Maxis and the PTB's what you would like fixed, what you want in the future so they don't make the same mistakes. Tell them daily so it will sink in. Join us!
The Cowboy and the Mermaid
Players who insist, with varying degrees of rudeness, on telling others to shut up and go away are nothing new and I just completely ignore their comments.
They don't like reading our "futile" complaints and I don't like being stuck with a busted, watered down game. When I get what I want, a game that is worthy of me spending time and money on, then they can get what they want, an end to the "complaint" threads and posts.
But until then everyone is just going to have to suck it up and deal with things they don't like.
I do not tell others they aren't allowed to like the game, or call people names, tell people what they do is pointless or how they feel isn't ever worth considering. Even when I advocated for EA I didn't tell people that they weren't allowed to feel ripped off or that EA doesn't care. None of us talk for EA. None of us know what's going on in their meeting rooms or what the developers feel when they see things. The devs may see things the way some of us do-but their job requires they do as they are told. I've never told a dev to step outside their contract and speak without authority agreeing to it. The reason I say something is because I am addressing EA the entity-not an individual person.
If you find me annoying please feel free to press that ignore button. But no amount of pressure from others to shut up will work. I'm respectful and I'm not telling others what to do. I appreciate the same courtesy from others. Thank you.
https://twitter.com/sparkfairy1
The only thing is, I expect they're going to try to broaden the market further by watering down the game even more rather than spend resources and make a game that appeals to a broad category of people due to it being completely outstanding.
You still have to distinguish between Maxis who makes the games and EA which is the parent company and who only publishes and sell the Sims games. Maxis is EA's subsidiary who makes games for EA. But EA decides which games Maxis can make. EA also decides how much money Maxis is allowed to use on each game. So Maxis can't just ignore EA.
smh
Spore and Darkspore is another matter because I don't think that EA will finance more of those games.
The Sims series for PC is in danger because TS4 seems to be much less popular than the previous games. The cause is of course the missing open world, the missing toddlers and the simplified babies and teens which the new emotions, the multitasking and the new build mode was meant replace and compensate for. But they didn't do that in a very convincing way.
The problem now is that the decision isn't up to the developers or Maxis. Instead it is EA's top who will decide what to do if the sales numbers for TS4 disappoints them. But EA's top aren't simmers and they don't care much about this forum because they only see TS4 as one of many EA games. Their principle is that all EA games have to be profitable. So if they think that TS4 isn't or they for some other reason don't think that TS5 will be profitable then their reaction won't be to attempt to make a better game. Instead they will only discuss if TS5 can be made for less money or if TS5 just shouldn't be made at all.
Definitely agree with this. Customer feedback can be a huge driver of change. I think in the case of TS4 there just isn't much room for the devs to implement that change, whether because of poor engine design, poor management, poor creative vision, or whatever the case may be. I would agree that the best thing for everyone at this point would be to jump start TS5 development but that is likely more dependent on how the EP's are selling and if EA thinks it is worthwhile to milk this cow dry.
Companies like EA pay thousands to research consultants and people who create surveys to understand their customers. But they have a good wide variety of opinions and positions within their own sites. All it requires is someone to pay attention, note the important threads of common feelings and actually think about what damage they caused by trying to salvage a base which wasn't built from the ground up specifically for the offline single player sims experience.
I dont believe EA are that dim to overlook that 'salvaging' the base from Olympus has had a huge impact on the success of TS4. They have access to the best and brightest staff-if they aren't utilising that then they've got a big problem.
Of course this could have been an exercise in trying to transition sims fans into a 'cross platform' ideal they have which much less depth to accommodate the other platforms working well alongside a PC game.
If EA haven't learnt lessons from SC2013 and TS4 then they are extremely foolish.
https://twitter.com/sparkfairy1
I totally agree.
https://twitter.com/sparkfairy1
That the Sims games have less and less attention from EA's board can also be seen in EA's financial reports where the Sims games usually aren't even mentioned anymore. EA's main attention now seem to be the mobile platforms and apparently they just see the Sims games as something which once gave EA the biggest income - but now just seems to be a concept which won't pay many of EA's bills in the future.
PS: So don't count on EA's board as your ally. There doesn't seem to be any of the persons who earlier worked with the Sims games left on EA's board. Just look at the descriptions on http://investors.ea.com/directors.cfm Who of those persons do you think would ever care about the Sims games (unless they still see a big profit coming from those games)?
Simcity Buildit is not Maxis. EA owns the name and gave it to the mobile division long before Maxis was rolled into the mobile division. I have no doubt that the Sims will live on in mobile. At the last shareholder report I read, Sims 4 and Freeplay were discussed in the same sentence when talking about the success of the Sims series.
EA is not the ones making the little decisions about the game, though. That's what they pay the developers to do. They give the budget and then expect the developers to make them money with it. A game doesn't do well? They're not going to care so much why as what they can do to recover. And if they think mobile is the way to go (and given the decision of putting a mobile person in charge of the sims and then putting in a mobile division this seems likely) they will try that.
Sims 4 problem was that they started on line then changed. So there were just not enough resources to develop as good of an offline game as it needed to be to be an overwhelming success. It does not help that the person who oversees the game is from a mobile, not Sims background who from interviews doesn't seem to know what she doesn't know.
Besides, the reason there are loading screens between every lot is due to the game starting off as an online, social game. I think the fact that people can rotate is just a happy accident after they decided to take the game offline. But as I said, it's a strange hybrid that is not ideal. If they are going to attempt to simulate a community around your sim household with SP, then there needs to actually be a community to simulate.
Where are we going, and why am I in this hand basket?!
So they do listen. They just seem incapable of understanding.
Heh, except they do have rabbit holes. Or do they think leaving out the actual building and just having the sims go *poof* means that there are no rabbit holes? Heck, even the rocket is a rabbit hole as are the short trips to hidden lots.
Edit: Gah, I do miss the LOL button though. You post genuinely made me laugh. I gave you an awesome instead.
I don't know if "EA is not the ones making the little decisions about the game" as you wrote because it depends on the kind of decisions. Most small details are decided by the developers without consulting EA. But EA also has details which they want to discuss with the developers.
The problem for EA is that the developers otherwise just could decide to make the new Sims game nearly identical to the previous one - like you actually can see some other game companies do with their game series. This isn't something that EA would accept because EA knows that we all then would postpone our purchase of the new game and on playing the previous one - at least until several expansions were released too. But we even could decide never to buy the new game in the end. This would of corse be completely unacceptable for EA even though the developers might not care very much about it.
Therefore I am quite sure that EA has conditions when they ask a development team to make a new Sims game and my guess is that EA requires the team to tell EA in advance what they plan to include of main new things in the game. Then EA will discuss this with EA's sales and marketing people to hear if they think that this will be suitable to make people decide to buy the new basegame immediately when it is released. Only if EA gets a positive evaluation on this will EA then give the development a green light to start making the game.
In the Sims 4 case it should be obvious that those main new things were the new emotions, the multitasking and the new build mode which probably were the things that convinced EA to give the development team a green light to start making the game. But then the team couldn't omit any of those things instead of toddlers when they got problems with the deadline and therefore had to omit some other things instead. So it had to be toddlers instead of any of the mentioned things that the team omitted.