Culling is the result of a badly designed game engine intended for an online game, and a heavy focus on running this game on low end hardware.
Their budget issues are another story that's unrelated to culling.
Culling is a feature with the purpose to create a more dynamic world where new sims can appear all the time. Both this and the relationship decay were added to make TS4 into a new game which became more different from the earlier games.
Most veteran simmers don't like the changes. But they were never in the target group anyway because TS4 clearly was mainly meant to be a new Sims game targeted mainly at new simmers.
Culling is a game mechanic that erases garbage data in order to cut down on save file bloat and minimize loading times. The dynamic world is achieved through their excessive spawning of NPC's and townies that spawn almost every time you hit a loading screen. While culling does build off of this, they are two separate mechanics.
No matter who they are targeting it doesn't change the fact that what they are working with was designed for an online multiplayer game. They didn't have time to redo the engine completely so they did what they could to make it as stable as possible. Was it a good decision? IMO no, because their culling is aggressive and displays how underpowered their game engine is. It wasn't done this way for new players, or to make a new game; things are this way because the people from up top EA + Maxis are more focused on increasing their profit than providing a semi-decent life simulation game. Blame greed, and ignorance not new or old players.
They have never confirmed that the Sims 4 was meant to be an online game and that EA let them waste hundreds of hours on that such that they didn't have time to change the game. This also doesn't sound like EA at all. Do you always listen to rumors from unreliable sources even when they are about a company like EA becoming the biggest game company in the world just by wasting hundreds of millions of dollars by having no plan for its games?
Culling is the process of deleting NPC sims when the population reaches its maximum. This has been done in all the Sims games. But in the first game the maximum was so very big (in TS2 it was at least a thousand sims) that culling usually never happened. But in TS3 and TS4 the maximum is much lower. So therefore we see it much more often. I remember it very well from TS3 too but the story progression from Nraas removed it.
The purpose of culling is to avoid crashes which could happen if the population became much bigger than intended. Without culling new NPC sims couldn't be added at all if the population already had reached its intended max size. In TS3 the game didn't very often want to add new NPC sims. So culling rarely happened. But TS4 is designed differently and the game is now intended to let new NPC sims be created and appear much more often. Therefore more culling is necessary.
Are you serious? Denying TS4 was originally an online game is an ignorant position to take. We have more than enough information surrounding the game's early development to come to a solid conclusion that The Sims 4 started production as an online multiplayer game. Portfolios of former employees, websites, and references still existing in the game code are all pretty legitimate sources.
You're rephrasing my comments in the remainder of your post. Culling = mechanic to aid in game performance. It's not there to do anything more than erase garbage data from your save. I know how it works, I know why it's necessary, and the reality is that it's aggressive and poorly implemented. I never ran into culling in Sims 3, even with story progression, I never had Sims disappear. The fact that this mechanic is so widely complained about is a major red flag that it's noticeable. Having the problem go on for over three years tells me their foundation is weak.
TS4may have started as an online game. But for how long? Was it more than a couple of weeks in the beginning when only a small team was working on it? Is there anything left in the game from those days?
Did you ever heard the term "The Sims Olympus"? It was a big project planned as a multiplayer game (because EA thinks multiplayer is always better) after the success of TS3. And also multiplayer brings certain limitations. Olympus was defined by a blue plumbob that resembled the other players. This, in fact, is already hinted at in TS3: University Life in a statue with a blue plumbob titled "Future". It shows that in 2013, one year before TS4's release, "The Sims 4" was still "Sims Olympus", a multiplayer game with blue plumbobs. EA tries to destroy every hint of Olympus.
It is all based on rumors. People want to think that EA just doesn't know how to make games or to earn money without wasting hundreds of millions of dollars on projects EA then just cancels because they want an "explanation" for the reason why TS4 doesn't have toddlers, cars and an open world like TS3. But there is two things wrong with this "explanation":
1. EA would have gone bankrupt decades ago if EA had been run that unprofessionally. Instead EA became the hugest game company in the world and earned so many billions of dollars that EA could buy several other game companies each year.
2. People in this forum won't accept that they aren't the most important people in the world for EA. They want to believe that they instead are the only people who matter. But there are only a few hundred simmers in the forum and EA needs millions of customers for each Sims game to make a profit because EA needs enough money to pay the wages to the about 200 developers who work on the game. If a thousand simmers in the forum should do this than there would only be 5 simmers to pay each developer and EA's marketing people must be paid too. This would mean that each simmer should buy games for about $30,000 every year. But they only buy a couple of expansions for maybe $100 a year with is so little that it doesn't matter. Therefore EA instead targets the games at new simmers which need an easier game with very small minimum requirements or many of them wouldn't be able to play the game. Therefore TS4 was made as it is.
Culling was in TS3 too. Was it because TS3 also was considered to become an online game? I don't think so.
The limit in TS3 was MUCH higher though. You had to simulate a town full of people. They really need to raise the limit in TS4 (as there are new worlds coming, Culling won't get better on its own), but that would cause serious performance problems with TS4's engine.[/quote]
I only bought the first couple of EPs for TS3. So I don't know if the limit was raised later. But in the beginning the limit was very low and sims disappeared from my game even though there were very few sims in my world.
Therefore I think that the difference between TS3 and TS4 instead is that new NPC sims are created more often in TS4 than in TS3 which also means that the culling happens more often in TS4 than it did in TS3.
I find it disrespectful to mock simmers with these in-game things. The culling poster, and the pop-up about the forums in the Social Media career are two clear examples of how much they (don't) care about customers' feedback.
Origin ID is: AlbaWaterhouse
All my creations are CC free.
I find it disrespectful to mock simmers with these in-game things. The culling poster, and the pop-up about the forums in the Social Media career are two clear examples of how much they (don't) care about customers' feedback.
You... you've heard of jokes you know? Maybe you're, I don't know, taking this a bit too seriously when it's meant to just be something fun, silly, and self-referential?
Just some random Simmer you probably don't even follow on the gallery! Gallery name's the same as my username! Did I just rhyme there?
I find it disrespectful to mock simmers with these in-game things. The culling poster, and the pop-up about the forums in the Social Media career are two clear examples of how much they (don't) care about customers' feedback.
You... you've heard of jokes you know? Maybe you're, I don't know, taking this a bit too seriously when it's meant to just be something fun, silly, and self-referential?
I would find it hilarious if I wouldn't feel disrespected with every interview they do and with many interventions by the gurus in the forums.
Origin ID is: AlbaWaterhouse
All my creations are CC free.
I find it disrespectful to mock simmers with these in-game things. The culling poster, and the pop-up about the forums in the Social Media career are two clear examples of how much they (don't) care about customers' feedback.
You... you've heard of jokes you know? Maybe you're, I don't know, taking this a bit too seriously when it's meant to just be something fun, silly, and self-referential?
I would find it hilarious if I wouldn't feel disrespected with every interview they do and with many interventions by the gurus in the forums.
Maybe it's not them being disrespectful, just you choosing to take it that way because of personal feelings towards the game and those working on it. I mean, it is a possibility. Do the gurus not have the right to make jokes about their game and just have a little bit of fun? Or do they have to be perfect robots, unable to make mistakes at all, lest they risk offending someone on here because of the way they took things.
Just some random Simmer you probably don't even follow on the gallery! Gallery name's the same as my username! Did I just rhyme there?
I find it disrespectful to mock simmers with these in-game things. The culling poster, and the pop-up about the forums in the Social Media career are two clear examples of how much they (don't) care about customers' feedback.
You... you've heard of jokes you know? Maybe you're, I don't know, taking this a bit too seriously when it's meant to just be something fun, silly, and self-referential?
I would find it hilarious if I wouldn't feel disrespected with every interview they do and with many interventions by the gurus in the forums.
Maybe it's not them being disrespectful, just you choosing to take it that way because of personal feelings towards the game and those working on it. I mean, it is a possibility. Do the gurus not have the right to make jokes about their game and just have a little bit of fun? Or do they have to be perfect robots, unable to make mistakes at all, lest they risk offending someone on here because of the way they took things.
I would interpret it as a way of the developers to show that they know about this problem (Culling) and that they do their best to fix it. (Annnnd of course that they DO hear us)
I find it disrespectful to mock simmers with these in-game things. The culling poster, and the pop-up about the forums in the Social Media career are two clear examples of how much they (don't) care about customers' feedback.
You... you've heard of jokes you know? Maybe you're, I don't know, taking this a bit too seriously when it's meant to just be something fun, silly, and self-referential?
I would find it hilarious if I wouldn't feel disrespected with every interview they do and with many interventions by the gurus in the forums.
Maybe it's not them being disrespectful, just you choosing to take it that way because of personal feelings towards the game and those working on it. I mean, it is a possibility. Do the gurus not have the right to make jokes about their game and just have a little bit of fun? Or do they have to be perfect robots, unable to make mistakes at all, lest they risk offending someone on here because of the way they took things.
I would interpret it as a way of the developers to show that they know about this problem (Culling) and that they do their best to fix it. (Annnnd of course that they DO hear us)
their best effort? you are funny
Then why no add an option to disable culling? There are mods than do it without cause lag
or Why no an option to increase the limit?
Comments
1. EA would have gone bankrupt decades ago if EA had been run that unprofessionally. Instead EA became the hugest game company in the world and earned so many billions of dollars that EA could buy several other game companies each year.
2. People in this forum won't accept that they aren't the most important people in the world for EA. They want to believe that they instead are the only people who matter. But there are only a few hundred simmers in the forum and EA needs millions of customers for each Sims game to make a profit because EA needs enough money to pay the wages to the about 200 developers who work on the game. If a thousand simmers in the forum should do this than there would only be 5 simmers to pay each developer and EA's marketing people must be paid too. This would mean that each simmer should buy games for about $30,000 every year. But they only buy a couple of expansions for maybe $100 a year with is so little that it doesn't matter. Therefore EA instead targets the games at new simmers which need an easier game with very small minimum requirements or many of them wouldn't be able to play the game. Therefore TS4 was made as it is.
The limit in TS3 was MUCH higher though. You had to simulate a town full of people. They really need to raise the limit in TS4 (as there are new worlds coming, Culling won't get better on its own), but that would cause serious performance problems with TS4's engine.[/quote]
I only bought the first couple of EPs for TS3. So I don't know if the limit was raised later. But in the beginning the limit was very low and sims disappeared from my game even though there were very few sims in my world.
Therefore I think that the difference between TS3 and TS4 instead is that new NPC sims are created more often in TS4 than in TS3 which also means that the culling happens more often in TS4 than it did in TS3.
Anyone else think "Angsty" is a play on Banksy?
Definitely!
All my creations are CC free.
You... you've heard of jokes you know? Maybe you're, I don't know, taking this a bit too seriously when it's meant to just be something fun, silly, and self-referential?
I would find it hilarious if I wouldn't feel disrespected with every interview they do and with many interventions by the gurus in the forums.
All my creations are CC free.
Maybe it's not them being disrespectful, just you choosing to take it that way because of personal feelings towards the game and those working on it. I mean, it is a possibility. Do the gurus not have the right to make jokes about their game and just have a little bit of fun? Or do they have to be perfect robots, unable to make mistakes at all, lest they risk offending someone on here because of the way they took things.
I would interpret it as a way of the developers to show that they know about this problem (Culling) and that they do their best to fix it. (Annnnd of course that they DO hear us)
their best effort? you are funny
Then why no add an option to disable culling? There are mods than do it without cause lag
or Why no an option to increase the limit?