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Recycling old content and a lack of creativity in development

So Jungle Adventure just came out, and I think most of us know it recycles merchant tables and food stalls from City Living. This isn't the first time either, as Pets recycled those exact same assets.

My personal stance on recycling content goes like this: if a pack manages to deliver quality content, then recycling existing content can be warranted if smaller features are recycled. If someone pointed out content that Vampires recycled for example, I would hesitate to pass judgement because Vampires was a solid pack. I have no way of knowing why they chose to recycle it, but I believe in good faith and benefit of the doubt, so if the pack is solid and there's recycled content, I'll assume they needed to recycle content so they could focus on putting more effort elsewhere.

However, the amount of content being recycled or how frequently they get recycled is at times....rather concerning. The food stalls and merchant tables as examples make sense to me to recycle because they serve as vendors and there's little to no benefit of remaking that system. At the same time though, I would also debate the value of giving us 237868 meals that are all functionally identical. While it's wise to recycle the food stalls themselves since their assets and coding all work, I also have to question why food is supposed to be a decent chunk of a pack to begin with. Are we recycling it because there's a clear demand for it and we're trying to work efficiently, or are we recycling it because the development of Sims 4 prioritizes features that we can recycle just to save on costs? Development should be about making a fun pack, not about reducing the development budget as much as possible. Sometimes it feels like the latter and like the team has development sessions where they ask "what would be cheap and easy to make given the assets that we already have?" I might be consider that understandable if this were a small indie company developing this game....but this is one of the largest development companies in the world with a top 10 best-selling game franchise.

There's similar cases with clothing styles and textures. How many times has a new top released and people have pointed out how outrageously similar it was to another pre-existing top? Do I even need to link the Bear costumes or the Super llama costumes? Reskinning textures continues with Jungle Adventures. This made the rounds on another Sims forum:

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With that image? I feel like an argument can be made they had to do it since they cannot use content from Get Together or expect that all users have it; they MUST copy-paste it to be able to use it in the pack. However, I feel the problem with things such as above is just how frequently the recycling of assets and features occurs. It's one of those cases where the straw can break the camel's back, and seeing recycled content EVERYWHERE you turn can absolutely make you lose faith in the game and it's future. I would shrug at that above image normally and argue they NEED to copypaste it to be able to use it in this pack.....but that was the argument with the Superllama costume in City Living....and that was the argument with the bear costume in Parenthood. Eventually it hits a point where - as I said - I have to question if decisions aren't being made based on what saves production costs rather than on what makes sense or would be neat. The Superllama costume being recycled could've been seen as an opportunity to make a Batgnome costume for example, or Parenthood could've been seen as a chance to create pony costumes. Instead we didn't get that. We got more of the same. Not a big deal for the individual packs perhaps, but yes it adds up to long-term disappointment. And again, it's not just textures or clothing...

The vet career for example recycles many animations from the scientist and doctor careers, the Jungle puzzles themselves seem to try and incorporate existing animations, and don't even get me started on the amount of social animations that are visually/audibly/functionally identical. I remember being disappointed in Sims 3 when personality traits like Daredevil and Evil were mostly just changes to the text names of their interactions, but wow, Sims 4 is seriously putting those two to shame with a record high of recycled socials. There was a time when each new pack had ~2 new socials that were functionally unique with unique animations, but now...? I had to do a double take when I realized the dance in Jungle Adventures is ACTUALLY NEW and doesn't seem to be a re-hashed combination of existing animations in any way, shape or form, nor did it seem poorly done or basic. No, it felt like they went all out and gave that animation their all. I feel like this is the first time that's happened in a while, so kudos to that, it's just a shame it's an exception to the rule.

Even concepts seem to get recycled. With this it's less about recycling assets, but rather a lack of creativity. In Outdoor Retreat, there's basically nothing to do there and no motivation to go there unless you want to collect. Collect plants, collect insects, collect fish. Otherwise, the area is almost entirely devoid of any motivation to be there. Fast forward to Jungle Adventure, and once again Sims 4 thinks it's a collectathon. There's two collections, and both aspirations seem to more or less revolve around collecting. I feel like collecting things is their go-to activity for almost every pack these days, and personally, I hate it. Collecting is not something with a long-term benefit that helps flesh out my sim. It's just a time kill that has no effects whatsoever once finished.


To me, the biggest offender has to be the Vet Career and the entirety of the retail system.
It amazes me that there was not more outrage about this.

Get to Work released, people tried out retail, it was terrible. Complaints included that both customers and employees seemed to do nothing at all, basic interactions with customers took ages, and employees just simply weren't doing their job. Fast forward to today, they still haven't patched or repaired that system in any way whatsoever. That portion of Get To Work remains broken and an absolute chore to participate in.

A broken feature is one thing. Having the audacity to recycle a broken feature and demand $40 for it....? Whoa. I seriously cannot believe there was not outrage over this. Browse the forums and sure enough, you'll see very familiar complaints. "My Vet employees aren't working! They just stand around!" This is the exact same issue. They copy-pasted the retail system, bugs and all. They absolutely should've known this would've happened. This is a case where either they directly knew this might happen, or they should've known and the idea that they couldn't anticipate this is ridiculous.


Above I asked the question of whether assets are recycled because they make sense, or if assets are recycled because content is planned out in such a way that allows for it. AKA, if we had a choice between a new pack revolving around Sumo Wrestling or a new pack involving being a caterer, they'd absolutely do the caterer pack strictly because they get to save on costs while the Sumo wrestling would demand new assets. That's my concern: that the person behind the steering wheel of Sims 4 isn't asking "what would be fun to play," but rather "how can I take this work I already did and extend it," with budgeting taking priority over fun and gameplay. Looking at how "new" (functionally identical) foods have become a theme since Dine Out and how the Vet career recycled retail despite how overwhelmingly obvious that wasn't a good idea, combined with all the other examples of recycled content above, I struggle to see how budgeting and cutting corners is not a company policy for this game.

I suppose my question at this point would be simple to word, difficult to answer: why?

Why does this game constantly feel underfunded, as if the upper management refuses to secure funds for it OR insists more profit can be made via cutting corners?

Why is content recycled so frequently? I don't recall this ever happening with any of the past Sims games. Recycling a single tidbit of content in past games was really noticeable since it was so rare (example, laundry being in both Ambitions and University Life), but here I feel like the only pack not recycling content at all since Get Together is - big surprise - vampires.

Why are concepts that we know to be flawed or buggy being recycled? If I ask myself this question, the only answer I can come up with is "money lol." There is simply no other motivation to recycle that Vet career and lo and behold the bugs weren't fixed at all.

And to the community itself: why are we not more critical of this? As I said, I can understand recycling certain assets. Sometimes it just makes sense and saves on time. I wouldn't expect new animations for excavation sites because we already have a perfectly good digging animation that suits it. However, I remain amazed they got away with recycling that Vet career (and all it's bugs) and I remain amazed how many of the animations/audio files/gameplay effects of social interactions are 100% identical.


Personally, I want more, and I doubt I'm the only one. I'd love to hear thoughts from others and how they feel about the recycled content, because I feel this seriously harms the quality of future packs and the game as a whole when future content seems HEAVILY reliant on what's easiest to copy and paste.

"Who are you, that do not know your history?"

Comments

  • NikNakNikNak Posts: 302 Member
    I was just going to post this image here. Couldn't agree more with this.
  • ChazzzyChazzzy Posts: 7,166 Member
    edited March 2018
    I like the new bush in Jungle Adventures, and yes I know it was “recycled” from Get Together.

    I like the new food options we get in every pack.

    I don’t use any costumes.

    I don’t use the retail system from Get To Work because I don’t like we can’t have the business open while we’re off the lot.

    Even though we can have the restaurant open from Dine Out without being on the lot, the last time I did it was very problematic. If I switched to a different household and switched back, I had employees gone and positions unfilled. If I by chance happened to still have employees and was able to open the restaurant, it would take hours to make any money. I make much more money actually being on the lot. I have no idea why that’s the case but it seemed like a waste of time to even have a restaurant unless you want to build your sim a studio apartment above it to live in.
  • BrindletonBrindleton Posts: 415 Member
    Well, Sims 3 had Late Night/Showtime reusing the same fame system (one of them being completely dedicated to the fame system) + vampires being a life state in both Late Night and Supernatural...so compared to that, the recycling in the Sims 4 looks pretty tame to me.
  • bloodydarkanglbloodydarkangl Posts: 74 Member
    They've always been doing that
  • jackjack_kjackjack_k Posts: 8,601 Member
    edited March 2018
    They've always been doing that

    Examples? It definitely has never felt this frequent or obvious.
    Brindleton wrote: »
    Well, Sims 3 had Late Night/Showtime reusing the same fame system (one of them being completely dedicated to the fame system) + vampires being a life state in both Late Night and Supernatural...so compared to that, the recycling in the Sims 4 looks pretty tame to me.

    As I said, the few times Sims 3 recycled content stood out like a sore thumb because they were so rare. Vampires being recycled both made sense for the pack and they received new interactions to play around with. Laundry being recycled felt as simple as them wanting laundry in University life, but needing to copy-paste it to make that possible. (and yeah, they made new washers) I'm not even sure if you're correct about Showtime recycling the fame system as I don't recall that happening, but even if it did, again it makes sense. Sure enough if I google it though, everyone attributes the fame system solely to Late Night.

    Individually the recycled content doesn't feel like that big of a deal. No one sees the bush from Get Together and loses it because a bush was reused, but seeing a bush, several costumes, some textures, animations, coding for social interactions, food stalls and merchant tables, and all kinds of systems recycled...? Every single one of those is an opportunity for new content, and every time they choose to pass.

    And the concern for me extends beyond the potential content lost because of cut corners. Like in my post above, I'm at the point I'm concerned that the theme and pack features are chosen with the ease of recycling content playing a huge role in what gets picked. The last pack to be made without heavily recycling assets in a noticeable manner was probably Vampires, and that was over a year ago.

    If you're angry at EA reusing the retail system (which is actually a business system) to make Dine Out and the Vet (which operate completely differently btw), you must also be angry at EA reusing the professions system for other packs? The Daycare profession for TS3, at best, adds a new Toddler interaction (the claw) the rest is base game content. Yet, for a pack like Generations that was already so small, they did the bare minimum to do anything with it. Compare that to Dine Out, where they reused the Business system to make an entirely new venue and business.

    The Sims 3 literally sold content twice (Hot Tubs, Washers, Dryers to name a few) and just added some new designs. But you had to pay $10 - $20 for a set, even if you had bought the EPs already.

    Get this, want a couple of new styled of washers and dryers, even though you already paid for them in Ambitions?
    $10 for 16 items https://store.thesims3.com/setsProductDetails.html?categoryId=&scategoryId=12746&index=0&productId=OFB-SIM3:24481&pcategoryId=&ppcategoryId=12745

    What's the difference between that and reusing Food Vendors or Market tables? Oh I know, EA basically included them for free with JA. Considering it has numerous gameplay items, more than any Game Pack before.

    Not to mention, The Sims 2 would recycle content as well. You realise that Bon Voyage meant that Hotel gameplay revolved around Restaurants as well? So if you already spent years with Restaurants in the Sims 2, you already played with the majority of what Hotels offer. They also made you pay for Cars as a paid feature of Nightlife, even though Cars were free with The Sims 2 (free download because of the backlash after Cars were removed from the base game, and then tried to be sold later).

    I guess if you wanna be a typical 2017/2018 "I'm offended" type, you could find that to be a bad thing. But what are Hotels without Restaurants?


    The Business system was designed not just for retail. It was designed for multiple kinds of business', hence why the UI was literally built to support more than a Retail store. You can't say they "recycled the retail system" when it was just a case of Retail being the first Business they picked. Dine Out even adds completely different UI, and the Vet Career again, has a completely different UI.

    Again, there's nothing different between that and reusing the Profession system in The Sims 3. They build these systems so they can be used more than once. There is nothing wrong with that.

    When EA decides to release a "dating expansion" for example that includes Restaurants & Cafes as dating hotspots, even though we already have them, and decide to make that 50% of the content of the pack, and we're forced to buy them again, you have a point. Until then, theres no difference between EA recycling content like food vendors, with EA recycling content like Restaurants.



    As for recycling in general, I don't mind recycling if it makes sense. For C&D, the Vet Career is nothing like the Retail or Restaurant career.
    Food vendors, offer new types of food. Market tables in JA, sell new content.

    It's not like if I buy Jungle Adventures, that Get Together is useless because of a bush. The market table in JA doesn't really work anywhere else. And the market stalls in CL and C&D still offer new content.

    At this point, I'm sorry, but your completely playing "oblivious" to times when The Sims 3 and 2 would actually charge us twice for the same thing (The Sims 2 store sets would reuse content from other packs and make you buy them twice, and reused existing meshes) while complaining that EA added reskins of existing gameplay items WHILE providing more Build/Buy mode items and MORE gameplay items than ever before.

    If they offered us the same content, instead of new, you'd have a point. But they offered us this content, while making Jungle Adventure the biggest Game Pack so far, with over 200 Build/Buy items, and over 15 items with new Animations.
  • DragonCat159DragonCat159 Posts: 1,896 Member
    edited March 2018
    There are countless frequent examples of recycled content. Like the hair from C&D for males is copy-paste and are barely different. Parenthood added exact same raccoon outfit from CL. They could have just patched in or added as a color swatch to the existing item, but nooo - wanna give an illusion into tricking "LOOK! new cas asset/item" by having lame-ish justify their poor budget or lack of creativity. Animations are also too frequently recycled, the broken retail system (pretty predictable it was that vet clinic would turn out to be buggy as a store), the retail table, the rugs that come in two objects (separated & overlapped in a shape). Imma make a comparison between TS4 era & TS3 era recycled content quantity to see how much of a significant difference they have.
    NNpYlHF.jpg
  • jackjack_kjackjack_k Posts: 8,601 Member
    @JoAnne65 wrote: »
    Brindleton wrote: »
    Well, Sims 3 had Late Night/Showtime reusing the same fame system (one of them being completely dedicated to the fame system) + vampires being a life state in both Late Night and Supernatural...so compared to that, the recycling in the Sims 4 looks pretty tame to me.
    Apart from the fact the OP already covers it started with Sims 3, Showtime didn’t have the same fame system? Fame in LN meant scandal, free gifts and paparazzi. Fame in Showtime meant performing for larger audiences in different, larger venues (much more fun as far as I’m concerned). And Supernatural offered four other life states and just refined - and therefore patched in - the already existing vampire. In fact adding new gameplay to them.

    @jackjack_k I never played the Daycare profession, but doesn’t that feature also add a mechanism to run a Daycare? (I hated the SP’s with yet another hot tub or barbecue by the way, so again, how does this adress what the OP wants to discuss: it’s annoying when it happens too often and seems to become a habit rather than an exception; is it really that hard to stay on topic?)

    The point is, you guys are complaining about EA recycling content instead of new content, when they are ACTUALLY recycling old content, while also giving us new content alongside, not instead of.

    There is a huge difference between "recycling old content" which takes up slots and "recycling old content" without sacrificing any new content.

    This was never an issue when The Sims 3 or The Sims 2 (heck even The Sims 1 did it), so why is it an issue now? And my point is, there was actually more to be angry about back then there is now.

    So why the faux outrage?
  • FreezerBunnyCowplantFreezerBunnyCowplant Posts: 3,957 Member
    I like that they recycle awesome features from other packs!
    Otherwise Jungle Adventure would be the same pack, without merchant tables, food stalls and PooHoo bushes. :)
    That would be lame!
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  • jackjack_kjackjack_k Posts: 8,601 Member
    edited March 2018
    @jackjack_k Two things:

    1) Why do you treat this like a competition to be less bad? I name a problem with Sims 4, and you immediately start criticizing Sims 3. Why? Just because the other games have lowpoints does NOT absolve Sims 4 of any problems. BOTH are entirely capable of being guilty of the same mistakes. I even touched on this and criticized both Daredevil and Evil traits in Sims 3 for not actually providing new content, but rather just renaming the text names for interactions. The problem is we're at a new Sims game and that problem has worsened significantly instead of gone away. Another great example is that the recycling of the Vet career reminds me of Island Paradise: a pack released that was buggy and nonfunctional, and EA does nothing to fix it. It doesn't excuse the Vet career, it just makes it more outrageous that such practices continue. And no, Generations was not my favorite pack and you touch on why that is.

    I have no desire to go into detail of every flaw in past games though because this isn't about them, this is about Sims 4. Highlighting those past flaws is of limited use because those games are done, whereas Sims 4 can still benefit from feedback. The only interest I have in mentioning past games is to showcase that the frequency of recycling has absolutely spiked.

    There's even this ridiculous double standard here:

    The Sims 3 literally sold content twice (Hot Tubs, Washers, Dryers to name a few)

    You mean the ones with vastly different designs? In packs where there was enough raw content for this to be irrelevant? By your logic here, Sims 4 is reselling us content every time they make a new bed variant; those were new variants, not direct copies. You don't see me complaining about new bed designs because they're new; yes I would complain if a bed had the exact same cell and design but got re-released with slightly different colors, though.

    Even the presentation is different: Late Night releases a new type of Hot Tub, and no it's not blasted all over the streams and trailers as though the hot tub is somehow a "major" selling point of the pack. They new it was minor and kept it as such. The same cannot be said for these Food stands, as making "new cultural food" is practically becoming a running gag at this point. They've done this thrice now. Heck, even the recycled bear costume and recycled Superllama costume were used in pack previews and streams with the devs saying "look how neat this is!" There's a very different tone in the execution of recycled content: when past games did it, they didn't draw attention to it because the devs understood recycled content isn't exciting. Here? There's basically a 50-50 shot the recycled content will be presented as a major feature of the pack.
    What's the difference between that and reusing Food Vendors or Market tables? Oh I know, EA basically included them for free with JA.

    So Sims 3 releases several hot tubs with different aesthetic designs in multiple packs and this is "reselling old content," but if Jungle Adventures reuses food stalls, that's "including them for free?" Yeah seems legit, makes perfect sense.

    2) I've said this before, but your entire post is just statements with bold claims, but zero support, arguments or evidence. You absolutely have a habit of this:

    "For C&D, the Vet Career is nothing like the Retail or Restaurant career." *changes subject*

    "What's the difference between that and reusing Food Vendors or Market tables? Oh I know, EA basically included them for free with JA. Considering it has numerous gameplay items, more than any Game Pack before." *changes subject*

    "And the market stalls in CL and C&D still offer new content." *changes subject*

    You've not addressed a word of what I said or done anything to even support your own stances. I don't know what you're expecting to come of your post since you leave people with nothing to discuss. You haven't refuted a word of any of my arguments. You've just said "the vet career is completely different" and that's your argument I guess, but that's not really an argument because you've done nothing to point out how it's different.

    What I'm saying and what I'm arguing is this: why does the EXACT bug that pops up in GTW retail workers resurface in the Vet career? They've had three years to fix the retail system and they haven't done it. On top of that, they're ready and willing to copypaste it despite knowing the system is heavily flawed. It's lazy, it results in sub-par buggy content, and it's downright insulting to see such content repeated with zero improvements or even bug fixes. Why on earth should I give them my money for repeat content that doesn't even work right? That's like if I went to an auto dealer and they sold me a lemon of a Red Honda Accord that has troubles with starting the engine, and then one year later when I'm sick of dealing with it, I go back to the same auto dealer and they greet me with "so I heard you were unsatisfied with your Red Honda Accord with engine problems. Wanna buy a BLUE Honda Accord with engine problems?" No, no I don't. No one in their right mind would go back to that same auto dealer, nor would they trust to purchase another Honda Accord from them. That sums up my stance with this game wonderfully: I have opted out of multiple packs specifically because they recycle content to function as main features, and I don't think that warrants a purchase.

    I would have absolutely nothing against them recycling that retail system if it were good, stable, and saw regular improvements each time it was reused. This is not the case. You touched on the professions system of Sims 3 and yeah, there's your difference: that system worked (individual careers such as Ghost Hunter had individual bugs, yes, but there was no universal bug that was a guarentee to afflict all active careers), this system doesn't. The quality of retail system that we got in 2017 is more or less the same as the quality of the system in 2015. We are not moving forward, we're going in circles, and that's a severe problem. It makes the game look and feel like a blatant cash-grab too.

    How many times is the recycling of content too much? Food stalls have been used three times now, with the concept of "new recipes" as a major feature having been used four times. I do not care about the cheaply drawn food on my Sim's plate. It's completely irrelevant to me, and yet it's four times now they've tried to sell this stuff to us as a major feature. That's my concern: that this is just gonna continue, and that recycled content is actually behind the steering wheel with this game, directly playing a large role in what packs get made and what packs get skipped.



    1) It's not a comparison to be "less bad" because The Sims 4 isn't recycling any content that takes up slots for new content. This is how DLC works for any game. It's only an issue if Jungle Adventure, for example, completely got rid of the jungle area, and just gave us a new world with the same content. Instead, it took what it already built, re-used some of it, and then gave us a whole new GP over the top.
    You can't also "recycle a vet career" when we didn't have a Vet career. They reused the Business system, but The Sims 1 - 3 all reused systems too. If the new content was "run a vet store" then I could understand the backlash. But a Vet operates nothing like Retail, apart from the fact it shares a UI. DLC for games reuses existing content and builds upon it. A lot of what you're saying was "recycled" was built into the base game coding.

    2) The point here is, they didn't just sell you new laundry designs, they literally made you pay for the "development" of laundry twice. At most, those new laundry items on the store should have been a $3 DLC pack (16 items). Instead they make you pay $10, because they're making you pay for the development of Laundry twice. Adding Laundry into new Expansions is fine. But asking $10 alone for Laundry even if you already paid for it previously, is a stretch. EA should have just bundled those new designs into EPs/SPs or made them much cheaper than $10. At $10, you're past the point of "oh hey, here's some new laundry designs" to "hey please pay for Laundry twice".

    3) The food stalls didn't take up new gameplay slots, so again, the faux outrage trend is for teenagers who just discovered Twitter, not for those who can put 2 and 2 together and realise they didn't sacrifice new gameplay, to reintroduce old gameplay. The market without the Food stands would have been less interesting, and therefore is a welcome addition to Jungle Adventure. They also sell new foods, not existing foods. And for those who like Cooking, adds a huge new range of foods to cook. It can also be used in Dine Out, and a brand new type of Restaurant can be made also. There's substantial new content, considering it's recycled, and at this point doesn't even take up development time of the pack.

    4) How about you point out how the Retail and the Vet system is the same? Considering you played C&D on a friends computer, perhaps you may have not actually played it for yourself. Tell me what is the same? All I see is a UI being reused.

    (PS I love how you can write essays when you want to, but then always ask people who reply to your threads to prove themselves, even though your the one who's supposed to prove what you say to begin with).

    5) "I've addressed nothing of what you said" um... okay then.

    6) What's broken with the Retail system or Vet system. They work fine for me. Dine Out has an issue with Sims getting up to chat with each other, but the Vet career and Retail career work fine for me. You don't even talk about the bug in question.

    7) The Profession system did have bugs though. There's actually a bug where if your Profession requires use of a Rabbit Hole, it only works in worlds that don't have combo rabbit holes (which every world does beyond Ambitions). So if you're playing with Bridgeport or later, Professions don't work unless you replace the combo rabbit holes with base game ones. Also, that basically means that unless you're willing to use base game rabbit holes, the whole Profession System is broken. EA became aware of this, and basically made sure that future professions didn't require Rabbit holes. Nice of them eh?

    8) They're not selling Food stalls a major feature. That's full of it even for you. They are shown for less than a second in the announcement trailer. Literally blink and you miss it. It's also not even mentioned on the Origin page as more than a blip.

    That seems to be your issue. You get focused too much on one thing, that it clouds your vision for everything else that's going on.

    Jungle Adventure literally came with more Build/Buy and CAS items, and also more unique gameplay items (if we include the gameplay items found in BuyDebug from the Jungle/Temple) than a whole Sims 2 Bon Voyage Expansion (which is when EA made EPs $40 btw) for $20, and you're coming in with "um we've had these 3 things before".

    Obviously, Bon Voyage has more on it's side with Gameplay features (something that BA did really well), but that's quite a feat for $20 and all you can think about is the smallest, most unnecessary things ever and making them out to be the worst thing in gaming history.
  • simgirl1010simgirl1010 Posts: 35,701 Member
    I quite actually like the idea of new food cart recipes in each pack. Food and recipes are some of my favorite game features. I think it would be cool if instead of giving us newly designed food carts to give us the ability to customize existing carts and then just new recipes with each pack. That way we could add whatever recipes we wanted to existing food carts and those resources could be used for other features.
  • Horrorgirl6Horrorgirl6 Posts: 3,170 Member
    I quite actually like the idea of new food cart recipes in each pack. Food and recipes are some of my favorite game features. I think it would be cool if instead of giving us newly designed food carts to give us the ability to customize existing carts and then just new recipes with each pack. That way we could add whatever recipes we wanted to existing food carts and those resources could be used for other features.

    I think it depends what the feature is food and merchandise stands . For instance, aleast have different kinds of food, and merch stands there are okay. Something like a bush with a different texture is just lazy and just devalued the previse dlc. The problem isn't necessary recycling . Is the recycling use in a new, and gameplay way.
  • SimTrippySimTrippy Posts: 7,651 Member
    edited March 2018
    I think when it comes to TS4 recycling content, it depends on how they do it. And in the last few packs, I was rather happy with what it meant. Because I actually like that this time around, what we get in a pack isn't all of that kind we'll ever get. People liked the foodstands, they keep adding to them, without making it a general focus of the pack. People liked active careers, they further experimented with them in Dine Out (and it's much better, Dine Out is honestly fun to me while retail isn't and the active careers too repetitive.. and the last few patches have fixed a lot of bugs in both DO and the vet career for me - in DO my employees never just stand around and when I go out to eat, or take my own pets to the vet, everything's pretty fast and smooth again, and no longer takes a ridiculous amount of time), then in a different way in CL and now again in the vet career. In fact as a person who loves careers, if they finally give us self-employment back, TS4 will be the best to me career-wise (but only if I can one day register my sim at City Hall or other as a gardener, painter, archaeologist, etc. - and on that note, I'm excited that for archaeology they added a nice perk that at least feels a bit like the chance cards related to TS3's self-employment system). They took the idea from GF to sell vacation supplies and made it a lot better by fusing it with the vendor table. And there are so many items to buy there. If that's in part because they didn't have to spend any time on actually making the vendor table, then I'm happy with that decision. Anyway, what I'm trying to say is that recycling in these examples simply doesn't bother me because it's done so that they can add other things to these packs we didn't yet have, and the recycled content is usually a much improved version of the original.
  • DeservedCriticismDeservedCriticism Posts: 2,251 Member
    SimTrippy wrote: »
    Anyway, what I'm trying to say is that recycling in these examples simply doesn't bother me because it's used so they can add other things to packs and they're usually much improved versions of the original.

    I don't see it that way at all. Look at the Vet career. The exact same bug from retail pops up in the Vet career, and then if you look at the rest of the pack itself.....where are small pets? Where are horses? Where are Pet skills, careers and competitions? We didn't gain anything, we only lost features.

    As I said, it could be a case where they were never gonna be able to produce new content anyways, or it could be a case where recycling content is a "goal" of sorts that they try to use as much as possible. If it's the former, then this is the same old questioning of why the Sims 4 has such a tiny budget. If it's the latter, then I know exactly what to expect from Seasons: new food stalls, vendor tables and maybe a just-as-buggy copy of the retail system. For me, that's not exciting or worth my money to just get the same stuff over and over.
    "Who are you, that do not know your history?"
  • SimTrippySimTrippy Posts: 7,651 Member
    edited March 2018
    SimTrippy wrote: »
    Anyway, what I'm trying to say is that recycling in these examples simply doesn't bother me because it's used so they can add other things to packs and they're usually much improved versions of the original.

    I don't see it that way at all. Look at the Vet career. The exact same bug from retail pops up in the Vet career, and then if you look at the rest of the pack itself.....where are small pets? Where are horses? Where are Pet skills, careers and competitions? We didn't gain anything, we only lost features.

    As I said, it could be a case where they were never gonna be able to produce new content anyways, or it could be a case where recycling content is a "goal" of sorts that they try to use as much as possible. If it's the former, then this is the same old questioning of why the Sims 4 has such a tiny budget. If it's the latter, then I know exactly what to expect from Seasons: new food stalls, vendor tables and maybe a just-as-buggy copy of the retail system. For me, that's not exciting or worth my money to just get the same stuff over and over.

    The vet career is a lot more like DO and the active careers than the retail system. And although I'm sure retail is rooted in the same mechanics, I hate retail in TS4 but I really enjoy restaurants and being a vet, and sometimes enjoy active careers.

    Now concerning cats&dogs: I still like it, but I know you don't. I won't argue about this but, really, the vet career isn't all there is to this pack for me. And I, for one, am much happier about the vet than I would've been about small pets in cages. To each their own.

    Also, I don't know if it's my CPU, RAM, luck, or something else altogether but again, I do not experience such extreme bugs. The restaurant especially is fast, I haven't been a vet in a while but the main issue I had with it was visiting the vet with sick pets. Which took forever. It simply doesn't anymore, so I don't share your frustration there (although frankly, I doubt your bug reports in this respect are based on actually owning and playing these packs).

    And they do still make new content. Jungle Adventure is a pretty solid experience for one (but yes, it's a vacation experience, not a base game overhaul, we know, we know. Actually we knew before we bought it), despite the recycling of certain features. It still feels very much like its own addition and offers far more than merely the sum of its recycled features.

    Anyway... Just my opinion, of course, but I guess a lot of other people seem pretty happy too :)
  • SimTrippySimTrippy Posts: 7,651 Member
    edited March 2018
    Recycling is hurting this game. You only have to look at the active careers to see that.

    Even if you don't play the vet career, a visit there with a sick pet and the vets will wander about, chat, play on the pc, eventually they may treat your pet. But last time I did it was a good 8 hours before they would.

    Retail is a mess, dine out your sims can still be waiting up for 4/5 game hours on a good day for food. And if that's not enough you are fighting them getting up and dancing and swatting away random sims who drop by your sims table to chat.

    Doctor career is still broken. Those systems should never have been recycled.

    Not a huge fan of food carts being recycled either. It's just massive corner cutting.

    I accept fully that some people still experience these issues and for a bit I did too, but I really haven't at all the last weeks when playing. I'm not sure why. But then the question for me still is whether it's the recycling as such (which can add a lot of room) or the bugs that bother people. Because bugs can be fixed and they are being fixed, even if reproducing and actually finding bugs in this type of game and reliably fixing them without ever breaking them again later on, is probably pretty 🐸🐸🐸🐸 hard (and let's not forget it's always been that way, when it comes to bugs, modders saved TS3 as well).
  • ChampandGirlieChampandGirlie Posts: 2,482 Member
    edited March 2018
    I'll admit that I'm skimming this subject right now to add my two cents. I might go back and re-read it more thoroughly later.

    I will say that I am one of the people who like the various types of foods and different clothes because they do matter to me in the game. I'm not someone who makes the same dish over and over. I need the variety of different characters with their various interests, tastes and quirks as part of how I play the game. I guess I'm really into character development in this game. My mind probably goes in that direction generally, because I'm someone who loves learning about historic details such as what people ate, wore and did from day to day at various points in time or in different parts of the world. I like details. I find all the foods and stuff immersive. If I had less choices, I would get bored faster. That's just how I play and part of what keeps me interested, so I like it.

    That said, I agree with you about the recycling. I've definitely noticed it. I guess it's a fair point that they don't need to remake the same market table over and over again. It's also a fair point that they spend a lot of time on re-coloring and re-skinning old items and concepts. I'm sure that you are right that finding ways to re-use old concepts in new ways is a subject that they consider a lot. I don't think it's always bad at all, but I think that pointing out the frequency is a fair criticism. It's also fair to ask if doing this is coming at the expense of developing new ideas beyond new forms of artwork. I also agree that while I liked the depth of the breeds and the pets themselves, I felt like C&D was a little thin. The world was gorgeous but small for an EP. Admittedly, the pets required a whole bunch of new forms of movement for them, so they weren't recycled.

    New ways of moving and new activities do feel like they could be increased in this game. I've said this before but I'm liking JA. I saw that someone mentioned that whitewater rafting was originally a suggestion for the OR concept. Having played JA, I can say that it made me wonder, "Why didn't they add something like rafting to OR? It's precisely the kind of thing that is missing from it." It's reasonable to guess that it would have been too much work to develop the new movements at the time.

    Weirdly, we tend to see more gameplay objects in SPs such as laundry, climbing walls or bowling. (Yeah, I know that some people panned the bowling but I generally like it. It does offer a bunch of new movements and the games are kind of random. Sure, it'd be nice to socialize but it gives my sims another option for an activity so I like it). Yes, it's almost a joke that laundry is a gameplay object but they really did go all out with it. Lol. I'll admit that it's well done.

    Anyway, I don't want to see them simplify objects like foods, clothes and decor but I agree that adding more to do, more gameplay, should definitely be a focus of whatever they release as well. I think the art team does a fantastic job but I agree that adding more activities and directions to go in with the game is key.

    Champ and Girlie are dogs.
  • JoAnne65JoAnne65 Posts: 22,959 Member
    Can we please treat this hovering above the versions? Indeed, Sims 3 had the problem too. So, back to the problem.
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