A cell system sounds good, but: it´s nothing different than loading screens. If the cells are loaded when a Sim comes near a new cell, then just this cells are giving the appearance of liveliness, but the others are in a kind of stasis. So is the town. There won´t be any progression in town, the other Sims don´t have an own life, the player has to play other Sims in order to get new families, skills, etc.. (what you have to do in Sims 2 and 4)
So if you want a town which would behave like a real town, you have to load the whole town at once. (Sims 3)
Jumping in without reading the whole thread, but I just wanted to add my thoughts about TS4. I have never played it myself. I am the type who holds onto the one I am playing and doesn't actually play the next iterations until years after the release. That is usually only because I hate spending money. Before TS4 was released, though, I did watch the videos where they show you different aspects of the game and I raised my eyebrows to those. I am the type of player who wants realism in my game as much as possible. The new game took it in the wrong direction for me in terms of that. The new sims look more like cartoons than TS3. I am not gonna lie, I was truly let down for even just that. Then my niece got it and was so excited she wanted to show me, knowing how much I loved The Sims. She would ask me question on how to do things and I told her I had no clue. That this game was completely different from what I play. I did try it a little and got frustrated at what I couldn't do, as the OP complained.
@Evalen, hard to say on that. With the Glass Box engine powering TS4, I'm not sure what the limitations are with that and whether it will involve re-coding the whole world so to speak in order to facilitate Sims being able to travel to and from any location in the world without a loading screen. I suspect it would have to be a lot; because every lot right now in TS4 is subject to loading as other lots are not considered active in game until the player clicks on it. And that's the MAIN beef that I have with TS4 over TS3.
That is the main reason why I don't resent the long pre-game loading screen in TS3. It's the fact that the WHOLE world is loading at one time so that we can traverse the entirety of the world-map freely.
When you say "long" pre-game loading screen in TS3, how long is long for you? It's 90 seconds for me so it doesn't mean a thing. That's why I can't stand all the loading screens in Sims 4.
@Evalen, hard to say on that. With the Glass Box engine powering TS4, I'm not sure what the limitations are with that and whether it will involve re-coding the whole world so to speak in order to facilitate Sims being able to travel to and from any location in the world without a loading screen. I suspect it would have to be a lot; because every lot right now in TS4 is subject to loading as other lots are not considered active in game until the player clicks on it. And that's the MAIN beef that I have with TS4 over TS3.
That is the main reason why I don't resent the long pre-game loading screen in TS3. It's the fact that the WHOLE world is loading at one time so that we can traverse the entirety of the world-map freely.
When you say "long" pre-game loading screen in TS3, how long is long for you? It's 90 seconds for me so it doesn't mean a thing. That's why I can't stand all the loading screens in Sims 4.
It usually takes about 5 minutes for my TS3 screen to go from launcher to game-mode, so to "not-so-patient" people it might seem long, but I don't mind it. I'd be going friggin' nuts if I had to deal with the number of loading screens in Sims 4.
I just find something else to do while the game is loading. Then again, I'm nearing 50, so patience has become a LOT easier, than perhaps for younger folks.
Always "River McIrish" ...and maybe some Bebe Hart. ~innocent expression~
My computer doesn't really like TS3. My load time is approx. 20 minutes. I have to start it all up and do something else while I wait. But it is so worth it.
My computer doesn't really like TS3. My load time is approx. 20 minutes. I have to start it all up and do something else while I wait. But it is so worth it.
It was almost 20 minutes when I was playing on the laptop (I was trying to run 10 out of 11 EPs on a 2.2GHz machine - minimum requirement for Pets was 2.4GHz - not a good idea).
Now I'm running all 11 EPs on a 3.5GHz (still no dedicated Graphics Card - still using integrated..., but keeping my fingers crossed that I can afford one; one of these days)
Always "River McIrish" ...and maybe some Bebe Hart. ~innocent expression~
Before TS4 came out I was defending it because the future of the franchise was so exciting to me. Then I found out that it wouldn't have an open world or CASt. Sure we have to accept limitations sometimes but to get rid of Create A Style was incomprehensible to me. Why cut out a feature so beloved and central to TS3, where the options were limitless?? It just doesn't make sense. What kind of upgrade is a game when it gives the players less choices.
Here is the first look trailer for TS3. 'Imagine if you had lived your entire life inside your house, and then someone opens the door...' That trailer was and still is pure magic https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o6gXiw5URNM
Then with TS4 it's like they thought that 99% of people were limited to playing on potato laptops only meant for light tasks and they literally shut the door and nailed it down.
I know, eh, @coco. It's frustrating to say the least with the limitations that they posed on us with TS4. I'm glad I never shelled out the money for it. I'm much happier playing TS3.
Always "River McIrish" ...and maybe some Bebe Hart. ~innocent expression~
I see lots of folks making excellent points about the problems with TS4, and they are justified. I've played it and didn't like anything about it. Some are questioning why they took away open world. I'd like to make the point that the TS2 players, me being one of them, had a real hard time with no rotational play in TS3. It made me not play for years and go back to TS2 until recently. I've finally wrapped my head about the fact that it's a different game and I have to play differently (unless I use mods and such).
So they TRIED to incorporate some of TS3 and TS2 into TS4 but in my opinion, it failed miserably. Example, if you have rotational play on (it's an option), and leave a family to play another one and the mom is pregnant, she will have her baby and it will be auto-named. Also, she doesn't age while pregnant so if she has 1-3 kids, her husband ages way beyond her. Lots of annoying things like that.
Not trying to justify here, just maybe give some reasons behind their crazy design. I have TS4 but it's unlikely I will ever play it.
I know, eh, @coco. It's frustrating to say the least with the limitations that they posed on us with TS4. I'm glad I never shelled out the money for it. I'm much happier playing TS3.
I never did either, thank goodness. It truly looks like a horribly boring version, with less choice instead of more. The plastic art style, lack of CaSt, the mind numbingly boring looking gameplay, the dreadful bugs ( mother feeling flirty while her son is burning in front of her, and incest issues particularly ) that take ages to fix, or are repeatedly broken, the padded out packs with silly decals .. just to name a few, it all contrives to put me right off the horrible game. As well as Origin + online requirements. UGH.
I used to keep informed with LP's and other things, to try and keep current, when I thought that EA might improve things and something might end up appealing to me, but they never have and the game never has. To the point that I even refused to play a trial. I just can't be bothered spending time downloading gigs of a demo that I already know I dislike.
And I utterly despise seeing animals dressed up in stupid costumes, both in games and RL - it looks ridiculous and seems cruel.
My TS3 game takes hardly any time to load. Three or four minutes maybe from launch to family.
Before TS4 came out I was defending it because the future of the franchise was so exciting to me. Then I found out that it wouldn't have an open world or CASt. Sure we have to accept limitations sometimes but to get rid of Create A Style was incomprehensible to me. Why cut out a feature so beloved and central to TS3, where the options were limitless?? It just doesn't make sense. What kind of upgrade is a game when it gives the players less choices.
Here is the first look trailer for TS3. 'Imagine if you had lived your entire life inside your house, and then someone opens the door...' That trailer was and still is pure magic https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o6gXiw5URNM
Then with TS4 it's like they thought that 99% of people were limited to playing on potato laptops only meant for light tasks and they literally shut the door and nailed it down.
It's just sad
I think the potato laptops was just an excuse. I think Sims 4 was to be an online game and then when it wasn't, they had to salvage what was left and made a game rather than start over. And that the existing game engine just won't handle open world and create-a-style.
So they made a new game that went backwards to Sims 1. No open world, Create-a-Style, edit town, terrain tools, no nothing. And I prefer Sims 1.
I see lots of folks making excellent points about the problems with TS4, and they are justified. I've played it and didn't like anything about it. Some are questioning why they took away open world. I'd like to make the point that the TS2 players, me being one of them, had a real hard time with no rotational play in TS3. It made me not play for years and go back to TS2 until recently. I've finally wrapped my head about the fact that it's a different game and I have to play differently (unless I use mods and such).
So they TRIED to incorporate some of TS3 and TS2 into TS4 but in my opinion, it failed miserably. Example, if you have rotational play on (it's an option), and leave a family to play another one and the mom is pregnant, she will have her baby and it will be auto-named. Also, she doesn't age while pregnant so if she has 1-3 kids, her husband ages way beyond her. Lots of annoying things like that.
Not trying to justify here, just maybe give some reasons behind their crazy design. I have TS4 but it's unlikely I will ever play it.
I have 20 families in Sims 3 that I somehow manage to play rotationally. I play some for a couple months then move to another one, then go back to the last one. It works for me, anyway. I've given them all bios and they are all intertwined.
Jumping in without reading the whole thread, but I just wanted to add my thoughts about TS4. I have never played it myself. I am the type who holds onto the one I am playing and doesn't actually play the next iterations until years after the release. That is usually only because I hate spending money. Before TS4 was released, though, I did watch the videos where they show you different aspects of the game and I raised my eyebrows to those. I am the type of player who wants realism in my game as much as possible. The new game took it in the wrong direction for me in terms of that. The new sims look more like cartoons than TS3. I am not gonna lie, I was truly let down for even just that. Then my niece got it and was so excited she wanted to show me, knowing how much I loved The Sims. She would ask me question on how to do things and I told her I had no clue. That this game was completely different from what I play. I did try it a little and got frustrated at what I couldn't do, as the OP complained.
My niece started playing Sims 3 on my PC (never played a Sims game before) and loved it. She especially likes redoing everything in Create-a-style and redoing her town. And she loves watching her sim drive his car through the town she more-or-less created. I don't know what she'd do with Sims 4.
I find the Sims 4 Sims with their lego hair and that same, upturned smile all the same.
I don't think there will be a sims 5. EA is clearly milking us to the last penny with ts4, I doubt they have any intentions of creating a superior game in the future.
I agree with Sunnyyesjams. What exactly would a TS5 have to offer that its predecessors already have not? What revolutionary or innovative/unique content or game play/game mechanics could it surpass its predecessors in?
Certainly not in insane difficulty the way TS1 was
Certainly not in the TS2 focus on legacy families from cradle to grave the way TS2 was
Certainly not in the TS3 capacity to provide an unprecedented degree of customization. From the Color Wheel, CAP/CAW tools simmers have mastered in building/designing custom content for the game world environment --- right down to the freckles on a Sim's nose. So certainly would not surpass TS3 in being first to introduce, such innovative, highly customized modding tools. Or a borderless neighborhood in a seamless world --- with all the associated routing & navigational migraines. Or an open/interactive waterfront (both natural and man made on lots), accessed by an unlimited degree of transportation means (i.e cars, bikes, boats, toddler/baby strollers, Jetpacks/hover boards, supernatural teleportation, and HORSES).
Certainly not likely to beat all the recycled and unoriginal content from prior Sims games as regurgitated in TS4. i.e Seasons, Pets expansion. The post base game addition of ghosts. The late addition of Toddlers, etc etc. So certainly nothing new or different from TS4.....
So what point would it be for a simmer like me who has been playing the sims since TS1, and has all the original CDs (and redundant digital) copies of TS1 to TS3 to date? And that's BEFORE I factor any 3rd party CC like ATS3 Sandy, MTS3 etc etc. Like TSM, I didn't bother with buying TS4. Partially because I didn't consider TS4 a true Sims game just like TSM fell short of that reality. But mostly because it was the gutted engine of what for all purposes, was clearly intended to be released as an online social media type game. Which apparently got scrapped as the Sims version of Farmville at last minute. Because of leaks like Honeywell alerted the fan base to what was happening behind the scenes. I never bought EA or the devs marketing that TS4 was a stand alone iteration of the franchise. And my skepticism was proven right over 4 years later.
EA is reknown for having a deficiency in innovative capital where its franchises are concerned. FIFA, Madden, BF3 etc are all perfect examples of this shortcoming. Instead of dedicating the time and resources to develop innovative dev teams, EA has always opted to buy out entire Indie companies which possess said talent.
Cannibalize these Indie companies intellectual capital by milking it for all it's worth. With drip feed DLC that has been micro transactioned and
multi million dollar celebrity endorsed to death. Charge the fan base an eye and half a brain to pay for it all. Then shutter the company and retain all patents/licensing rights to said former Indie dev company. Westwood, PopCap (did they ever truly break even on that $1.3 Billion price tag for that acquisition before JR was retired as CEO btw?), Bullfrog, and yes Maxis were all victims of this.
The other factor is the fan base is now #WOKE on these franchise marketing shenanigans. So for those (salted) reasons, I doubt if the fan base will fall for a TS5 TBH.....
What exactly would a TS5 have to offer that its predecessors already have not? What revolutionary or innovative/unique content or game play/game mechanics could it surpass its predecessors in?
I've been silent on this thread thus far. To be fair, no has asked for mod advice yet.
But I can answer these questions. The remainder of your post notwithstanding, all of the sims games have something in common -- they only allow us to engage two of our senses while we play the game, while most of us have five. We can see and hear our sims. But wouldn't you like to smell the autumn leaves after a fresh rain, the aroma of a sims bakery or pizza parlor vs. the toxic polluted swamp waters of Twinbrook; taste what your sims are having for dinner or what the kids are baking up in their little ovens; and feel the fabrics we can choose in CASt, and what it's really like to wear freshly laundered clothes or have a soft comfy sofa vs. a hard cheap park bench?
One by one the game needs to evolve to encompass the other three senses. We won't get them all at once of course, we'll have to keep buying the next and then the next again iterations, and expect the first one they give us in TSx (probably won't be 5) to be taken away again in TS(x+1), the one that follows, only to be patched back in later due to player uproar.
@Evalen, hard to say on that. With the Glass Box engine powering TS4, I'm not sure what the limitations are with that and whether it will involve re-coding the whole world so to speak in order to facilitate Sims being able to travel to and from any location in the world without a loading screen. I suspect it would have to be a lot; because every lot right now in TS4 is subject to loading as other lots are not considered active in game until the player clicks on it. And that's the MAIN beef that I have with TS4 over TS3.
That is the main reason why I don't resent the long pre-game loading screen in TS3. It's the fact that the WHOLE world is loading at one time so that we can traverse the entirety of the world-map freely.
I was thinking it would be nice to have each section open, so you can walk, build on places you cannot go. maybe a loading screen to the next section, I know I am using the wrong word, sections, but to be able to go anywhere on the section you are living in would be nice. I would like to be able to put things down in some places, and go on places you can't go.
We found back Bob Pancakes ahaha in less grumpy ! (trailer of the sims 3 shared by @coco)
First time I went to sims 3 I was omg not possible I can walk and ring on my neighbohour door without always having a loading screen.
---
I say if you want to play both sims 3 and sims 4 do it ! Opinions are just opinions and to kill the sims 3 the community is very gifted for .
Both are different game experiences.
Then with TS4 it's like they thought that 99% of people were limited to playing on potato laptops only meant for light tasks and they literally shut the door and nailed it down.
It's just sad
IMO, that's exactly the reason why. My hypothesis on this is that they took all those dxdiag.txt players were posting in the Technical forum section as gospel. Then based the development of the 4th gen sims game as a super dumbed down life sim that was best optimized to run on lower PC specs.
When TS3 base game came out in 2009, I suspect most of the fan base were still using their TS2 legacy PC rigs. Not many simmers had advanced 64 bit Win 7 OS 6GB+ RAM high end rigs like I had. So playing the base game (up to WA) wasn't that much of an issue. At least if you discount the blue lots and Error 12 save game issues with WA that is.
AMB was the first time I think simmers became aware of their old TS2 hardware limitations. That ultra fast CPU in your Alienware PC (that ran TS2 with all it's EPs & CC so flawlessly) was suddenly struggling to animate your sim driving their Woo Woo to an emergency. Possibly because the CPU was being challenged with keeping track of the infinite number of cars in all townie sim inventories. Think it was right around then that simmer bug complaints started trending in the tech support forum.
But IMO LN was the first EP that raised the bar for simmer hardware. It was the first to place a HUGE burden on simmer's graphics card & RAM. From memory/graphics heavy features like HD water reflections, shadows to the stupid grey lot issue. And on the CPU from tracking new vamp sims to sims typically getting stuck in elevators, being lost (toddlers), or even falling off the map from BP's nightmare terrain due to routing/nav issues. That was the first time I think simmers first became aware their hardware might not be up to spec. Because if your video card and/or system MB RAM were insufficient, you were stuck with playing at the crappiest resolutions. And likely in slow motion since your rig was struggling to render the animations. And after LN came out, the tech forum was flooded with dxdiag posts.
By Pets, Twallan's SP and other modding utilities had become mainstream knowledge. By then, the entire community was tech savvy enough to know that in order to play the game, you needed to use the Nraas mod suite and/or have an upgraded gaming rig. This was definitely second hand knowledge by the time the bug fest that was IP was released.
So if any of this wild speculation is true, then its likely simmers with med to higher end rigs (like mine when AMB first came out) didn't need to post our dxdiags in the tech forum. The need simply wasn't there, as our hardware capability was forgiving enough to allow us to still run the game. Even with horrific bugs like the inventory bug. Regardless, I suspect we were in the minority. Most simmers seemed to have older TS2 legacy hardware. But even as more simmers became tech savvy, the cost of upgrading their rigs was likely a significant factor.
So if the tech forum posts are any indicator, then IMO the majority of simmers appeared to have lower end TS2 gen hardware. Which I suspect the devs were quietly collecting for data analysis & design purposes for TS4.
Which is a good thing from perspective of being proactive in game design and development. But also bad, since the PC tech curve is an exponentially evolving phenomenon. Which means the technical hardware dxdiag data from simmer hardware systems (by ITF release) would be obsoleted by the time TS4 development phase was complete (with game release approximately 1 year later). And I also suspect the sim community on here isn't close to the real simmer population who have NEVER bothered posting on here (ie. rather post on other fan sites). Or didn't know or care to bother posting their dxdiag info anywhere on the web.
That's my long winded speculation why TS4 seems to have been developed for "playing on potato laptops only meant for light tasks".
Oh and don't forget about a minority of simmers in the community who suffered from Agoraphobia. i.e. those hard core TS2 simmers, who never bothered to make the transition to TS3 because they weren't comfortable leaving the house
I suspect these folks were among the first to happily migrate over to TS4, as it offered continuity to their preferred game play style and mechanic (especially loading screens). Now I'm wondering how many TS2 simmers are still dutifully playing TS4? Returned to TS2?
edit:
Wonder if TS4 loading screens would make running TS4 on TS2 recommended hardware more plausible?
Recommended TS2 specs:
CPU: Pentium 4 or Athlon XP
CPU SPEED: 2 GHz
RAM: 512 MB
OS: Windows XP / Vista / 7
VIDEO CARD: 64 MB 3D accelerated video card (NVIDIA GeForce3/ATI Radeon 8500/Intel Extreme Graphics 2 or better)
DIRECTX VERSION: 8.1 (included)
SOUND CARD: Yes
FREE DISK SPACE: 3.5 GB
DVD-ROM: 8X DVD-ROM (This game contains technology intended to prevent copying that may conflict with some CD/DVD-ROM, CD/DVD-RW and virtual drives.)
Minimum TS4 specs:
CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E4300 or AMD Athlon 64 X2 4000+ (2.0 GHz Dual Core required if using integrated graphics) <--(dual core 2 intel has double cores TS2 Pentinum 4 so double capability)
CPU SPEED: Info
RAM: 2 GB <--(~4X RAM for TS2)
OS: Windows XP <--(same base OS as TS2)
VIDEO CARD: NVIDIA GeForce 6600 or ATI Radeon X1300 or Intel GMA X4500 <--(~3 gen+ higher in GPU tech)
SOUND CARD: Yes
FREE DISK SPACE: 10 GB
DVD-ROM: (notably missing as publishers in industry now prefer downloading from Origin/Steam etc)
Comments
So if you want a town which would behave like a real town, you have to load the whole town at once. (Sims 3)
https://forums.thesims.com/en_US/discussion/953447/streuner-a-cat-s-tale
It all started with Zack & Blair....
When you say "long" pre-game loading screen in TS3, how long is long for you? It's 90 seconds for me so it doesn't mean a thing. That's why I can't stand all the loading screens in Sims 4.
It usually takes about 5 minutes for my TS3 screen to go from launcher to game-mode, so to "not-so-patient" people it might seem long, but I don't mind it. I'd be going friggin' nuts if I had to deal with the number of loading screens in Sims 4.
I just find something else to do while the game is loading.
Always "River McIrish" ...and maybe some Bebe Hart. ~innocent expression~
It all started with Zack & Blair....
It was almost 20 minutes when I was playing on the laptop (I was trying to run 10 out of 11 EPs on a 2.2GHz machine - minimum requirement for Pets was 2.4GHz - not a good idea).
Now I'm running all 11 EPs on a 3.5GHz (still no dedicated Graphics Card - still using integrated..., but keeping my fingers crossed that I can afford one; one of these days)
Always "River McIrish" ...and maybe some Bebe Hart. ~innocent expression~
Before TS4 came out I was defending it because the future of the franchise was so exciting to me. Then I found out that it wouldn't have an open world or CASt. Sure we have to accept limitations sometimes but to get rid of Create A Style was incomprehensible to me. Why cut out a feature so beloved and central to TS3, where the options were limitless?? It just doesn't make sense. What kind of upgrade is a game when it gives the players less choices.
Here is the first look trailer for TS3. 'Imagine if you had lived your entire life inside your house, and then someone opens the door...' That trailer was and still is pure magic
Then with TS4 it's like they thought that 99% of people were limited to playing on potato laptops only meant for light tasks and they literally shut the door and nailed it down.
It's just sad
It all started with Zack & Blair....
Always "River McIrish" ...and maybe some Bebe Hart. ~innocent expression~
So they TRIED to incorporate some of TS3 and TS2 into TS4 but in my opinion, it failed miserably. Example, if you have rotational play on (it's an option), and leave a family to play another one and the mom is pregnant, she will have her baby and it will be auto-named. Also, she doesn't age while pregnant so if she has 1-3 kids, her husband ages way beyond her. Lots of annoying things like that.
Not trying to justify here, just maybe give some reasons behind their crazy design. I have TS4 but it's unlikely I will ever play it.
I never did either, thank goodness. It truly looks like a horribly boring version, with less choice instead of more. The plastic art style, lack of CaSt, the mind numbingly boring looking gameplay, the dreadful bugs ( mother feeling flirty while her son is burning in front of her, and incest issues particularly ) that take ages to fix, or are repeatedly broken, the padded out packs with silly decals .. just to name a few, it all contrives to put me right off the horrible game. As well as Origin + online requirements. UGH.
I used to keep informed with LP's and other things, to try and keep current, when I thought that EA might improve things and something might end up appealing to me, but they never have and the game never has. To the point that I even refused to play a trial. I just can't be bothered spending time downloading gigs of a demo that I already know I dislike.
And I utterly despise seeing animals dressed up in stupid costumes, both in games and RL - it looks ridiculous and seems cruel.
My TS3 game takes hardly any time to load. Three or four minutes maybe from launch to family.
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
I think the potato laptops was just an excuse. I think Sims 4 was to be an online game and then when it wasn't, they had to salvage what was left and made a game rather than start over. And that the existing game engine just won't handle open world and create-a-style.
So they made a new game that went backwards to Sims 1. No open world, Create-a-Style, edit town, terrain tools, no nothing. And I prefer Sims 1.
I have 20 families in Sims 3 that I somehow manage to play rotationally. I play some for a couple months then move to another one, then go back to the last one. It works for me, anyway. I've given them all bios and they are all intertwined.
It's just different but you can do it.
My niece started playing Sims 3 on my PC (never played a Sims game before) and loved it. She especially likes redoing everything in Create-a-style and redoing her town. And she loves watching her sim drive his car through the town she more-or-less created. I don't know what she'd do with Sims 4.
I find the Sims 4 Sims with their lego hair and that same, upturned smile all the same.
So what point would it be for a simmer like me who has been playing the sims since TS1, and has all the original CDs (and redundant digital) copies of TS1 to TS3 to date? And that's BEFORE I factor any 3rd party CC like ATS3 Sandy, MTS3 etc etc. Like TSM, I didn't bother with buying TS4. Partially because I didn't consider TS4 a true Sims game just like TSM fell short of that reality. But mostly because it was the gutted engine of what for all purposes, was clearly intended to be released as an online social media type game. Which apparently got scrapped as the Sims version of Farmville at last minute. Because of leaks like Honeywell alerted the fan base to what was happening behind the scenes. I never bought EA or the devs marketing that TS4 was a stand alone iteration of the franchise. And my skepticism was proven right over 4 years later.
EA is reknown for having a deficiency in innovative capital where its franchises are concerned. FIFA, Madden, BF3 etc are all perfect examples of this shortcoming. Instead of dedicating the time and resources to develop innovative dev teams, EA has always opted to buy out entire Indie companies which possess said talent.
Cannibalize these Indie companies intellectual capital by milking it for all it's worth. With drip feed DLC that has been micro transactioned and
multi million dollar celebrity endorsed to death. Charge the fan base an eye and half a brain to pay for it all. Then shutter the company and retain all patents/licensing rights to said former Indie dev company. Westwood, PopCap (did they ever truly break even on that $1.3 Billion price tag for that acquisition before JR was retired as CEO btw?), Bullfrog, and yes Maxis were all victims of this.
The other factor is the fan base is now #WOKE on these franchise marketing shenanigans. So for those (salted) reasons, I doubt if the fan base will fall for a TS5 TBH.....
But I can answer these questions. The remainder of your post notwithstanding, all of the sims games have something in common -- they only allow us to engage two of our senses while we play the game, while most of us have five. We can see and hear our sims. But wouldn't you like to smell the autumn leaves after a fresh rain, the aroma of a sims bakery or pizza parlor vs. the toxic polluted swamp waters of Twinbrook; taste what your sims are having for dinner or what the kids are baking up in their little ovens; and feel the fabrics we can choose in CASt, and what it's really like to wear freshly laundered clothes or have a soft comfy sofa vs. a hard cheap park bench?
One by one the game needs to evolve to encompass the other three senses. We won't get them all at once of course, we'll have to keep buying the next and then the next again iterations, and expect the first one they give us in TSx (probably won't be 5) to be taken away again in TS(x+1), the one that follows, only to be patched back in later due to player uproar.
NRaas has moved!
Our new site is at http://nraas.net
I was thinking it would be nice to have each section open, so you can walk, build on places you cannot go. maybe a loading screen to the next section, I know I am using the wrong word, sections, but to be able to go anywhere on the section you are living in would be nice. I would like to be able to put things down in some places, and go on places you can't go.
First time I went to sims 3 I was omg not possible I can walk and ring on my neighbohour door without always having a loading screen.
---
I say if you want to play both sims 3 and sims 4 do it ! Opinions are just opinions and to kill the sims 3 the community is very gifted for .
Both are different game experiences.
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When TS3 base game came out in 2009, I suspect most of the fan base were still using their TS2 legacy PC rigs. Not many simmers had advanced 64 bit Win 7 OS 6GB+ RAM high end rigs like I had. So playing the base game (up to WA) wasn't that much of an issue. At least if you discount the blue lots and Error 12 save game issues with WA that is.
AMB was the first time I think simmers became aware of their old TS2 hardware limitations. That ultra fast CPU in your Alienware PC (that ran TS2 with all it's EPs & CC so flawlessly) was suddenly struggling to animate your sim driving their Woo Woo to an emergency. Possibly because the CPU was being challenged with keeping track of the infinite number of cars in all townie sim inventories. Think it was right around then that simmer bug complaints started trending in the tech support forum.
But IMO LN was the first EP that raised the bar for simmer hardware. It was the first to place a HUGE burden on simmer's graphics card & RAM. From memory/graphics heavy features like HD water reflections, shadows to the stupid grey lot issue. And on the CPU from tracking new vamp sims to sims typically getting stuck in elevators, being lost (toddlers), or even falling off the map from BP's nightmare terrain due to routing/nav issues. That was the first time I think simmers first became aware their hardware might not be up to spec. Because if your video card and/or system MB RAM were insufficient, you were stuck with playing at the crappiest resolutions. And likely in slow motion since your rig was struggling to render the animations. And after LN came out, the tech forum was flooded with dxdiag posts.
By Pets, Twallan's SP and other modding utilities had become mainstream knowledge. By then, the entire community was tech savvy enough to know that in order to play the game, you needed to use the Nraas mod suite and/or have an upgraded gaming rig. This was definitely second hand knowledge by the time the bug fest that was IP was released.
So if any of this wild speculation is true, then its likely simmers with med to higher end rigs (like mine when AMB first came out) didn't need to post our dxdiags in the tech forum. The need simply wasn't there, as our hardware capability was forgiving enough to allow us to still run the game. Even with horrific bugs like the inventory bug. Regardless, I suspect we were in the minority. Most simmers seemed to have older TS2 legacy hardware. But even as more simmers became tech savvy, the cost of upgrading their rigs was likely a significant factor.
So if the tech forum posts are any indicator, then IMO the majority of simmers appeared to have lower end TS2 gen hardware. Which I suspect the devs were quietly collecting for data analysis & design purposes for TS4.
Which is a good thing from perspective of being proactive in game design and development. But also bad, since the PC tech curve is an exponentially evolving phenomenon. Which means the technical hardware dxdiag data from simmer hardware systems (by ITF release) would be obsoleted by the time TS4 development phase was complete (with game release approximately 1 year later). And I also suspect the sim community on here isn't close to the real simmer population who have NEVER bothered posting on here (ie. rather post on other fan sites). Or didn't know or care to bother posting their dxdiag info anywhere on the web.
That's my long winded speculation why TS4 seems to have been developed for "playing on potato laptops only meant for light tasks".
Oh and don't forget about a minority of simmers in the community who suffered from Agoraphobia. i.e. those hard core TS2 simmers, who never bothered to make the transition to TS3 because they weren't comfortable leaving the house
I suspect these folks were among the first to happily migrate over to TS4, as it offered continuity to their preferred game play style and mechanic (especially loading screens). Now I'm wondering how many TS2 simmers are still dutifully playing TS4? Returned to TS2?
edit:
Wonder if TS4 loading screens would make running TS4 on TS2 recommended hardware more plausible?
Recommended TS2 specs:
CPU: Pentium 4 or Athlon XP
CPU SPEED: 2 GHz
RAM: 512 MB
OS: Windows XP / Vista / 7
VIDEO CARD: 64 MB 3D accelerated video card (NVIDIA GeForce3/ATI Radeon 8500/Intel Extreme Graphics 2 or better)
DIRECTX VERSION: 8.1 (included)
SOUND CARD: Yes
FREE DISK SPACE: 3.5 GB
DVD-ROM: 8X DVD-ROM (This game contains technology intended to prevent copying that may conflict with some CD/DVD-ROM, CD/DVD-RW and virtual drives.)
Minimum TS4 specs:
CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E4300 or AMD Athlon 64 X2 4000+ (2.0 GHz Dual Core required if using integrated graphics) <--(dual core 2 intel has double cores TS2 Pentinum 4 so double capability)
CPU SPEED: Info
RAM: 2 GB <--(~4X RAM for TS2)
OS: Windows XP <--(same base OS as TS2)
VIDEO CARD: NVIDIA GeForce 6600 or ATI Radeon X1300 or Intel GMA X4500 <--(~3 gen+ higher in GPU tech)
SOUND CARD: Yes
FREE DISK SPACE: 10 GB
DVD-ROM: (notably missing as publishers in industry now prefer downloading from Origin/Steam etc)