Games like The Sims are very ambitious and it's one of a very few exceptions in this industry when you really need a big team to produce such big project. Sims is much bigger and more complex game compared to Simcity. Only AAA dev is capable to produce something like that and they will never touch it because it would mean taking risks.
I just don't see this. The scope of the game will be as wide as the studio can do, but remember that life simulation does not need to be like sims. Crusader Kings II's family simulation features are not like "The Sims", but it also meant that they were free to explore more topics, from war injuries, to incest. Youtuber's life, despite being limited kind of simulation has its own unique loop and its own version of dating. Heck Stardew Valley like farming sims are all the rage right now and they have life simulation features too.
Well this is the franchise that forgot to put a toilet in a house in the last world. How can you build a bathroom and forget a toilet?
There are lots of things like that. One of the apartments in city living the lobby part isn’t painted properly, they uploaded a restaurant under their account that was built by them that didn’t work and or wasn’t fully decorated with sections missed out.
I guess to them it’s leave it to the builders.
I don't quite remember these things happening in TS3 gladly and they had a lot of land to fill. TS4 worlds have much less lots and somehow they are even lazier now at decorating/building them.
LOL, I just saw where the new houses in the new world don't even come with furniture. The new world also reuses a base game house in one spot. And the bunker in the airplane, Sims can't use the kitchen, because no one play tested to see if they had counter space. Talk about half baked, there you go. And they want me to cheer for three more years of a lack of quality control, half done worlds (houses without furniture) and reused base game houses coming in new worlds? I don't think so.
That's really bad, considering this is a glorified world pack.
Well this is the franchise that forgot to put a toilet in a house in the last world. How can you build a bathroom and forget a toilet?
There are lots of things like that. One of the apartments in city living the lobby part isn’t painted properly, they uploaded a restaurant under their account that was built by them that didn’t work and or wasn’t fully decorated with sections missed out.
I guess to them it’s leave it to the builders.
I don't quite remember these things happening in TS3 gladly and they had a lot of land to fill. TS4 worlds have much less lots and somehow they are even lazier now at decorating/building them.
Actually it happened on almost every world. Hence why you can download a bunch of vanilla worlds with "fixes". Remember Island Paradise and people saying it was broken? Well, it wasn't so much broken at all as it was just awfully built. The routing areas were a mess leading to stuck sims on many areas and a bunch of lots were built in a way that sims would get stuck constantly. Even so that great EP became widely known for being broken when in fact, it was the world, not the pack.
I seldom use EA builds so I probably wouldn't have noticed a misplaced object or an empty room since I almost instantly replace the lots.
Well this is the franchise that forgot to put a toilet in a house in the last world. How can you build a bathroom and forget a toilet?
There are lots of things like that. One of the apartments in city living the lobby part isn’t painted properly, they uploaded a restaurant under their account that was built by them that didn’t work and or wasn’t fully decorated with sections missed out.
I guess to them it’s leave it to the builders.
I don't quite remember these things happening in TS3 gladly and they had a lot of land to fill. TS4 worlds have much less lots and somehow they are even lazier now at decorating/building them.
Actually it happened on almost every world. Hence why you can download a bunch of vanilla worlds with "fixes". Remember Island Paradise and people saying it was broken? Well, it wasn't so much broken at all as it was just awfully built. The routing areas were a mess leading to stuck sims on many areas and a bunch of lots were built in a way that sims would get stuck constantly. Even so that great EP became widely known for being broken when in fact, it was the world, not the pack.
I seldom use EA builds so I probably wouldn't have noticed a misplaced object or an empty room since I almost instantly replace the lots.
I'm talking totally empty houses. And IP was several years ago, we can't keep making excuses for this company just because of things they practiced in the past. Brand new game, brand new pack, ought to come with brand new quality control, new and improved.
"Games Are Not The Place To Tell Stories, Games Are Meant To Let People Tell Their Own Stories"...Will Wright.
Well this is the franchise that forgot to put a toilet in a house in the last world. How can you build a bathroom and forget a toilet?
There are lots of things like that. One of the apartments in city living the lobby part isn’t painted properly, they uploaded a restaurant under their account that was built by them that didn’t work and or wasn’t fully decorated with sections missed out.
I guess to them it’s leave it to the builders.
I don't quite remember these things happening in TS3 gladly and they had a lot of land to fill. TS4 worlds have much less lots and somehow they are even lazier now at decorating/building them.
Actually it happened on almost every world. Hence why you can download a bunch of vanilla worlds with "fixes". Remember Island Paradise and people saying it was broken? Well, it wasn't so much broken at all as it was just awfully built. The routing areas were a mess leading to stuck sims on many areas and a bunch of lots were built in a way that sims would get stuck constantly. Even so that great EP became widely known for being broken when in fact, it was the world, not the pack.
I seldom use EA builds so I probably wouldn't have noticed a misplaced object or an empty room since I almost instantly replace the lots.
I'm talking totally empty houses. And IP was several years ago, we can't keep making excuses for this company just because of things they practiced in the past. Brand new game, brand new pack, ought to come with brand new quality control, new and improved.
I have to agree. Issues from previous games doesn’t excuse things not done right this generation. If anything that should be an incentive if you will to ensure quality and performance is much better. And while the sims 4 runs better that doesn’t go for much. It has issues of its own, issues that are game breaking for some. And the game isn’t complete yet. I dread to think what state it will be in by time it’s done.
Not to mention the sims 3 is irrelevant. I’m really getting tired of the attitude of not being able to give constructive criticism to the sims 4 without putting the sims 3 down. As LGR said Is that the best thing we can say about the sims 4? That it runs well?
I really don't see any risk for another company producing a simulation game if they have the capability to do it.
It's a risk because this is a huge project which requires big resources, something what AAA developers prefer to use for marketing campaigns. Outside of EA nobody tried to do anything like that (if you discount mid-devs competitors which mostly focused on expanding particular features and pretty much failed to produce the same success of The Sims for this reason) and if you're familiar with the history of the game you probably know that EA wasn't a big found of the idea at first too since it required a high budget thus making it was very risky as I said, they didn't believe that The Sims would become so popular and make the investment justifiable. It's kind of the same thing with video games like The Elder Scrolls which has no competition as well and which also suffers from questionable decisions. Unfortunately, no one is trying to cash-in on success of TES either, a series which also had very rich and meaningful plot.
Companies nowadays prefer to make what 100% already works hence even movie industry in US is suffering from this too. Add to that the fact that many prefer easy but big money or that shareholders also have no idea about video games market. This is a part of the problem why remakes, reboots and remasters is such a huge thing or why everyone prefer to use established brands and turn those franchises into absolutely different games, just for the sake of the name recognition. Nowadays the business is about playing safe. Why bother with making something new when developers just can milk casual FPS, open-world sandbox/Western RPG, mobile games, etc?
A lot of ideas for video games can work and definitely would sell, life simulation is among them. But it's much easier to make a casual FPS and get ton of millions from that. You can even make every new one each year and get even more money and you don't even need a big team of competent developers to produce such a game which means less budget.
The Sims or pretty much almost any simulator has a lot of attention to details and are expensive to make (it varies from specific genre, but Sims is definitely the most complex of them all), it's insanely huge and has very complex gameplay, to the point that you pretty much can still discover new things in previous games which are many years old already. You have ton of things to do in this game and even proper AI is extremely complicated to do due to big variety of tasks or even items with which it can interact, add to that ton of possible situations which can happen to the sim and you need to make sure that nothing can go wrong. Not only you have to think and do some planning, this alone means a huge mess of code as well and AI isn't the only thing this game has.
One-man programmer will never be capable to produce anything on the level of the series unless he focus on a few specific features or unless said programmer is a superhuman who can account pretty much anything in every situation and also knows programming very well (though chances are he would never work in gaming industry and would prefer to work on something meaningful and serious which also pays much better) and most importantly can implement everything in no time which is very valuable as well (and what EA managers with shareholders apparently don't understand). And then you'll need a lot of modelers to produce ton of items too, but again, the main problem would be programming ton of various interactions with these, shouldn't forget people who make animations of course which The Sims is full of as well.
Of course you can expand one or several specific features, Stardew Valley was actually made by one guy even, the entire game, but I wouldn't call it a life simulator, it's a lite/casual farm simulator at best, where a lot of things besides farming are pretty much just a bonus hence those aren't too complex (even NPC behavior is scripted there) and which sets the game apart from sim games. There were Singles games and some other games I don't really remember which weren't really as successful as The Sims and which are the closest you can get to the genre. However, those games were lacking in many other aspects compared to The Sims which is the only proper life simulator and expanding already existing features in the series means even more complicated work. Honestly wasn't as enthusiastic about weak alternatives myself and I keep playing even the first game from time to time. Not even Stardew Valley or Harvest Moon or Rune Factory games were as good as The Sims (for obvious reasons).
I'm talking totally empty houses. And IP was several years ago, we can't keep making excuses for this company just because of things they practiced in the past. Brand new game, brand new pack, ought to come with brand new quality control, new and improved.
The problem is that some people think TS3 was free of issues or bugs (outside of optimization issues) and is pretty much a perfect game on every level (it isn't). Criticizing TS3 too doesn't mean justifying bugs or mistakes in TS4 unless I missed something, it's actually on the contrary. Now glorifying TS3 is pretty hypocritical and I never understood for what purpose those people do that (just in case, this is generalization). I mean both games were published by the same EA, but guess that's what happens when the series competes with itself. Neither game is ideal unfortunately, to the point that even TS1 with TS2 have their advantages over both.
The Sims or pretty much almost any simulator has a lot of attention to details and are expensive to make (it varies from specific genre, but Sims is definitely the most complex of them all), it's insanely huge and has very complex gameplay, to the point that you pretty much can still discover new things in previous games which are many years old already. You have ton of things to do in this game and even proper AI is extremely complicated to do due to big variety of tasks or even items with which it can interact, add to that ton of possible situations which can happen to the sim and you need to make sure that nothing can go wrong. Not only you have to think and do some planning, this alone means a huge mess of code as well and AI isn't the only thing this game has.
One-man programmer will never be capable to produce anything on the level of the series unless he focus on a few specific features or unless said programmer is a superhuman who can account pretty much anything in every situation and also knows programming very well (though chances are he would never work in gaming industry and would prefer to work on something meaningful and serious which also pays much better) and most importantly can implement everything in no time which is very valuable as well (and what EA managers with shareholders apparently don't understand). And then you'll need a lot of modelers to produce ton of items too, but again, the main problem would be programming ton of various interactions with these, shouldn't forget people who make animations of course which The Sims is full of as well.
Of course you can expand one or several specific features, Stardew Valley was actually made by one guy even, the entire game, but I wouldn't call it a life simulator, it's a lite/casual farm simulator at best, where a lot of things besides farming are pretty much just a bonus hence those aren't too complex (even NPC behavior is scripted there) and which sets the game apart from sim games. There were Singles games and some other games I don't really remember which weren't really as successful as The Sims and which are the closest you can get to the genre. However, those games were lacking in many other aspects compared to The Sims which is the only proper life simulator and expanding already existing features in the series means even more complicated work. Honestly wasn't as enthusiastic about weak alternatives myself and I keep playing even the first game from time to time. Not even Stardew Valley or Harvest Moon or Rune Factory games were as good as The Sims (for obvious reasons).
my "I don't see this" was as to why are people so hung up on having a sims clone. I remember being very much engrossed into Kudos or Alter Ego. And both of these are very non graphical games (Kudos has some graphical elements, but for the most part it's text only). I think Paradox could do a wonderful strategy life simulation, as they did amazing with Crusader Kings and similar games. The dynamics of family relations, marriage, religion and other mature topics are something that I feel is completely missing from something like The Sims.
Lastly sims is heavily scripted. The Sims 3 was scripted to follow you around whenever you entered a community lot, with The Sims 4 and 2 it's even easier as these little people don't continue their lives when off screen. In The Sims 4 actually they don't even need to remember most off screen happenings. Something like The Guild, where the map is always loaded, NPCs have specified jobs and have to progress marriage and relationships in a way that makes sense for their dynasty (including attacks, assassinations, etc), that's probably more complex AI wise despite having less life simulation-y interactions.
I honestly do not see why someone can't attempt a modern "The Guild" with a focus on life-sim, or a Crusader Kings with a focus on just family management, or any other system that is available currently. I do not see why farming sim boom can't lead to a life simulation boom, especially considering that once again, any other entry to the gender does not need to be like The Sims.
Well this is the franchise that forgot to put a toilet in a house in the last world. How can you build a bathroom and forget a toilet?
There are lots of things like that. One of the apartments in city living the lobby part isn’t painted properly, they uploaded a restaurant under their account that was built by them that didn’t work and or wasn’t fully decorated with sections missed out.
I guess to them it’s leave it to the builders.
I don't quite remember these things happening in TS3 gladly and they had a lot of land to fill. TS4 worlds have much less lots and somehow they are even lazier now at decorating/building them.
Actually it happened on almost every world. Hence why you can download a bunch of vanilla worlds with "fixes". Remember Island Paradise and people saying it was broken? Well, it wasn't so much broken at all as it was just awfully built. The routing areas were a mess leading to stuck sims on many areas and a bunch of lots were built in a way that sims would get stuck constantly. Even so that great EP became widely known for being broken when in fact, it was the world, not the pack.
I seldom use EA builds so I probably wouldn't have noticed a misplaced object or an empty room since I almost instantly replace the lots.
I'm talking totally empty houses. And IP was several years ago, we can't keep making excuses for this company just because of things they practiced in the past. Brand new game, brand new pack, ought to come with brand new quality control, new and improved.
Well this is the franchise that forgot to put a toilet in a house in the last world. How can you build a bathroom and forget a toilet?
There are lots of things like that. One of the apartments in city living the lobby part isn’t painted properly, they uploaded a restaurant under their account that was built by them that didn’t work and or wasn’t fully decorated with sections missed out.
I guess to them it’s leave it to the builders.
I don't quite remember these things happening in TS3 gladly and they had a lot of land to fill. TS4 worlds have much less lots and somehow they are even lazier now at decorating/building them.
Actually it happened on almost every world. Hence why you can download a bunch of vanilla worlds with "fixes". Remember Island Paradise and people saying it was broken? Well, it wasn't so much broken at all as it was just awfully built. The routing areas were a mess leading to stuck sims on many areas and a bunch of lots were built in a way that sims would get stuck constantly. Even so that great EP became widely known for being broken when in fact, it was the world, not the pack.
I seldom use EA builds so I probably wouldn't have noticed a misplaced object or an empty room since I almost instantly replace the lots.
I'm talking totally empty houses. And IP was several years ago, we can't keep making excuses for this company just because of things they practiced in the past. Brand new game, brand new pack, ought to come with brand new quality control, new and improved.
I have to agree. Issues from previous games doesn’t excuse things not done right this generation. If anything that should be an incentive if you will to ensure quality and performance is much better. And while the sims 4 runs better that doesn’t go for much. It has issues of its own, issues that are game breaking for some. And the game isn’t complete yet. I dread to think what state it will be in by time it’s done.
Not to mention the sims 3 is irrelevant. I’m really getting tired of the attitude of not being able to give constructive criticism to the sims 4 without putting the sims 3 down. As LGR said Is that the best thing we can say about the sims 4? That it runs well?
My response was a flat counter to the statement that "this basically did not happen in TS3", it had nothing to do with making excuses or invalidating criticism by putting TS3 down. Come on now.
And quite a laugh from seeing that quote from 2014 LGR, you should probably catch on to the past, hm, almost 5 years. It gets much more in depth in his reviews.
Well this is the franchise that forgot to put a toilet in a house in the last world. How can you build a bathroom and forget a toilet?
There are lots of things like that. One of the apartments in city living the lobby part isn’t painted properly, they uploaded a restaurant under their account that was built by them that didn’t work and or wasn’t fully decorated with sections missed out.
I guess to them it’s leave it to the builders.
I don't quite remember these things happening in TS3 gladly and they had a lot of land to fill. TS4 worlds have much less lots and somehow they are even lazier now at decorating/building them.
Actually it happened on almost every world. Hence why you can download a bunch of vanilla worlds with "fixes". Remember Island Paradise and people saying it was broken? Well, it wasn't so much broken at all as it was just awfully built. The routing areas were a mess leading to stuck sims on many areas and a bunch of lots were built in a way that sims would get stuck constantly. Even so that great EP became widely known for being broken when in fact, it was the world, not the pack.
I seldom use EA builds so I probably wouldn't have noticed a misplaced object or an empty room since I almost instantly replace the lots.
I'm talking totally empty houses. And IP was several years ago, we can't keep making excuses for this company just because of things they practiced in the past. Brand new game, brand new pack, ought to come with brand new quality control, new and improved.
Well this is the franchise that forgot to put a toilet in a house in the last world. How can you build a bathroom and forget a toilet?
There are lots of things like that. One of the apartments in city living the lobby part isn’t painted properly, they uploaded a restaurant under their account that was built by them that didn’t work and or wasn’t fully decorated with sections missed out.
I guess to them it’s leave it to the builders.
I don't quite remember these things happening in TS3 gladly and they had a lot of land to fill. TS4 worlds have much less lots and somehow they are even lazier now at decorating/building them.
Actually it happened on almost every world. Hence why you can download a bunch of vanilla worlds with "fixes". Remember Island Paradise and people saying it was broken? Well, it wasn't so much broken at all as it was just awfully built. The routing areas were a mess leading to stuck sims on many areas and a bunch of lots were built in a way that sims would get stuck constantly. Even so that great EP became widely known for being broken when in fact, it was the world, not the pack.
I seldom use EA builds so I probably wouldn't have noticed a misplaced object or an empty room since I almost instantly replace the lots.
I'm talking totally empty houses. And IP was several years ago, we can't keep making excuses for this company just because of things they practiced in the past. Brand new game, brand new pack, ought to come with brand new quality control, new and improved.
I have to agree. Issues from previous games doesn’t excuse things not done right this generation. If anything that should be an incentive if you will to ensure quality and performance is much better. And while the sims 4 runs better that doesn’t go for much. It has issues of its own, issues that are game breaking for some. And the game isn’t complete yet. I dread to think what state it will be in by time it’s done.
Not to mention the sims 3 is irrelevant. I’m really getting tired of the attitude of not being able to give constructive criticism to the sims 4 without putting the sims 3 down. As LGR said Is that the best thing we can say about the sims 4? That it runs well?
My response was a flat counter to the statement that "this basically did not happen in TS3", it had nothing to do with making excuses or invalidating criticism by putting TS3 down. Come on now.
And quite a laugh from seeing that quote from 2014 LGR, you should probably catch on to the past, hm, almost 5 years. It gets much more in depth in his reviews.
I may have misunderstood what you referring to, but I'm not one to hold TS3 on a pedistal, either. I received as much grief there as here when I complained about obvious things that should have been corrected or were remakes of things I had the game, and or new reskins, or routing problems. I'm just saying people are going to pay to get a new world in this new pack and it comes with empty houses. Some think that is good and let's them decorate their way, but I do know a lot of players who would think that would be a half finished world and need quality control to look at and play test every thing before shipping it. Like the world trees, rocks etc. are not in buildmode (Not even in debug) in this new pack and one guru has no idea why those were not included. We can all make an excuse like deadlines, budget, time, but quality control shouldn't be one of them. Another unfinished world.
"Games Are Not The Place To Tell Stories, Games Are Meant To Let People Tell Their Own Stories"...Will Wright.
Well this is the franchise that forgot to put a toilet in a house in the last world. How can you build a bathroom and forget a toilet?
There are lots of things like that. One of the apartments in city living the lobby part isn’t painted properly, they uploaded a restaurant under their account that was built by them that didn’t work and or wasn’t fully decorated with sections missed out.
I guess to them it’s leave it to the builders.
I don't quite remember these things happening in TS3 gladly and they had a lot of land to fill. TS4 worlds have much less lots and somehow they are even lazier now at decorating/building them.
Actually it happened on almost every world. Hence why you can download a bunch of vanilla worlds with "fixes". Remember Island Paradise and people saying it was broken? Well, it wasn't so much broken at all as it was just awfully built. The routing areas were a mess leading to stuck sims on many areas and a bunch of lots were built in a way that sims would get stuck constantly. Even so that great EP became widely known for being broken when in fact, it was the world, not the pack.
I seldom use EA builds so I probably wouldn't have noticed a misplaced object or an empty room since I almost instantly replace the lots.
I'm talking totally empty houses. And IP was several years ago, we can't keep making excuses for this company just because of things they practiced in the past. Brand new game, brand new pack, ought to come with brand new quality control, new and improved.
Well this is the franchise that forgot to put a toilet in a house in the last world. How can you build a bathroom and forget a toilet?
There are lots of things like that. One of the apartments in city living the lobby part isn’t painted properly, they uploaded a restaurant under their account that was built by them that didn’t work and or wasn’t fully decorated with sections missed out.
I guess to them it’s leave it to the builders.
I don't quite remember these things happening in TS3 gladly and they had a lot of land to fill. TS4 worlds have much less lots and somehow they are even lazier now at decorating/building them.
Actually it happened on almost every world. Hence why you can download a bunch of vanilla worlds with "fixes". Remember Island Paradise and people saying it was broken? Well, it wasn't so much broken at all as it was just awfully built. The routing areas were a mess leading to stuck sims on many areas and a bunch of lots were built in a way that sims would get stuck constantly. Even so that great EP became widely known for being broken when in fact, it was the world, not the pack.
I seldom use EA builds so I probably wouldn't have noticed a misplaced object or an empty room since I almost instantly replace the lots.
I'm talking totally empty houses. And IP was several years ago, we can't keep making excuses for this company just because of things they practiced in the past. Brand new game, brand new pack, ought to come with brand new quality control, new and improved.
I have to agree. Issues from previous games doesn’t excuse things not done right this generation. If anything that should be an incentive if you will to ensure quality and performance is much better. And while the sims 4 runs better that doesn’t go for much. It has issues of its own, issues that are game breaking for some. And the game isn’t complete yet. I dread to think what state it will be in by time it’s done.
Not to mention the sims 3 is irrelevant. I’m really getting tired of the attitude of not being able to give constructive criticism to the sims 4 without putting the sims 3 down. As LGR said Is that the best thing we can say about the sims 4? That it runs well?
My response was a flat counter to the statement that "this basically did not happen in TS3", it had nothing to do with making excuses or invalidating criticism by putting TS3 down. Come on now.
And quite a laugh from seeing that quote from 2014 LGR, you should probably catch on to the past, hm, almost 5 years. It gets much more in depth in his reviews.
I may have misunderstood what you referring to, but I'm not one to hold TS3 on a pedistal, either. I received as much grief there as here when I complained about obvious things that should have been corrected or were remakes of things I had the game, and or new reskins, or routing problems. I'm just saying people are going to pay to get a new world in this new pack and it comes with empty houses. Some think that is good and let's them decorate their way, but I do know a lot of players who would think that would be a half finished world and need quality control to look at and play test every thing before shipping it. Like the world trees, rocks etc. are not in buildmode (Not even in debug) in this new pack and one guru has no idea why those were not included. We can all make an excuse like deadlines, budget, time, but quality control shouldn't be one of them. Another unfinished world.
I did as well, in fact I haven't held any title on a pedestal yet because all of them had issues neglected and never fixed. Well, maybe TS2 since I seldom recall many noticeable or gamebreaking bugs. Out of curiosity, which houses come empty? I've been wary of some videos but I saw lilsimsie's and it was one rehashed base game house and a house that had an empty room and not that much furniture but haven't seen an empty house yet.
Heh, if there's one excuse I'd never use for Eaxis is budget, don't they say they are making a killing with TS4?
Well this is the franchise that forgot to put a toilet in a house in the last world. How can you build a bathroom and forget a toilet?
There are lots of things like that. One of the apartments in city living the lobby part isn’t painted properly, they uploaded a restaurant under their account that was built by them that didn’t work and or wasn’t fully decorated with sections missed out.
I guess to them it’s leave it to the builders.
I don't quite remember these things happening in TS3 gladly and they had a lot of land to fill. TS4 worlds have much less lots and somehow they are even lazier now at decorating/building them.
Actually it happened on almost every world. Hence why you can download a bunch of vanilla worlds with "fixes". Remember Island Paradise and people saying it was broken? Well, it wasn't so much broken at all as it was just awfully built. The routing areas were a mess leading to stuck sims on many areas and a bunch of lots were built in a way that sims would get stuck constantly. Even so that great EP became widely known for being broken when in fact, it was the world, not the pack.
I seldom use EA builds so I probably wouldn't have noticed a misplaced object or an empty room since I almost instantly replace the lots.
I'm talking totally empty houses. And IP was several years ago, we can't keep making excuses for this company just because of things they practiced in the past. Brand new game, brand new pack, ought to come with brand new quality control, new and improved.
Well this is the franchise that forgot to put a toilet in a house in the last world. How can you build a bathroom and forget a toilet?
There are lots of things like that. One of the apartments in city living the lobby part isn’t painted properly, they uploaded a restaurant under their account that was built by them that didn’t work and or wasn’t fully decorated with sections missed out.
I guess to them it’s leave it to the builders.
I don't quite remember these things happening in TS3 gladly and they had a lot of land to fill. TS4 worlds have much less lots and somehow they are even lazier now at decorating/building them.
Actually it happened on almost every world. Hence why you can download a bunch of vanilla worlds with "fixes". Remember Island Paradise and people saying it was broken? Well, it wasn't so much broken at all as it was just awfully built. The routing areas were a mess leading to stuck sims on many areas and a bunch of lots were built in a way that sims would get stuck constantly. Even so that great EP became widely known for being broken when in fact, it was the world, not the pack.
I seldom use EA builds so I probably wouldn't have noticed a misplaced object or an empty room since I almost instantly replace the lots.
I'm talking totally empty houses. And IP was several years ago, we can't keep making excuses for this company just because of things they practiced in the past. Brand new game, brand new pack, ought to come with brand new quality control, new and improved.
I have to agree. Issues from previous games doesn’t excuse things not done right this generation. If anything that should be an incentive if you will to ensure quality and performance is much better. And while the sims 4 runs better that doesn’t go for much. It has issues of its own, issues that are game breaking for some. And the game isn’t complete yet. I dread to think what state it will be in by time it’s done.
Not to mention the sims 3 is irrelevant. I’m really getting tired of the attitude of not being able to give constructive criticism to the sims 4 without putting the sims 3 down. As LGR said Is that the best thing we can say about the sims 4? That it runs well?
My response was a flat counter to the statement that "this basically did not happen in TS3", it had nothing to do with making excuses or invalidating criticism by putting TS3 down. Come on now.
And quite a laugh from seeing that quote from 2014 LGR, you should probably catch on to the past, hm, almost 5 years. It gets much more in depth in his reviews.
I may have misunderstood what you referring to, but I'm not one to hold TS3 on a pedistal, either. I received as much grief there as here when I complained about obvious things that should have been corrected or were remakes of things I had the game, and or new reskins, or routing problems. I'm just saying people are going to pay to get a new world in this new pack and it comes with empty houses. Some think that is good and let's them decorate their way, but I do know a lot of players who would think that would be a half finished world and need quality control to look at and play test every thing before shipping it. Like the world trees, rocks etc. are not in buildmode (Not even in debug) in this new pack and one guru has no idea why those were not included. We can all make an excuse like deadlines, budget, time, but quality control shouldn't be one of them. Another unfinished world.
Well - if you want to go Original Sims - then almost no house was finished. Even in Sims 2 - houses often had only kitchens and bathrooms done. Look at Sims 2 apartments in Apartment life even. So finished buildings is more of a new thing than a Sims Original thing. I am pretty sure only Sims 3 came with totally furnished houses. And even many of those were bare bones. The Sims 3 store world houses were the most complete of all Sims houses and those were done by separate team of people at a separate studio even - not really the Sims regular devs.
"Games Are Not The Place To Tell Stories, Games Are Meant To Let People Tell Their Own Stories"...Will Wright.
In dreams - I LIVE!
In REALITY, I simply exist.....
Well this is the franchise that forgot to put a toilet in a house in the last world. How can you build a bathroom and forget a toilet?
There are lots of things like that. One of the apartments in city living the lobby part isn’t painted properly, they uploaded a restaurant under their account that was built by them that didn’t work and or wasn’t fully decorated with sections missed out.
I guess to them it’s leave it to the builders.
I don't quite remember these things happening in TS3 gladly and they had a lot of land to fill. TS4 worlds have much less lots and somehow they are even lazier now at decorating/building them.
Actually it happened on almost every world. Hence why you can download a bunch of vanilla worlds with "fixes". Remember Island Paradise and people saying it was broken? Well, it wasn't so much broken at all as it was just awfully built. The routing areas were a mess leading to stuck sims on many areas and a bunch of lots were built in a way that sims would get stuck constantly. Even so that great EP became widely known for being broken when in fact, it was the world, not the pack.
I seldom use EA builds so I probably wouldn't have noticed a misplaced object or an empty room since I almost instantly replace the lots.
I'm talking totally empty houses. And IP was several years ago, we can't keep making excuses for this company just because of things they practiced in the past. Brand new game, brand new pack, ought to come with brand new quality control, new and improved.
Well this is the franchise that forgot to put a toilet in a house in the last world. How can you build a bathroom and forget a toilet?
There are lots of things like that. One of the apartments in city living the lobby part isn’t painted properly, they uploaded a restaurant under their account that was built by them that didn’t work and or wasn’t fully decorated with sections missed out.
I guess to them it’s leave it to the builders.
I don't quite remember these things happening in TS3 gladly and they had a lot of land to fill. TS4 worlds have much less lots and somehow they are even lazier now at decorating/building them.
Actually it happened on almost every world. Hence why you can download a bunch of vanilla worlds with "fixes". Remember Island Paradise and people saying it was broken? Well, it wasn't so much broken at all as it was just awfully built. The routing areas were a mess leading to stuck sims on many areas and a bunch of lots were built in a way that sims would get stuck constantly. Even so that great EP became widely known for being broken when in fact, it was the world, not the pack.
I seldom use EA builds so I probably wouldn't have noticed a misplaced object or an empty room since I almost instantly replace the lots.
I'm talking totally empty houses. And IP was several years ago, we can't keep making excuses for this company just because of things they practiced in the past. Brand new game, brand new pack, ought to come with brand new quality control, new and improved.
I have to agree. Issues from previous games doesn’t excuse things not done right this generation. If anything that should be an incentive if you will to ensure quality and performance is much better. And while the sims 4 runs better that doesn’t go for much. It has issues of its own, issues that are game breaking for some. And the game isn’t complete yet. I dread to think what state it will be in by time it’s done.
Not to mention the sims 3 is irrelevant. I’m really getting tired of the attitude of not being able to give constructive criticism to the sims 4 without putting the sims 3 down. As LGR said Is that the best thing we can say about the sims 4? That it runs well?
My response was a flat counter to the statement that "this basically did not happen in TS3", it had nothing to do with making excuses or invalidating criticism by putting TS3 down. Come on now.
And quite a laugh from seeing that quote from 2014 LGR, you should probably catch on to the past, hm, almost 5 years. It gets much more in depth in his reviews.
I may have misunderstood what you referring to, but I'm not one to hold TS3 on a pedistal, either. I received as much grief there as here when I complained about obvious things that should have been corrected or were remakes of things I had the game, and or new reskins, or routing problems. I'm just saying people are going to pay to get a new world in this new pack and it comes with empty houses. Some think that is good and let's them decorate their way, but I do know a lot of players who would think that would be a half finished world and need quality control to look at and play test every thing before shipping it. Like the world trees, rocks etc. are not in buildmode (Not even in debug) in this new pack and one guru has no idea why those were not included. We can all make an excuse like deadlines, budget, time, but quality control shouldn't be one of them. Another unfinished world.
I did as well, in fact I haven't held any title on a pedestal yet because all of them had issues neglected and never fixed. Well, maybe TS2 since I seldom recall many noticeable or gamebreaking bugs. Out of curiosity, which houses come empty? I've been wary of some videos but I saw lilsimsie's and it was one rehashed base game house and a house that had an empty room and not that much furniture but haven't seen an empty house yet.
Heh, if there's one excuse I'd never use for Eaxis is budget, don't they say they are making a killing with TS4?
I'm not sure of the name of the district. But where the more upscale homes are located. They are empty. One has one commode. Rehashed is hardly the word for the base game home in a lot. It has an extended bathroom but very same house. All they did was pull out the bathroom size about an inch. lol
"Games Are Not The Place To Tell Stories, Games Are Meant To Let People Tell Their Own Stories"...Will Wright.
Well this is the franchise that forgot to put a toilet in a house in the last world. How can you build a bathroom and forget a toilet?
There are lots of things like that. One of the apartments in city living the lobby part isn’t painted properly, they uploaded a restaurant under their account that was built by them that didn’t work and or wasn’t fully decorated with sections missed out.
I guess to them it’s leave it to the builders.
I don't quite remember these things happening in TS3 gladly and they had a lot of land to fill. TS4 worlds have much less lots and somehow they are even lazier now at decorating/building them.
Actually it happened on almost every world. Hence why you can download a bunch of vanilla worlds with "fixes". Remember Island Paradise and people saying it was broken? Well, it wasn't so much broken at all as it was just awfully built. The routing areas were a mess leading to stuck sims on many areas and a bunch of lots were built in a way that sims would get stuck constantly. Even so that great EP became widely known for being broken when in fact, it was the world, not the pack.
I seldom use EA builds so I probably wouldn't have noticed a misplaced object or an empty room since I almost instantly replace the lots.
I'm talking totally empty houses. And IP was several years ago, we can't keep making excuses for this company just because of things they practiced in the past. Brand new game, brand new pack, ought to come with brand new quality control, new and improved.
Well this is the franchise that forgot to put a toilet in a house in the last world. How can you build a bathroom and forget a toilet?
There are lots of things like that. One of the apartments in city living the lobby part isn’t painted properly, they uploaded a restaurant under their account that was built by them that didn’t work and or wasn’t fully decorated with sections missed out.
I guess to them it’s leave it to the builders.
I don't quite remember these things happening in TS3 gladly and they had a lot of land to fill. TS4 worlds have much less lots and somehow they are even lazier now at decorating/building them.
Actually it happened on almost every world. Hence why you can download a bunch of vanilla worlds with "fixes". Remember Island Paradise and people saying it was broken? Well, it wasn't so much broken at all as it was just awfully built. The routing areas were a mess leading to stuck sims on many areas and a bunch of lots were built in a way that sims would get stuck constantly. Even so that great EP became widely known for being broken when in fact, it was the world, not the pack.
I seldom use EA builds so I probably wouldn't have noticed a misplaced object or an empty room since I almost instantly replace the lots.
I'm talking totally empty houses. And IP was several years ago, we can't keep making excuses for this company just because of things they practiced in the past. Brand new game, brand new pack, ought to come with brand new quality control, new and improved.
I have to agree. Issues from previous games doesn’t excuse things not done right this generation. If anything that should be an incentive if you will to ensure quality and performance is much better. And while the sims 4 runs better that doesn’t go for much. It has issues of its own, issues that are game breaking for some. And the game isn’t complete yet. I dread to think what state it will be in by time it’s done.
Not to mention the sims 3 is irrelevant. I’m really getting tired of the attitude of not being able to give constructive criticism to the sims 4 without putting the sims 3 down. As LGR said Is that the best thing we can say about the sims 4? That it runs well?
My response was a flat counter to the statement that "this basically did not happen in TS3", it had nothing to do with making excuses or invalidating criticism by putting TS3 down. Come on now.
And quite a laugh from seeing that quote from 2014 LGR, you should probably catch on to the past, hm, almost 5 years. It gets much more in depth in his reviews.
I may have misunderstood what you referring to, but I'm not one to hold TS3 on a pedistal, either. I received as much grief there as here when I complained about obvious things that should have been corrected or were remakes of things I had the game, and or new reskins, or routing problems. I'm just saying people are going to pay to get a new world in this new pack and it comes with empty houses. Some think that is good and let's them decorate their way, but I do know a lot of players who would think that would be a half finished world and need quality control to look at and play test every thing before shipping it. Like the world trees, rocks etc. are not in buildmode (Not even in debug) in this new pack and one guru has no idea why those were not included. We can all make an excuse like deadlines, budget, time, but quality control shouldn't be one of them. Another unfinished world.
Well - if you want to go Original Sims - then almost no house was finished. Even in Sims 2 - houses often had only kitchens and bathrooms done. Look at Sims 2 apartments in Apartment life even. So finished buildings is more of a new thing than a Sims Original thing.
I don't recall any of that, most of them had basic furniture (base game furniture) and the cheaper furniture. Houses in The Sims were to allow you to move in your Sims and play the house your way if you chose not to play the Goths etc. Since TS3 world builders usually fill all the homes with some furniture or at least a kitchen, bathroom and couch.
"Games Are Not The Place To Tell Stories, Games Are Meant To Let People Tell Their Own Stories"...Will Wright.
You would think a bed would be required, but I guess you could sleep on the couch. My back hurts just thinking about that lol.
I suppose it won't look odd to players who haven't played for years, and that's o.k. But to some of us it's more like somone said I spent a lot of time on buildig this victorian home, but I'm too tired to fill it with furniture so let's just ship it, and btw, I got too tired to build anymore new homes so I stuck in a base game house. To me it says they got too tired to fool with it and shipped it anyway.
"Games Are Not The Place To Tell Stories, Games Are Meant To Let People Tell Their Own Stories"...Will Wright.
Well this is the franchise that forgot to put a toilet in a house in the last world. How can you build a bathroom and forget a toilet?
There are lots of things like that. One of the apartments in city living the lobby part isn’t painted properly, they uploaded a restaurant under their account that was built by them that didn’t work and or wasn’t fully decorated with sections missed out.
I guess to them it’s leave it to the builders.
I don't quite remember these things happening in TS3 gladly and they had a lot of land to fill. TS4 worlds have much less lots and somehow they are even lazier now at decorating/building them.
Actually it happened on almost every world. Hence why you can download a bunch of vanilla worlds with "fixes". Remember Island Paradise and people saying it was broken? Well, it wasn't so much broken at all as it was just awfully built. The routing areas were a mess leading to stuck sims on many areas and a bunch of lots were built in a way that sims would get stuck constantly. Even so that great EP became widely known for being broken when in fact, it was the world, not the pack.
I seldom use EA builds so I probably wouldn't have noticed a misplaced object or an empty room since I almost instantly replace the lots.
I'm talking totally empty houses. And IP was several years ago, we can't keep making excuses for this company just because of things they practiced in the past. Brand new game, brand new pack, ought to come with brand new quality control, new and improved.
Well this is the franchise that forgot to put a toilet in a house in the last world. How can you build a bathroom and forget a toilet?
There are lots of things like that. One of the apartments in city living the lobby part isn’t painted properly, they uploaded a restaurant under their account that was built by them that didn’t work and or wasn’t fully decorated with sections missed out.
I guess to them it’s leave it to the builders.
I don't quite remember these things happening in TS3 gladly and they had a lot of land to fill. TS4 worlds have much less lots and somehow they are even lazier now at decorating/building them.
Actually it happened on almost every world. Hence why you can download a bunch of vanilla worlds with "fixes". Remember Island Paradise and people saying it was broken? Well, it wasn't so much broken at all as it was just awfully built. The routing areas were a mess leading to stuck sims on many areas and a bunch of lots were built in a way that sims would get stuck constantly. Even so that great EP became widely known for being broken when in fact, it was the world, not the pack.
I seldom use EA builds so I probably wouldn't have noticed a misplaced object or an empty room since I almost instantly replace the lots.
I'm talking totally empty houses. And IP was several years ago, we can't keep making excuses for this company just because of things they practiced in the past. Brand new game, brand new pack, ought to come with brand new quality control, new and improved.
I have to agree. Issues from previous games doesn’t excuse things not done right this generation. If anything that should be an incentive if you will to ensure quality and performance is much better. And while the sims 4 runs better that doesn’t go for much. It has issues of its own, issues that are game breaking for some. And the game isn’t complete yet. I dread to think what state it will be in by time it’s done.
Not to mention the sims 3 is irrelevant. I’m really getting tired of the attitude of not being able to give constructive criticism to the sims 4 without putting the sims 3 down. As LGR said Is that the best thing we can say about the sims 4? That it runs well?
My response was a flat counter to the statement that "this basically did not happen in TS3", it had nothing to do with making excuses or invalidating criticism by putting TS3 down. Come on now.
And quite a laugh from seeing that quote from 2014 LGR, you should probably catch on to the past, hm, almost 5 years. It gets much more in depth in his reviews.
I wasn’t picking you out personally. If I were referring to you I would have quoted you. He may have said it 5 years ago but I hear people saying that all the time. So it still stands.
Also you won’t get an argument from me that the sims 3 had its flaws. My point was meant generally agreeing with Cinebar because I do believe that just because a previous version has problems that excuses sims 4 of its. And generally speaking I see that a lot
You would think a bed would be required, but I guess you could sleep on the couch. My back hurts just thinking about that lol.
I suppose it won't look odd to players who haven't played for years, and that's o.k. But to some of us it's more like somone said I spent a lot of time on buildig this victorian home, but I'm too tired to fill it with furniture so let's just ship it, and btw, I got too tired to build anymore new homes so I stuck in a base game house. To me it says they got too tired to fool with it and shipped it anyway.
Imo, I think they should at least come with original houses with the architecture of whatever place the town is representing.
As far as unfurnished houses go, I prefer a house already furnished when I buy it if I'm not building my own house. Having said that though, at least I can furnish an unfurnished house with whatever furnishings I prefer that are within my budget. So although I do prefer buying a furnished house when I'm not building my own, an unfurnished house isn't a deal breaker for me.
It's more the principle of the whole thing to me. It's just another example of how the quality and content has really gone downhill in recent years. Time constraints must be getting really tight in their budget now. Which is a shame considering how much money they are already making on this franchise.
I think it gets more difficult for them the more packs they add as they use only the Basic pack and Expansion, Game or Stuff pack they are selling at the time. I means we don't get much furniture in houses other than basic and that particular new pack. At least that's how I see it.
I tried to make a Basic house for upload once, Filtering to only using the basic pack but it was still listed as having some other pack items in.
LOL, I just saw where the new houses in the new world don't even come with furniture. The new world also reuses a base game house in one spot. And the bunker in the airplane, Sims can't use the kitchen, because no one play tested to see if they had counter space. Talk about half baked, there you go. And they want me to cheer for three more years of a lack of quality control, half done worlds (houses without furniture) and reused base game houses coming in new worlds? I don't think so.
That is just SAD. This is what happens when the staff is much reduced. Quality grows more sloppy and incomplete and quantity dwindles. This is what TS4 simmers have to put up with for the next 2.5 years left of this iteration and they're being told by other TS4 'simmers" to just accept it, that this is the way things are now. I don't know how they can stand the abuse to their wallet and disrespect to their loyalty. The true TS4 simmers need to stop listening to those "simmers". You need to demand more from EAxis for the money you keep handing over to them!
I don't own a thing of TS4, but this concerns me just as much since I'm looking forward to TS5. I want EAxis to know right now that if they continue do to the same shoddy work on TS5, I WON'T EVER BUY THAT ONE EITHER!
Come on, EAxis! You continue to sell TS3 because it continues to bring in profits that may very well help to continue to fund development of TS4 and begin work on TS5. Why do you think TS3 still sells well? And it's TEN YEARS OLDER! It's because you had several developing teams working on it - teams to work on its coding of AI, interactions, unpredictable events (equivalent to TS2 chance cards, only acted out in live action) memories, traits, etc.; teams on animations so that there are separate actions for many things instead of reusing them for everything; teams to come up with innovative things (scuba diving, all the water/ocean activities, tomb exploration, etc. are new to the Sims; teams to create more objects for the Sims 3 store;.... I could go on but I don't feel like typing all that out - there is so much more!
If you're not going to hire anymore people for TS4, then PLEASE at least hire more for TS5 so that it truly is AAA game with the quality and traditions of TS1 through TS3, but also have new and truly exciting innovative ideas (not any of the silliness of TS4 - they're actually cringe-y and maybe only the preteens think it's cool or funny). At least consult with all the people you laid off from TS2 and TS3 and Will Wright from TS1.
Please bring back fully open world - the computers out now can handle a fully open world and I expect the game engine to run in 64-bit. It needs to be fully open world so there is no break in immersion. Bring back all the wonderful things from TS1 - TS3. And it would be nice if flying was introduced. I don't mean just teleporting from one spot to another in the world like with the jetpack from TS3's Into the Future EP, or that awful air balloon from Aurora Skies (I had such high expectations of that one - how disappointing that turned out to be!). I mean flying like what you see in open world action games like Far Cry, Just Cause, etc. series. I would love to just sit back and take in the view as my sims hang glide or fly their helicopter or single engine aircraft.
Also please don't use the art-style of TS4. I know you think it's a selling point, but I actually hate that goofy-cartoony style. And they constantly have that stupid smile plastered on their faces. Plus the male sims have these small heads and big bodies. What is up with that?!??
Games like The Sims are very ambitious and it's one of a very few exceptions in this industry when you really need a big team to produce such big project. Sims is much bigger and more complex game compared to Simcity. Only AAA dev is capable to produce something like that and they will never touch it because it would mean taking risks.
I really don't see any risk for another company producing a simulation game if they have the capability to do it. The Sims franchise has made millions and is still making a lot of money on TS4 despite the quality and content being a lot less than desired. Frankly, I'm surprised that a company hasn't taken advantage of how EA has created a lot of unhappy simmers. Sure, there are still a lot of simmers who are happy with TS4, but "blind" loyalty only goes so far in my opinion. Especially, if a better option for the same type of gameplay becomes available.
I totally agree. The competing devs just have to read this forum to know what we want - basically the best of each iteration from TS1 through TS4 - and put it all in their own game with new innovating gameplay. And I don't understand why a simmer would try to discourage that idea by saying that it's too large and complex a project. Twallan fixed the entire TS3 game ALL BY HIMSELF and even added more functionality to it! (Well okay, not the entire game, but he sure did a lot! He fixed the major brunt of it!) So if one dev can do all that alone (and remember, he had a day job), imagine what a good but efficient group of devs can do working full time on it.
One thing that needs to be pointed out. Twallan was motivated as can be seen by the brilliant quality of his work. EA and any dev that wants to compete in this genre need to hire motivated people. You can't just hire someone who is a good programmer or whatever - they have to LOVE the life simulation genre. I saw that love in TS1 through TS3, but I don't see it at all in TS4. I want that love back in TS5!
You would think a bed would be required, but I guess you could sleep on the couch. My back hurts just thinking about that lol.
I suppose it won't look odd to players who haven't played for years, and that's o.k. But to some of us it's more like somone said I spent a lot of time on buildig this victorian home, but I'm too tired to fill it with furniture so let's just ship it, and btw, I got too tired to build anymore new homes so I stuck in a base game house. To me it says they got too tired to fool with it and shipped it anyway.
Imo, I think they should at least come with original houses with the architecture of whatever place the town is representing.
As far as unfurnished houses go, I prefer a house already furnished when I buy it if I'm not building my own house. Having said that though, at least I can furnish an unfurnished house with whatever furnishings I prefer that are within my budget. So although I do prefer buying a furnished house when I'm not building my own, an unfurnished house isn't a deal breaker for me.
It's more the principle of the whole thing to me. It's just another example of how the quality and content has really gone downhill in recent years. Time constraints must be getting really tight in their budget now. Which is a shame considering how much money they are already making on this franchise.
Yes, it's sort of perplexing to wonder why Strangerville has Victorian houses (empty ones borrowed from something else?) in a desert town then compare it to the desert trailer park. Weird, and doesn't seem to fit the theme. And three more years of it.
"Games Are Not The Place To Tell Stories, Games Are Meant To Let People Tell Their Own Stories"...Will Wright.
Actually, if Strangerville is based on one of several desert towns in Arizona, Victorian homes would be quite the thing as that type of architecture was used often for towns that were built from the 1860s through the early part of the century. In fact, there is a large group of Victorians in Prescott and several more in Sedona.
OK, Having all the packs I wouldn't mind EA/Maxis furnishing the houses with all the objects I already have but what about those who haven't got many of them? That's why they look empty.
I don't want to have houses just furnished with basic items but have to put up with them because others don't have all the packs that I have. The less furnished the better for me as I want to fill them with objects from all my packs.
Comments
I just don't see this. The scope of the game will be as wide as the studio can do, but remember that life simulation does not need to be like sims. Crusader Kings II's family simulation features are not like "The Sims", but it also meant that they were free to explore more topics, from war injuries, to incest. Youtuber's life, despite being limited kind of simulation has its own unique loop and its own version of dating. Heck Stardew Valley like farming sims are all the rage right now and they have life simulation features too.
I don't quite remember these things happening in TS3 gladly and they had a lot of land to fill. TS4 worlds have much less lots and somehow they are even lazier now at decorating/building them.
That's really bad, considering this is a glorified world pack.
Actually it happened on almost every world. Hence why you can download a bunch of vanilla worlds with "fixes". Remember Island Paradise and people saying it was broken? Well, it wasn't so much broken at all as it was just awfully built. The routing areas were a mess leading to stuck sims on many areas and a bunch of lots were built in a way that sims would get stuck constantly. Even so that great EP became widely known for being broken when in fact, it was the world, not the pack.
I seldom use EA builds so I probably wouldn't have noticed a misplaced object or an empty room since I almost instantly replace the lots.
I'm talking totally empty houses. And IP was several years ago, we can't keep making excuses for this company just because of things they practiced in the past. Brand new game, brand new pack, ought to come with brand new quality control, new and improved.
I have to agree. Issues from previous games doesn’t excuse things not done right this generation. If anything that should be an incentive if you will to ensure quality and performance is much better. And while the sims 4 runs better that doesn’t go for much. It has issues of its own, issues that are game breaking for some. And the game isn’t complete yet. I dread to think what state it will be in by time it’s done.
Not to mention the sims 3 is irrelevant. I’m really getting tired of the attitude of not being able to give constructive criticism to the sims 4 without putting the sims 3 down. As LGR said Is that the best thing we can say about the sims 4? That it runs well?
Companies nowadays prefer to make what 100% already works hence even movie industry in US is suffering from this too. Add to that the fact that many prefer easy but big money or that shareholders also have no idea about video games market. This is a part of the problem why remakes, reboots and remasters is such a huge thing or why everyone prefer to use established brands and turn those franchises into absolutely different games, just for the sake of the name recognition. Nowadays the business is about playing safe. Why bother with making something new when developers just can milk casual FPS, open-world sandbox/Western RPG, mobile games, etc?
A lot of ideas for video games can work and definitely would sell, life simulation is among them. But it's much easier to make a casual FPS and get ton of millions from that. You can even make every new one each year and get even more money and you don't even need a big team of competent developers to produce such a game which means less budget.
The Sims or pretty much almost any simulator has a lot of attention to details and are expensive to make (it varies from specific genre, but Sims is definitely the most complex of them all), it's insanely huge and has very complex gameplay, to the point that you pretty much can still discover new things in previous games which are many years old already. You have ton of things to do in this game and even proper AI is extremely complicated to do due to big variety of tasks or even items with which it can interact, add to that ton of possible situations which can happen to the sim and you need to make sure that nothing can go wrong. Not only you have to think and do some planning, this alone means a huge mess of code as well and AI isn't the only thing this game has.
One-man programmer will never be capable to produce anything on the level of the series unless he focus on a few specific features or unless said programmer is a superhuman who can account pretty much anything in every situation and also knows programming very well (though chances are he would never work in gaming industry and would prefer to work on something meaningful and serious which also pays much better) and most importantly can implement everything in no time which is very valuable as well (and what EA managers with shareholders apparently don't understand). And then you'll need a lot of modelers to produce ton of items too, but again, the main problem would be programming ton of various interactions with these, shouldn't forget people who make animations of course which The Sims is full of as well.
Of course you can expand one or several specific features, Stardew Valley was actually made by one guy even, the entire game, but I wouldn't call it a life simulator, it's a lite/casual farm simulator at best, where a lot of things besides farming are pretty much just a bonus hence those aren't too complex (even NPC behavior is scripted there) and which sets the game apart from sim games. There were Singles games and some other games I don't really remember which weren't really as successful as The Sims and which are the closest you can get to the genre. However, those games were lacking in many other aspects compared to The Sims which is the only proper life simulator and expanding already existing features in the series means even more complicated work. Honestly wasn't as enthusiastic about weak alternatives myself and I keep playing even the first game from time to time. Not even Stardew Valley or Harvest Moon or Rune Factory games were as good as The Sims (for obvious reasons).
The problem is that some people think TS3 was free of issues or bugs (outside of optimization issues) and is pretty much a perfect game on every level (it isn't). Criticizing TS3 too doesn't mean justifying bugs or mistakes in TS4 unless I missed something, it's actually on the contrary. Now glorifying TS3 is pretty hypocritical and I never understood for what purpose those people do that (just in case, this is generalization). I mean both games were published by the same EA, but guess that's what happens when the series competes with itself. Neither game is ideal unfortunately, to the point that even TS1 with TS2 have their advantages over both.
my "I don't see this" was as to why are people so hung up on having a sims clone. I remember being very much engrossed into Kudos or Alter Ego. And both of these are very non graphical games (Kudos has some graphical elements, but for the most part it's text only). I think Paradox could do a wonderful strategy life simulation, as they did amazing with Crusader Kings and similar games. The dynamics of family relations, marriage, religion and other mature topics are something that I feel is completely missing from something like The Sims.
Lastly sims is heavily scripted. The Sims 3 was scripted to follow you around whenever you entered a community lot, with The Sims 4 and 2 it's even easier as these little people don't continue their lives when off screen. In The Sims 4 actually they don't even need to remember most off screen happenings. Something like The Guild, where the map is always loaded, NPCs have specified jobs and have to progress marriage and relationships in a way that makes sense for their dynasty (including attacks, assassinations, etc), that's probably more complex AI wise despite having less life simulation-y interactions.
I honestly do not see why someone can't attempt a modern "The Guild" with a focus on life-sim, or a Crusader Kings with a focus on just family management, or any other system that is available currently. I do not see why farming sim boom can't lead to a life simulation boom, especially considering that once again, any other entry to the gender does not need to be like The Sims.
My response was a flat counter to the statement that "this basically did not happen in TS3", it had nothing to do with making excuses or invalidating criticism by putting TS3 down. Come on now.
And quite a laugh from seeing that quote from 2014 LGR, you should probably catch on to the past, hm, almost 5 years. It gets much more in depth in his reviews.
I may have misunderstood what you referring to, but I'm not one to hold TS3 on a pedistal, either. I received as much grief there as here when I complained about obvious things that should have been corrected or were remakes of things I had the game, and or new reskins, or routing problems. I'm just saying people are going to pay to get a new world in this new pack and it comes with empty houses. Some think that is good and let's them decorate their way, but I do know a lot of players who would think that would be a half finished world and need quality control to look at and play test every thing before shipping it. Like the world trees, rocks etc. are not in buildmode (Not even in debug) in this new pack and one guru has no idea why those were not included. We can all make an excuse like deadlines, budget, time, but quality control shouldn't be one of them. Another unfinished world.
I did as well, in fact I haven't held any title on a pedestal yet because all of them had issues neglected and never fixed. Well, maybe TS2 since I seldom recall many noticeable or gamebreaking bugs. Out of curiosity, which houses come empty? I've been wary of some videos but I saw lilsimsie's and it was one rehashed base game house and a house that had an empty room and not that much furniture but haven't seen an empty house yet.
Heh, if there's one excuse I'd never use for Eaxis is budget, don't they say they are making a killing with TS4?
Well - if you want to go Original Sims - then almost no house was finished. Even in Sims 2 - houses often had only kitchens and bathrooms done. Look at Sims 2 apartments in Apartment life even. So finished buildings is more of a new thing than a Sims Original thing. I am pretty sure only Sims 3 came with totally furnished houses. And even many of those were bare bones. The Sims 3 store world houses were the most complete of all Sims houses and those were done by separate team of people at a separate studio even - not really the Sims regular devs.
"Games Are Not The Place To Tell Stories, Games Are Meant To Let People Tell Their Own Stories"...Will Wright.
In dreams - I LIVE!
In REALITY, I simply exist.....
I'm not sure of the name of the district. But where the more upscale homes are located. They are empty. One has one commode. Rehashed is hardly the word for the base game home in a lot. It has an extended bathroom but very same house. All they did was pull out the bathroom size about an inch. lol
I don't recall any of that, most of them had basic furniture (base game furniture) and the cheaper furniture. Houses in The Sims were to allow you to move in your Sims and play the house your way if you chose not to play the Goths etc. Since TS3 world builders usually fill all the homes with some furniture or at least a kitchen, bathroom and couch.
I suppose it won't look odd to players who haven't played for years, and that's o.k. But to some of us it's more like somone said I spent a lot of time on buildig this victorian home, but I'm too tired to fill it with furniture so let's just ship it, and btw, I got too tired to build anymore new homes so I stuck in a base game house. To me it says they got too tired to fool with it and shipped it anyway.
I wasn’t picking you out personally. If I were referring to you I would have quoted you. He may have said it 5 years ago but I hear people saying that all the time. So it still stands.
Also you won’t get an argument from me that the sims 3 had its flaws. My point was meant generally agreeing with Cinebar because I do believe that just because a previous version has problems that excuses sims 4 of its. And generally speaking I see that a lot
Imo, I think they should at least come with original houses with the architecture of whatever place the town is representing.
As far as unfurnished houses go, I prefer a house already furnished when I buy it if I'm not building my own house. Having said that though, at least I can furnish an unfurnished house with whatever furnishings I prefer that are within my budget. So although I do prefer buying a furnished house when I'm not building my own, an unfurnished house isn't a deal breaker for me.
It's more the principle of the whole thing to me. It's just another example of how the quality and content has really gone downhill in recent years. Time constraints must be getting really tight in their budget now. Which is a shame considering how much money they are already making on this franchise.
I tried to make a Basic house for upload once, Filtering to only using the basic pack but it was still listed as having some other pack items in.
That is just SAD. This is what happens when the staff is much reduced. Quality grows more sloppy and incomplete and quantity dwindles. This is what TS4 simmers have to put up with for the next 2.5 years left of this iteration and they're being told by other TS4 'simmers" to just accept it, that this is the way things are now. I don't know how they can stand the abuse to their wallet and disrespect to their loyalty. The true TS4 simmers need to stop listening to those "simmers". You need to demand more from EAxis for the money you keep handing over to them!
I don't own a thing of TS4, but this concerns me just as much since I'm looking forward to TS5. I want EAxis to know right now that if they continue do to the same shoddy work on TS5, I WON'T EVER BUY THAT ONE EITHER!
Come on, EAxis! You continue to sell TS3 because it continues to bring in profits that may very well help to continue to fund development of TS4 and begin work on TS5. Why do you think TS3 still sells well? And it's TEN YEARS OLDER! It's because you had several developing teams working on it - teams to work on its coding of AI, interactions, unpredictable events (equivalent to TS2 chance cards, only acted out in live action) memories, traits, etc.; teams on animations so that there are separate actions for many things instead of reusing them for everything; teams to come up with innovative things (scuba diving, all the water/ocean activities, tomb exploration, etc. are new to the Sims; teams to create more objects for the Sims 3 store;.... I could go on but I don't feel like typing all that out - there is so much more!
If you're not going to hire anymore people for TS4, then PLEASE at least hire more for TS5 so that it truly is AAA game with the quality and traditions of TS1 through TS3, but also have new and truly exciting innovative ideas (not any of the silliness of TS4 - they're actually cringe-y and maybe only the preteens think it's cool or funny). At least consult with all the people you laid off from TS2 and TS3 and Will Wright from TS1.
Please bring back fully open world - the computers out now can handle a fully open world and I expect the game engine to run in 64-bit. It needs to be fully open world so there is no break in immersion. Bring back all the wonderful things from TS1 - TS3. And it would be nice if flying was introduced. I don't mean just teleporting from one spot to another in the world like with the jetpack from TS3's Into the Future EP, or that awful air balloon from Aurora Skies (I had such high expectations of that one - how disappointing that turned out to be!). I mean flying like what you see in open world action games like Far Cry, Just Cause, etc. series. I would love to just sit back and take in the view as my sims hang glide or fly their helicopter or single engine aircraft.
Also please don't use the art-style of TS4. I know you think it's a selling point, but I actually hate that goofy-cartoony style. And they constantly have that stupid smile plastered on their faces. Plus the male sims have these small heads and big bodies. What is up with that?!??
*Sigh* This is just so frustrating....
I totally agree. The competing devs just have to read this forum to know what we want - basically the best of each iteration from TS1 through TS4 - and put it all in their own game with new innovating gameplay. And I don't understand why a simmer would try to discourage that idea by saying that it's too large and complex a project. Twallan fixed the entire TS3 game ALL BY HIMSELF and even added more functionality to it! (Well okay, not the entire game, but he sure did a lot! He fixed the major brunt of it!) So if one dev can do all that alone (and remember, he had a day job), imagine what a good but efficient group of devs can do working full time on it.
One thing that needs to be pointed out. Twallan was motivated as can be seen by the brilliant quality of his work. EA and any dev that wants to compete in this genre need to hire motivated people. You can't just hire someone who is a good programmer or whatever - they have to LOVE the life simulation genre. I saw that love in TS1 through TS3, but I don't see it at all in TS4. I want that love back in TS5!
Yes, it's sort of perplexing to wonder why Strangerville has Victorian houses (empty ones borrowed from something else?) in a desert town then compare it to the desert trailer park. Weird, and doesn't seem to fit the theme. And three more years of it.
I don't want to have houses just furnished with basic items but have to put up with them because others don't have all the packs that I have. The less furnished the better for me as I want to fill them with objects from all my packs.