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What is it with bathrooms?
Loanet
Posts: 4,079 Member
What is it with the devs building houses, and bathrooms? Like, two bathrooms? I get that - one downstairs one upstairs. But how is it that their houses need SO MANY? Three, four, five bathrooms?
And what is it with minimal effort? THere's already options to buy houses with or without furnishing. You can have cheap lots and still put some effort in. What is it with them and making dull houses? A decent starter house can be thrown together in fifteen minutes.
I can partly explain this though - they cannot use anything that's not either in base game, or in the pack the lot came with. Nonetheless, the lack of effort is astonishing.
And what is it with minimal effort? THere's already options to buy houses with or without furnishing. You can have cheap lots and still put some effort in. What is it with them and making dull houses? A decent starter house can be thrown together in fifteen minutes.
I can partly explain this though - they cannot use anything that's not either in base game, or in the pack the lot came with. Nonetheless, the lack of effort is astonishing.
Prepping a list of mods to add after Infants are placed into the game. Because real life isn't 'nice'.
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Yeah plus I’m sure they completely excuse it with, “the gallery has many options.” 🙄
I know it's just a job to them, but they need to stay in touch with gamers.
I wish they’d try to color-coordinate things better, center objects; even place a few plants here and there to add some color. Nowadays, I’m starting to suspect the reason the lots are even more barren than usual is because they may be throwing their builds together last-minute.
I have never looked at a house and been like, “Wow, I wish this house had _____”. I can just add it myself if I desire or do what I want. They have said multiple times that they do not want to dictate how people play.
Also, the lots have to be somewhat simple for those with low-budget computers. Each item increases demand that is needed by the game and if you open a lot with hundreds of items, it can really strain some computers.
In the end, does it really matter? I just watched lilsimsie whine – yes, whine – about this issue for twenty minutes. I just cannot fathom how a house being copy-pasted or lacklustre in furniture is worthy enough to bother you when you can spend five minutes and fix it up.
As for the bathrooms, a lot of mansions, manors, and estates often have more bathrooms than bedrooms. A friend of mine had six bathrooms in a three bedroom house.
If that’s the case, it’s probably because they’re rubbish, with poorly thought out floor plans, and no consideration at all given to color coordination and cohesive style. If the prebuilt houses were well done, more people would like them and they’d be less inclined to demolish them. It sure would make my life a lot easier not having to overhaul everything.
There's also the really small home in Oasis Springs (Raffia Quinta) that had a nice layout for a small place. The only changes I've made to that lot when I play it is flip the kitchen so the entrance faces the dining room, and then add stairs to the rear patio.
Getting back to the OP. Lots of larger homes or multi level homes will have more bathrooms than bedrooms. I've made a three-story condo for San Myshuno and it had four bathrooms and only three bedrooms. One on the entry level that had a garage and entry way, a second one on the second floor where the living and dining areas are, and then two bedrooms upstairs. The master had its own bathroom, and the other bedrooms shared one in the hallway. It might sound crazy, but a condo I almost bought had a layout similar to this.
The houses that comes with the expansions are just made by people at the studio who they have no idea who they are. Apparently the lots also go through many people, that's why for example they did the mistake with the fruit bowl who prevents you from cooking food on the crashed plane lot. They wanted to take some pictures and thought it would look better with a fruit bowl on the counter.
It sounds to me that it's just bad management, and since it is not affecting sales directly, I think they simply don't care. It's more important for them to ship a product in time and for it to be functional than caring if some houses look good.
Me personally, I find it ridiculous that this team can program new animations, make new textures and can code in everything that's necessary for an expansion pack to work. But they can't find the time, resources or people to build some nice looking houses in the game itself.
I think they simply don't care about bathrooms in this iteration of The Sims, and the lack of urinals and bathroom stalls after all these years is further proof of that. I can't say it bothers me too much, though, because I can always change whatever I don't like.
Something wicked this way comes!
I don't use MCCC.
Also it's not that bad as before since we have the gallery. If you don't like a lot just grab one from the gallery. About half of the houses I have in game came from the gallery.
Also it makes sense that builds would be low priority when it comes to a pack since what's more important getting this feature to work or to make sure this home has a nicely furnished kitchen. I will say though it seems like builds, mainly residential, are given less effort now but maybe we're over exaggerating, I mean it's only been noticeable in the 2 most recent packs and the builds in Del Sol Valley weren't bad they just had unfinished bathrooms.
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The devs do have a lot of other stuff to do. Coding, animating, and rendering alone is a lot of work in itself. I don't blame them for not being that enthusiastic on building.
But that build with the busted plane is rather novel, to be sure. And the bowl of fruit can always be moved.
Now if it was real life - well i could see the point - I want toilets in my abode in real life - but a game. Pfttt - no big deal. Takes a few seconds to place one. Really - what's the big deal? I just don't get it. Who hasn't missed a door or a sink or something in the game over the last 19 years anyway?
Just not a biggie to me.
"Games Are Not The Place To Tell Stories, Games Are Meant To Let People Tell Their Own Stories"...Will Wright.
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In REALITY, I simply exist.....
Not a big deal on the grander scheme of things, sure but it does show a lack of quality control and assurance. From an indie low budget game I’d let it slide. For a big budget game it’s lazy, simple.
It shows how stingy EA is. I do not believe that I know of a single game where the developers did not do world building. Even Prison Architect had scenarios with pre-built prisons. I don't think that it's right to be like "do world building on your after work hours, no you don't get paid for it!". I mean for The Sims 3 we had the tool that they used to build neighborhoods themselves, yet I do not think (or I hope not anyway) that developers got sent home to do world building in their spare time like it's some sort of weird hobby that they're supposed to have to be employed.
There ARE some really cool lots in the Gallery though - that would be really cool if they could be hired to build official lots for the game and its packs. Maybe the reason the team consistently shares players' builds is in part because they WISH they could give us better choices but EA is too stingy, as someone else mentioned.
I usually an extra bath in the basement along with whatever else is down there. But I have to agree, EA loves bathrooms, lol.
Hopefully it's not in their spare time, that was like the worst scenario. My guess is that they probably have world building in their schedule but it get's very low priority. Because it is not essential to gameplay. We can replace premade lots with lots from the gallery, but we can't fix broken code that causes the game to crash.
They probably have multiple things that they need finished within a deadline, such as coding, so they could work on getting the dlc ready in time, or they could build some houses in a build that may not be the final build and could even be changed because the lots goes to different people and they will not get credited for it. EA pays them for a finished working product, not a product that has fancy lots in it.
I am not sure how we could get them to fix this, I think the best way is to kindly ask them to prioritize it more and hopefully they could make room in their schedule to have some more world building with better lots. Give them some time to test the dlc with some people, like the one they have for EA Game Changers. I am pretty sure a lot of people from there commented on the lots from the dlc, but they had no time to change them.
My current Legacy house has 5. Three downstairs and 2 upstairs and if I could figure out a way to get a sixth one upstairs, I would.
As far as minimal effort, I'm not blown away by any of the EA houses in game. I definitely see much more talented builders on the gallery. I think they should be hired to build houses for the sims. But, I think what we have it fine for what it is. We do have the gallery for more detailed tastes and desires. Heck, I'm not even a builder and I build in sims 4 and usually end up, pretty much, happy with what I've built. We really do have lots of options, so I can kind of see the devs not spending a ton of time to give us epic houses, though a few really nice EA houses would be nice.
And then, of course, there is the "can't please everyone" business. I'm sure, no matter what they did, someone would complain about something. If they really built amazing builds, someone would prefer Victorian. Or another would want modern. Or another traditional. Someone, somewhere, would complain that their style was being ignored. So, they give us basic houses, basic designs and we can either build our own or find something fitting our style of the gallery.
I get it.