The lack of communication between the dev team and the community is disheartening. I can’t remember the last time there were actually teasers about the upcoming content?Short and even vague blog posts hinting at what’s to come wouldn’t take much effort to put out, and they would encourage the community to discuss what the packs could be and drum up excitement.
Yes, they announced 3 packs are coming out in the next 6 months. But how can people get excited about something we don’t know anything about? We have nothing to look forward too. For all we know, the stuff pack is another ‘dlc on top of dlc’ pack. They won’t even tell us the name until a few weeks before release.
It’s just sad when the forums are not engaging in anything because there isn’t anything to talk about until they decide to release a pack teaser. When there isn’t any updates to look forward to it’s hard to want to keep playing when you don’t know if any of the game-breaking glitches, bugs, and pathfinding issues will ever be fixed. New content is what keeps Sims 4 alive. What’s the incentive to keep playing when the devs go completely silent for months at a time, with no news of what’s to come?
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Yes. Kind of sad tbh, but I guess there's more people there.
I know, I finally made me a twitter account because of how huge the Sims community is.
There is plenty to look forward to. At least two more years of content.
There are plenty of threads discussing gameplay. Maybe take a look at the Challenges, Stories and Legacies forum for ideas.
https://forums.thesims.com/en_US/categories/the-sims-4-stories-and-legacies
The incentive to keep playing is that you enjoy the game and existing content.
Also you may want to check out this thread. You might see something to try that you've not yet experienced in your game.
https://forums.thesims.com/en_US/discussion/829244/things-you-didnt-know/p1
I think it’s partially because the gurus can share sims and stuff they like from the gallery without so much speculation on what it means. People also seem much friendlier on their tweets as opposed to forum posts, which probably helps.
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Thanks for the links I know people love the existing content and that’s great! I personally can’t keep playing when they are so quiet about what’s to come and we have no idea what’s coming in these two years. I just don’t see how building excitement for an upcoming pack on the forums wouldn’t be beneficial for the game instead of them announcing a pack two weeks before its release date.
If they do announce content next week, good for them! However, it still has been months of silence.
It's just that Strangerville didn't add a lot of gameplay value and has been 6 months since the last EP.
Get Famous was an EP that not a whole lot of players would have asked for given the chance to decide . So our last EP, 6 months ago was a little lackluster for some. And so, yes, many players are restless and bored for good reason , even people who LIKE sims 4 @Oldeseadogge
Once the players have university and maybe a style like the Island paradise one, they will tend to be a lot less restless
That's true for me.
I don't want to play generationally without University.
All my sims are pretty much on hold until I get it.
I stopped progression of my main sims after Parenthood.
I stopped playing them altogether when we got Get Famous.
Now I just play alternative saves just to explore new packs.
I lost interest in Strangerville.
I love the scenario I created around the theme, but I just don't feel like chatting up a scientist to get this thing, that will lead me to that thing, and the next thing.
as others have said they communicate with us more on twitter.
I miss the regular news on upcoming packs and the store. like how it was with the sims 3
I agree with this wholeheartedly. Twitter in general can be very toxic, but the sims players there don't argue as much as on the forums.
As far as TS2's continuing hold goes: I love building and decorating, and I can do things in 2 that 4 can't even imagine. Such as a full-blown 2nd Empire Victorian with all the trimmings from period plans, or an early American farming village. The screenshots are tied to the households, which is critical to my style of play/storytelling in 2, while 4 just dumps everything into a common pot. In 2 I can have true rotational play, sims staying where I put them until I get back. Not so in 4 where they're off doing their own thing while I'm elsewhere. Crum, they run amok while I'm in CAS before launching a household. A smaller point, but with Body Shop I've got full control over what my sims wear
Yes, there are features in 4 that it would be nice to have in 2, but on balance 2 wins out easily, at least for me and my 19 or so years of playing style since day one of TS1. Everybody is different and there is no single 'right' way or version to play.
To the OP's point, EA created an environment of a certain level of communication in various forms way back when. For them to break away from that is bound to make for restless and suspicious players. We don't necessarily need, or want, heavy details. A simple 'this is what's coming soon' often suffices, tells us we're not forgotten.
At the very root of the unhappiness being expressed by Simmers is the lack of information coming out of the head offices at EA. The gurus are forbidden to tell us anything about anything until they are given permission to speak. And that has to grate a bit on the gurus that have been with the franchise for years. Especially when they work on new content they are excited to share, and end up being bound to silence by a non-disclosure agreement. The one and only statement they can make is they are working on future content. Well, yeah, we know that. That isn't really news, or very surprising.
While I appreciate the whys behind the long stretches of no news-worthy disclosures, I can't help but feel sad we aren't allowed into The Inner Circle of Knowledge, and kept in the dark for months on end. Since SimGuruGraham's announcement that was made on April 9th of this year, we still don't know anything about those 3 new packs he said were going to be released in the following six months. He made this statement almost two months ago, yet we still know nothing about what is coming. The excitement I felt when he made that announcement has died. RIP.
All of this doesn't mean I don't love or play Sims4. It doesn't mean I will stop playing it if we have to wait for new content. Once Seasons dropped, I have been pretty happy with the game as a whole. The bugs and irritations have, for the most part, been tamed by searching for and finding, many, many mods. I now have forty mods working in my game. These mods are necessary; they kill the bugs and put an end to autonomous actions that are just too stupid to put up with. I don't use custom careers or traits. I don't feel the need to change the basics. I use only mods that put an end to irritations and bugs. The need to use mods of some kind has been a part of playing any Sims iteration since Sims2. But it would be refreshing to have some fixes that didn't break again after the release of new updates.
This week is a short one with today being a national holiday in the US. That leaves just four short days for some kind of real news to be released. SimGuruLyndsay stated in the May Maxis Monthly that EA would not be making any kind of big announcement at EA PLay, being held the weekend of June7th,8th and 9th. IF, and this is a stretch, an expansion is set to be released close to the end of June, and four game outlets have updated their web sites so they are ready to take pre-orders for the new expansion, then EA has to make an announcement of some kind before EA Play. And this kind of speculation is the cause of our unhappiness with EA and waiting for the truth about what we can expect. We want to discuss the new content and experience the same kind of excitement we had with Sims2 and 3. We have moved beyond becoming excited about hints and riddles and long silences. Heck, I'd be happy with a small screenshot of some kind at this point. Anything, no matter how small, would be better than this feeling we are being ignored.
Won't say simming has been quiet, but just finished a model Ford Falcon Ranchero. Not the stripped down re-release of a few years ago but the original loaded up 1961 release. The decals even still work at 68 years of age!