I am not on board for this at all. Who thought this was a good idea?
Nobody. At least not in any official capacity. This is nothing more than some talk about prospective ideas and future philosophies.
I hope you’re right, because if they employ micro transactions I will be financially excluded from the new game. Not that I’m in any hurry to throw over Sims 4.
I echo that sentiment. But there are many other ways to integrate new social/online components, and I think some could actually be positive additions to the game.
Imagine being able to visit worlds created by other players, for example. I’d love that. Or being able to click someone’s Twitter link and have it take you directly to their world.
I don't want to visita anyones world, i don't want to interact with unknow people, no no no...
It makes no sense. I want to create litros people, Control their livres, marry them tô meu own characters, etc etc It has nothing to do with multiplayer
You misunderstand me. When I say visiting other players’ neighborhoods I simply mean playing inside the worlds they created, having access to an almost infinite number of player-made creations at the click of a mouse, as if they’re part of an interconnected world.
You wouldn’t be interacting with these people at all, but you would be able to drop into their worlds in the state they’re in at that moment (kind of a snapshot), creating your own “instance” of their world. The sims themselves would still be AI controlled and control would still be entirely yours.
No more having to download custom worlds online with all sorts of compatibility barriers. Everything would be seamless and built in.
The Simcity reboot attempted something similar and I thought it was a good idea that was executed poorly - like most of that game.
All I want is a game where I can play my story line the way I want with no interference from others. I prefer single player games. If the sims 5 would force multi player I will stick to previous iterations as long as my pc allows me to.
Andrew Wilson gave an interesting answer, saying that Maxis is continuously thinking about The Sims for a new generation and that features from The Sims Online will become a part of that experience “in the years to come”.
Thinking about it isn't a confirmation, it is mere speculation and an attempt build hype.
Question: Any thoughts on relaunching an online version of the franchise given its large popularity? (referring to The Sims Online that was present up until 2008)
Andrew Wilson (EA CEO): Great question on The Sims! The Sims will be 20 next week. That Maxis team and the team that’s been a part of Maxis over the years continue to deliver unbelieavably innovative and creative content for a constantly growing Sims community globally. As we think about The Sims – again, I reference the motivations of why we play the games – inspiration, escape, social interaction, creation, self improvement, competition. Typically what The Sims has done is really focus on fulfilling the motivations and inspiration, escape, creation, self-improvement and not necessarily focus as much as on social interaction and competition.
But a few things are in fact true over the years. One is that the Sims community continues to grow and with the broad of social platforms continue to connect with each other and share what they do – in and around the game they play. And we’ve seen that manifest in The Sims Online which was a more social experience for us. And we’re also seeing that the competition nature of The Sims is also rising and we’re seeing people compare and contrast. Not competition in an original sport sense but how they create and what they create and how they use their imaginations and what they’re able to build inside of these Sims universes.
Didn't answer the question.
So far there is nothing in here that says it will or even might have multiplayer at this stage.
I don‘t like multiplayer games. If I wanted multiplayer I would play Second Life.
I see multiple problems:
- How will customizing your own world work?
- What if other players have packs that I don‘t have? Say another player goes out for a walk with their dogs but I don‘t have the Pets Expansion Pack.
- What if other players use CC that I don‘t have in my game?
- What if other players use mods that I don‘t have in my game (including NSFW mods)?
- Will there be a chat? If yes, it must be moderated heavily because both children and adults play the game.
- Will certain interaction be only available to adult players? I wouldn‘t like it if my adult sim wohooed another adult sim and I then find out that it‘s a 14 year old child behind the avatar.
I think that going multiplayer will kill the customization aspect of The Sims franchise. I also suspect that the usage of CC and mods will be restricted and the costs of developing, maintaining and moderating the multiplayer part having a negative influence on the content we‘re given (even without multiplayer bunk beds are allegedly too expensive, now imagine the things we will miss out on if the costs increase for EA). Gameplay will get even more dumbed down and childish since underage children and adults play together. I wouldn‘t be surprised if they‘d remove mean interactions to combat bullying.
Well I think multiplayer seems unlikely. Expanded online features seems more likely and also what Andrew Wilson seems to think as well. He wants to have the success they have seen with social interaction and competition with their other games with the sims and hopefully they will leave that up to Maxis to figure out how to best make it.
I am not totally against the idea. Competition could add more challenges and depth to the sims and social interactions could add more ways we could share and experience what we make in the sims.
I have zero interest in multiplayer Sims. I can see the popularity among some types of players but definitely not me.
I have gamer friends who would probably be into that, the kind of people who want to make simselves and then goof off together in the game. Really not my thing. It took me a while to even accept downloading lots from the gallery.
I don't want to play with random players and I probably don't want to play with people I know.
I can see how some YouTubers could get into that. It's all a little bit strange to me. For myself, I have no interest in multiplayer gameplay or in a simulated community that would probably be pretty sketchy. Sims is my imaginative play space without interference.
Oh no! I really dislike multiplayer games. I like being able to play games by myself (I'm an antisocial sort ) But I use games to escape life and people, I can't bare the idea of having that time invaded by others! I like that there is an online gallery in TS4, I like that there is this forum, but really, that's about as online and multiplayer I'm in any way willing to get.
That is SUCH a misleading headline."Maxis continues to think about The Sims for a new generation" doesn't confirm anything at all.
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Assuming on my part there was a MP aspect to TS5? i'd likely create a Sandra Matthews loner type, highly creative and just wanting to be left alone for the most part. i don't see the point if TS5 characters had such attributes, traits and values. But if they aren't there then how can you create an experience on the matter if half of it is intentionally left out to try shoe horn players into the social aspect?
The multiplayer aspect would have a direct impact on your sim and the world around it and would add elements of different play style types. I'd hate to see specific content walled behind specific social requirements like teaming up, getting sims to be at a required friendship level between the players on the team in order to enter a dungeon to complete a mission together and complete aspirations and what not. Or one sim requires a great friendship with another to paint that sim in the buff in order to advance a painting career, and can't be done without painting a few like that.
it's stuff like that i dislike a lot. If it is anything like that i'll give TS5 a hard pass no matter what. but if it's just a persistent world where users have their sims interacting with others to gain bonuses rather than directly having any impact then i won't mind so much with that type of play, so long as it allows for other styles of play as well.
omg, A.W. please don't bring back any part of TSO, he speaks of the competition in TSO...just no. But yeah, we know they have been dreaming about redo for years and no doubt 5 will be just that. What a gawd awful idea.
"Games Are Not The Place To Tell Stories, Games Are Meant To Let People Tell Their Own Stories"...Will Wright.
Wow, I totally forgot all about Sims Online! I gave it a try, but I didn't like the game and quit very quickly. I don't like multiplayer gaming. I wonder how they will make both an online and a single-player game. I guess the good thing is that there are a few years left before they switch to Sims 5 because Sims 4 still feels new to me. Every day I'm discovering something in the game I didn't know about.
One thing I do remember now from Sims Online is that I really loved that tomato station and I wish it was in Sims 4! It's the only thing I liked from Sims Online. Anyone else remember it? It was really addictive and fun.
Most game devs love multiplayer because of the way it sparks competition. If people can see each other in game, there is definitely a market to exploit. "Cosmetics only -- it's not pay to win" is used to justify putting in ridiculous, ummm, I can't call a $20 skin a microtransaction so lets call it macrotransactions into any game they can. And while the prices for said cosmetic items are ridiculous, there is a small segment of the gaming population who will pay the price to be somehow better than. But worse -- say a beautiful couch comes out at a $10 price tag. After the whales have fed, it may drop down to $5 on sale before it's taken off the market to rope in more people who somehow think they're getting a bargain.
The Sims 3 already has done loot boxes and experimented with pretend scarcity as well -- taking popular items out of the store and then putting them back in later. But the prices compared to modern games are quite reasonable. But I guarantee you that Sims Online Reimagined or whatever cutsy name they come up with will be following the trend of the time, which is crazy high prices and stupid sales that are still ridiculous. They might not be dumb enough to put in loot boxes, but I'm pretty sure they still have them for Sims 3 with no uproar so who knows.
And this is the direction EA wants to go into, and they have not made it a secret at all. They'd charge per bullet in a shooter if they wouldn't lose the audience.
The worst part of it is, once they have their in-game store market, they spend more time making cool stuff to buy than they do working on an engaging game. It has to be good enough to keep whales and some non-whales playing, but that's the baseline. And with the whales, cool items to show off IS the game, and so it just takes a few non-whales to play for a few hours a week to keep the whales happy. And it makes sense -- who's the better customer for EA? The person who pays $60 for a base game and $40 a pack, or the person who pays all that AND an additional $100 or more per month for items?
Anything multiplayer is going to be a right mess. Will I be able to have my mods? Will I be forced to adhere to a PG 13 playstyle? Will other people get any say over my style of story telling? Will there be micro-transactions out the wazoo? NOT EVERY POPULAR GAME NEEDS TO BE AN MMO!!!! PLEASE!!!! STOP!!!
At this point, leave this sort of thing to Second Life or IMVU or whatever, do NOT bring multiplayer to the sims. It's going to be a massive waste of time and energy and money. It's going to run like garbage. You'll have to be Always Online. The quality of the graphics will be MASSIVELY REDUCED - the gameplay style is going to end up "please wait 8 irl hours for your sim to return from work" and other such nonsense.
The sims is a single player game and I personally do not want ANYONE ELSE in my game messing up my sims I worked hard on, or ruining my stories.
ETA: Also I feel MASSIVELY UNCOMFORTABLE about the possibility of "romancing" someone else's sim only to find out they are a Literal Child on the other side of the screen. God, the thought of that makes my skin crawl. There's literally NO WAY To prove you are who you say you are in any online space that tries to filter out children from adults. For example, I joined Second Life when I was 15 and asked my mom to use her CC info so I could have my account "verified". She agreed and to anyone else I interacted with, my account looked like one that any other adult had, and my avatar was allowed into adult spaces (clubs, certain stores and the like - anything marked mature and up). Do you know HOW EASY it is for children to lie about their age? And how EASY it is for adults to take advantage of that?? (happened to me!!)
How will they moderate anything? If there's chat, how are they going to moderate that??
One thing to note is that if they knew a game was going to be both single and multiplayer they would be able to develop the game around that, instead of trying to turn the engine for a multiplayer game into a single player game.
Anyway I don’t know if I’d bother with a sims game with multiplayer, though they might have it be something like the multiplayer in Stardew Valley.
But even in a full mmo I highly doubt they’d let anyone act out their family man challenge or serial killer fantasy on other player’s characters.
There's a reason why Second Life isn't on the top 10 highest grossing franchises list. There's a reason why Simcity died. There's a reason why The Sims Online isn't around to this day (or for too long, actually).
I really hope the CEO didn't just risk Sims 4's next dlcs sales by sharing us misleading information about Sims 5. maybe the online aspect he's talking about has to do with the Gallery and a better one, more interactive. Maybe in Sims 5 we'll be able to share Styled Looks, Worlds, or even a whole family tree with more than 8 family members. Maybe we'll be able to share custom content too. I'm ok with that option, but it has to be something I can filter if I want to avoid broken cc, etc...
I would be ok if the game had both a Single Player and a Multiplayer, but separate. I'm not always able to play The Sims while i'm connected to internet, like when I go to a farm or something like that. That whole cloud talk we've had in the gaming community the latest years jsut scare me, I like to have control over my archives in my computer, for some reason, but what about playing offline?! I'll be able to download temporarily like Netflix?
And, hm... I really hope Sims 5 isn't the end for us. I know any developer can create a Sims-like game, but I have a special place for this game in my heart. I'll miss Bella Goth, and the plumbob, and a lot of things that have been with me since I was barely a child.
To be fair I think implementing both is a good idea. It gives players the choice to play however they wish. If it is done properly then it could be a good thing.
Please...no multiplayer. The Sims should remain a single player game. They need to focus on the single player aspect only and make sure we have a full complete base game.
To be fair I think implementing both is a good idea. It gives players the choice to play however they wish. If it is done properly then it could be a good thing.
I would agree ONLY if they have two totally different dev teams for each game, and keep or expand the dev team for single player sims 5.
If they split the team or make one team work on both games, both will suck.
Anything multiplayer is going to be a right mess. Will I be able to have my mods? Will I be forced to adhere to a PG 13 playstyle? Will other people get any say over my style of story telling? Will there be micro-transactions out the wazoo? NOT EVERY POPULAR GAME NEEDS TO BE AN MMO!!!! PLEASE!!!! STOP!!!
At this point, leave this sort of thing to Second Life or IMVU or whatever, do NOT bring multiplayer to the sims. It's going to be a massive waste of time and energy and money. It's going to run like garbage. You'll have to be Always Online. The quality of the graphics will be MASSIVELY REDUCED - the gameplay style is going to end up "please wait 8 irl hours for your sim to return from work" and other such nonsense.
The sims is a single player game and I personally do not want ANYONE ELSE in my game messing up my sims I worked hard on, or ruining my stories.
ETA: Also I feel MASSIVELY UNCOMFORTABLE about the possibility of "romancing" someone else's sim only to find out they are a Literal Child on the other side of the screen. God, the thought of that makes my skin crawl. There's literally NO WAY To prove you are who you say you are in any online space that tries to filter out children from adults. For example, I joined Second Life when I was 15 and asked my mom to use her CC info so I could have my account "verified". She agreed and to anyone else I interacted with, my account looked like one that any other adult had, and my avatar was allowed into adult spaces (clubs, certain stores and the like - anything marked mature and up). Do you know HOW EASY it is for children to lie about their age? And how EASY it is for adults to take advantage of that?? (happened to me!!)
How will they moderate anything? If there's chat, how are they going to moderate that??
No!! Just. No. Please no.
urgh, yeah, I tried Second Life for about a week, and, uh, yeah, no thanks. And if Sims is made MMO style, even with strict content restrictions, it would likely run into the same problems as Sims Online did. No, I'm not going to link any articles here, but googling it can be an eye opener. My guess is most parents had absolutely no clue.
Sims Online 2 could be made as something other than an open sandbox, but if it were, I'd have no interest in the single player version at all. OTOH, I hate the thought of predators taking advantage of an open sandbox, online, where a lot of kids play.
And if Sims is made MMO style, even with strict content restrictions, it would likely run into the same problems as Sims Online did. No, I'm not going to link any articles here, but googling it can be an eye opener. My guess is most parents had absolutely no clue.
The sims online came out when I was freshly 10 years old - ie - the things I did online were like, Barbie Makeup and Neopets, or AIM for talking to my cousin. I saw "the sims" on the box and got excited and my parents bought me the game, and once they realized there were other, real people wandering around, talking to me, that was a big NOPE and they got rid of it lol. This isn't going to change with a new Sims online 2 situation - kids will see the sims brand, get their parents to buy it for them, and then parents will go "wait a second here".
Comments
You misunderstand me. When I say visiting other players’ neighborhoods I simply mean playing inside the worlds they created, having access to an almost infinite number of player-made creations at the click of a mouse, as if they’re part of an interconnected world.
You wouldn’t be interacting with these people at all, but you would be able to drop into their worlds in the state they’re in at that moment (kind of a snapshot), creating your own “instance” of their world. The sims themselves would still be AI controlled and control would still be entirely yours.
No more having to download custom worlds online with all sorts of compatibility barriers. Everything would be seamless and built in.
The Simcity reboot attempted something similar and I thought it was a good idea that was executed poorly - like most of that game.
"Will be"? and the link you provided says "might have". misleading thread title and clickbait the more i get into it.
Let's pull this thing apart:
Thinking about it isn't a confirmation, it is mere speculation and an attempt build hype.
Didn't answer the question.
So far there is nothing in here that says it will or even might have multiplayer at this stage.
I see multiple problems:
- How will customizing your own world work?
- What if other players have packs that I don‘t have? Say another player goes out for a walk with their dogs but I don‘t have the Pets Expansion Pack.
- What if other players use CC that I don‘t have in my game?
- What if other players use mods that I don‘t have in my game (including NSFW mods)?
- Will there be a chat? If yes, it must be moderated heavily because both children and adults play the game.
- Will certain interaction be only available to adult players? I wouldn‘t like it if my adult sim wohooed another adult sim and I then find out that it‘s a 14 year old child behind the avatar.
I think that going multiplayer will kill the customization aspect of The Sims franchise. I also suspect that the usage of CC and mods will be restricted and the costs of developing, maintaining and moderating the multiplayer part having a negative influence on the content we‘re given (even without multiplayer bunk beds are allegedly too expensive, now imagine the things we will miss out on if the costs increase for EA). Gameplay will get even more dumbed down and childish since underage children and adults play together. I wouldn‘t be surprised if they‘d remove mean interactions to combat bullying.
I am not totally against the idea. Competition could add more challenges and depth to the sims and social interactions could add more ways we could share and experience what we make in the sims.
I have gamer friends who would probably be into that, the kind of people who want to make simselves and then goof off together in the game. Really not my thing. It took me a while to even accept downloading lots from the gallery.
I don't want to play with random players and I probably don't want to play with people I know.
I can see how some YouTubers could get into that. It's all a little bit strange to me. For myself, I have no interest in multiplayer gameplay or in a simulated community that would probably be pretty sketchy. Sims is my imaginative play space without interference.
The multiplayer aspect would have a direct impact on your sim and the world around it and would add elements of different play style types. I'd hate to see specific content walled behind specific social requirements like teaming up, getting sims to be at a required friendship level between the players on the team in order to enter a dungeon to complete a mission together and complete aspirations and what not. Or one sim requires a great friendship with another to paint that sim in the buff in order to advance a painting career, and can't be done without painting a few like that.
it's stuff like that i dislike a lot. If it is anything like that i'll give TS5 a hard pass no matter what. but if it's just a persistent world where users have their sims interacting with others to gain bonuses rather than directly having any impact then i won't mind so much with that type of play, so long as it allows for other styles of play as well.
Those are apples ^^
The Sims 3 already has done loot boxes and experimented with pretend scarcity as well -- taking popular items out of the store and then putting them back in later. But the prices compared to modern games are quite reasonable. But I guarantee you that Sims Online Reimagined or whatever cutsy name they come up with will be following the trend of the time, which is crazy high prices and stupid sales that are still ridiculous. They might not be dumb enough to put in loot boxes, but I'm pretty sure they still have them for Sims 3 with no uproar so who knows.
And this is the direction EA wants to go into, and they have not made it a secret at all. They'd charge per bullet in a shooter if they wouldn't lose the audience.
The worst part of it is, once they have their in-game store market, they spend more time making cool stuff to buy than they do working on an engaging game. It has to be good enough to keep whales and some non-whales playing, but that's the baseline. And with the whales, cool items to show off IS the game, and so it just takes a few non-whales to play for a few hours a week to keep the whales happy. And it makes sense -- who's the better customer for EA? The person who pays $60 for a base game and $40 a pack, or the person who pays all that AND an additional $100 or more per month for items?
At this point, leave this sort of thing to Second Life or IMVU or whatever, do NOT bring multiplayer to the sims. It's going to be a massive waste of time and energy and money. It's going to run like garbage. You'll have to be Always Online. The quality of the graphics will be MASSIVELY REDUCED - the gameplay style is going to end up "please wait 8 irl hours for your sim to return from work" and other such nonsense.
The sims is a single player game and I personally do not want ANYONE ELSE in my game messing up my sims I worked hard on, or ruining my stories.
ETA: Also I feel MASSIVELY UNCOMFORTABLE about the possibility of "romancing" someone else's sim only to find out they are a Literal Child on the other side of the screen. God, the thought of that makes my skin crawl. There's literally NO WAY To prove you are who you say you are in any online space that tries to filter out children from adults. For example, I joined Second Life when I was 15 and asked my mom to use her CC info so I could have my account "verified". She agreed and to anyone else I interacted with, my account looked like one that any other adult had, and my avatar was allowed into adult spaces (clubs, certain stores and the like - anything marked mature and up). Do you know HOW EASY it is for children to lie about their age? And how EASY it is for adults to take advantage of that?? (happened to me!!)
How will they moderate anything? If there's chat, how are they going to moderate that??
No!! Just. No. Please no.
Anyway I don’t know if I’d bother with a sims game with multiplayer, though they might have it be something like the multiplayer in Stardew Valley.
But even in a full mmo I highly doubt they’d let anyone act out their family man challenge or serial killer fantasy on other player’s characters.
I really hope the CEO didn't just risk Sims 4's next dlcs sales by sharing us misleading information about Sims 5. maybe the online aspect he's talking about has to do with the Gallery and a better one, more interactive. Maybe in Sims 5 we'll be able to share Styled Looks, Worlds, or even a whole family tree with more than 8 family members. Maybe we'll be able to share custom content too. I'm ok with that option, but it has to be something I can filter if I want to avoid broken cc, etc...
I would be ok if the game had both a Single Player and a Multiplayer, but separate. I'm not always able to play The Sims while i'm connected to internet, like when I go to a farm or something like that. That whole cloud talk we've had in the gaming community the latest years jsut scare me, I like to have control over my archives in my computer, for some reason, but what about playing offline?! I'll be able to download temporarily like Netflix?
And, hm... I really hope Sims 5 isn't the end for us. I know any developer can create a Sims-like game, but I have a special place for this game in my heart. I'll miss Bella Goth, and the plumbob, and a lot of things that have been with me since I was barely a child.
I would agree ONLY if they have two totally different dev teams for each game, and keep or expand the dev team for single player sims 5.
If they split the team or make one team work on both games, both will suck.
But we all know how EA is w/ their money so ....
urgh, yeah, I tried Second Life for about a week, and, uh, yeah, no thanks. And if Sims is made MMO style, even with strict content restrictions, it would likely run into the same problems as Sims Online did. No, I'm not going to link any articles here, but googling it can be an eye opener. My guess is most parents had absolutely no clue.
Sims Online 2 could be made as something other than an open sandbox, but if it were, I'd have no interest in the single player version at all. OTOH, I hate the thought of predators taking advantage of an open sandbox, online, where a lot of kids play.
The sims online came out when I was freshly 10 years old - ie - the things I did online were like, Barbie Makeup and Neopets, or AIM for talking to my cousin. I saw "the sims" on the box and got excited and my parents bought me the game, and once they realized there were other, real people wandering around, talking to me, that was a big NOPE and they got rid of it lol. This isn't going to change with a new Sims online 2 situation - kids will see the sims brand, get their parents to buy it for them, and then parents will go "wait a second here".
I for one was ejected from the game for building an FBI Training Academy. 😂