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Too many "fake" houses.
Onverser
Posts: 3,364 Member
I get the reason why they've been putting fake houses in newer worlds as they seem to be limited to 5-6 lots in each neighborhood (also, why is it so limited in newer worlds? In Windenburg and San Myshuno some of the neighbourhoods have up to 8 lots but all of the newer neighbourhoods are restricted to 6 at a maximum) but I wish they wouldn't use these fake houses. It just feels like set dressing and makes the worlds feel dead to me, rather than making it feel bigger and more full it makes it feel empty. It just feels like a ghost town and emphasises how few lots there are.
For example in this Eco Lifestyle neighborhood there's two usable houses and one usable apartment complex and that's it, yet there's 20 fake houses. So this means for every genuine house, there's 6.6 fake houses. See below, the circled lots are the only useable space in the entire area. (excluding the community space)
That means that only 13% of the neighborhood is actually usable. In my opinion it just emphasises the flaws with the Sims 4 and all the restrictions, when there's so few usable houses it doesn't feel like a community anymore it just feels like a couple houses in the middle of a ghost town. I think it'd be much better if the neighborhood was smaller, but it was full of real houses because all of this set dressing is only a bad thing in my opinion. If you're gonna give us fake house, atleast make them rabbithole lots so we can get some use out of them because this just makes it feel dead.
I'm interested to see what other people think on this - Do you like the fake houses or hate them?
For example in this Eco Lifestyle neighborhood there's two usable houses and one usable apartment complex and that's it, yet there's 20 fake houses. So this means for every genuine house, there's 6.6 fake houses. See below, the circled lots are the only useable space in the entire area. (excluding the community space)
That means that only 13% of the neighborhood is actually usable. In my opinion it just emphasises the flaws with the Sims 4 and all the restrictions, when there's so few usable houses it doesn't feel like a community anymore it just feels like a couple houses in the middle of a ghost town. I think it'd be much better if the neighborhood was smaller, but it was full of real houses because all of this set dressing is only a bad thing in my opinion. If you're gonna give us fake house, atleast make them rabbithole lots so we can get some use out of them because this just makes it feel dead.
Update 15/11/2020:
Very disappointed to see this exact same issue come back up in Snowy Escape. Counted them (not very accurately) but there's around 66 buildings in this neighborhood, 5 are usable. I think that's an even worse ratio than the Eco Lifestyle one. The entire top area is pretty much entirely set dressing with one actual house in the whole area
I'm interested to see what other people think on this - Do you like the fake houses or hate them?
Post edited by Onverser on
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Otherwise I just can't find a reason to like them, what is there to like really?
So to make the game accessible to these people, they have to tone down the content.
The same as how EA houses are underfurnished to help with loading times
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I mean, in past games we were able to change the world environment so we could fill in the scenery however we wanted, but without that huge feature, all we have are interactive lots to make the best of a neighborhood. It's extremely restricting.
I feel like it's time for them to give us a set tool to change some of the backdrops and shells if this is the direction they're going with lots. Give us something to work with, for crying out loud. Even if it's a limited selection, like two or three backgrounds to choose from, or select structures to remove or change that remain unplayable. Something.
At this rate, there'll be nothing left in the EPs to charge us for.
I can't say much because I hear a lot of people complaining about lag and issues and they are trying to compensate for many players. I thought with the upgrade to 64bit or whatever they call it the lots and worlds would expand for the better lol But no I don't like it.
That's from the green neighbourhood status.
Because back in 2015/2016 there were only like 100 lots in total across all worlds. Then they realized that as they added more lots to the game, loading times/performance began to suffer as a result. If they continued to add 30 lots per world, TS4 would have well over 500 lots across all worlds by the end of its lifespan. Their solution was decreasing the number of lots in newer worlds, in hope that by the time TS4 ends, it would only have 300 lots in total, as opposed to 500+ lots.
Essentially, the number of lots in a certain neighborhood or a certain world doesn’t matter much. What matters is the total number of lots across all worlds, as this directly increases the save file size/loading times, and negatively affects performance. It wouldn’t make any sense to put 8+ lots in a single neighborhood, when their goal is to keep the total number of lots low.
I wish they would leave this up to players to decide how many lots they are going to populate in their neighbourhoods. There are some neighbourhoods I like more than others, and would love to have more playable lots in them. Also, it bothers me because some of these new fake houses appear to use quite a lot of build/buy items as their textures are way more detailed than standard fake houses.
But I thought that was the whole point of getting rid of the open world. Only the lot you’re in loads so it wouldn’t matter if there are 20 that aren’t loaded or 200. Even if the other usable lots in the neighborhood are “semi-loaded” so that they render properly that’s still just a handful of lots.
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I understand if there are a few fake houses but it seems to be a lot of them in EL (only seen screenshots and videos so far) . What bothers me most is the fact that they are in between the lot and not just around them. I like it if playable lots are locatednnear each other.
Same! This is why I love the Windenburg Island, Forgotten Hollow, and Glimmerbrook so much! When I'm building in those worlds I can make them whatever design I want them without the "background houses" having to influence them. Of course anyone can do whatever they want, but I feel to make the lot fit in with the surroundings you have to model it somewhat to the non-playable houses in the background.
For example, you don't have to make Forgotten Hollow all gothic victorian builds if you don't want too because there's no houses in the background to influence the world. So anything you build won't look out of place. I notice gothic victorian builds seem common with builders in Forgotten Hollow (probably because of the lore) but you can literally do dark modern vampire homes and it looks just as good there!
Another example, Oasis Springs is the perfect world for mid-century modern homes IMO but a lot of the non-playable houses are spanish villa themed so it's kind of a challenge to make it work depending on what part of Oasis Springs you're in. This is all subjective of course.
I agree. I think there should be Sims in the world that can't be interacted with mixed in with Sims that can be interacted with. They could run on predetermined loops like the vehicles run on the roads. This would at least alleviate that empty feeling.
But I also agree with @LiELF that if they're going to shortchange on the content then they need to at least let us be able to edit that to our liking. I guess with EL it's hard because the world changes based on NAPs though.