When I am programming a game, I like to keep this quote from Shigeru Miyamoto in mind:
"A delayed game is eventually good, but a rushed game is forever bad."
That's what I like about Paralives. They won't rush, but do it in their own pace. If a good game is coming, I'm always willing to wait.
Though I am still thinking if it would be possible to play rotationally in Paralives. I need it! That's why I prefer The Sims 1, 2, and 4 over The Sims 3.
You can play rotationally in TS3.
Don’t mean to go OT, although I would like to know how I can rotationally play in TS3 without the Nraas mod.
I didn’t think there is a straight forward way to do it without cheats.
The only way to achieve ‘switching’ households is to merge them and kick/ move out the sim I don’t want to play any more. Is there a ‘make active household’ cheat? Or does it work via edit town?
The only way to achieve ‘switching’ households is to merge them and kick/ move out the sim I don’t want to play any more. Is there a ‘make active household’ cheat? Or does it work via edit town?
What?!! of course you can switch houses in sims 3 with zero mods. You went through so much trouble to do it, it seems, haha. Yes, you can do it in edit town. When people talk about rotational play they dont mean just switching the active household, but maybe i got you wrong? i am so sorry if i did, i want to claim it is because english is not my first language, but i misunderstood many times when reading things in my own language, so it is because of me, sadly XD
The only way to achieve ‘switching’ households is to merge them and kick/ move out the sim I don’t want to play any more. Is there a ‘make active household’ cheat? Or does it work via edit town?
What?!! of course you can switch houses in sims 3 with zero mods. You went through so much trouble to do it, it seems, haha. Yes, you can do it in edit town. When people talk about rotational play they dont mean just switching the active household, but maybe i got you wrong? i am so sorry if i did, i want to claim it is because english is not my first language, but i misunderstood many times when reading things in my own language, so it is because of me, sadly XD
No no, it’s me, I believe you! I got confused between two different things.
I actually went back into TS3 last week to check out a couple of features, but it has been 2.5 years since I played the game and I couldn’t for the life of me remember how to jump to and play another household or if there is in fact an easy way to do so.
So in edit town I just switch another household to an active one, is that how it works? I’ll check it out myself in a bit because I’m getting awful curious now.
I always believed that rotational play means that you choose several households to play with and jump between each one depending on which one you want to progress with.
In Sims 4 you can have multiple active households. However in Sims 3 I thought you can only have one and the rest will switch to NPC and become part of the story progression mechanics that take place outside of the active household. I believed for TS3 I need a mod to stop certain sims from getting married or getting babies if I want to go back to playing with them again. TS4 just doesn’t have that kind of story progression. But I could be utterly wrong. That’s why I‘m asking.
To get back on topic, I also wonder how Paralives will deal with rotational play and story progression.
ETA: I figured out how to switch to another household in TS3 via edit town. I remember I always used to do it that way. 🙃
My rotational play question still remains though...
The only way to achieve ‘switching’ households is to merge them and kick/ move out the sim I don’t want to play any more. Is there a ‘make active household’ cheat? Or does it work via edit town?
What?!! of course you can switch houses in sims 3 with zero mods. You went through so much trouble to do it, it seems, haha. Yes, you can do it in edit town. When people talk about rotational play they dont mean just switching the active household, but maybe i got you wrong? i am so sorry if i did, i want to claim it is because english is not my first language, but i misunderstood many times when reading things in my own language, so it is because of me, sadly XD
No no, it’s me, I believe you! I got confused between two different things.
I actually went back into TS3 last week to check out a couple of features, but it has been 2.5 years since I played the game and I couldn’t for the life of me remember how to jump to and play another household or if there is in fact an easy way to do so.
So in edit town I just switch another household to an active one, is that how it works? I’ll check it out myself in a bit because I’m getting awful curious now.
I always believed that rotational play means that you choose several households to play with and jump between each one depending on which one you want to progress with.
In Sims 4 you can have multiple active households. However in Sims 3 I thought you can only have one and the rest will switch to NPC and become part of the story progression mechanics that take place outside of the active household. I believed for TS3 I need a mod to stop certain sims from getting married or getting babies if I want to go back to playing with them again. TS4 just doesn’t have that kind of story progression. But I could be utterly wrong. That’s why I‘m asking.
To get back on topic, I also wonder how Paralives will deal with rotational play and story progression.
ETA: I figured out how to switch to another household in TS3 via edit town. I remember I always used to do it that way. 🙃
My rotational play question still remains though...
Yeah, it's very clunky. When the game first shipped it had zero rotational play capability. It wasn't initially designed for it so it was kind of wedged in later (I don't know when, I had abandoned the game already) because a lot of the rotational players had a huge issue with its absence and complained.
I tried to use the system about a year and a half ago, made a second Sim in another household, but I didn't see him anywhere and his house wasn't even clickable, if I'm remembering right. I just know that it didn't work the way I wanted it to. I play my game to colonize and see my own Sims around and interact with them and guide their lives and I tend to ignore townies. And I switch households a lot. In 2 and 4, I can do that easily but 3 was a headache.
As for Paralives, it seems to be inspired by the Sims 3 setup from what I've heard so far; single household gameplay with rabbit holes in the town... so I don't think I'll be joining in, even with the news that they have an improved Parafolk design. That's okay though, there are people who are excited and I hope the game gets a lot of support, even if it's not for me. I'll still keep watching in case development changes.
As for Paralives, it seems to be inspired by the Sims 3 setup from what I've heard so far; single household gameplay with rabbit holes in the town... so I don't think I'll be joining in, even with the news that they have an improved Parafolk design. That's okay though, there are people who are excited and I hope the game gets a lot of support, even if it's not for me. I'll still keep watching in case development changes
@LiELF but you will be able to make bunk beds, have above ground pools (when has the Sims ever had above ground pools), more diverse sims- like the business about Seb taking off his shoes, in a lot of cultures (Asian countries, and some middle-eastern countrieS) they take off their shoes when they come home, you will be able to strech stuff-like you can have a 3 person bed, or you can turn a desk lamp into a floor lamp, trees and curtiains will actually move, you can write on stockings, or on tombstones, Seasons and Pets (only 3 confirmed for the base game: Dogs, cats and Horses), you will be able to build a house on a slope, you will be able to have paras of different heights, walk-out basements,etc
As for Paralives, it seems to be inspired by the Sims 3 setup from what I've heard so far; single household gameplay with rabbit holes in the town... so I don't think I'll be joining in, even with the news that they have an improved Parafolk design. That's okay though, there are people who are excited and I hope the game gets a lot of support, even if it's not for me. I'll still keep watching in case development changes
@LiELF but you will be able to make bunk beds, have above ground pools (when has the Sims ever had above ground pools), more diverse sims- like the business about Seb taking off his shoes, in a lot of cultures (Asian countries, and some middle-eastern countrieS) they take off their shoes when they come home, you will be able to strech stuff-like you can have a 3 person bed, or you can turn a desk lamp into a floor lamp, trees and curtiains will actually move, you can write on stockings, or on tombstones, Seasons and Pets (only 3 confirmed for the base game: Dogs, cats and Horses), you will be able to build a house on a slope, you will be able to have paras of different heights, walk-out basements,etc
While that's all great and no doubt there are many people excited for it all, none of that means anything to me. I honestly don't even understand the hype or rage about pools and bunk beds. I hardly ever use pools, and bunk beds are just beds. The shoe removal, while a cute touch, isn't a deal maker. I could take it or leave it. Standard objects are just objects. I don't build, so I'm happy with any cool structure that someone else makes as long as I can put outside files into my game. Cultural differences are great, but I usually just play in a fantasy world, not realistic, so again, it doesn't mean much to me beyond having options, which is always a welcome thing.
The things that are important to my personal play style are character appearance (including art style) and creation, the ability to colonize the world with my own characters, occult, fantastical, or any other kind of "non-realistic" options, interesting gameplay locations I can take my characters to visit, like bars, night clubs, ruins, parks, pool halls, haunted locations, or general adventure areas, and good interactive gameplay. Some of these are imperative for my simulation game. Others I could sacrifice if there was good compensation elsewhere to make it worth it to me. So that's why I am still keeping one eye on the development of Paralives because you never know what they'll end up doing.
But as of now, Paralives seems like it will be more of a realistic dollhouse game, and that's fine, that's just not what I'm interested in. But I think it's a good thing that it's going in that direction because Sims 4 strayed far away from it (even though The Sims series was never truly "realistic" to begin with). I prefer simulated adventures and fantastical themes, which I think is something the Sims 4 is generally good at and I hope it will carry on into Sims 5. Maybe the player base needs a good realistic life simulator that is separate from The Sims so those players can have their gameplay without it being muddled with weird stuff. But I love that weird stuff, lol.
As for Paralives, it seems to be inspired by the Sims 3 setup from what I've heard so far; single household gameplay with rabbit holes in the town... so I don't think I'll be joining in, even with the news that they have an improved Parafolk design. That's okay though, there are people who are excited and I hope the game gets a lot of support, even if it's not for me. I'll still keep watching in case development changes
@LiELF but you will be able to make bunk beds, have above ground pools (when has the Sims ever had above ground pools), more diverse sims- like the business about Seb taking off his shoes, in a lot of cultures (Asian countries, and some middle-eastern countrieS) they take off their shoes when they come home, you will be able to strech stuff-like you can have a 3 person bed, or you can turn a desk lamp into a floor lamp, trees and curtiains will actually move, you can write on stockings, or on tombstones, Seasons and Pets (only 3 confirmed for the base game: Dogs, cats and Horses), you will be able to build a house on a slope, you will be able to have paras of different heights, walk-out basements,etc
While that's all great and no doubt there are many people excited for it all, none of that means anything to me. I honestly don't even understand the hype or rage about pools and bunk beds. I hardly ever use pools, and bunk beds are just beds. The shoe removal, while a cute touch, isn't a deal maker. I could take it or leave it. Standard objects are just objects. I don't build, so I'm happy with any cool structure that someone else makes as long as I can put outside files into my game. Cultural differences are great, but I usually just play in a fantasy world, not realistic, so again, it doesn't mean much to me beyond having options, which is always a welcome thing.
The things that are important to my personal play style are character appearance (including art style) and creation, the ability to colonize the world with my own characters, occult, fantastical, or any other kind of "non-realistic" options, interesting gameplay locations I can take my characters to visit, like bars, night clubs, ruins, parks, pool halls, haunted locations, or general adventure areas, and good interactive gameplay. Some of these are imperative for my simulation game. Others I could sacrifice if there was good compensation elsewhere to make it worth it to me. So that's why I am still keeping one eye on the development of Paralives because you never know what they'll end up doing.
But as of now, Paralives seems like it will be more of a realistic dollhouse game, and that's fine, that's just not what I'm interested in. But I think it's a good thing that it's going in that direction because Sims 4 strayed far away from it (even though The Sims series was never truly "realistic" to begin with). I prefer simulated adventures and fantastical themes, which I think is something the Sims 4 is generally good at and I hope it will carry on into Sims 5. Maybe the player base needs a good realistic life simulator that is separate from The Sims so those players can have their gameplay without it being muddled with weird stuff. But I love that weird stuff, lol.
please remember that the game is IN developmental at the moment, so nothing is going to be perfect until later down the line.. I mean remember the Original Sims was only a dollhouse which could only have babies via kissing together. Vs Paralives will be able to have pregnancy from the get-go, and more family game play then the "YA" gameplay that sims 3 and 4 has.
As for Paralives, it seems to be inspired by the Sims 3 setup from what I've heard so far; single household gameplay with rabbit holes in the town... so I don't think I'll be joining in, even with the news that they have an improved Parafolk design. That's okay though, there are people who are excited and I hope the game gets a lot of support, even if it's not for me. I'll still keep watching in case development changes
@LiELF but you will be able to make bunk beds, have above ground pools (when has the Sims ever had above ground pools), more diverse sims- like the business about Seb taking off his shoes, in a lot of cultures (Asian countries, and some middle-eastern countrieS) they take off their shoes when they come home, you will be able to strech stuff-like you can have a 3 person bed, or you can turn a desk lamp into a floor lamp, trees and curtiains will actually move, you can write on stockings, or on tombstones, Seasons and Pets (only 3 confirmed for the base game: Dogs, cats and Horses), you will be able to build a house on a slope, you will be able to have paras of different heights, walk-out basements,etc
While that's all great and no doubt there are many people excited for it all, none of that means anything to me. I honestly don't even understand the hype or rage about pools and bunk beds. I hardly ever use pools, and bunk beds are just beds. The shoe removal, while a cute touch, isn't a deal maker. I could take it or leave it. Standard objects are just objects. I don't build, so I'm happy with any cool structure that someone else makes as long as I can put outside files into my game. Cultural differences are great, but I usually just play in a fantasy world, not realistic, so again, it doesn't mean much to me beyond having options, which is always a welcome thing.
The things that are important to my personal play style are character appearance (including art style) and creation, the ability to colonize the world with my own characters, occult, fantastical, or any other kind of "non-realistic" options, interesting gameplay locations I can take my characters to visit, like bars, night clubs, ruins, parks, pool halls, haunted locations, or general adventure areas, and good interactive gameplay. Some of these are imperative for my simulation game. Others I could sacrifice if there was good compensation elsewhere to make it worth it to me. So that's why I am still keeping one eye on the development of Paralives because you never know what they'll end up doing.
But as of now, Paralives seems like it will be more of a realistic dollhouse game, and that's fine, that's just not what I'm interested in. But I think it's a good thing that it's going in that direction because Sims 4 strayed far away from it (even though The Sims series was never truly "realistic" to begin with). I prefer simulated adventures and fantastical themes, which I think is something the Sims 4 is generally good at and I hope it will carry on into Sims 5. Maybe the player base needs a good realistic life simulator that is separate from The Sims so those players can have their gameplay without it being muddled with weird stuff. But I love that weird stuff, lol.
please remember that the game is IN developmental at the moment, so nothing is going to be perfect until later down the line.. I mean remember the Original Sims was only a dollhouse which could only have babies via kissing together. Vs Paralives will be able to have pregnancy from the get-go, and more family game play then the "YA" gameplay that sims 3 and 4 has.
As I've stated already, I'm well aware that Paralives is still in development. The thing I think you don't understand is, I don't care that much about family play and I prefer playing with young adults. I don't consider myself part of this "hive mind" mentality where all players want the same things like babies and bunk beds and cars. Because we don't all want the same things.
And that's one of the main reasons why I think Sims 4 has kind of stretched itself too thin and we need a game like Paralives. The Sims 4 is trying too hard to please too many people all the time. I think the reason that the Vampire and Parenthood packs were so well received is because they were true to their themes and catered specifically to the players who wanted those things. Of course, then somewhere down the line Vampire break-ins got nerfed, disappointing the Occult players and ruining a feature of the pack just so they could please a completely different player subset. But that's a whole other can of worms.
So to clarify, I definitely want to see Paralives succeed. I hope that it's a great game for the people who want family or domestic realistic gameplay. I hope it becomes a worthy competitor to The Sims. I just probably won't play it myself because it doesn't appeal to my own interests. Maybe another company will come along and create a fantasy/occult simulation adventure game for mature players. I would definitely play that one.
@LiELF
I play similarly to you and get what your saying as so far I haven't seen much gameplay I care about. Plus we probably have two to three years minimum for us to have a game so I'm not really investing much in paralives yet.
However, while they have said they aren't doing supernatural themes at launch, they haven't said they are never doing them. So I do have some belief (considering how much they listen to feedback and the popularity of occults) that there will one day be gameplay for us fantasy types.
Again though, tempered expectations and limited excitement as I am expecting a long wait to see anything I can actually play from paralives.
I'm pretty impressed with what Paralives already has - a lot of it are things that aren't in The Sims that we would have liked. I'm actually excited about how the parafolk behavior and town dynamics will be like!
I'm pretty impressed with what Paralives already has - a lot of it are things that aren't in The Sims that we would have liked. I'm actually excited about how the parafolk behavior and town dynamics will be like!
This seems to be their marketing strategy. I don‘t know what to think about this. It‘s like they‘re sitting around brainstorming „what does TS4 not have that people want“ instead of doing their own thing. They’re provoking the anti-TS4 comments on their Youtube and Twitter page and then complain when Paralives gets compared to TS4.
I'm pretty impressed with what Paralives already has - a lot of it are things that aren't in The Sims that we would have liked. I'm actually excited about how the parafolk behavior and town dynamics will be like!
This seems to be their marketing strategy. I don‘t know what to think about this. It‘s like they‘re sitting around brainstorming „what does TS4 not have that people want“ instead of doing their own thing. They’re provoking the anti-TS4 comments on their Youtube and Twitter page and then complain when Paralives gets compared to TS4.
I don't think they're actively developing features based on what The Sims doesn't have. When was the last time you saw someone criticize The Sims 4 for failing to include ziplining?
The Sims 4, itself, provokes the anti-The Sims 4 comments you see not only in Paralives' social media channels, but everywhere else on the Internet. Many people are tired, some for all these past 6 years, and just want to purchase a good game with no drama, excuses, or constant waiting for a complete game (a fourth time, mind you).
The Parafolk themselves still need a lot of rework, the facial animation(or lack thereof) need to be improved as so not to look lifeless
They're not finished with that, but I'm actually more optimistic about the Paralives devs continued work on it than I am about the TS4 devs fixing the sims' personilities and getting them to do things properly. I hope EA will announce TS5 soon and hope that the Sims are a whole lot better than TS4's as well, but I don't have much faith in TS5 devs yet.
Why do people assume that small team cannot make great game? I would even say - it is more probable than a huge studio as EA. 1. Where is no difference in difficulty. The difference is - people versus time. For example - for a feature X you will need 10 000 lines of coding. So you could think that a big studio can hire 4 devs and make it 4 times faster than 1 person in small studio... but it is not true. In reality the communication between workers and the fact that small team probably everyone is more familliar with the game code the difference will be smaller. So yeah - for a small team it will probably take more time. 2. Paralives do not spend milions for marketing 3. Paralives do not need to pay milions of dollars to CEO (seriously check how much they make) 4. Paralives have less management cost 5. Paralives do not have stakeholders on the top. So they are not pushed to sell as little work as possible for the most money they can get.
Do you really believe that EA just "cant" do a lot of things players want? That is not the issue. There is no "cant" in general in programming. You may not be able to make a feature that will work well on low end spec computers but there is no general "not possible". What they mean by saying "it is not possible" is - it takes a lot of time (so money for developers) and it will not bring us the amount of profit that we want". You are welcome - I translated it for you. I believe in Paralives because they are free of worring about it. I hope they will charge a fair (not too low) price for the game and I hope they will continue with paid extra content. You should be rewarded for the fair work you do. This what we are getting from EA is not 'fair' it is less and less for the same or even more amount of money. The real danger for Paralives is IMHO sims legal team. I can see the real chance they will sue them over the smallest simmilarities and I hope Paralives team have a great bugdet for the legal battles. The other worry is the performance issues - it might be the problem when your testing team is small. But for the other hand - the big company as EA is not better, it is a shame how bugs there are in sims. Sorry for my English - I am not native :) I do work in programming related field, it is not game dev but more business apps development but I do believe that proccess is pretty simmilar to what I do.
@szajka well I don't think there's anything that the EA's Legal team can do- since Paralives wouldn't be calling "fun times in bed" wohoo and we aren't going to being call adult drinks "juice", and it's unknown how we'll know which Para is active when we're controlling them.
Why do people assume that small team cannot make great game? I would even say - it is more probable than a huge studio as EA.
Heck, Stardew Valley was made by just one person and it has so much more gameplay, depth and fun than any Harvest Moon/Story of Seasons game for me.
This past year particularly has been a train wreck for The Sims 4 and Maxis. The current state of the game is so buggy, you'd think EA were a small indie company.
Why do people assume that small team cannot make great game? I would even say - it is more probable than a huge studio as EA.
Heck, Stardew Valley was made by just one person and it has so much more gameplay, depth and fun than any Harvest Moon/Story of Seasons game for me.
This past year particularly has been a train wreck for The Sims 4 and Maxis. The current state of the game is so buggy, you'd think EA were a small indie company.
Stardew Valley sure do and yeah some of these Indie companies do put EA/Maxis to shame.
Omen by HP Intel®️ Core™️ i9- 12900K W/ RGB Liquid Cooler 32GB Nvidia RTX 3080 10Gb ASUS Ultra-Wide 34" Curved Monitor. Omen By HP Intel® Core™ i7-12800HX 32 GB Nvidia 3070 Ti 8 GB 17.3 Screen
Why do people assume that small team cannot make great game? I would even say - it is more probable than a huge studio as EA.
Heck, Stardew Valley was made by just one person and it has so much more gameplay, depth and fun than any Harvest Moon/Story of Seasons game for me.
This past year particularly has been a train wreck for The Sims 4 and Maxis. The current state of the game is so buggy, you'd think EA were a small indie company.
Stardew Valley sure do and yeah some of these Indie companies do put EA/Maxis to shame.
[quote="MadameLee;c-17682522"]@szajka well I don't think there's anything that the EA's Legal team can do- since Paralives wouldn't be calling "fun times in bed" wohoo and we aren't going to being call adult drinks "juice", and it's unknown how we'll know which Para is active when we're controlling them.[/quote]
I think they can do a lot. Paralives need to be careful especially with UI. Names are not the main problem, user interface is. And game mechanics. Even if EA would sue them over something stupid it can affect paralives development. It would probably cost nothing for EA and devastating to paralives team.
It is first game that probably will be able to compete with sims. I am pretty sure EA is looking closely, they have all the "doll house" market for now. Seriously - think about it, there is no other game like that. SIMS games are for now only live simulators that matters. They made over 1 BILLION $ for just Sims 4.
I really hope paralives to have good gameplay - like sims 2 with open world and updated graphics. I would probably drop sims (at least I will not buy anymore packs) if paralives will deliver that. I suppose many ppl will.
I am also very sad that is it EA that have SIMS franchise. Like - really this is the worst developer. They are ruining great games - think about Dragon Age series. Think what could happen with sims if for example Paradox would have them? (100 expansion packs with hairs and songs only ;) and the game would be playable 6 months after release but I am sure overall quality would be better). After wonderful last Anno game I would even prefer Ubisoft. Wasnt EA even voted "worst company in America"?
Imagine the PR disaster if a huge corporation like EA tried to sue a small indie developer over an issue with an invalid basis. Their reputation is on thin ice as it is
Don't manhandle the urchin. He's not for sale. FIND YOUR OWN! - Xenon the Antiquarian, Dragon Age II
Race Against the Clock: Can your elder sim turn back the clock before their time runs out?
When I am programming a game, I like to keep this quote from Shigeru Miyamoto in mind:
"A delayed game is eventually good, but a rushed game is forever bad."
That's what I like about Paralives. They won't rush, but do it in their own pace. If a good game is coming, I'm always willing to wait.
Though I am still thinking if it would be possible to play rotationally in Paralives. I need it! That's why I prefer The Sims 1, 2, and 4 over The Sims 3.
You can play rotationally in TS3.
I know that it is possible. I have played rotationally before in The Sims 3, but without mods, it's a struggle. I turn story progression and aging off (I like how testingcheats in TS3 has the ability to age sims up) and play rotationally, but the game sometimes works against me. The most memorable moment is when I retired an elder and rotated away. When I came back, the elder had found a new job in culinary, eliminating his pension completely. And then there's one rotational save in Bridgeport that has worse simulation lag than in The Sims 4.
Imagine the PR disaster if a huge corporation like EA tried to sue a small indie developer over an issue with an invalid basis. Their reputation is on thin ice as it is
They're not going to sue. For a few reasons.A.They have no case.Just because they started life simulator games Dosent mean can stop anybody from making one.Two the pr nightmare.C Ea probably not threatened.
I am also very sad that is it EA that have SIMS franchise. Like - really this is the worst developer. They are ruining great games - think about Dragon Age series. Think what could happen with sims if for example Paradox would have them? (100 expansion packs with hairs and songs only and the game would be playable 6 months after release but I am sure overall quality would be better). After wonderful last Anno game I would even prefer Ubisoft.
Wasnt EA even voted "worst company in America"?
EA was the only developer who had the least interest in "The Sims" that Will Wright made. It was the first developer to have gay characters in the game, as when it was first shown it was the sensation of the show outshining all the competing games.
Just read a bit about the history before saying that it was sad that EA developed it because it wouldn't have gone ahead at the time at all except for them.
We can be sad that they haven't invested as much as they should have in the last couple of games and made mistakes but give them the credit for having the insight to make it in the first place.
Comments
Don’t mean to go OT, although I would like to know how I can rotationally play in TS3 without the Nraas mod.
I didn’t think there is a straight forward way to do it without cheats.
The only way to achieve ‘switching’ households is to merge them and kick/ move out the sim I don’t want to play any more. Is there a ‘make active household’ cheat? Or does it work via edit town?
What?!! of course you can switch houses in sims 3 with zero mods. You went through so much trouble to do it, it seems, haha. Yes, you can do it in edit town. When people talk about rotational play they dont mean just switching the active household, but maybe i got you wrong? i am so sorry if i did, i want to claim it is because english is not my first language, but i misunderstood many times when reading things in my own language, so it is because of me, sadly XD
No no, it’s me, I believe you! I got confused between two different things.
I actually went back into TS3 last week to check out a couple of features, but it has been 2.5 years since I played the game and I couldn’t for the life of me remember how to jump to and play another household or if there is in fact an easy way to do so.
So in edit town I just switch another household to an active one, is that how it works? I’ll check it out myself in a bit because I’m getting awful curious now.
I always believed that rotational play means that you choose several households to play with and jump between each one depending on which one you want to progress with.
In Sims 4 you can have multiple active households. However in Sims 3 I thought you can only have one and the rest will switch to NPC and become part of the story progression mechanics that take place outside of the active household. I believed for TS3 I need a mod to stop certain sims from getting married or getting babies if I want to go back to playing with them again. TS4 just doesn’t have that kind of story progression. But I could be utterly wrong. That’s why I‘m asking.
To get back on topic, I also wonder how Paralives will deal with rotational play and story progression.
ETA: I figured out how to switch to another household in TS3 via edit town. I remember I always used to do it that way. 🙃
My rotational play question still remains though...
Yeah, it's very clunky. When the game first shipped it had zero rotational play capability. It wasn't initially designed for it so it was kind of wedged in later (I don't know when, I had abandoned the game already) because a lot of the rotational players had a huge issue with its absence and complained.
I tried to use the system about a year and a half ago, made a second Sim in another household, but I didn't see him anywhere and his house wasn't even clickable, if I'm remembering right. I just know that it didn't work the way I wanted it to. I play my game to colonize and see my own Sims around and interact with them and guide their lives and I tend to ignore townies. And I switch households a lot. In 2 and 4, I can do that easily but 3 was a headache.
As for Paralives, it seems to be inspired by the Sims 3 setup from what I've heard so far; single household gameplay with rabbit holes in the town... so I don't think I'll be joining in, even with the news that they have an improved Parafolk design. That's okay though, there are people who are excited and I hope the game gets a lot of support, even if it's not for me. I'll still keep watching in case development changes.
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSf86hFKLt7YsNtnGFpCZbFFuE__Sa4B93aZf1Vnw3vpDmCNRg/viewform
@LiELF but you will be able to make bunk beds, have above ground pools (when has the Sims ever had above ground pools), more diverse sims- like the business about Seb taking off his shoes, in a lot of cultures (Asian countries, and some middle-eastern countrieS) they take off their shoes when they come home, you will be able to strech stuff-like you can have a 3 person bed, or you can turn a desk lamp into a floor lamp, trees and curtiains will actually move, you can write on stockings, or on tombstones, Seasons and Pets (only 3 confirmed for the base game: Dogs, cats and Horses), you will be able to build a house on a slope, you will be able to have paras of different heights, walk-out basements,etc
While that's all great and no doubt there are many people excited for it all, none of that means anything to me. I honestly don't even understand the hype or rage about pools and bunk beds. I hardly ever use pools, and bunk beds are just beds. The shoe removal, while a cute touch, isn't a deal maker. I could take it or leave it. Standard objects are just objects. I don't build, so I'm happy with any cool structure that someone else makes as long as I can put outside files into my game. Cultural differences are great, but I usually just play in a fantasy world, not realistic, so again, it doesn't mean much to me beyond having options, which is always a welcome thing.
The things that are important to my personal play style are character appearance (including art style) and creation, the ability to colonize the world with my own characters, occult, fantastical, or any other kind of "non-realistic" options, interesting gameplay locations I can take my characters to visit, like bars, night clubs, ruins, parks, pool halls, haunted locations, or general adventure areas, and good interactive gameplay. Some of these are imperative for my simulation game. Others I could sacrifice if there was good compensation elsewhere to make it worth it to me. So that's why I am still keeping one eye on the development of Paralives because you never know what they'll end up doing.
But as of now, Paralives seems like it will be more of a realistic dollhouse game, and that's fine, that's just not what I'm interested in. But I think it's a good thing that it's going in that direction because Sims 4 strayed far away from it (even though The Sims series was never truly "realistic" to begin with). I prefer simulated adventures and fantastical themes, which I think is something the Sims 4 is generally good at and I hope it will carry on into Sims 5. Maybe the player base needs a good realistic life simulator that is separate from The Sims so those players can have their gameplay without it being muddled with weird stuff. But I love that weird stuff, lol.
please remember that the game is IN developmental at the moment, so nothing is going to be perfect until later down the line.. I mean remember the Original Sims was only a dollhouse which could only have babies via kissing together. Vs Paralives will be able to have pregnancy from the get-go, and more family game play then the "YA" gameplay that sims 3 and 4 has.
As I've stated already, I'm well aware that Paralives is still in development. The thing I think you don't understand is, I don't care that much about family play and I prefer playing with young adults. I don't consider myself part of this "hive mind" mentality where all players want the same things like babies and bunk beds and cars. Because we don't all want the same things.
And that's one of the main reasons why I think Sims 4 has kind of stretched itself too thin and we need a game like Paralives. The Sims 4 is trying too hard to please too many people all the time. I think the reason that the Vampire and Parenthood packs were so well received is because they were true to their themes and catered specifically to the players who wanted those things. Of course, then somewhere down the line Vampire break-ins got nerfed, disappointing the Occult players and ruining a feature of the pack just so they could please a completely different player subset. But that's a whole other can of worms.
So to clarify, I definitely want to see Paralives succeed. I hope that it's a great game for the people who want family or domestic realistic gameplay. I hope it becomes a worthy competitor to The Sims. I just probably won't play it myself because it doesn't appeal to my own interests. Maybe another company will come along and create a fantasy/occult simulation adventure game for mature players. I would definitely play that one.
I play similarly to you and get what your saying as so far I haven't seen much gameplay I care about. Plus we probably have two to three years minimum for us to have a game so I'm not really investing much in paralives yet.
However, while they have said they aren't doing supernatural themes at launch, they haven't said they are never doing them. So I do have some belief (considering how much they listen to feedback and the popularity of occults) that there will one day be gameplay for us fantasy types.
Again though, tempered expectations and limited excitement as I am expecting a long wait to see anything I can actually play from paralives.
The Sims 4, itself, provokes the anti-The Sims 4 comments you see not only in Paralives' social media channels, but everywhere else on the Internet. Many people are tired, some for all these past 6 years, and just want to purchase a good game with no drama, excuses, or constant waiting for a complete game (a fourth time, mind you).
They're not finished with that, but I'm actually more optimistic about the Paralives devs continued work on it than I am about the TS4 devs fixing the sims' personilities and getting them to do things properly. I hope EA will announce TS5 soon and hope that the Sims are a whole lot better than TS4's as well, but I don't have much faith in TS5 devs yet.
1. Where is no difference in difficulty. The difference is - people versus time. For example - for a feature X you will need 10 000 lines of coding. So you could think that a big studio can hire 4 devs and make it 4 times faster than 1 person in small studio... but it is not true. In reality the communication between workers and the fact that small team probably everyone is more familliar with the game code the difference will be smaller. So yeah - for a small team it will probably take more time.
2. Paralives do not spend milions for marketing
3. Paralives do not need to pay milions of dollars to CEO (seriously check how much they make)
4. Paralives have less management cost
5. Paralives do not have stakeholders on the top. So they are not pushed to sell as little work as possible for the most money they can get.
Do you really believe that EA just "cant" do a lot of things players want? That is not the issue. There is no "cant" in general in programming. You may not be able to make a feature that will work well on low end spec computers but there is no general "not possible". What they mean by saying "it is not possible" is - it takes a lot of time (so money for developers) and it will not bring us the amount of profit that we want". You are welcome - I translated it for you.
I believe in Paralives because they are free of worring about it. I hope they will charge a fair (not too low) price for the game and I hope they will continue with paid extra content. You should be rewarded for the fair work you do. This what we are getting from EA is not 'fair' it is less and less for the same or even more amount of money.
The real danger for Paralives is IMHO sims legal team. I can see the real chance they will sue them over the smallest simmilarities and I hope Paralives team have a great bugdet for the legal battles.
The other worry is the performance issues - it might be the problem when your testing team is small. But for the other hand - the big company as EA is not better, it is a shame how bugs there are in sims.
Sorry for my English - I am not native :)
I do work in programming related field, it is not game dev but more business apps development but I do believe that proccess is pretty simmilar to what I do.
Heck, Stardew Valley was made by just one person and it has so much more gameplay, depth and fun than any Harvest Moon/Story of Seasons game for me.
This past year particularly has been a train wreck for The Sims 4 and Maxis. The current state of the game is so buggy, you'd think EA were a small indie company.
Stardew Valley sure do and yeah some of these Indie companies do put EA/Maxis to shame.
Yep.
I think they can do a lot. Paralives need to be careful especially with UI. Names are not the main problem, user interface is. And game mechanics. Even if EA would sue them over something stupid it can affect paralives development. It would probably cost nothing for EA and devastating to paralives team.
It is first game that probably will be able to compete with sims. I am pretty sure EA is looking closely, they have all the "doll house" market for now. Seriously - think about it, there is no other game like that. SIMS games are for now only live simulators that matters. They made over 1 BILLION $ for just Sims 4.
I really hope paralives to have good gameplay - like sims 2 with open world and updated graphics. I would probably drop sims (at least I will not buy anymore packs) if paralives will deliver that. I suppose many ppl will.
Wasnt EA even voted "worst company in America"?
Race Against the Clock: Can your elder sim turn back the clock before their time runs out?
I know that it is possible. I have played rotationally before in The Sims 3, but without mods, it's a struggle. I turn story progression and aging off (I like how testingcheats in TS3 has the ability to age sims up) and play rotationally, but the game sometimes works against me. The most memorable moment is when I retired an elder and rotated away. When I came back, the elder had found a new job in culinary, eliminating his pension completely. And then there's one rotational save in Bridgeport that has worse simulation lag than in The Sims 4.
EA was the only developer who had the least interest in "The Sims" that Will Wright made. It was the first developer to have gay characters in the game, as when it was first shown it was the sensation of the show outshining all the competing games.
Read this from the New Yorker
https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/the-kiss-that-changed-video-games
Just read a bit about the history before saying that it was sad that EA developed it because it wouldn't have gone ahead at the time at all except for them.
We can be sad that they haven't invested as much as they should have in the last couple of games and made mistakes but give them the credit for having the insight to make it in the first place.