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Worlds are getting smaller
Loanet
Posts: 4,079 Member
Looking at the Copperville leaked map, all I see are vast swathes of empty space and shell buildings.
Look at that huge lake. It takes up half the map, but you can't use it for anything. It disguises how little building space there is. There are THREE residential buildings and no empty lots! Sure, we can change the other lots into building lots but then where are the recreational lots?
While Werewolf-land was a game pack, the world was HUgE - and yet you can't build on most of it! There's even a chopped-down forest that is covered with a swathe of tree stumps that are in fact a single asset. Where are our Sims meant to live? And where are the pre-mades supposed to live if we want to interact with them?
We need to stop patting Maxis on the back for decorating and demand more room to do the jobs ourselves.
Look at that huge lake. It takes up half the map, but you can't use it for anything. It disguises how little building space there is. There are THREE residential buildings and no empty lots! Sure, we can change the other lots into building lots but then where are the recreational lots?
While Werewolf-land was a game pack, the world was HUgE - and yet you can't build on most of it! There's even a chopped-down forest that is covered with a swathe of tree stumps that are in fact a single asset. Where are our Sims meant to live? And where are the pre-mades supposed to live if we want to interact with them?
We need to stop patting Maxis on the back for decorating and demand more room to do the jobs ourselves.
Prepping a list of mods to add after Infants are placed into the game. Because real life isn't 'nice'.
Post edited by EA_Cade on
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Comments
The devs really want players to interact with their characters and their stories in TS4, and being able to build up our own casts, worlds, and plotlines is kind of an afterthought. This isn't just evident in world design, but the choices they made for the aspirations in the "Werewolves" GP too. All of the aspirations after the initial Werewolf Initiate aspiration that involve actually staying a werewolf revolve around the devs' two werewolf packs and Greg. They want so badly for players to center their attention on the world, characters, and lore they wove that they didn't even think that someone might want to form their own pack, or have a lone wolf that's also super chill. Using werewolf powers isn't even included as a GP-specific addition to the Get Together club system! And don't even get me started on the female werewolf beast form customization issue! No option for a real bust, having to push the hip and waist sliders to their limits to give them any curves...What were they thinking?! Didn't they even stop to think that maybe people WANT a female werewolf to look good in a smokin'-hot evening gown in werewolf form?! If they're not afraid of anti-LGBTQ+ backlash, they shouldn't get squeamish about anti-furry backlash...
The point is, the limited building space in worlds is a symptom of a bigger problem in TS4, and that's the dev team trying to get players to play their stories in their worlds with their characters and their lore instead of allowing players to build up their own. The Sims has always been about player freedom and player choice. With TS4, it's like they have a bunch of people working on this game who would rather be working on a narrative-focused game with a set world and cast of characters and a definitive beginning, middle, and end than an open-ended, player-driven experience. This series is always best when it gives us systems and a blank canvas to explore them on, not when it tries to tell the player a story the devs already made up for them.
I'll be sad if we can't swim in it. Regarding fishing spots, they always seem to add plenty of those and I think I saw a fishing spot at the fair pier and I saw another pier close by near the rental mansion. But the lake seems to be surrounded by rocks, so who knows, maybe it will be like the little island in Tartosa and offer no easy access to the water.
I think I need to see the world better before I can pass judgement, Iβd like to have more than the 12 lots but if the neighborhood is well made with off-lot activities (we know about the amusement pier, still need to see about things like swimmable water, collectibles, food stands, seasons objects, that abandoned cabin in the trailer etc) then I donβt mind as much.
Iβm not so sure, the neighborhood on the left looks like it has a beach area.
I have sims I want to play but all the lots are taken in the worlds that I want to play them in and I don't really want to create a new game so it's difficult to play these worlds when you have many sims in your save.
Copperdale seems pretty okay though. 12 lots is not too bad.
and less useless shell buildings
like with this new map all I would really visit besides my sims house is carnival pier and the school
yet those places are like opposite edges of map and if you live in the mining part its gonna take forever to go to either
π‘ Gallery π Stories π World Project π₯ MOD/CC Free
Are there different loading times based on where your sim is traveling to? π€
In terms of the world I don't think they are getting smaller and I've really been liking the worlds a lot lately. Glad they are moving away from the repeated suburbs which never fit any of my sims.
I believe at some point the devs confirmed that we will no longer get Windenburg size worlds with tons of lots because the game will go on for a long time and performance and everything has to be taken into consideration. Could also be budget as mentioned by logion.
I'm okay with the sizes we get and I think they are decent. I love to have a variety of world types so I would rather have a bunch of small ones with varying themes more than a few big ones. I almost never even play in Windenburg. I also like how they are trying to make the environments feel more interactive. I think if anything we are upgrading.
Has it been confirmed the lake is not swimmable? We get swimming lakes almost all the time now. It's no big deal if it's not. I would like it for my mermaid though.
I mean no but its like say the carnival pier and school/sports area were near to each other
you could then visit it all at the same time by going to school lot because sports and carnival are off lot
which you can't really do with bigger world cause they're different neighborhoods
therefore you can't say have your family visit carnival while your teens at school or something
and then within the neighborhoods theres just so much empty space for nothing but walking really for idk what reason
and the lots are all spread out so you don't really get proper community vibe anywhere
like idk sure the loading screens are the same
but it just feels so separated that i don't think id ever end up going to that mining part of town
π‘ Gallery π Stories π World Project π₯ MOD/CC Free
There's also the issue of no playable lots in the village center which is really annoying, if you want to make a business lot you have to build it on the outskirt of the village because village center is full of rabbit hole type buildings or buildings with no functionality.
I just don't understand how programming in an empty square to build in is so budget heavy.
Except I wouldn't say the worlds are getting "smaller", they're getting bigger, but with NOTHING TO DO IN THEM!! People talk about this carnival pier like there's going to be sooooo much gameplay and activities to do there. (This is nothing like the amusement park from TS3!) I think it will again be a lot of set dressing, pretty to look at and great for picture taking. I think it will be just like the festivals, click the rides, your sim will disappear for a few moments, come off the ride with a moodlet, and then what? Buy food and sit and eat like the festivals?
There's so few lots to build on, and this huge huge huge world with all this empty pretty space for sims to what ... walk around in?
Does adding more lots disrupt the vision the world creator had for it? Is that why? I mean come on! Look at GF, No beach lots and not even a swimmable ocean IN A CALIFORNIA INSPIRED WORLD!!!!
THIS ^^^^^
Right there you took the words right out of my mouth!
Can't "Play with Life" how I want, when I can't create the atmosphere to do it in and I'm forced to play in what the devs "envisioned" I should be playing in!
And, I personally don't buy the budget theory that adding more lots would take away from the budget. I would absolutely think adding more set dressings would be more labor intensive to the team.
When is EA going to stop holding our hands and trying to "protect" our PCs by making everything soooo simple? People should take some responsibility with their own laptop and computer, if you know your computer is not set up to run on "HIGH" you don't run the game on HIGH. It should be the same thing with lots .... if you know your computer starts to lag with a too many buildings on all of the lots and/or sims in the area ... then people would not build on all of the lots. Let "us" (you know, the people who bought the game and pays your salaries?) decide what our systems can handle and stop with the hand holding!
lake/river worlds & have more better venues. Unfortunately they don't.
This is what I've been thinking/feeling for a while now. I get that companies must keep up with demand, and I'm sure they're well aware that they'll have losses as well as gains. If this current direction is the path to real and substantial change in response to demand for it, I'll be among the losses because I'll apparently be in the minority, but more importantly I'll have lost the thing I found appealing about this game (and the thing which I feel is/was the game's strongest feature). For quite some time I've already been feeling a growing sense of someone slowly nudging me toward the exit door. This feeling isn't directly related (at least not solely) to the size of worlds, but that does seem to be one of the symptoms of the whole "You're free to play your stories as long as they're the same as ours" thing.
Because I can't; I keep all sigs turned off.
> I always hope for a "smaller" world (less walking around in an open area) but with tons of empty lots for building. I wouldn't mind a world where all the lots are crammed next to each other, as long as there are plenty of empty lots for our Sims to live in. I would definitely buy a Newcrest-style pack.
Lots of lots, and plenty of neighborhood amenities. That's the magic of Newcrest. I also wish we had more of that.
-Yes, person I barely know, you have my blessing to hang out with Johnny Zest.
-No person with the mean, hot-headed and self-absorbed traits, I don't think you should get married.
There's a football field, but it doesn't look like you can build on it... And the lake takes up about half of the world, forcing you to take huge round trips that eat up your day.
Some of the buildings in Strangerville just SCREAM 'a lot could go here' - multiple shells right along the road. In fact... Strangerville was the first pack with some kind of story.
The entire point of Sims 4 is that by moving between lots through a loading screen, the loading in general would be lessened. Having less lots doesn't actually impact this. I understand; you want to set some kind of theme for the world in the trailer, and put in a few basic families with personalities. But once those three basic families are in there, there's hardly any room for OUR families to interact with them! Also, the so-called 'basic' families always seem to take the largest, nicest lots.
Nobody wants to play as the basic families. Perhaps they like to interact with them. Realistically, you can fit one, maybe two of your own buildings in there, before you have to knock down amenities.
What happened to getting worlds the size of Windenburg?
I'd rather have one giant world with 30 lots I could fully decorate over 10 small 6-12 lot worlds overly stylized I'd never use. It's kind of sad their major selling point is a world with a handful of lots which also eats up a major chunk of the pack budget stripping most packs to almost being featureless give me CAW tool and never add a world in again I say.
When one of the Guru's said "One of the stories we want you to tell" they were serious they are constantly forcing their stories on us just look at the Werewolf game pack with the 2 predetermined packs play their story or don't at all I don't want their lore I want my own.
I get it if they want to design their own beautiful high school, and that lovely pier, and a few students... but at least leave room for OUR families to move in!
"They worked so long and hard on this world". Notice you never hear them ever say anything about how long and hard they worked on the actual gameplay of packs? (That's evidenced in the MWS pack release .... the world visually? *Chef's Kiss* The gameplay? what gameplay? Let's reuse the events system, tweak it slightly, and call it "new". Let's instead spend 80% of the budget creating large, beautiful worlds that having very little to actually do in them and no real lots for our player base to build on. Because you know, why do they need to build their own lots when they can enjoy this amazing world we envisioned instead! And, besides who really needs gameplay, it's overrated! Isn't TS4 mostly a CAS and Builder's platform, anyway? (Because seriously if you ever look at any of the Gurus and The Sims re-tweets, it's always referring to someone's build or sims they created, it's never about stories people tell). Just look at all of the beautiful screenshots they can create in this world!
You can tell a HUGE difference in the recent worlds from the basegame ones. And, honestly, I personally almost always have my sims live in the BG worlds the biggest majority of the time. They'll visit other worlds, but for living in them, they just make more sense to me.
For my sims to live in a world, I need enough lots that I can place down the main venues (restaurant, bar/lounge, gym, park, cafe, library) AND have at least 8 residential lots for my sims' neighbors to live in. I always use the bigger BG worlds because I can do that with them. My sim doesn't travel to other cities or "countries" to go to the gym, library, or bar on a daily basis. That is reserved for special events. If they are just going to get a bite to eat, I always make them do it in a restaurant in the world they live in, unless it's going to be a night out. Now the worlds are big and elaborate, with lots of a visuals and no place to live AND put venues, you have to choose.
Seriously, what's the point of even having a world with only 5 lots on it? That's like my neighbors' houses on either side of me, the house across the street, and the one behind me. That's not a "world", that's not even a neighborhood block.
And it was confirmed back in 2016 by SimGuruEugi that the reason we can't build our own apartments is because:
https://simsvip.com/2016/09/21/sims-4-city-living-simgurueugi-explains-apartment-limitations/