Here is a new life simulation game that has everything you loved about Sims 2 and Sims 3 plus more things you only dreamed about AND here's the tools we used to make it so you can further customize and make it your own? Yes please!! Yes of course there are things that need work. I'm sure by release time it will look a lot different but what I've seen so far is enough for me to pre order because I want in on the early access.
I've seen the preview and to me it looks a lot like TS3. Same shiny textures with too bright light and very few sims/agents around. World seems bigger, and on the surface the description of capabilities look great, but I saw very few characters around, none of them did something interesting and their movement seemed a bit rough and stiff. They don't seem to have younger life stages and the bit of shopping they showed didn't seem convincing. I suppose if you like nature you could use the game as an immersive sightseeing exercise if you could connect it to a treadmill or exercise bike, but there wasn't much gameplay in it. Also, the text adventure they are introducing seems limiting, because text is text, there's not too many ways to interpret it and having the option to add or modify the text doesn't help much either. And some of the hairs looked like bad wigs.
Seems a lot of people are complaining about how the characters look and the sparse population. The game world is still in development. They are just showing us their vision and some of where the characters can go and what they can do. For me, I'm excited and share the same vision they do for a life simulator.
Also I'm a bit worried by the "tell your story" part they were talking about. Personally I'm a goal oriented player, not a storyteller, and one of my biggest peeves with 4 has always been how much they've been focusing on this "tell your story" type of gameplay as I don't play that way. I'm not someone who comes up with imaginative stories and wants a sandbox to bring those stories to life, so I hope they don't focus too heavily on that and they'll include gameplay to make the game fun for people with other playstyles too.
Yeah me too. I will still buy it but I am also a bit worried.
The reason TS4 is not really my kind of jam is because there are too many weird options and everything is based on player input. Nothing happens without me initiation it.
I don't want to tell stories or stuff like that. I want to play a game and let it (or my characters) guide me though it... I hate it when TS4 "news" or whatever say that you can now create yourself even better/ easier and tell your story. But I don't want to do that! And it's always just stuff, never gameplay. I play games to get away from reality, just like I watch movies for the same. I don't want current politics or anything that reminds me of the real me in-game.
What about us who don't care about playing ourselves or "our stories" and are more focused on gameplay than story or looks. I am so tired of new hairstyles (or kitchen whatever, or a sweater or hearing aids etc) being viewed as revolutionary. It's hair (or just other assets). Won't make the game more fun or payable as it adds no gameplay.
@JackOnYourBack My impression is that LBY is a game for most people. Story telling for those who like to tell stories. Family generations for those who are into that. And, for players like you and myself, the ability to just get into the game and play to escape reality for awhile and just have fun! As well as CAW and the ability to build for those who love that!
I'm really excited about this game in a way that The Sims hasn't excited me since they regressed imo with 4.
@JackOnYourBack My impression is that LBY is a game for most people. Story telling for those who like to tell stories. Family generations for those who are into that. And, for players like you and myself, the ability to just get into the game and play to escape reality for awhile and just have fun! As well as CAW and the ability to build for those who love that!
I'm really excited about this game in a way that The Sims hasn't excited me since they regressed imo with 4.
Me too! Shame we have to wait so long!
What you said sounds lovely and I hope you are right
I am so longing for a new game that seems a bit like TS3 which was my favourite game inte the Sims franchise but it's so old now it's not the same as a completely new game would be.
I think though that the characters not talking in Life By You will feel weird. Just like Dragon Age Origins no talking weirds me out after having played DAI
I was actually going to preorder LbY, never done that before, but I really would prefer Steam so I'm thinking I might wait until September. I just hope the price will be the same for the early access on steam.
I think the tools they are letting us use will allow so many different types of "games within the game" to be made with it
I would imagine at one end we will see people making their own Strangerville stories and then at the other end we will see people making their own version of GTA using the direct control and over shoulder camera. With these tools you can easily make, -without any real programming skill-, GTA Convenience Store robberies for example. You could even make smaller scope stories such as murder mystery games of Cluedo within a mansion house with meaningful scripts.
The benefit of releasing all the creators is that the developers dont need to make gameplay "Expansions" although I am sure they will make at least one classicly regarded expansion yearly. They can just do "Item and housing packs" for different themes and time periods
With the Conversation system, the flirty conversation may become a problem.
Like recently with the Gallery, the game could also need a "Profanity update".
I wonder if they have genetics in this game? How the family gameplay work? Work don't seem to be a rabbit hole, but kids and school? Hospital, fire station, police, town hall, etc.
Thank you @83bienchen for modding the game. Whims Overhaul is essential for my gameplay.
If there are ZERO rabbit holes, then we would need some sort of "macro" control.
Imagine you click your character's portrait in the UI and you get context-dependent macro controls
-at home: do chores, build skill...painting, cook, socialize
-at work: work hard, do assignments, socialize
Basically like the "styles" of rabbit hole work in Sims 3 and 4 except instead of the Sims just doing this in the rabbit hole, these macro selections actually modify the AI so we actually see them do those tasks.
If Rene goes down the zero rabbit hole model, then we need to have better AI control so the Sims can be directed at a "high level" like I described. Much more control than we currently have. Otherwise, it gets overwhelming
Work don't seem to be a rabbit hole, but kids and school? Hospital, fire station, police, town hall, etc.
Rod said no rabbithole but these places could be as empty as the world in the trailer.
Hopefully that is still being worked out the population of people active in the world is going to make or break the open world experience. They need to make it so retail nightclubs commercial streets and beaches depending on weather are active while other places like forested areas and neighborhoods can be less active besides random cars driving by and seeing neighbors once in a while.
Sims 4 went from "You Rule" to "One of the stories we want you to tell"
Does anyone know what Humble feel regarding occults/ supernaturals? Since they are going for very realistic (which I like) I am wondering what he thinks of such things and if it might be a thing or not in the future. I know Paralives will not come with it in base game but they have said they might release something supernatural as a pack later on.
I don't specifically care for if it is vampires/ werewolves/ mermaids etc, but just something not human would be nice. Actually something other than those ones would be preferable to me
Work don't seem to be a rabbit hole, but kids and school? Hospital, fire station, police, town hall, etc.
Rod said no rabbithole but these places could be as empty as the world in the trailer.
Hopefully that is still being worked out the population of people active in the world is going to make or break the open world experience. They need to make it so retail nightclubs commercial streets and beaches depending on weather are active while other places like forested areas and neighborhoods can be less active besides random cars driving by and seeing neighbors once in a while.
This is not me being grumpy , but I think people need think this realistically.Why I think they would have audible amount of population .I imagine the population right now can't be too big.
Does anyone know what Humble feel regarding occults/ supernaturals? Since they are going for very realistic (which I like) I am wondering what he thinks of such things and if it might be a thing or not in the future. I know Paralives will not come with it in base game but they have said they might release something supernatural as a pack later on.
I don't specifically care for if it is vampires/ werewolves/ mermaids etc, but just something not human would be nice. Actually something other than those ones would be preferable to me
Rod Humble, a former real-life Sims executive and Sims 2 NPC, is reportedly working on a life simulation game since 2018. For context, Paralives started development in the same year. The most publicly-available details of the project can be read in this excellent profile, though it is light on specifics.
A few days ago, Rod on Twitter[edit: his Twitter has been deactivated] - I encourage you to follow him and he follows simmers back! - announced he's going off social media for a few months to intensely work for an important time in the game. The tweet is here. The text is as follows:
Taking another break from social media & community my friends. Nothing bad, just clearing my mind to focus on an important time for the game.
I hope some of you will be future customers and my focus is on delivering a great game to serve you. Love you all, seeya in a few months.
I think he could be gearing up for a first announcement or teaser of the game. What do you guys think? I'm very excited.
Would you guys buy Sims 5, this new competitor, or both?
I saw someone on YouTube give an extensive walkthrough of this. It was the most awesome 20 minutes and I would totally buy this while it is pre release in September except...ITS NOT ON IOS platform. WHY????? crying 😭 Oh the torture. It is going to be awesome. Might even force me to purchase a windows gaming laptop. That's how incredible it all looks and it's early on.
I have to say I am so excited for this game, I literally could not sleep the night of the announcement after watching the trailer. I had so many ideas and questions!
I will 100% for sure be buying this on early release in September. It's sounds too good to be true!
Now, what I do think is this:
I don't believe this will hurt EA/The Sims very much, simply because of the art style that they're going for.
Simmers have had 9 years of TS4's pixar-ish cartoony looking graphics and that's what they're used to.
So when they saw this trailer, they couldn't get past the visuals of it. Plus, there are a LOT of simmers who don't actually even "play" the gameplay of TS4 and just build and dress up sims. So for those people, this game looks hideous!
So yeah, this game won't appeal to some simmers at all. They are perfectly content having a game that looks pretty and don't care about shallow and boring gameplay just as long as it looks pretty in their screenshots. These same people also complained about Project Renee's initial reveal of the art-style too.
I am NOT one of those people. I need a game that excites me and draws me in and keeps me so engrossed that when I look at the clock it's 2AM already and I have to get up for work in less than 3 hours! That's the kind of game this sounds like it will be. TS4 doesn't (and hasn't ever) done that for me, not ever! I haven't done that sims TS2 and TS3 ..... and I don't expect it to happen with TS5 either.
I just keep thinking about how amazingly customizable it will be and how I will actually finally be able to play out my own stories without having to adapt them because of restrictions imposed by the devs such as:
Itty bitty, teeny tiny worlds
A bazillion fake buildings in the worlds, forcing me to adapt my lots/worlds to match what the devs decided the world should look like
No ability to edit the worlds
No ability to build apartments by the players
Only 3 trait slots in CAS
No way to save outfits to reuse on other sims
Mismatched color swatches that don't match anything else
No toggle to turn off certain features
TOTAL FREEDOM to create what I want!
NEGATIVES FOR ME (That hopefully will be addressed and improved before the final release.)
#1 Negative: Character Animations - They are janky! Too clunky and robotic and they look like an amateur modder created them. (Which I overlook when it's from a CC creator, but I can NOT accept that from a major Game Dev Team that has a huge budget and can afford to hire professional animators!) Not a deal breaker, but definitely will be something I continuously complain about until they are smoother and more realistic movements. Oddly though the animations of the people riding bikes and riding the skateboard looked amazing!
#2 Negative: Facial Expressions - They were again pretty robotic and lifeless. You could not read their body language and tell what kind of mood they were in. I definitely don't want anything like TS4's overly exaggerated facial expressions, but I do expect to see some emotion on them, especially when they are interacting with other characters!
#3 Negative: Possible Phone Addiction/Appendage Again? I noticed in all of the Character Icons during gameplay that they ALL had a cell phone icon too, that worries me unless we can customize who gets a cell phone and who doesn't. Hoping it also comes with the ability to have landlines for retro type game play.
#4 Negative: The Hairs - Most of what was shown were pretty atrocious (gave me serious TS3 fugggly hair vibes) But again, I'm sure CC creators will be able to help with that (just like they have in all of The Sims games). So, that too is not a deal breaker.
#5 Negative: Scale of Objects - Some of them look odd and weirdly sized, either too big or their scale is too small compared to other objects. For example the stairs are almost literally straight up instead of a realistic incline.
#6 Negative: Lighting - It's either dark in areas or overly bright in areas. But, I'm a mod user so I'm sure someone will create some kind of lighting mod if it doesn't get fixed before release (I also have to use lighting mods for TS4 too) so that's not a deal breaker either.
POSITIVES FOR ME
10 Traits in Create-a-Character!
Ability to set job, actual age, pronouns, sexual preferences, starting funds and vehicle in Create-a-Character!
Place lots anywhere - No Grid Restriction! (This means that if you don't want the "open world" and traveling abilities, you can literally just set up a block of community lots all within walking distance! How amazing is that!)
Region Creator!
Customize Lot Sizes
Hair physics (you can see someone's hair move and cover their eye while in Create-a-Character)
1/2 Tile Wall Placements! (Although ultimately I would have hoped that we had NO restrictions on wall placement, but I have been wanting at least bare minimum 1/2 tile wall placements since TS1!)
Jackets/Coats can be worn on top of clothing (no more being forced to have a coat with an attached top)
No Rabbit Holes!
No Loading Screens!
Things I'm Super Excited About (but have so many questions):
Conversation creator (Imagine playing another player's story in which they created and/or customized all of the conversation choices along with the friendship/relationship gains/hits!)
Event creator (Curious what an "event" is in this game)
Career creator (Endless Possibilities!)
Quest creator (I do enjoy some questing tasks when I can't think of what to do in my current play session. I wonder if we'd be able to set up a quest for "Character A" to do a crime and then set up a custom career for "Character B" to be the police and their tasks for that job would be to "discover" that "Character A" was the suspect of the crime. Or set up characters to cheat on their partners and create a custom career for an investigator to discover their cheatiness and report back to the client that hired them. Could be sooooo fun!)
Recipe creator (How would that work? I mean, the food asset for the "new recipe" would have to look like the "new recipe" or will you be forced to just use the existing food assets? Or maybe this is more for CC creators who make new food meshes).
Skill creator (I'm not a modder, but I would absolutely love to be able to download other people's custom skills!)
Trait creator (Love me some new traits! But, will they actually affect how the character behaves? Are these things that we get to choose how someone with a certain trait will behave?)
Crafting creator (Again, I'm not sure exactly what this is, when I think of crafting I automatically think of the things we can do in The Sims (woodworking, knitting, cross-stitching, sculpting, etc)
Collectible creator (Love this one! You could literally make some kind of treasure map and hide your collectibles all over, maybe give little cryptic clues for the characters to have to follow, or how about a scavenger hunt type collection?
So if Project Renee can give me all this (or better yet ... even more player customization) then I will be buying both! If not, then it will be a wait and see what "ground breaking" features they implement in the newest version.
^ Well said, Chicklet! I too am NOT one of those people. Gameplay is first.
Like you, I care about them fixing the animation. It's a bigger priority to me than the graphics, although I would also like to see improvement to them.
Expressive animations are SO important!
Idle animations: I want the characters to show how they are feeling. Low needs? I should visually see that.
Reaction animations: A smelly sim? Let's see a "pee yew." Or an attractive Sim that meets their chemistry criteria? They should react!
Social animations: Strong theatrical animations that visually show how well an interaction is going should be the goal.
Aspirations and Wants and Fears!
Separately, Wants and Fears tied to a high-level aspiration archetype of the character are really important to me. I don't want specific checklist to-do aspirations of the Sims 4. Those are great for "quests" as LBY calls them. But high-level aspirations should be broad categories of what that person wants to get out of life. The Wants and Fears should be directly related to that aspiration to provide a blueprint.
Both games are worth having! I already am a long time enthusiast of the Sims 3 and Sims 4 ( I started playing in December of 2016), and I preordered "Life by You" that doesn't mean I don't want to play the Sims 5, if it is a great game to, why not! I am also am considering giving Paralives a try if I like that one as well.. Now for those that have to choose, I hope you enjoy what you chose!
I feel like the only one who had their enthusiasm dropped by the trailer and presentation. It seems more like an open world platform to show off modding capabilities than an actual game. It feels more Second Life than The Sims. Given that the Early Access release is only six months away, the footage looked like it belonged to a game way earlier in the development process. Aside from the jankiness which will probably get buffed out (hopefully), the world is so dead, again, early in development, it could change.
The lack of "rabbit holes" gives me pause, while others here are like, "yay! I can finally watch my sim check emails for eight hours", and I like that retail services are not locked behind a rabbit hole, I'm concerned how this is going to play out. The Sims 3 worlds, while pretty, they were dead, especially worlds such as Bridgeport and Roaring Heights, which are supposed to be urban. What is the cap of people going to be? 200? 300? And all these people are going to spread out doing their own thing?
Then, the actual open workplace themselves. From what we saw, while again, early in development, a person's entire job for the day was do 5 "work tasks", not a work task in particular, said task included stocking a shelf. Is that the entire work day? Stock three shelves and you are good to go? How well will this be automated by unplayed "agents", and this is before we talk about schools and such. I have a feeling most of these careers will be office or shop work, and very few that require their own interactions and activities.
It seems like the dev is going down the Roblox(?) route of getting modders to build all the content, while I know a lot of people here love and can't live without their CC and mods, to me a lot of looks like it clearly wasn't made by a developer. Think of it like DeviantArt, there are some great pieces of artwork, but that buried by all the poorly made stuff by delusional artists and ai generated stuff that it easily gets lost. Not to mention, I've seen lots of players struggle with the Sims 4's roof tools, they are in for a fresh new world of pain with the tools shown off in this, Paralives and Project Rene/Sims 5.
I have a similar issue with both Paralives and Project Rene/Sims 5 since both seem to be more focussed on build and buy with only limited promises of what the game itself will be like. Note, this was a trap The Sims 1 almost fell into, which originally was going to be a game centred around building - the sims only existed to support and complement it, until they brought in some new devs who convinced the team to focus on the sims themselves (children weren't even going to be in the game until some new dev pointed it out).
All the focus seems to be on the distracting bells and whistles, and little on the actual gameplay itself.
Maybe I'm an overly negative and pessimistic person. Sorry for rambling, I hope I made my points across clear.
I feel like the only one who had their enthusiasm dropped by the trailer and presentation. It seems more like an open world platform to show off modding capabilities than an actual game. It feels more Second Life than The Sims. Given that the Early Access release is only six months away, the footage looked like it belonged to a game way earlier in the development process. Aside from the jankiness which will probably get buffed out (hopefully), the world is so dead, again, early in development, it could change.
The lack of "rabbit holes" gives me pause, while others here are like, "yay! I can finally watch my sim check emails for eight hours", and I like that retail services are not locked behind a rabbit hole, I'm concerned how this is going to play out. The Sims 3 worlds, while pretty, they were dead, especially worlds such as Bridgeport and Roaring Heights, which are supposed to be urban. What is the cap of people going to be? 200? 300? And all these people are going to spread out doing their own thing?
It seems like the dev is going down the Roblox(?) route of getting modders to build all the content, while
All the focus seems to be on the distracting bells and whistles, and little on the actual gameplay itself.
Maybe I'm an overly negative and pessimistic person. Sorry for rambling, I hope I made my points across clear.
I think we need to keep in mind sims 3 came out in 2009 .Over ten years ago , computers are more powerful now.The other thing is the game is not complete.They are planning the game be on early access.For a whole year.So the game will be finish in a year and six months .Also the specs of the game are high.Tgere defenatley not trying to make this game run on low spec pcs or laptops.
I feel like the only one who had their enthusiasm dropped by the trailer and presentation. It seems more like an open world platform to show off modding capabilities than an actual game. It feels more Second Life than The Sims. Given that the Early Access release is only six months away, the footage looked like it belonged to a game way earlier in the development process. Aside from the jankiness which will probably get buffed out (hopefully), the world is so dead, again, early in development, it could change.
The lack of "rabbit holes" gives me pause, while others here are like, "yay! I can finally watch my sim check emails for eight hours", and I like that retail services are not locked behind a rabbit hole, I'm concerned how this is going to play out. The Sims 3 worlds, while pretty, they were dead, especially worlds such as Bridgeport and Roaring Heights, which are supposed to be urban. What is the cap of people going to be? 200? 300? And all these people are going to spread out doing their own thing?
It seems like the dev is going down the Roblox(?) route of getting modders to build all the content, while
All the focus seems to be on the distracting bells and whistles, and little on the actual gameplay itself.
Maybe I'm an overly negative and pessimistic person. Sorry for rambling, I hope I made my points across clear.
I think we need to keep in mind sims 3 came out in 2009 .Over ten years ago , computers are more powerful now.The other thing is the game is not complete.They are planning the game be on early access.For a whole year.So the game will be finish in a year and six months .Also the specs of the game are high.Tgere defenatley not trying to make this game run on low spec pcs or laptops.
Maybe this is an unpopular opinion, but I'm happy when devs are not making their game geared towards the lowest common denominator of PC specs (or insisting that the game be playable across PC, Mac, and multiple consoles). The former leads to constraints and the latter may complicate development.
Comments
Yeah me too. I will still buy it but I am also a bit worried.
The reason TS4 is not really my kind of jam is because there are too many weird options and everything is based on player input. Nothing happens without me initiation it.
I don't want to tell stories or stuff like that. I want to play a game and let it (or my characters) guide me though it... I hate it when TS4 "news" or whatever say that you can now create yourself even better/ easier and tell your story. But I don't want to do that!
What about us who don't care about playing ourselves or "our stories" and are more focused on gameplay than story or looks. I am so tired of new hairstyles (or kitchen whatever, or a sweater or hearing aids etc) being viewed as revolutionary. It's hair (or just other assets). Won't make the game more fun or payable as it adds no gameplay.
I'm really excited about this game in a way that The Sims hasn't excited me since they regressed imo with 4.
Me too! Shame we have to wait so long!
What you said sounds lovely and I hope you are right
I am so longing for a new game that seems a bit like TS3 which was my favourite game inte the Sims franchise but it's so old now it's not the same as a completely new game would be.
I think though that the characters not talking in Life By You will feel weird. Just like Dragon Age Origins no talking weirds me out after having played DAI
I was actually going to preorder LbY, never done that before, but I really would prefer Steam so I'm thinking I might wait until September. I just hope the price will be the same for the early access on steam.
I would imagine at one end we will see people making their own Strangerville stories and then at the other end we will see people making their own version of GTA using the direct control and over shoulder camera. With these tools you can easily make, -without any real programming skill-, GTA Convenience Store robberies for example. You could even make smaller scope stories such as murder mystery games of Cluedo within a mansion house with meaningful scripts.
The benefit of releasing all the creators is that the developers dont need to make gameplay "Expansions" although I am sure they will make at least one classicly regarded expansion yearly. They can just do "Item and housing packs" for different themes and time periods
With the Conversation system, the flirty conversation may become a problem.
Like recently with the Gallery, the game could also need a "Profanity update".
The Sims 4 Ideas Corner
- 👕 [CAS] Male content | 💰 §1 Million Lifestyle | ♂️ Man lifestyle for The Sims | ♻️ Content from The Sims
- 🔨 [Build/Buy Mode] Ideas | 📱 Ideas from The Sims FreePlay | ✈️ Vacation : Gameplay update | 🥦 New meals
The Sims 4 General DiscussionRod said no rabbithole but these places could be as empty as the world in the trailer.
The Sims 4 Ideas Corner
- 👕 [CAS] Male content | 💰 §1 Million Lifestyle | ♂️ Man lifestyle for The Sims | ♻️ Content from The Sims
- 🔨 [Build/Buy Mode] Ideas | 📱 Ideas from The Sims FreePlay | ✈️ Vacation : Gameplay update | 🥦 New meals
The Sims 4 General DiscussionImagine you click your character's portrait in the UI and you get context-dependent macro controls
-at home: do chores, build skill...painting, cook, socialize
-at work: work hard, do assignments, socialize
Basically like the "styles" of rabbit hole work in Sims 3 and 4 except instead of the Sims just doing this in the rabbit hole, these macro selections actually modify the AI so we actually see them do those tasks.
The Sims 4 Ideas Corner
- 👕 [CAS] Male content | 💰 §1 Million Lifestyle | ♂️ Man lifestyle for The Sims | ♻️ Content from The Sims
- 🔨 [Build/Buy Mode] Ideas | 📱 Ideas from The Sims FreePlay | ✈️ Vacation : Gameplay update | 🥦 New meals
The Sims 4 General DiscussionI don't specifically care for if it is vampires/ werewolves/ mermaids etc, but just something not human would be nice. Actually something other than those ones would be preferable to me
This is not me being grumpy , but I think people need think this realistically.Why I think they would have audible amount of population .I imagine the population right now can't be too big.
Definitely can see occults in a DLC
I saw someone on YouTube give an extensive walkthrough of this. It was the most awesome 20 minutes and I would totally buy this while it is pre release in September except...ITS NOT ON IOS platform. WHY????? crying 😭 Oh the torture. It is going to be awesome. Might even force me to purchase a windows gaming laptop. That's how incredible it all looks and it's early on.
I will 100% for sure be buying this on early release in September. It's sounds too good to be true!
Now, what I do think is this:
I don't believe this will hurt EA/The Sims very much, simply because of the art style that they're going for.
Simmers have had 9 years of TS4's pixar-ish cartoony looking graphics and that's what they're used to.
So when they saw this trailer, they couldn't get past the visuals of it. Plus, there are a LOT of simmers who don't actually even "play" the gameplay of TS4 and just build and dress up sims. So for those people, this game looks hideous!
So yeah, this game won't appeal to some simmers at all. They are perfectly content having a game that looks pretty and don't care about shallow and boring gameplay just as long as it looks pretty in their screenshots. These same people also complained about Project Renee's initial reveal of the art-style too.
I am NOT one of those people. I need a game that excites me and draws me in and keeps me so engrossed that when I look at the clock it's 2AM already and I have to get up for work in less than 3 hours! That's the kind of game this sounds like it will be. TS4 doesn't (and hasn't ever) done that for me, not ever! I haven't done that sims TS2 and TS3 ..... and I don't expect it to happen with TS5 either.
I just keep thinking about how amazingly customizable it will be and how I will actually finally be able to play out my own stories without having to adapt them because of restrictions imposed by the devs such as:
TOTAL FREEDOM to create what I want!
NEGATIVES FOR ME (That hopefully will be addressed and improved before the final release.)
#1 Negative: Character Animations - They are janky! Too clunky and robotic and they look like an amateur modder created them. (Which I overlook when it's from a CC creator, but I can NOT accept that from a major Game Dev Team that has a huge budget and can afford to hire professional animators!) Not a deal breaker, but definitely will be something I continuously complain about until they are smoother and more realistic movements. Oddly though the animations of the people riding bikes and riding the skateboard looked amazing!
#2 Negative: Facial Expressions - They were again pretty robotic and lifeless. You could not read their body language and tell what kind of mood they were in. I definitely don't want anything like TS4's overly exaggerated facial expressions, but I do expect to see some emotion on them, especially when they are interacting with other characters!
#3 Negative: Possible Phone Addiction/Appendage Again? I noticed in all of the Character Icons during gameplay that they ALL had a cell phone icon too, that worries me unless we can customize who gets a cell phone and who doesn't. Hoping it also comes with the ability to have landlines for retro type game play.
#4 Negative: The Hairs - Most of what was shown were pretty atrocious (gave me serious TS3 fugggly hair vibes) But again, I'm sure CC creators will be able to help with that (just like they have in all of The Sims games). So, that too is not a deal breaker.
#5 Negative: Scale of Objects - Some of them look odd and weirdly sized, either too big or their scale is too small compared to other objects. For example the stairs are almost literally straight up instead of a realistic incline.
#6 Negative: Lighting - It's either dark in areas or overly bright in areas. But, I'm a mod user so I'm sure someone will create some kind of lighting mod if it doesn't get fixed before release (I also have to use lighting mods for TS4 too) so that's not a deal breaker either.
POSITIVES FOR ME
Things I'm Super Excited About (but have so many questions):
So if Project Renee can give me all this (or better yet ... even more player customization) then I will be buying both! If not, then it will be a wait and see what "ground breaking" features they implement in the newest version.
Like you, I care about them fixing the animation. It's a bigger priority to me than the graphics, although I would also like to see improvement to them.
Expressive animations are SO important!
Aspirations and Wants and Fears!
Separately, Wants and Fears tied to a high-level aspiration archetype of the character are really important to me. I don't want specific checklist to-do aspirations of the Sims 4. Those are great for "quests" as LBY calls them. But high-level aspirations should be broad categories of what that person wants to get out of life. The Wants and Fears should be directly related to that aspiration to provide a blueprint.
The lack of "rabbit holes" gives me pause, while others here are like, "yay! I can finally watch my sim check emails for eight hours", and I like that retail services are not locked behind a rabbit hole, I'm concerned how this is going to play out. The Sims 3 worlds, while pretty, they were dead, especially worlds such as Bridgeport and Roaring Heights, which are supposed to be urban. What is the cap of people going to be? 200? 300? And all these people are going to spread out doing their own thing?
Then, the actual open workplace themselves. From what we saw, while again, early in development, a person's entire job for the day was do 5 "work tasks", not a work task in particular, said task included stocking a shelf. Is that the entire work day? Stock three shelves and you are good to go? How well will this be automated by unplayed "agents", and this is before we talk about schools and such. I have a feeling most of these careers will be office or shop work, and very few that require their own interactions and activities.
It seems like the dev is going down the Roblox(?) route of getting modders to build all the content, while I know a lot of people here love and can't live without their CC and mods, to me a lot of looks like it clearly wasn't made by a developer. Think of it like DeviantArt, there are some great pieces of artwork, but that buried by all the poorly made stuff by delusional artists and ai generated stuff that it easily gets lost. Not to mention, I've seen lots of players struggle with the Sims 4's roof tools, they are in for a fresh new world of pain with the tools shown off in this, Paralives and Project Rene/Sims 5.
I have a similar issue with both Paralives and Project Rene/Sims 5 since both seem to be more focussed on build and buy with only limited promises of what the game itself will be like. Note, this was a trap The Sims 1 almost fell into, which originally was going to be a game centred around building - the sims only existed to support and complement it, until they brought in some new devs who convinced the team to focus on the sims themselves (children weren't even going to be in the game until some new dev pointed it out).
All the focus seems to be on the distracting bells and whistles, and little on the actual gameplay itself.
Maybe I'm an overly negative and pessimistic person. Sorry for rambling, I hope I made my points across clear.
Maybe this is an unpopular opinion, but I'm happy when devs are not making their game geared towards the lowest common denominator of PC specs (or insisting that the game be playable across PC, Mac, and multiple consoles). The former leads to constraints and the latter may complicate development.