I'm gonna jump in and quickly focus on one of the points the op gave. The op complains about babies being just objects. When in truth, babies have always been classified and treated like objects in past games. The only difference is that they can't be picked up and placed elsewhere. People might call it "pure laziness" that babies are tied to cribs, but those people obviously know nothing about gameplay mechanics. The complexity of the multitasking system in TS4 is far more complex than people realise, and issues with multitasking is why we didn't see toddlers on launch either.
The point is that people blindly call the devs lazy, ignorant, and arrogant even though the reasons they give are valid. No amount of insulting the game and the devs will bring these things back. It's a lot like the pot calling the kettle black.
Sorry, I'll have to disagree here. The devs themselves said they skimped on animations because it was "easier" and they could focus on other aspects of the game. For example the emotion system... which doesn't work.
I haven't seen this quote before. Could you track it down, perhaps? I thought I'd seen every dev statement about the game by now.
"Ultimately, we thought we would rather spend our time making the actual baby interactions fun and interesting and have more time for people like me to spend devoted to our new socialization system and multitasking - it would have occupied my time entirely for many months to build carryable babies." - SimGuruMax in the tech talk thread.
Not necessarily about emotions, they certainly tie into the social system, but he does make it clear that management chose to prioritize multitasking & socializing over making real babies. It's kinda funny how he tries to justify it by calling the baby interactions fun and interesting, when they are all essentially the same animations that are neither fun nor interesting.
Just my two cents tho.
This is also only one of MANY quotes from various devs who said themselves pretty much the same thing in different things they wrote and shared. I recall Ryan Vaughn saying many of the like sentiments on why other things were omitted "for now" and how he indicated these things were left out more or less temporary for their stable foundation and the new emotional system as well as the multitasking. Then there was the animator -I forget who exactly, but who stated they could have spent eons of time working out the carrying of infants, but have came up with an issue because of the multitasking where the sims kept trying to pocket the infants like they do mops and other objects they pull out of the air to use - but instead of wasting precious time at tryi g to work around this flaw it was just easier to not allow the babies to be carried around - and indicated it was just for the moment - but he mentioned he felt all of that would be worked out in time.
Even Graham stated more than once toddlers and other things they had omitted were due to time constraints.... and also indicated these things would come in the not so distant future - because they had made sure the game had a stable foundation, etc, etc. I also know Graham spent numerous amounts of time even on other forums - like modthesims explaining why some things were sacrificed for now in order to not further delay the project - with many indications this was all temporary or fixable. Maybe not in so many words - but these things were indicated in his posts.
To me it was just a ploy to keep simmers from cancelling pre-orders - by indicating these things would be rectified once the game came out and they had more time to devote to all the things we were complaining were missing. Not once did they indicate these things would not happen or that it would take years.
When a game reaches nearly a year and a half of age since release - it is no longer in the new game territory for features that are considered BASE game features, that we are still waiting for. Sims life stages is a base game feature, not an ep feature, and this can no longer be looked at with the same peace of mind that the game is young and it will come that many of us keep getting told.
"Games Are Not The Place To Tell Stories, Games Are Meant To Let People Tell Their Own Stories"...Will Wright.
In dreams - I LIVE!
In REALITY, I simply exist.....
I'm gonna jump in and quickly focus on one of the points the op gave. The op complains about babies being just objects. When in truth, babies have always been classified and treated like objects in past games. The only difference is that they can't be picked up and placed elsewhere. People might call it "pure laziness" that babies are tied to cribs, but those people obviously know nothing about gameplay mechanics. The complexity of the multitasking system in TS4 is far more complex than people realise, and issues with multitasking is why we didn't see toddlers on launch either.
The point is that people blindly call the devs lazy, ignorant, and arrogant even though the reasons they give are valid. No amount of insulting the game and the devs will bring these things back. It's a lot like the pot calling the kettle black.
Sorry, I'll have to disagree here. The devs themselves said they skimped on animations because it was "easier" and they could focus on other aspects of the game. For example the emotion system... which doesn't work.
I haven't seen this quote before. Could you track it down, perhaps? I thought I'd seen every dev statement about the game by now.
"Ultimately, we thought we would rather spend our time making the actual baby interactions fun and interesting and have more time for people like me to spend devoted to our new socialization system and multitasking - it would have occupied my time entirely for many months to build carryable babies." - SimGuruMax in the tech talk thread.
Not necessarily about emotions, they certainly tie into the social system, but he does make it clear that management chose to prioritize multitasking & socializing over making real babies. It's kinda funny how he tries to justify it by calling the baby interactions fun and interesting, when they are all essentially the same animations that are neither fun nor interesting.
Just my two cents tho.
ETA: He also goes on to say how they wanted to avoid complex programming, "complexity is our biggest enemy" which just goes to show their priorities when developing the game. They made it abundantly clear that it wasn't worth it to them to do the hard stuff and make a good game.
Thank you. So, nothing about "easy" here. It's about making choices when you can't do everything, because choices always have to be made. And as far as I can tell, what makes the "actually baby interactions fun and interesting" is animation. What was nixed was solving the multitasking issue needed to unhook babies from cribs for the base game.
Here's an example of what "complexity" looks like. This is from the game as developed:
The game has not eschewed all hard stuff, as this shows. It's a very complex system, and it's basegame development. Complexity might be enemy, but that doesn't mean that everything complex is just not being done at all: it simply means it poses challenges. (And honestly, I don't see how there's an argument to be made that complex things don't pose challenges.) But the reality of game development is that if you can't do everything on your bucket list, it can be a reasonable decision to drop something that takes 1,000 development hours and risks a high bug count in favour of four things that take 250 development hours at less bug risk. Because you can't just double the development hours (and triple the QA hours, at the very least).
Does that mean we all have to agree with the choices made? Of course not. But nothing that has been said has indicated that nothing "hard" or "complex" has made the cut. It has simply indicated that complexity is a factor when game design and development choices have to be made.
EA CREATOR NETWORK MEMBER — Want to be notified of patches, new Broken Mods threads, and urgent Sims 4 news? Follow me at https://www.patreon.com/luthienrising.
You missed my point I was talking about me personally I didn't want a rehash of things from the past in the series if I wanted all of that I would have never moved on to TS4. So its not about what you wanted its what I was expecting for the game.
Just out of curiosity, what were you expecting for the game?
I was expecting to get some things that were from past games like EP wise but I wasn't wanting everything to come back. I really don't like toddlers so that is a no biggie thing for me not to have them come back. I just wanted a sims game that didn't resemble past game that was the appeal like open words I like semi open worlds but I don't like that you have a loading screen if your neighbor is in the same section of the neighborhood. I kind of like we don't have the repoman or burglars coming to the house stealing stuff considering we don't have burglar alarms. But I was ready to move on from TS3 because I was bored and that game sucks now after playing TS4 I wish that they could do things they can't and then I get frustrated at them. lol Lets just say that having everything in the game doesn't make it fun or interesting it makes the game slightly less fun because you can do everything and in no way have I even explored all of TS3 I haven't. But I only really go back for the weather.
I think that a game has problems when it creates so much tension between players.
I think putting everything from old iterations back in a new base game would be too much, as it would be a lot of work. But I think some basics could be there already, like the ability to make apartments, maybe some rain and basic weather.
I think TS4 is a good game, but the new features don't really make me forget other things that were in the previous base games that I liked. The open world in TS3 made me excited for the new game, I thought of all possibilities that could entail. For me, TS4 improvements seem really technical, so they are definetely improvements, but they don't make the game that much fun for me, at least for now.
(Personally, my favorite is still TS2. I could only dream about having a game like TS2 in todays wonderful graphics. Maybe TS4 could be that game, who knows. It is not finished yet)
@luthienrising he said pretty explicitly that complexity is something they try to avoid. Does that mean nothing in the game is complex? No, and I never said that. I said they looked at any and all ways to avoid doing the hard work, which is backed up when SGM said they try to avoid complexity at every turn because "complexity is their biggest enemy".
Youre right not everything makes the cut, but the shortcuts the took did not lead to a better product. They made tremendous cuts, and the things that were prioritized are far from breakout features. Emotions are a hot mess, and far from compelling enough to warrant being the games main 'new' feature; multitasking is also not all that profound, there's plenty of situations where multitasking cannot be done. For being the two prominent features they are incredibly underwhelming.
In terms of the base game, that's where the foundation should be completed. Having a whole life stage incomplete, and babies downgraded to an object with a handful of animations doesn't tell me that the foundation is all that complete. There's tons of work that needs to be done, and given the track record we've seen so far I don't see why anyone would assume they're willing to put that kind of work in. He said himself in the same little interview that the tech to free babies from the bassinets was there and that it would be seen in the not so distant future... Well we're a year and a half past launch and there's no word on any of that. So I thoroughly have no confidence in anything from Maxis, there are too many official statements from developers that contradict what we are seeing.
The entire framework of their "you rule" marketing campaign was built on a foundation of lies, because in The Sims 4 we aren't given options to "rule" outside of how the developers imagine the game. It's just sad.
And how is that different from any other Sims game? Sure, we had CASt in Sims 3, but apart from that, it's not like you could rule your games? You couldn't even rule your own business in Sims 3, the game did it for you.
The slogan for TS3 was play with life, and seeing how you had a full suite of age groups all complete with different interactions that slogan is 100% on point.
"You Rule" was created for TS4, and only pertains to TS4.
I'm gonna respectfully agree to disagree on the post above the quoted one.
Your argument for the Sims 3 slogan would be accurate IF it was 'Play Life', but it's 'Play With Life'. Play with life means that the decision you and your sims make will change and shape the world around them, much like the butterfly or ripple effect.
The 'You Rule' campaign in the sims 4 is accurate in the context they are trying to achieve - you create your sims, you control your sims, and you rule your sims. Same meaning for both campaigns, different wording.
I think that a game has problems when it creates so much tension between players.
I think putting everything from old iterations back in a new base game would be too much, as it would be a lot of work. But I think some basics could be there already, like the ability to make apartments, maybe some rain and basic weather.
I think TS4 is a good game, but the new features don't really make me forget other things that were in the previous base games that I liked. The open world in TS3 made me excited for the new game, I thought of all possibilities that could entail. For me, TS4 improvements seem really technical, so they are definetely improvements, but they don't make the game that much fun for me, at least for now.
(Personally, my favorite is still TS2. I could only dream about having a game like TS2 in todays wonderful graphics. Maybe TS4 could be that game, who knows. It is not finished yet)
This isn't a tense community. It's downright civil. You want tense? Try the World of Warcraft forums.
The entire framework of their "you rule" marketing campaign was built on a foundation of lies, because in The Sims 4 we aren't given options to "rule" outside of how the developers imagine the game. It's just sad.
And how is that different from any other Sims game? Sure, we had CASt in Sims 3, but apart from that, it's not like you could rule your games? You couldn't even rule your own business in Sims 3, the game did it for you.
The slogan for TS3 was play with life, and seeing how you had a full suite of age groups all complete with different interactions that slogan is 100% on point.
"You Rule" was created for TS4, and only pertains to TS4.
I'm gonna respectfully agree to disagree on the post above the quoted one.
Your argument for the Sims 3 slogan would be accurate IF it was 'Play Life', but it's 'Play With Life'. Play with life means that the decision you and your sims make will change and shape the world around them, much like the butterfly or ripple effect.
The 'You Rule' campaign in the sims 4 is accurate in the context they are trying to achieve - you create your sims, you control your sims, and you rule your sims. Same meaning for both campaigns, different wording.
Did you even read the context of my post? The above user was making claims that don't pertain to TS3. "You can't rule your own business in Sims 3"
"You rule" WAS the marketing strategy for Sims 4, not 3. The slogan for The Sims3 was play with life. I said you had a full suite of age groups to play with, therefor I'm not inaccurate by any means. They are two completely different slogans meaning two completely different things.
You can try and justify your point, but at the end of the day they mean different things. You rule implies you are in complete control, which you are not. I can only control what I'm given to work with, whereas in Sims 3 you had tons of customization options allowing you much greater control over your game. It was how you wanted it, versus how it is now where we have little control.
The entire framework of their "you rule" marketing campaign was built on a foundation of lies, because in The Sims 4 we aren't given options to "rule" outside of how the developers imagine the game. It's just sad.
And how is that different from any other Sims game? Sure, we had CASt in Sims 3, but apart from that, it's not like you could rule your games? You couldn't even rule your own business in Sims 3, the game did it for you.
The slogan for TS3 was play with life, and seeing how you had a full suite of age groups all complete with different interactions that slogan is 100% on point.
"You Rule" was created for TS4, and only pertains to TS4.
I'm gonna respectfully agree to disagree on the post above the quoted one.
Your argument for the Sims 3 slogan would be accurate IF it was 'Play Life', but it's 'Play With Life'. Play with life means that the decision you and your sims make will change and shape the world around them, much like the butterfly or ripple effect.
The 'You Rule' campaign in the sims 4 is accurate in the context they are trying to achieve - you create your sims, you control your sims, and you rule your sims. Same meaning for both campaigns, different wording.
Did you even read the context of my post? The above user was making claims that don't pertain to TS3. "You can't rule your own business in Sims 3"
"You rule" WAS the marketing strategy for Sims 4, not 3. The slogan for The Sims3 was play with life. I said you had a full suite of age groups to play with, therefor I'm not inaccurate by any means. They are two completely different slogans meaning two completely different things.
You can try and justify your point, but at the end of the day they mean different things. You rule implies you are in complete control, which you are not. I can only control what I'm given to work with, whereas in Sims 3 you had tons of customization options allowing you much greater control over your game. It was how you wanted it, versus how it is now where we have little control.
Im going to leave the play with life slogan there because we can honestly keep going back on fourth on that with the same arguments.
But can I not control the appearance of my sims, can I not control they way they behave, can I not control what they do and don't do? Because I would call all of those ruling my sims.
I'm gonna jump in and quickly focus on one of the points the op gave. The op complains about babies being just objects. When in truth, babies have always been classified and treated like objects in past games. The only difference is that they can't be picked up and placed elsewhere. People might call it "pure laziness" that babies are tied to cribs, but those people obviously know nothing about gameplay mechanics. The complexity of the multitasking system in TS4 is far more complex than people realise, and issues with multitasking is why we didn't see toddlers on launch either.
The point is that people blindly call the devs lazy, ignorant, and arrogant even though the reasons they give are valid. No amount of insulting the game and the devs will bring these things back. It's a lot like the pot calling the kettle black.
Sorry, I'll have to disagree here. The devs themselves said they skimped on animations because it was "easier" and they could focus on other aspects of the game. For example the emotion system... which doesn't work.
I haven't seen this quote before. Could you track it down, perhaps? I thought I'd seen every dev statement about the game by now.
I remember what @nanashi-sims is referring to. Back in the beginning when we had the tech discussion thread, someone asked @SimGuruMax about why there is so much slot popping and that was the response he gave.
Edit: whoops, didn't see someone had already mentioned this.
Yeh, they deffo said that babies tied to cribs was a shortcut - it was basically an easy option - the cause of that also being why a toddler was a problem; however, they aren't technical limitations - just shortcuts.
I just wanted to offer my insight, at least when it comes to Sims 3 vs Sims 4. In the Sims 3, I would often get lost for hours creating and populating neighborhoods, filling them with lots, getting everything down to my precise specifications. When I finally played the game, I found it a little robotic and wouldn't get to far. Then I'd return a month later, delete my save, and build a new town.
The huge, open world of the Sims 3 was great, but I think it placed too much emphasis on that and not actually a life simulation like the game was meant to be. It was easy to get lost when there was so much content in that area. On top of that, I would download so much custom content to make the game look and play the way I want it to, that, coupled with the story progression handling the entire town, the game would bog down so much to be unplayable. Not to mention how bloated everything gets to the point where a save file becomes completely unplayable after a bit.
Sims 4, even though the emotions are a little wacky, seems much more alive to me. With the enhanced graphics and multitasking, I wonder how smooth the game would run if it was a massive open world like in the Sims 3. I have no problem playing with multiple generations with all the custom content my heart desires. The game still runs great. This is an acceptable sacrifice for me. My world feels less realistic, but the family or sim I'm actually playing feels more involved and alive.
I agree that the no toddlers is a problem (although not for me, because I hated that part of the gameplay, babies, too, and I'm happy to skip through it.) I'm confident that they're trying their best to bring this into the game, but don't want to make any promises because it is such a huge change.
Im going to leave the play with life slogan there because we can honestly keep going back on fourth on that with the same arguments.
But can I not control the appearance of my sims, can I not control they way they behave, can I not control what they do and don't do? Because I would call all of those ruling my sims.
I can't control my Sims at all. They do whatever the hell they want. I want them to read? They put the book behind the TV and go Troll teh Forums.
I want them to sit at the table and eat their food? They have to walk around with their plates, taking forever because they won't get off their phones (which I did NOT tell them to do), then leave their plate in the street where I can't pick it up.
I want them to paint? Too bad. Even though their hunger is completely full, they've cancelled what I wanted them to do, and have queued up Drink Milk three times. I cancel them, and my Sim still walks to the fridge, gets the milk, spins around in confusion, and puts the milk down on the floor. In the time it took to do this, Drink Milk has queued up again, and so they turn around and get more milk before I can stop them.
Need your Sim to be in a certain mood for work? Too bad, I know you took a bath, looked at a painting, and drank tea, but it just randomly changed by itself due to a trait and overrode the last two hours you spent getting your Sims ready for work.
Want to go to the park, but want your kid to finish their home work, take a shower and go to bed? Awww, too bad. You have no control over Sims at home when you are off lot. You child will be standing in the yard, hungry, dirty, and tired, with homework still undone when you get back. Good luck getting him to school on time!
Want to give the Sim you are standing next to a hug? Better run out of the house and stand in the back yard first. That other Sim may or may not follow you for that hug, but either way, it's going to waste an hour.
Want your Sim to work out? Nope, they've cancelled that so they can run across the neighborhood to talk to another Sim that is for some reason doing push ups in the road.
You have no control over Sims in this game AT ALL.
Visit me in the gallery! CC-free builds under origin name Piperbird!
Im going to leave the play with life slogan there because we can honestly keep going back on fourth on that with the same arguments.
But can I not control the appearance of my sims, can I not control they way they behave, can I not control what they do and don't do? Because I would call all of those ruling my sims.
I can't control my Sims at all. They do whatever the hell they want. I want them to read? They put the book behind the TV and go Troll teh Forums.
I want them to sit at the table and eat their food? They have to walk around with their plates, taking forever because they won't get off their phones (which I did NOT tell them to do), then leave their plate in the street where I can't pick it up.
I want them to paint? Too bad. Even though their hunger is completely full, they've cancelled what I wanted them to do, and have queued up Drink Milk three times. I cancel them, and my Sim still walks to the fridge, gets the milk, spins around in confusion, and puts the milk down on the floor. In the time it took to do this, Drink Milk has queued up again, and so they turn around and get more milk before I can stop them.
Need your Sim to be in a certain mood for work? Too bad, I know you took a bath, looked at a painting, and drank tea, but it just randomly changed by itself due to a trait and overrode the last two hours you spent getting your Sims ready for work.
Want to go to the park, but want your kid to finish their home work, take a shower and go to bed? Awww, too bad. You have no control over Sims at home when you are off lot. You child will be standing in the yard, hungry, dirty, and tired, with homework still undone when you get back. Good luck getting him to school on time!
Want to give the Sim you are standing next to a hug? Better run out of the house and stand in the back yard first. That other Sim may or may not follow you for that hug, but either way, it's going to waste an hour.
Want your Sim to work out? Nope, they've cancelled that so they can run across the neighborhood to talk to another Sim that is for some reason doing push ups in the road.
You have no control over Sims in this game AT ALL.
It looks like you might have to disable the autonomy for the active household Piperbird. It's the only sure way of getting your sims to obey your commands, and to prevent them from doing this again in future playing sessions.
I'm gonna jump in and quickly focus on one of the points the op gave. The op complains about babies being just objects. When in truth, babies have always been classified and treated like objects in past games. The only difference is that they can't be picked up and placed elsewhere. People might call it "pure laziness" that babies are tied to cribs, but those people obviously know nothing about gameplay mechanics. The complexity of the multitasking system in TS4 is far more complex than people realise, and issues with multitasking is why we didn't see toddlers on launch either.
The point is that people blindly call the devs lazy, ignorant, and arrogant even though the reasons they give are valid. No amount of insulting the game and the devs will bring these things back. It's a lot like the pot calling the kettle black.
Sorry, I'll have to disagree here. The devs themselves said they skimped on animations because it was "easier" and they could focus on other aspects of the game. For example the emotion system... which doesn't work.
I haven't seen this quote before. Could you track it down, perhaps? I thought I'd seen every dev statement about the game by now.
Sure thing. The post was made in this forum by one of the gurus who was discussing game mechanics.
The newbies may find this version of the Sims appealing but I have been with this franchise since day 1 and we have gone backwards.
1.Babies are nothing more then objects and skip the toddler stage to become a 10 year old.
2.Gotta teleport to visit across the street or the lot next door.
3.No more color wheel.
4.No more age sliders.
Over a decade and the Sims have gone backwards.
Let me just add A couple of things to that list
5. No terrain tool
6. No toddlers
7. No open world
8. No town editing
9. No landline phones
10. No newspapers
11. No burglars
12. No firefighters
13. No cars/bikes
14. Teens are the same height as ya, adults and elders
15. No school bus or car to pick you up for work
I'm sure there is more, these were the ones that came to mind.
Im going to leave the play with life slogan there because we can honestly keep going back on fourth on that with the same arguments.
But can I not control the appearance of my sims, can I not control they way they behave, can I not control what they do and don't do? Because I would call all of those ruling my sims.
I can't control my Sims at all. They do whatever the hell they want. I want them to read? They put the book behind the TV and go Troll teh Forums.
I want them to sit at the table and eat their food? They have to walk around with their plates, taking forever because they won't get off their phones (which I did NOT tell them to do), then leave their plate in the street where I can't pick it up.
I want them to paint? Too bad. Even though their hunger is completely full, they've cancelled what I wanted them to do, and have queued up Drink Milk three times. I cancel them, and my Sim still walks to the fridge, gets the milk, spins around in confusion, and puts the milk down on the floor. In the time it took to do this, Drink Milk has queued up again, and so they turn around and get more milk before I can stop them.
Need your Sim to be in a certain mood for work? Too bad, I know you took a bath, looked at a painting, and drank tea, but it just randomly changed by itself due to a trait and overrode the last two hours you spent getting your Sims ready for work.
Want to go to the park, but want your kid to finish their home work, take a shower and go to bed? Awww, too bad. You have no control over Sims at home when you are off lot. You child will be standing in the yard, hungry, dirty, and tired, with homework still undone when you get back. Good luck getting him to school on time!
Want to give the Sim you are standing next to a hug? Better run out of the house and stand in the back yard first. That other Sim may or may not follow you for that hug, but either way, it's going to waste an hour.
Want your Sim to work out? Nope, they've cancelled that so they can run across the neighborhood to talk to another Sim that is for some reason doing push ups in the road.
You have no control over Sims in this game AT ALL.
Something is very wrong in your game Piper. My sims have never done this sort of thing outside of the infuriating toilet bug issue. Have you tried repairing your game? This is so very bizarre. My sims do whatever I tell them to do until they pass out from exhaustion or nearly die from hunger, and I have full autonomy on. You should really make an inquiry about this in the bugs section and submit your info.
Im going to leave the play with life slogan there because we can honestly keep going back on fourth on that with the same arguments.
But can I not control the appearance of my sims, can I not control they way they behave, can I not control what they do and don't do? Because I would call all of those ruling my sims.
I can't control my Sims at all. They do whatever the hell they want. I want them to read? They put the book behind the TV and go Troll teh Forums.
I want them to sit at the table and eat their food? They have to walk around with their plates, taking forever because they won't get off their phones (which I did NOT tell them to do), then leave their plate in the street where I can't pick it up.
I want them to paint? Too bad. Even though their hunger is completely full, they've cancelled what I wanted them to do, and have queued up Drink Milk three times. I cancel them, and my Sim still walks to the fridge, gets the milk, spins around in confusion, and puts the milk down on the floor. In the time it took to do this, Drink Milk has queued up again, and so they turn around and get more milk before I can stop them.
Need your Sim to be in a certain mood for work? Too bad, I know you took a bath, looked at a painting, and drank tea, but it just randomly changed by itself due to a trait and overrode the last two hours you spent getting your Sims ready for work.
Want to go to the park, but want your kid to finish their home work, take a shower and go to bed? Awww, too bad. You have no control over Sims at home when you are off lot. You child will be standing in the yard, hungry, dirty, and tired, with homework still undone when you get back. Good luck getting him to school on time!
Want to give the Sim you are standing next to a hug? Better run out of the house and stand in the back yard first. That other Sim may or may not follow you for that hug, but either way, it's going to waste an hour.
Want your Sim to work out? Nope, they've cancelled that so they can run across the neighborhood to talk to another Sim that is for some reason doing push ups in the road.
You have no control over Sims in this game AT ALL.
Something is very wrong in your game Piper. My sims have never done this sort of thing outside of the infuriating toilet bug issue. Have you tried repairing your game? This is so very bizarre. My sims do whatever I tell them to do until they pass out from exhaustion or nearly die from hunger, and I have full autonomy on. You should really make an inquiry about this in the bugs section and submit your info.
I repair my game in Origin every single time before I play. I have no CC or mods, and only have the base game. I have been having bugs and problems since the day the game came out. I can play TS3 with no lag what so ever, never had any issues, but TS4 is an unplayable buggy mess. I force myself to play, and get bored or frustrated within minutes.
And even with autonomy turned off, Sims still cancel the commands I give them and do whatever they want anyway.
Visit me in the gallery! CC-free builds under origin name Piperbird!
@luthienrising - here are quotes wherein SimGuruMax explains why they made some of the decisions; perhaps you will read them as something else, but I interpreted the decisions as opting for easier design choices to focus on other aspects of the game. I wanted to find the slot popping comment he made where they pretty much nixed animations because they wanted to make "different cups" and animations would cause some kind of trouble because where would sims put all those nifty new cups Couldn't find it though. Sorry.
To be fair, this guru says that they've done a lot and he insisted that they'd continue to make improvements, but he's just trying to be as honest as possible about the development process, and the truth was that the devs opted to simplify the game mechanics and sacrifice the quality of the past games to focus on other things in TS4 like borked emotions, unusual multitasking, and cup variations.
On babies as objects:
I can say somewhat unequivocally that it is technically feasible to make babies "real" again, as you describe it. As for prioritization, that is really up to our production team. Babies not being tied to the crib is going to be a sticking-point, though. That decision was made for many reasons, not just time-constraints. We felt dissatisfied with babies in TS3 and were looking for ways to get more good things without having all the crazy complexity. One of the most complicated aspects of babies is that Sims could carry them around - babies aren't just another carryable: they cannot be holstered (Sims can magically disappear items in their hands temporarily to play animations that need the hand) due to believability issues and there end up being a huge number of weird rules about them not being able to be placed in different locations, etc, etc, etc. Carryable babies were such a huge headache on TS3 and we had to ask the question "Is it worth it?"
On borked bed ownership (fixed later):
We thought about beds for a while and we wanted something simple that would work in most cases while not being obtrusive or require new UI and require direct player intervention. Keep in mind as well that every single player is different - things you want to see in the game someone else could hate; something you find simple, they may find too complex and daunting - "I thought I had a good grip on this game until I discovered the bed ownership screen - how far does the rabbit hole go, geez?". We figured most players playing the game would be fine with the simple solution and it was a simple solution, so we went with it: Sims automatically get a preferred object of certain tunable types when they do an interaction on that object (it can be set up for everything, beds is just one example). Whenever a Sim would autonomously run that interaction from that point on, the preferred object gets a 100 meter bonus (Sims will go up to 100 meters out of their way to sleep in that bed over other beds). This should mean the Sim will go to that bed wherever it is on your lot, short of some epic maze of corridors and stairs.
On teens (preteens teased in EP):
Animation time is our enemy and we take our animation quality very seriously. Having a third height would have required a *huge* number of new animations. To save some time, we could probably have ported some of our existing adult animations onto the smaller skeleton. We have partially-automated processes to port animations in various ways already, so we could cut some time there too. Problem is, someone still needs to touch all of them by hand and some are going to require considerable rework to get right. And this is prior to getting into the animations that just don't make any sense at all on the smaller frame and must be done for the Teen from scratch, of which there would be many.
Much of what I end up talking about is tradeoffs. Its the brutal reality of building games, or really anything honestly. So we have on the right teens of adult height but substantially more animation time to devote to both teens AND adults, and on the left we have shorter teens and far fewer animations for both teens and adults. We made the right call.
I wouldn't hold my breath on teens getting shorter.
I understand that this comes down to preference. The team decided having the animation content necessary for multitasking and authoring more interesting social animations was more important than Teens being shorter. I hope the additional behavior for both teens and adults, both in the base game and in the future, is some comfort to you even if you disagree with our choice.
Please note, this guru was not dismissive about the game at all. He seemed pretty proud of his work. I don't think his team did a very good job, but I do appreciate how communicative he was back when a lot of players were like "WTD is going on with TS4?!"
@luthienrising - here are quotes wherein SimGuruMax explains why they made some of the decisions; perhaps you will read them as something else, but I interpreted the decisions as opting for easier design choices to focus on other aspects of the game. I wanted to find the slot popping comment he made where they pretty much nixed animations because they wanted to make "different cups" and animations would cause some kind of trouble because where would sims put all those nifty new cups Couldn't find it though. Sorry.
To be fair, this guru says that they've done a lot and he insisted that they'd continue to make improvements, but he's just trying to be as honest as possible about the development process, and the truth was that the devs opted to simplify the game mechanics and sacrifice the quality of the past games to focus on other things in TS4 like borked emotions, unusual multitasking, and cup variations.
On babies as objects:
I can say somewhat unequivocally that it is technically feasible to make babies "real" again, as you describe it. As for prioritization, that is really up to our production team. Babies not being tied to the crib is going to be a sticking-point, though. That decision was made for many reasons, not just time-constraints. We felt dissatisfied with babies in TS3 and were looking for ways to get more good things without having all the crazy complexity. One of the most complicated aspects of babies is that Sims could carry them around - babies aren't just another carryable: they cannot be holstered (Sims can magically disappear items in their hands temporarily to play animations that need the hand) due to believability issues and there end up being a huge number of weird rules about them not being able to be placed in different locations, etc, etc, etc. Carryable babies were such a huge headache on TS3 and we had to ask the question "Is it worth it?"
On borked bed ownership (fixed later):
We thought about beds for a while and we wanted something simple that would work in most cases while not being obtrusive or require new UI and require direct player intervention. Keep in mind as well that every single player is different - things you want to see in the game someone else could hate; something you find simple, they may find too complex and daunting - "I thought I had a good grip on this game until I discovered the bed ownership screen - how far does the rabbit hole go, geez?". We figured most players playing the game would be fine with the simple solution and it was a simple solution, so we went with it: Sims automatically get a preferred object of certain tunable types when they do an interaction on that object (it can be set up for everything, beds is just one example). Whenever a Sim would autonomously run that interaction from that point on, the preferred object gets a 100 meter bonus (Sims will go up to 100 meters out of their way to sleep in that bed over other beds). This should mean the Sim will go to that bed wherever it is on your lot, short of some epic maze of corridors and stairs.
On teens (preteens teased in EP):
Animation time is our enemy and we take our animation quality very seriously. Having a third height would have required a *huge* number of new animations. To save some time, we could probably have ported some of our existing adult animations onto the smaller skeleton. We have partially-automated processes to port animations in various ways already, so we could cut some time there too. Problem is, someone still needs to touch all of them by hand and some are going to require considerable rework to get right. And this is prior to getting into the animations that just don't make any sense at all on the smaller frame and must be done for the Teen from scratch, of which there would be many.
Much of what I end up talking about is tradeoffs. Its the brutal reality of building games, or really anything honestly. So we have on the right teens of adult height but substantially more animation time to devote to both teens AND adults, and on the left we have shorter teens and far fewer animations for both teens and adults. We made the right call.
I wouldn't hold my breath on teens getting shorter.
I understand that this comes down to preference. The team decided having the animation content necessary for multitasking and authoring more interesting social animations was more important than Teens being shorter. I hope the additional behavior for both teens and adults, both in the base game and in the future, is some comfort to you even if you disagree with our choice.
Please note, this guru was not dismissive about the game at all. He seemed pretty proud of his work. I don't think his team did a very good job, but I do appreciate how communicative he was back when a lot of players were like "WTD is going on with TS4?!"
I think that thread should be required reading for all, lol. I was surprised to discover just how many factors have to be accounted for when animating the sims. There was some discussion of why sims do not walk and hold hands that I found particularly enlightening.
Im going to leave the play with life slogan there because we can honestly keep going back on fourth on that with the same arguments.
But can I not control the appearance of my sims, can I not control they way they behave, can I not control what they do and don't do? Because I would call all of those ruling my sims.
I can't control my Sims at all. They do whatever the hell they want. I want them to read? They put the book behind the TV and go Troll teh Forums.
I want them to sit at the table and eat their food? They have to walk around with their plates, taking forever because they won't get off their phones (which I did NOT tell them to do), then leave their plate in the street where I can't pick it up.
I want them to paint? Too bad. Even though their hunger is completely full, they've cancelled what I wanted them to do, and have queued up Drink Milk three times. I cancel them, and my Sim still walks to the fridge, gets the milk, spins around in confusion, and puts the milk down on the floor. In the time it took to do this, Drink Milk has queued up again, and so they turn around and get more milk before I can stop them.
Need your Sim to be in a certain mood for work? Too bad, I know you took a bath, looked at a painting, and drank tea, but it just randomly changed by itself due to a trait and overrode the last two hours you spent getting your Sims ready for work.
Want to go to the park, but want your kid to finish their home work, take a shower and go to bed? Awww, too bad. You have no control over Sims at home when you are off lot. You child will be standing in the yard, hungry, dirty, and tired, with homework still undone when you get back. Good luck getting him to school on time!
Want to give the Sim you are standing next to a hug? Better run out of the house and stand in the back yard first. That other Sim may or may not follow you for that hug, but either way, it's going to waste an hour.
Want your Sim to work out? Nope, they've cancelled that so they can run across the neighborhood to talk to another Sim that is for some reason doing push ups in the road.
You have no control over Sims in this game AT ALL.
Something is very wrong in your game Piper. My sims have never done this sort of thing outside of the infuriating toilet bug issue. Have you tried repairing your game? This is so very bizarre. My sims do whatever I tell them to do until they pass out from exhaustion or nearly die from hunger, and I have full autonomy on. You should really make an inquiry about this in the bugs section and submit your info.
Yeah, that behavior does seem really bizarre. My Sims always do what I tell them to do, although they may multitask something at times that I didn't queue. And when I tell them to do something they can't multitask, like painting, they do it until one of their needs goes into the red. I do have Sims that won't sit still while eating but that's more because of musical chairs and other household members wanting to kiss/hug them repeatedly while they are eating. As far as book reading goes, it's true that they don't always stay focused on finishing the book, and I'm not sure exactly what causes that (might be the Fun bar being full), but I find if I queue them to do it a second time after they put the book down, they usually will finish reading it.
"It's like there's a pink elephant in the room and no one's allowed to talk about it."
Comments
This is also only one of MANY quotes from various devs who said themselves pretty much the same thing in different things they wrote and shared. I recall Ryan Vaughn saying many of the like sentiments on why other things were omitted "for now" and how he indicated these things were left out more or less temporary for their stable foundation and the new emotional system as well as the multitasking. Then there was the animator -I forget who exactly, but who stated they could have spent eons of time working out the carrying of infants, but have came up with an issue because of the multitasking where the sims kept trying to pocket the infants like they do mops and other objects they pull out of the air to use - but instead of wasting precious time at tryi g to work around this flaw it was just easier to not allow the babies to be carried around - and indicated it was just for the moment - but he mentioned he felt all of that would be worked out in time.
Even Graham stated more than once toddlers and other things they had omitted were due to time constraints.... and also indicated these things would come in the not so distant future - because they had made sure the game had a stable foundation, etc, etc. I also know Graham spent numerous amounts of time even on other forums - like modthesims explaining why some things were sacrificed for now in order to not further delay the project - with many indications this was all temporary or fixable. Maybe not in so many words - but these things were indicated in his posts.
To me it was just a ploy to keep simmers from cancelling pre-orders - by indicating these things would be rectified once the game came out and they had more time to devote to all the things we were complaining were missing. Not once did they indicate these things would not happen or that it would take years.
When a game reaches nearly a year and a half of age since release - it is no longer in the new game territory for features that are considered BASE game features, that we are still waiting for. Sims life stages is a base game feature, not an ep feature, and this can no longer be looked at with the same peace of mind that the game is young and it will come that many of us keep getting told.
"Games Are Not The Place To Tell Stories, Games Are Meant To Let People Tell Their Own Stories"...Will Wright.
In dreams - I LIVE!
In REALITY, I simply exist.....
Thank you. So, nothing about "easy" here. It's about making choices when you can't do everything, because choices always have to be made. And as far as I can tell, what makes the "actually baby interactions fun and interesting" is animation. What was nixed was solving the multitasking issue needed to unhook babies from cribs for the base game.
Here's an example of what "complexity" looks like. This is from the game as developed:
The game has not eschewed all hard stuff, as this shows. It's a very complex system, and it's basegame development. Complexity might be enemy, but that doesn't mean that everything complex is just not being done at all: it simply means it poses challenges. (And honestly, I don't see how there's an argument to be made that complex things don't pose challenges.) But the reality of game development is that if you can't do everything on your bucket list, it can be a reasonable decision to drop something that takes 1,000 development hours and risks a high bug count in favour of four things that take 250 development hours at less bug risk. Because you can't just double the development hours (and triple the QA hours, at the very least).
Does that mean we all have to agree with the choices made? Of course not. But nothing that has been said has indicated that nothing "hard" or "complex" has made the cut. It has simply indicated that complexity is a factor when game design and development choices have to be made.
I think putting everything from old iterations back in a new base game would be too much, as it would be a lot of work. But I think some basics could be there already, like the ability to make apartments, maybe some rain and basic weather.
I think TS4 is a good game, but the new features don't really make me forget other things that were in the previous base games that I liked. The open world in TS3 made me excited for the new game, I thought of all possibilities that could entail. For me, TS4 improvements seem really technical, so they are definetely improvements, but they don't make the game that much fun for me, at least for now.
(Personally, my favorite is still TS2. I could only dream about having a game like TS2 in todays wonderful graphics. Maybe TS4 could be that game, who knows. It is not finished yet)
Youre right not everything makes the cut, but the shortcuts the took did not lead to a better product. They made tremendous cuts, and the things that were prioritized are far from breakout features. Emotions are a hot mess, and far from compelling enough to warrant being the games main 'new' feature; multitasking is also not all that profound, there's plenty of situations where multitasking cannot be done. For being the two prominent features they are incredibly underwhelming.
In terms of the base game, that's where the foundation should be completed. Having a whole life stage incomplete, and babies downgraded to an object with a handful of animations doesn't tell me that the foundation is all that complete. There's tons of work that needs to be done, and given the track record we've seen so far I don't see why anyone would assume they're willing to put that kind of work in. He said himself in the same little interview that the tech to free babies from the bassinets was there and that it would be seen in the not so distant future... Well we're a year and a half past launch and there's no word on any of that. So I thoroughly have no confidence in anything from Maxis, there are too many official statements from developers that contradict what we are seeing.
Your argument for the Sims 3 slogan would be accurate IF it was 'Play Life', but it's 'Play With Life'. Play with life means that the decision you and your sims make will change and shape the world around them, much like the butterfly or ripple effect.
The 'You Rule' campaign in the sims 4 is accurate in the context they are trying to achieve - you create your sims, you control your sims, and you rule your sims. Same meaning for both campaigns, different wording.
This isn't a tense community. It's downright civil. You want tense? Try the World of Warcraft forums.
Did you even read the context of my post? The above user was making claims that don't pertain to TS3. "You can't rule your own business in Sims 3"
"You rule" WAS the marketing strategy for Sims 4, not 3. The slogan for The Sims3 was play with life. I said you had a full suite of age groups to play with, therefor I'm not inaccurate by any means. They are two completely different slogans meaning two completely different things.
You can try and justify your point, but at the end of the day they mean different things. You rule implies you are in complete control, which you are not. I can only control what I'm given to work with, whereas in Sims 3 you had tons of customization options allowing you much greater control over your game. It was how you wanted it, versus how it is now where we have little control.
Im going to leave the play with life slogan there because we can honestly keep going back on fourth on that with the same arguments.
But can I not control the appearance of my sims, can I not control they way they behave, can I not control what they do and don't do? Because I would call all of those ruling my sims.
People are free to post whatever they want. Your threads are the ones becoming endless
I remember what @nanashi-sims is referring to. Back in the beginning when we had the tech discussion thread, someone asked @SimGuruMax about why there is so much slot popping and that was the response he gave.
Edit: whoops, didn't see someone had already mentioned this.
The huge, open world of the Sims 3 was great, but I think it placed too much emphasis on that and not actually a life simulation like the game was meant to be. It was easy to get lost when there was so much content in that area. On top of that, I would download so much custom content to make the game look and play the way I want it to, that, coupled with the story progression handling the entire town, the game would bog down so much to be unplayable. Not to mention how bloated everything gets to the point where a save file becomes completely unplayable after a bit.
Sims 4, even though the emotions are a little wacky, seems much more alive to me. With the enhanced graphics and multitasking, I wonder how smooth the game would run if it was a massive open world like in the Sims 3. I have no problem playing with multiple generations with all the custom content my heart desires. The game still runs great. This is an acceptable sacrifice for me. My world feels less realistic, but the family or sim I'm actually playing feels more involved and alive.
I agree that the no toddlers is a problem (although not for me, because I hated that part of the gameplay, babies, too, and I'm happy to skip through it.) I'm confident that they're trying their best to bring this into the game, but don't want to make any promises because it is such a huge change.
I can't control my Sims at all. They do whatever the hell they want. I want them to read? They put the book behind the TV and go Troll teh Forums.
I want them to sit at the table and eat their food? They have to walk around with their plates, taking forever because they won't get off their phones (which I did NOT tell them to do), then leave their plate in the street where I can't pick it up.
I want them to paint? Too bad. Even though their hunger is completely full, they've cancelled what I wanted them to do, and have queued up Drink Milk three times. I cancel them, and my Sim still walks to the fridge, gets the milk, spins around in confusion, and puts the milk down on the floor. In the time it took to do this, Drink Milk has queued up again, and so they turn around and get more milk before I can stop them.
Need your Sim to be in a certain mood for work? Too bad, I know you took a bath, looked at a painting, and drank tea, but it just randomly changed by itself due to a trait and overrode the last two hours you spent getting your Sims ready for work.
Want to go to the park, but want your kid to finish their home work, take a shower and go to bed? Awww, too bad. You have no control over Sims at home when you are off lot. You child will be standing in the yard, hungry, dirty, and tired, with homework still undone when you get back. Good luck getting him to school on time!
Want to give the Sim you are standing next to a hug? Better run out of the house and stand in the back yard first. That other Sim may or may not follow you for that hug, but either way, it's going to waste an hour.
Want your Sim to work out? Nope, they've cancelled that so they can run across the neighborhood to talk to another Sim that is for some reason doing push ups in the road.
You have no control over Sims in this game AT ALL.
Sure thing. The post was made in this forum by one of the gurus who was discussing game mechanics.
Let me just add A couple of things to that list
5. No terrain tool
6. No toddlers
7. No open world
8. No town editing
9. No landline phones
10. No newspapers
11. No burglars
12. No firefighters
13. No cars/bikes
14. Teens are the same height as ya, adults and elders
15. No school bus or car to pick you up for work
I'm sure there is more, these were the ones that came to mind.
Something is very wrong in your game Piper.
I repair my game in Origin every single time before I play. I have no CC or mods, and only have the base game. I have been having bugs and problems since the day the game came out. I can play TS3 with no lag what so ever, never had any issues, but TS4 is an unplayable buggy mess. I force myself to play, and get bored or frustrated within minutes.
And even with autonomy turned off, Sims still cancel the commands I give them and do whatever they want anyway.
To be fair, this guru says that they've done a lot and he insisted that they'd continue to make improvements, but he's just trying to be as honest as possible about the development process, and the truth was that the devs opted to simplify the game mechanics and sacrifice the quality of the past games to focus on other things in TS4 like borked emotions, unusual multitasking, and cup variations.
On babies as objects:
On borked bed ownership (fixed later):
On teens (preteens teased in EP):
Please note, this guru was not dismissive about the game at all. He seemed pretty proud of his work. I don't think his team did a very good job, but I do appreciate how communicative he was back when a lot of players were like "WTD is going on with TS4?!"
I think that thread should be required reading for all, lol.
Yeah, that behavior does seem really bizarre. My Sims always do what I tell them to do, although they may multitask something at times that I didn't queue. And when I tell them to do something they can't multitask, like painting, they do it until one of their needs goes into the red. I do have Sims that won't sit still while eating but that's more because of musical chairs and other household members wanting to kiss/hug them repeatedly while they are eating. As far as book reading goes, it's true that they don't always stay focused on finishing the book, and I'm not sure exactly what causes that (might be the Fun bar being full), but I find if I queue them to do it a second time after they put the book down, they usually will finish reading it.