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Give the People What They Want
SimsLovinLycan
Posts: 1,910 Member
There's an old adage in the entertainment industry, "Give the people what they want." That means, to keep that audience happy and wanting to see you put on a show, you've got to give them the show they're looking for. It's Halloween time? It's a safe bet to give 'em horror. Folks are going through hard times in real life? Give 'em comedy and fantastical escapism. People say they're bored of historical dramas and want a mindless action movie, give 'em that mindless action movie. Otherwise, you get a bored and dissatisfied audience who eventually will stop spending their money on you and go give it to an entertainer who WILL give them what they're looking for.
Now, why am I talking about this in the context of TS4? Because the games industry is a part of the entertainment industry, and game designers and developers, whether they want to acknowledge it or not, are professional entertainers. In terms of TS4, the show has been...middling at best, overall. The sets and costumes are lovely, but the script and acting are like a high school sophomore's first play being performed by stage-frightened middle school kids. That is all owed to the game running on an engine meant for an MMO life sim experience; a plethora of unsolved bugs, glitches, and AI problems; and a decreasing will to give players the meaty gameplay, quality of life updates, features, and additions they actually want.
Think about it. There are a ton of things, little and big, that players have been asking for since launch, from free babies and paintable ceilings to Create-A-World and more in-depth gameplay options to more occults and a "Generations" pack. These are the core things that players want and care about, because they affect their gameplay experience the most. But, what do we get? Mostly random junk we never wanted or asked for, and when we DO get something we actually wanted, 9 out of 10 times it's bugged out due to a rushed development or stripped down to split it into multiple products or accommodate players who buy packs with themes they don't like for completion or the CAS and build/buy stuff. In short, they're not giving us what we really want. Builders aren't getting what they want, family players aren't getting what they want, occult players aren't getting what they want...and now the audience's eyes are roving over to other theaters, because other entertainers are gearing up to put on shows that look a lot more entertaining than what The Sims Team Players have been doing for the past 6 years. Lots have even left mid-show or are looking more at that exit door than the stage these days and look like they're about to yeet out of there.
So, if The Sims Team Players want to keep their audience's behinds in their seats and bring back the folks who went "for a bathroom break" and never returned, they'll have to give the audience what they want. And, what do we want?
*More fully fleshed-out occults and improvements to ghosts, aliens, plantsims, merfolk (Who thought it would be a good idea to make merfolk without fin ears? Who?), and spellcasters (because, let's be real, that fire spell should be able to burn a sim to death).
*A "Farm Life" pack with animals, giant farm lots, and all that good stuff.
*A "Generations" pack filled with new gameplay and milestones for every lifestage.
*A "Go to School" pack where players can follow their sims to school and do stuff like bug teachers, deal with bullies, act up in the halls between classes.
*A "Sea Life" pack with sailing and house boats, cruise ships, underwater exploration, an underwater residential world or two, a Marine Biology career (which can split into Marine Ecology and Deepsea exploration), and a Mariner career (which can split into the Marine/Navy or Piracy branches).
*A "Supernatural"/"Happy Haunts" pack with paranormal investigators and ghost/vampire/monster hunters, Ouija boards, fortune tellers, and some hype mad science and horror themed stuff in there.
*A "Superheroes" pack with super powers, mad science, mutants, insane gadgets, epic battles, giant robots, and such-the-like.
* Paintable Ceilings.
*Create-A-World, or at least the ability to empty the pre-made worlds with a click of the mouse on the Manage Worlds screen.
*Freed Babies.
*A Fear Emotion.
*For the emotion system to be re-balanced so that it's not so heavily skewed to happiness and productivity anymore.
*For the autonomous water drinking action to finally be removed.
*For sims to wash dishes in the right friggin' sink on a consistent basis.
*For traits to mean something in how our sims behave autonomously.
*For sims to get angry and stay angry at each other when they've had an argument or been wronged.
*For "Dine Out" to finally work properly on a consistent basis.
*For "Get to Work"'s retail system to work properly on a consistent basis.
*Grocery Stores
*A "Hobbies" pack with MORE THAN ONE STINKIN' HOBBY!!
*Non-Checklist community lots that actually work and attract NPC sims.
*For objects that should have an NPC operator (bar tender, masseuse, etc.) to have one in any community lot you put them in.
*For simulation lag to go away and never return.
*For sims to stop dropping actions from their que autonomously.
*For autonomous "Check Toddler" to not pop up when autonomy is OFF!!
*Countless bug fixes.
This is just a fraction of the most popular things that people want in this game right now, both big and small. If they want to keep their audience, especially with other life sim games looking to hit the market in the next couple of years, they'll have to do what any old Vaudeville pro would tell 'em and give the people what they want. Otherwise, they'll be playing to an empty house.
Now, why am I talking about this in the context of TS4? Because the games industry is a part of the entertainment industry, and game designers and developers, whether they want to acknowledge it or not, are professional entertainers. In terms of TS4, the show has been...middling at best, overall. The sets and costumes are lovely, but the script and acting are like a high school sophomore's first play being performed by stage-frightened middle school kids. That is all owed to the game running on an engine meant for an MMO life sim experience; a plethora of unsolved bugs, glitches, and AI problems; and a decreasing will to give players the meaty gameplay, quality of life updates, features, and additions they actually want.
Think about it. There are a ton of things, little and big, that players have been asking for since launch, from free babies and paintable ceilings to Create-A-World and more in-depth gameplay options to more occults and a "Generations" pack. These are the core things that players want and care about, because they affect their gameplay experience the most. But, what do we get? Mostly random junk we never wanted or asked for, and when we DO get something we actually wanted, 9 out of 10 times it's bugged out due to a rushed development or stripped down to split it into multiple products or accommodate players who buy packs with themes they don't like for completion or the CAS and build/buy stuff. In short, they're not giving us what we really want. Builders aren't getting what they want, family players aren't getting what they want, occult players aren't getting what they want...and now the audience's eyes are roving over to other theaters, because other entertainers are gearing up to put on shows that look a lot more entertaining than what The Sims Team Players have been doing for the past 6 years. Lots have even left mid-show or are looking more at that exit door than the stage these days and look like they're about to yeet out of there.
So, if The Sims Team Players want to keep their audience's behinds in their seats and bring back the folks who went "for a bathroom break" and never returned, they'll have to give the audience what they want. And, what do we want?
*More fully fleshed-out occults and improvements to ghosts, aliens, plantsims, merfolk (Who thought it would be a good idea to make merfolk without fin ears? Who?), and spellcasters (because, let's be real, that fire spell should be able to burn a sim to death).
*A "Farm Life" pack with animals, giant farm lots, and all that good stuff.
*A "Generations" pack filled with new gameplay and milestones for every lifestage.
*A "Go to School" pack where players can follow their sims to school and do stuff like bug teachers, deal with bullies, act up in the halls between classes.
*A "Sea Life" pack with sailing and house boats, cruise ships, underwater exploration, an underwater residential world or two, a Marine Biology career (which can split into Marine Ecology and Deepsea exploration), and a Mariner career (which can split into the Marine/Navy or Piracy branches).
*A "Supernatural"/"Happy Haunts" pack with paranormal investigators and ghost/vampire/monster hunters, Ouija boards, fortune tellers, and some hype mad science and horror themed stuff in there.
*A "Superheroes" pack with super powers, mad science, mutants, insane gadgets, epic battles, giant robots, and such-the-like.
* Paintable Ceilings.
*Create-A-World, or at least the ability to empty the pre-made worlds with a click of the mouse on the Manage Worlds screen.
*Freed Babies.
*A Fear Emotion.
*For the emotion system to be re-balanced so that it's not so heavily skewed to happiness and productivity anymore.
*For the autonomous water drinking action to finally be removed.
*For sims to wash dishes in the right friggin' sink on a consistent basis.
*For traits to mean something in how our sims behave autonomously.
*For sims to get angry and stay angry at each other when they've had an argument or been wronged.
*For "Dine Out" to finally work properly on a consistent basis.
*For "Get to Work"'s retail system to work properly on a consistent basis.
*Grocery Stores
*A "Hobbies" pack with MORE THAN ONE STINKIN' HOBBY!!
*Non-Checklist community lots that actually work and attract NPC sims.
*For objects that should have an NPC operator (bar tender, masseuse, etc.) to have one in any community lot you put them in.
*For simulation lag to go away and never return.
*For sims to stop dropping actions from their que autonomously.
*For autonomous "Check Toddler" to not pop up when autonomy is OFF!!
*Countless bug fixes.
This is just a fraction of the most popular things that people want in this game right now, both big and small. If they want to keep their audience, especially with other life sim games looking to hit the market in the next couple of years, they'll have to do what any old Vaudeville pro would tell 'em and give the people what they want. Otherwise, they'll be playing to an empty house.
There is a song I hear, a melody from the past...
When I woke for the first time, when I slept for the last.
33
Comments
A lot of it is fixes of bugs and upgrades to the core base game, which won't make EA money.
I feel like their only concern is cranking out more and more packs with minimal assets, very little new gameplay and the least amount of effort possible for quick sales. They also need to seriously improve their QA protocol and thoroughly test everything before release to not conflict and break other aspects of the game. Playtesting needs to be done with every single pack installed (not just the basegame). TS4's team is very sloppy, IMO.
Please do not present requests as "things we all want", or even "things many of us want". I am fine with babies as furniture. I don't miss cars. I don't care for Superheroes. Eco Lifestyle DID include off-grid tools I had wanted. I DO like a Star Wars themed vacation world. I do NOT want a bar or massage table I place in a generic lot to spawn an attendant until I ask for one.
State what you want. That's fair. But understand people want different things, and our wishes are, in fact, at the attention of the Studio and its developers. If it is new DLC not on your list of desired content there is a really simple solution to that. It'll even save you money.
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*I would also add Attraction & better Romance options to this list. The romantic system in the game is so shallow!
This list isn't just things I want, or else freed babies, active school, and farms wouldn't be on that list. It's a list of some of the most popular wants among simmers as a whole. Not everyone wants every fix and feature on this list, true, but enough people want them that they are frequently requested and talked about by the community both on and off these forums.
Really, you're missing the point of this thread, which is: There are a lot of very unsatisfied players, players who have walked or are about to, because this game has failed to deliver a decent experience without having to pile 100 different script mods on top just to fix the thing, and if they don't get right, they'll lose a lot of people and a lot of dough.
The question remains, will Maxis and EA try to get them back by giving them what they want or focus on the new generation? The Sims4 will be on game pass soon, that could mean a lot of potential new players but I don't think that will include any DLC, how are they going to attract new players when the base game is so basic and you have to buy DLC for over $700?
What we’ve seen so far is a TS4 stage getting filled up with beautiful props and wonderful sets. Sound and light is exceptional. The actors look good in their costumes. However...their acting is...mediocre at best and they follow the narrative to a script that is unclear and messy. The director has a difficult time working with them because they don’t understand how to act in a story that doesn’t seem to have a clear beginning, middle and end. Meanwhile the executive producers keep throwing most of the budget at costumes and set design because they believe this is the reason why the audience would pay and attend a show. The nuances of drama in this show are lacking and nobody seems to want to pay the playwright to truly fix the script.
I’ve been enjoying a lot of elements of the TS4 Show, but it could and should be so much better and so much more.
one of the main thing they should (but probably can't) fix is the AI, which would mean half of ts4 issues gone.
i think the game is so bad coded that they won't even bother to add half of those things. not that they can't, probably they don't want to. modders have shown us that pretty much nothing is impossible in the game, difficult perhaps but you could expect more from developers that are in charge of one of the best-selling franchises.
If the the goal the Sims team is going for now is to create packs that speak to the pocketbooks of a narrow audience always having the simplest theme and main feature locked to 1 world with hardly any content they are on the right track, they surely are for you. I want better I want content that belonged in the base game from the get go had Sims 4 not been rushed out I want to see the features players have been begging for years now not some linear Star Wars mini game to advertise a theme park.
I don’t want farm animals, or a generations pack, or a school pack, or super heroes, or Create-a-World. I don’t mind painted ceilings, but they are not at the top of my priority list.
I like Tiny Living and Eco Lifestyle so they are creating things that players want. Just because some people aren’t happy, doesn’t mean that all are unhappy.
interesting. she wants for ALL players, you don't want for YOURSELF. not attacking you, just pointing our the different point of views.
Yes, it is interesting. She claims that it’s what players want, but it obviously is not. There are many people who don’t want some or many of the things she listed.
It is also interesting that you are trying to make it appear that I’m selfish and that she’s not. Especially when the opposite is true. If she isn’t selfish, she wouldn’t be so upset that some of us got what we wanted: Tiny Living, Eco Lifestyle, and the Star Wars pack.
🧐🧐🧐 I don’t think she is generalizing. There’s a lot of things on the list that appeal to a wide spectrum of player interests. There’s some things I really am looking forward to, and some not so much. But I still find it frustrating when things large groups are requesting (whether I’m in that group or not) are ignored by EA. If they add werewolves or farms, I won’t throw a party, but I’d be thrilled that EA was finally listening to some big requests from the fanbase.
In this case, it’s not all that constructive to argue semantics on whether “the people” includes every last person.
Add: I like EL and IL and TL but I wouldn’t say they contain features that fans have been rabidly clamoring for. I think the point of this post is more so that huge requests are ignored.
I don’t think huge requests are being ignored. I think simmers are unreasonably impatient. There is no way that they can create everything simmers want at the same time. Some things need to be added before others anyway. Just like building a house, builders cannot add windows or a roof before the walls are up. Also, if they are going to free babies, other team members that aren’t involved cannot sit idle until the babies are freed so they continue working on other packs.
of all the things people have asked, devs chose very specific packs so don't expect everyone to be happy about it especially when a lot of core gameplay is lacking or is flawed. especially flawed. your fav packs could have been way better if the game was better done, but ppl settles with whatever devs bring us even knowing that they're not doing enough. after all it's the sims franchise we are talking about. can't understand why would someone want less features in the game. all it takes are toggles instead of saying what you don't want, the game is made for anyone not for two or three people.
so anyways, i can't speak for simslovinlycan and you're also assuming that she's upset because of those packs. we can't ignore the amount of backlash devs got these past months. if ts4 was in a better state little to no ppl would've complained about the pack themes. so in a way, she's not wrong.
besides, i'm not making you look like nothing. i don't even know you. we are users and we discuss what we say here, not the kind of person we are or we are not.
No matter which packs were chosen some simmers would be unhappy since we all want different things. Just because the same simmers repeatedly asked for certain content doesn’t mean more simmers want that content. Some simmers just ask once for other things, but it doesn’t mean they want that other content any less than what the more demanding simmers want.
And not all simmers feel that the core game is lacking. Some don’t even play the game. They just use it as a creative tool so they are not settling. You not understanding why someone would want less features is just you not understanding that people want more features that they want instead of features they don’t want. Why would I want to pay for something I don’t want and a toggle to turn it off?
It’s good that you acknowledge the game is made for anyone and not only for the few. I think the majority are not the complainers I see on this forum who are constantly demanding they get what they want at the expense of what others want.
Yes, it’s hard to ignore the undeserved anger directed at the developers. And towards the simmers who enjoy the packs released this year. I know that some think the squeaky wheel gets the oil, but perhaps those players should be aware that after constantly having to oil the same wheel, the other wheels eventually get tired of listening to the squeaking so the wheel then gets replaced.
not playing, just using it as a creative tool you say...well. i do like to play and i miss when sims were more focused on being a god simulator instead of a story maker. it could be both though but you seem to just want one of them. this is why i think ea should make different gamemodes, the sims started with an idea and every time is changing it which is dividing the playerbase into people that wants more from one thing but the devs can't deliver enough. no wonder why people is never satisfied with the game. also, people is angry at devs because they promised fake things since the start of ts4 and they keep excusing their job, the anger it's not undeserved at all. people has reasons to be upset.
with replacing the "squeaking" wheel i'm guessing you talk about the players that don't share your opinion and dunno if it's what you meant but i find your comment pretty disrespectful. and you are also complaining... about the complainers. it makes no sense. having fun with the game doesn't mean to disregard the disappointment of all the other players but you know what, this is agree to disagree, so whatever. enjoy the game.
> Think about it. There are a ton of things, little and big, that players have been asking for since launch, from free babies and paintable ceilings to Create-A-World
>
> * Paintable Ceilings.
>
I would love paintable ceilings and better creating tools. As a historian I like to recreate grand buildings, especially ones with ornately painted, domed, vaulted, or timbered ceilings. I'd love to be able to build a "proper" stage to, rather than having to build up a foundation and remove it for the auditorium. I love to build everything from manors and estates (with accuracy to real homes), ballrooms and classic cinemas (think 1920s/1930s Fox Theatre or Granada Cinema) complete with organ and twinkling blue ceiling.
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Frankly, I'm exhausted of hearing about how impatient those of us who have been waiting for six years are being. Meanwhile, a lot of the people who are saying it are already as happy as bugs in a rug.
Not sure how you reached the conclusion that I only want it to be a story maker, but your conclusion is incorrect. Also don’t know what other game modes you want. We have 3 different modes now: build, CAS and live modes. Appears that you are only interested in live mode, but others who only use build and/or CAS modes are also paying for the game so they are entitled to have stuff added for them as well. The game has never been live mode only so that has not changed.
I have not seen any fake promises from the developers. What I have seen is misinterpretations of what the developers have said at times. So yes, the anger towards the developers is undeserved.
My squeaky wheel comment is not disrespectful to anyone. It is only command sense that people eventually tire of those constantly complaining to get what they want at the expense of what the real majority want. When that happens, the majority will leave if nothing is done so it would be better for EA to replace the minority of constant complainers. And no, pointing that out is not complaining about complainers.
Yes, it’s fine for simmers to point out what they don’t like. What’s not fine is to bully the developers because they aren’t providing what you want when you want it, or bully simmers who are happy with the content. I’m pretty sure they are catering to the majority even if you don’t think they are.
Not sure why you think I’m satisfied with the current state of the game. The fact that I like Tiny Living and Eco Lifestyle means just that. Has nothing to do with the rest of the game.
Fair statement, but I’d like to know what your timeline for “impatient” is?
Add: Is 6 years “impatient”? Is 2 years “impatient”? Is a decade “impatient”?
Add: Yo my man/girl/etc and to anybody reading this......IRL, this all fun and games here, but it you waiting in life for *six years* asking for somebody to resolve for anything you want, you gotta bounce from that situation. Js. 😎