Quite the opposite. I never really liked the open world in Sims 3, preferring the more compartmentalized scenes in Sims 2. Indeed, the biggest selling point for Sims 4 for me was that return to 2-style gameplay—turn off story progression and aging of non-played sims and it really is Sims 2's proper spiritual successor.
Granted, there was one very nice advantage to Sims 3's open world—it translated deliciously into The Sims Medieval, which I discovered last year (thanks, COVID-induced too much free time!) and fell instantly in love with.
(he/him)
And remember this above all. Our Roman gods are watching. Make sure they are not ashamed!
My NBA site, Pace and Space
Yes, it bothers me. I'm enjoying the game in spite of it, but since the Sims 3 was my formative simming experience and I'm a relatively recent newcomer to the Sims 4, there are some things I'm still getting used to.
For me, it's not about the loading screens at all. I got used to them very quickly, and they don't break my immersion. It's about the fact that life is only going on at one lot at a time.
To illustrate, here is a screenshot of one of my sims jogging through the Ohan'ali Town neighbourhood in Sulani.
The neighbourhood is beautiful and so large that while I'm following her around I can forget the world is closed.
However...
That area marked with a rectangle is Ohan'ali beach. If my sim travelled to that lot, it would be full of sims. But right now it's not the active lot. I can see it, and it's completely empty and dead. That actually does break my immersion.
This bothers me most when I'm playing a household of more than one sim. I'm still getting used to the fact that I can't, for example, send the mother to the park, the father to the library and leave the child at home, and have them all doing different things and communicating with different sims at the same time. In the Sims 3 I sometimes even visit lots where no one from my active household is at the moment. "I wonder if there is anyone at the graveyard... Oh, cool, there is a ghost building a snowman!" And I would stay there and watch for a while.
In an ideal game there would be the best of two worlds: lots of sims around like in TS4, but also the sense that the whole world is living on its own as in TS3.
Nah. It didn't bother me to begin with. What bothers me is the lack of delivered pizza, or being able to accept it the few times it actually arrives, after all these years. :P
If the game worlds were designed differently it would bother me more but with the current set up and limitations of lots I see no point for a full on open world. What bothers me sometimes though is neighbors houses being on a loading screen which makes things like trick or treating not possible so I do think open neighborhood should be a thing beyond the space around lots.
Sims 4 went from "You Rule" to "One of the stories we want you to tell"
I can’t see them giving us a complete open world like Sims 3. 😭
It should be possible to visit your neighbours without a loading screen though. Small worlds like Forgotten Hollow which is 5 lots should be open as it’s one neighbourhood etc.
No, I find the Sims 4 worlds have a good amount of "walking space" in each neighborhood (some parts I still haven't explored fully even after all these years.) I don't miss Sims 3 open world that much because I remember how long it used to take my poor Sim to get to her life guard job on the coast. She had to run over all these hills and stuff and it took HOURS because of open world and no roads to the beach.
No, the lack of create a style does bother me though as well as the lack of depth in the sims 4. It just doesn’t have the depth and challenge that sims 2 did. That game made me wake up and go straight to the computer and turn on my game.
Sometimes, but it really pales in comparison compared to the numerous other problems the game has, my top five issues with this game would be:
-Traits. They do next to nothing, there's way too few of them and can only have three. Huge step back from Sims 3.
-Sims do nothing on their own. Won't make enemies or lovers, no pranks, nothing remotely interesting with other sims unless you tell them to.
-The developers hate men. Masculine men at least, or any kind of masculinity. No body hair, few facial hair options, hardly any descent pants, interactions look more feminine in each new Sim instalment, men can't look like anything else than a Ken doll.
-All the fun stuff is crammed into game packs while it should be expansions. seriously, they just give us the bare minimum when it comes to magic, the super natural, science fiction and anything that is not boring real life.
-Build mode is terrible. It's a pain to create a stairwell, fences and most things. Huge step back from the other games that only improved it. Does not help either that we still don't have spiral stairs or elevators. And hard to make your furniture match because of limited colour swatches and of course unless it's part of the same set, items hardly ever use the same shade of wood colour.
They should seriously just hire a straight average Joe type fellow to help with the masculine content to give us clothes the average guy actually wears, hairstyles, beards, body hair, activities, etc.
As it is they are ignoring 50% of potential players at least, and that's not even counting anyone who wants the supernatural, magic and science fiction stuff from this series because it HAS ALWAYS BEEN THERE FROM THE START!
I guess the real reason why they never put a Sims 1 ultimate edition on Origin is because deep down they know it did a lot of things better and provided deeper experiences in a lot of things that they can't be bothered any more to deliver on these days.
It had the best magic expansion, random objects like the chemistry set, genie lamp and other things that could seriously mess you up, Sims got to drink alcohol and hire sexy dancers, and those five sliders gave them more personality than the meaningless traits in this game ever could.
I never played sims 3 because open world and story progression didn't appeal to me, so I don't miss them.
The idea of an open neighborhood, where going to a lot in the same neighborhood would not require a loading screen, is appealing, but not a full open world. I'd rather have the ability to visit multiple worlds.
I loved the open world of Sims 3 right away. I was still playing Sims 2 with all the loading screens so an open world was heaven, until about the 11th or 12th pack in and then it became almost impossible to play.
The DHD pack was the 38th pack and I'm still enjoying playing Sims 4...big difference so no, loading screens don't bother me anymore.
In my house, dog hair sticks to everything but the dog.
I wish we could go a little farther in the world before we hit loading screens at least, but they don't bother me as much as they obviously do some players. I never stopped playing Sims 2 up until recently when I got a new laptop, so I was used to them I guess.
Not so much open world but open the neighborhood. It is annoying you can't just go to your neighbors or go from one venue to another in the same neighborhood without having to go through the loading screen.
I might miss the open world un certain situations, but mostly I am happy with TS4 and I don't find loading times between lots troublesome. That said, I'm on an low-end computer and would probably not be able to play a TS4 open world version.
I do hope EA will sooner or later release a huuuuge world kit for players with top notch computers who wants larger and more active hoods/ worlds.
Comments
Granted, there was one very nice advantage to Sims 3's open world—it translated deliciously into The Sims Medieval, which I discovered last year (thanks, COVID-induced too much free time!) and fell instantly in love with.
And remember this above all. Our Roman gods are watching. Make sure they are not ashamed!
My NBA site, Pace and Space
For me, it's not about the loading screens at all. I got used to them very quickly, and they don't break my immersion. It's about the fact that life is only going on at one lot at a time.
To illustrate, here is a screenshot of one of my sims jogging through the Ohan'ali Town neighbourhood in Sulani.
The neighbourhood is beautiful and so large that while I'm following her around I can forget the world is closed.
However...
That area marked with a rectangle is Ohan'ali beach. If my sim travelled to that lot, it would be full of sims. But right now it's not the active lot. I can see it, and it's completely empty and dead. That actually does break my immersion.
This bothers me most when I'm playing a household of more than one sim. I'm still getting used to the fact that I can't, for example, send the mother to the park, the father to the library and leave the child at home, and have them all doing different things and communicating with different sims at the same time. In the Sims 3 I sometimes even visit lots where no one from my active household is at the moment. "I wonder if there is anyone at the graveyard... Oh, cool, there is a ghost building a snowman!" And I would stay there and watch for a while.
In an ideal game there would be the best of two worlds: lots of sims around like in TS4, but also the sense that the whole world is living on its own as in TS3.
It should be possible to visit your neighbours without a loading screen though. Small worlds like Forgotten Hollow which is 5 lots should be open as it’s one neighbourhood etc.
-Traits. They do next to nothing, there's way too few of them and can only have three. Huge step back from Sims 3.
-Sims do nothing on their own. Won't make enemies or lovers, no pranks, nothing remotely interesting with other sims unless you tell them to.
-The developers hate men. Masculine men at least, or any kind of masculinity. No body hair, few facial hair options, hardly any descent pants, interactions look more feminine in each new Sim instalment, men can't look like anything else than a Ken doll.
-All the fun stuff is crammed into game packs while it should be expansions. seriously, they just give us the bare minimum when it comes to magic, the super natural, science fiction and anything that is not boring real life.
-Build mode is terrible. It's a pain to create a stairwell, fences and most things. Huge step back from the other games that only improved it. Does not help either that we still don't have spiral stairs or elevators. And hard to make your furniture match because of limited colour swatches and of course unless it's part of the same set, items hardly ever use the same shade of wood colour.
They should seriously just hire a straight average Joe type fellow to help with the masculine content to give us clothes the average guy actually wears, hairstyles, beards, body hair, activities, etc.
As it is they are ignoring 50% of potential players at least, and that's not even counting anyone who wants the supernatural, magic and science fiction stuff from this series because it HAS ALWAYS BEEN THERE FROM THE START!
I guess the real reason why they never put a Sims 1 ultimate edition on Origin is because deep down they know it did a lot of things better and provided deeper experiences in a lot of things that they can't be bothered any more to deliver on these days.
It had the best magic expansion, random objects like the chemistry set, genie lamp and other things that could seriously mess you up, Sims got to drink alcohol and hire sexy dancers, and those five sliders gave them more personality than the meaningless traits in this game ever could.
The idea of an open neighborhood, where going to a lot in the same neighborhood would not require a loading screen, is appealing, but not a full open world. I'd rather have the ability to visit multiple worlds.
The DHD pack was the 38th pack and I'm still enjoying playing Sims 4...big difference so no, loading screens don't bother me anymore.
I do hope EA will sooner or later release a huuuuge world kit for players with top notch computers who wants larger and more active hoods/ worlds.