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It's Patch day! The latest update is now live for The Sims 4 which includes bug fixes, console improvements, and more. Click
here to read the notes.
May 26th - It's time for our Friday Highlights! You can check them out
here!
Comments
Drake said we probebly wouldn't be getting gif teasers anymore.
There is too much focus on the teasers. When they are released, how they display the upcoming content, what the discussion around them will be be... But all this is doing is shifting discussion away from the real problem, that people aren't happy with the amount, type or timeframe of what's actually being released.
The reason the marketing isn't generating a positive response is because the content it's marketing is dull, insubstantial and not living up to peoples expectations, not because there is an issue with the marketing itself.
We know what's going on in the immediate, we won't get any new news until September, but that tells us nothing about the future of the game beyond the next few months.
During Sims 3's timeframe we knew exactly what to expect. We would get two expansions a year, and each one would have a cohesive theme, include new gameplay and CAS elements, and would add at least one new lifestate to the game. We didn't know this because we were told so explicitly, but because the content was released on a predictable and reliable basis.
But with the Sims 4 we have no clue. Will an expansion be released this year? Will another game pack? If there is an expansion will it even include a new life state? How far can a game pack go? Will anything major be added via patch? We have absolutely no idea because the Sims 4 has been such a mishmash so far when it comes to DLC.
What people want to know are the long term plans for this game.
It's not right after playing a set way for 11 years to have the rug pulled right out from under you like this. Not right at all.
"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.....
Just to clarify: the quarterly teasers are still a thing, we just know that a still render with some animations just isn't the right visual to use in the future.
Thank you for clarifying. That's what I meant but I didn't word it right.
It's a news drought in the sense that a large portion of fans from every platform (I know because I look at all of them, I don't have accounts everywhere but you don't need one to visit Reddit or the The Sims' Twitter or Facebook) have been asking the same question and we have not gotten a straightforward answer yet: Will toddlers be in TS4 yes or no?
This is where the EA TS4 cash cow meme comes from... it just feels like you won't answer because it's a no, and you want to keep teasing us so we'll be hopeful and continue to buy more content.
They can't discuss toddlers right now.
I would love to go to the panel. How can I go about getting a spot for me and one other person?
Please do not send me PMs/post on my wall if you're looking for help. I can't attend to those. You can find me at AnswerHQ.
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How am I not surprised...
I totally agree 100%
As much as I am enjoying TS4, I must admit if I had known then what I know now, I probably would have passed on purchasing TS4 for another two years. But when I returned to TS4 EPs and game packs were being released on a somewhat regular basis. Now the release of a third EP has stalled. And the only news we have received so far is the fact SimGuruDrake is excited about it and thinks we will like it. As I have said before: it's not easy getting hyped about something we know absolutely nothing about. Her excitement means nothing without something that shows us why we should climb aboard the hype train.
I have praised the teams for the latest content that has been released. Kids Room and Backyard Stuff were excellent packs. But the two of them do not measure up to having a full EP after nearly a year of waiting for a new EP to be released or even whispered about. I haven't been this upset with EA since the SECURom kerfuffle. And I very nearly quit the Sims series because of it. So, having been truly upset with EA once already, mad enough to pull my support of The Sims franchise, it is extremely distressing to feel the same way now. That all happened a long time ago but here we are again, EA. The sad part in this is the fact EA probably doesn't care who supports the game or who does not. They gutted TS4's base game and kept the toddler bomb under wraps until it couldn't be contained any longer. A life stage that is an integral part of family play was just written off. The Family Tree is still not functioning for some players, relationship culling and decay that many, many players dislike intensely, bugs from Dine Out are still in need of attention. I am sure there are more issues in need of attention than the ones I mentioned.
If there is no new EP on our horizon, then we have the right to ask when we can expect these bugs to be fixed. I realize how much work game development is. I know what goes into it and how hard it can be when one tiny thing throws everything into chaos. The teams have my sympathy. They are dealing with everything as best they can. But I have a feeling TS4 will probably be the last Sims game I will ever buy. I cannot give my support to a corporation that just doesn't seem to care about the players.
I totally agree with @Scobre. I have never once said anything on this forum regarding released content and communication from the guru's, but I'm at my whits end and this is exactly how I feel too
It's more likely that they'll call it "EA has finally learned their marketing lesson and listened to us family players stuff."
But I think there is actually a worse communication problem with the way TS4 has been handled, and that's the patch notes. We get now that TS4 is using a "live service model" after Graham's posts, which means that the game is much more fluid than any other Sims game has been in the past. But the flip side of this which the team seems to be ignoring is that since the start of TS4, mechanics have been introduced into the game that damage the game, and they have come unannounced. I'm not talking about bugs - while TS4 has a lot of them (too many, I think), a certain amount of bugs are natural when the team is adding so much content so quickly. What I'm talking about are the mechanics that are added intentionally to "enhance performance", such as culling, relationship culling, and inactive played relationship decay. These mechanics were not in the game that we paid for at launch. But the worst part of it is that these features are never announced in patch notes. The patch notes, which in the past (for TS3) were a no-frills account of everything that had been added or changed in the game, now read in many ways as another piece of PR. We now have to sift through all of the gags to find the actual content, and even then, some of the content is left out. Why trade jokes for an honest communication of what has been added in a patch? Especially when these mechanics will damage players' games - since we are not informed about these changes in the patch notes, we naïvely venture forth into our beloved stories, only to find our Sims and their relationships vanishing. Too late comes the announcement from a Guru that the new mechanic is working as intended. The Sims, their relationships, and the stories we have spent hours lovingly crafting, are already gone.
Quietly adding mechanics that break down the core of most Simmers' gameplay - the actual Sims themselves - reeks of cowardice. This is not honest communication. Do you think we won't notice when our Sims start disappearing? Are you surprised when forums and help sites experience a panicked flood of Simmers trying to figure out what's happening to their games? What it feels like to the players is that the team is ashamed that their game cannot handle sustained basic gameplay over a long period in one save file, so they omit from their patch notes surreptitious changes that are introduced to ease the burden core gameplay puts on the game's performance (on low-end computers). Perhaps there is a very different motivation for leaving out the announcement of these features from the patch notes - but if there is, it hasn't been communicated to us.
That, above all, is what I see as the current failure of the live service system and its communication strategy. The live service model could work great, but so far, it's played out so that the team is often singing a very different tune to what has actually been put into the game.
Add Manage Neighbourhood Options - assign your own Sim to NPC jobs!
The Problems with Death in The Sims 4
Distinguish Elder gameplay with Elder-only reward traits
Filter Rugs by Room Size
This is such exciting news and makes me so happy to know that things are constantly being worked on, I don't know why people are still complaining because we are getting much more feedback than we did at the start of this series and I like it and the direction. It is affordable and prepares us for what is ahead once you can maintain the patience which is hard
Guru gurl is back in the building
That's what so many people have been asking for two years. A yes or no, EA. C'mon, you could answer if you really wanted to.