I mostly lurk here and I try to avoid getting involved in threads like this, but if anyone would please consider this...
I work in Product Development as a designer. While I don't work on video games, I feel my job involves similar tasks as the game devs, such as planning concepts, working within a schedule and budget, and listening to feedback.
Sometimes being on this forum is a lot like being at my job since I hear the same things from the fans/customers. They want to know why we can't do a thing, when they're going to be able to get something, or why we aren't able to do something that we did before. It is frustrating because I'm often not able to tell them the reasons why we do what we do (and yes, sometimes they just won't listen).
I know some of the decisions they are making seem baffling to some but I can understand it based on my experiences. Sometimes things change at a moment's notice--we have literally had to throw products into the recycling bin because we weren't able to launch them at the last minute. It's something to consider when you're wondering why they don't announce things ahead of time.
I appreciate everyone's frustration and I know I've left my share of feedback on the game, but I wish people would try to understand the realities of product development before they get upset about the communication. If you've ever worked a job where you had to work with limited resources to produce something, remember what it was like. If you haven't experienced it, please try to understand that there will always be aspects that don't make sense because you're not seeing the whole picture.
I hope no one takes this as a criticism, I am just hoping it gets through to someone. Even if you're frustrated, please respect the devs.
A slight side-issue but that must be incredibly deflating as a creative person! Having spent time and energy on something that is now basically unusable.
I'm a girl who likes to play with boys, what can I say...
“Instead of putting players in the role of Luke Skywalker, or Frodo Baggins, I'd rather put them in the role of George Lucas.”Will Wright.
I would also love to understand the rough timeline better! It's a great idea. Also, I would love to know, if you ever work on multiple EPs/GPs at the same time?
To add, please include me on the list of people who would love to know what goes on in the background and to have devs/gurus come and talk to us about it.
Also another thing, they're only in this courner, because they can't speak about free content and they don't know what is free and what is payed till the last minute. I'm following some games that talk about upcomming expansions full year in advance. What might be a good thing to do would actually be to send a person to give a bunch of no's and then say "but this is what we are doing" and announce 2 expansions in front. One would probably we near finished and ready for announcement and the other could be talked about in the vaguest terms (if you know that you're working on a holiday expansion for example, you could go "next one will be about holidays" without actually going to details. That way you can't exactly under-deliver).
Another suggestion would be to offer suggestion threads and actually USE the suggestions. If we had seen a suggestion thread and a year later we had seen some of the suggestions get into the game, you give a lot of customers the satisfaction of going "I suggested it! They listened! They listened!", those around them that had seen it happen would also feel better about seeing other customers being listened to.
I know that there was already a comment about too many cooks in the kitchen, but with customer relations so bad at the moment, including an object or two would most definitely not kill your vision.
They can't
I'm sure they know well in advance what's going to be free and what isn't. The issue is not that they can't talk about free content, except for the quarter it comes in, but that the free stuff is released with the paid stuff and a contract that says that they can't talk about future content. It's in their contracts. They would be fired or worse for breaking that. It's a law not a self imposed rule. There's no getting around it, and there's nobody coming out to tell us what they're working on or give us yes/no answers.
And they take up our suggestions. Sometimes they're doable and sometimes they're not. They've done it occasionally with TS3, and I'm fairly sure they do it with TS4.
where did I tell them to break their contract? I told you that their manager might want to reconsider how things are run.
There are other live services out there (mainly MMOs), free patch content is known to people around 1 month before it comes out (no different to here), however they are able to be open about future payed expansion. The reason why EA can not is its their NDA agreement that their workers are under. They can, as a company, decide to lift that for more of an open relationship with their player base. Anet had to do it after releasing a lackluster expansion pack and losing peoples trust.
I can't help but comment on how blaringly different @Lutefisk and @HappySimmer3 posts are. I respect both of your posts.
It seems just such a big divide doesn't it? I feel a bit like one of my sims at times... bouncing from one emotion to the next trying to make sense of it all. lol. At least as a community we can say we are diverse.
Thanks! That's interesting you feel that way, because after reading her post I don't feel like we're at opposite ends of the spectrum. @Lutefisk is responding based on her experience at her job, and why the communication about the game might be less than satisfactory. I'm responding based on my assessment of the actual content - or lack thereof - they have put into the game so far.
Now whether this is due to a lack of financial resources (which s/he seems to imply) or major problems with adding content to the game, is speculation on both our parts. (And really we'd both be correct because with enough resources they could probably fix the issues with adding content.)
But my conclusion would be the same. I still say that if the game were actually fun and the content they were adding worked correctly there would be a metric ton of fewer complaints on this forum about things that players want to see added. So the way I look at it, the problem is still the game and not the customers.
The Sims
Where are we going, and why am I in this hand basket?!
IMO they don't have the confidence to announce anything for this game because they are never sure if they can get it to work. And based on the relatively small amount of content (compared to past versions of the game) that has been added so far, even when they do announce it there's a high chance it's not going to work quite right.
The complete irony here is that Simmers aren't all that difficult to please. If they were releasing awesome, fantastic, engaging content that actually worked as you would expect it to, even if it wasn't exactly what people were asking for, I think you would see a huge difference in the number of complaints about the game.
So they can try to blame the players all the want, and label us toxic and negative; I think it's the game itself that is the real problem here. But hey, what do I know. I'm just a subset of a former customer group.
Do you use the same forums I do. They are toxic.
I'm a positive player, and person at least 40% of the time. There are about 2 areas on these forums (Off topic+creative) where I can be positive about the game, or about anything else in the case of off topic. In general, I can lay my hand to two threads in general where I'm 'allowed' to release the same positivity. If I put up a thread in General saying "I like my game" I would get at least 4 people responding to tell me what a plum I am and how bad the game is. If I complained about not being 'allowed' to be positive, I'd get told to go join one of the happy threads and stick to it. I'd get at least one person who wants toddlers telling me that I don't know what I'm talking about and I can't possibly enjoy my game without toddlers. It would then disseminate into arguing and chaos and end up locked.
I won't list the amount of things I've been told are my fault re the game and it's development or the smears on my character. Do you know what I do to deserve this? I enjoy my game.
I don't know what you consider toxic, but to me that's toxic, and if you happen to be a guru it's worse. There's a reason they don't want to come talk to us. That would be it.
I've seen a decent amount of both toxic "negative" people and toxic "positive" people. I think the underlying issue is that entire threads just get closed and no action is taken against those who were rude or drove it off-topic.
The "Feedback for SimGuruDrake" thread is a good example, there were about 2 people being very rude but otherwise it had some nice discussion. Instead of warning the rude users the whole thread was shut down. People will keep being rude and toxic as long as they see that they can get away with it.
IMO they don't have the confidence to announce anything for this game because they are never sure if they can get it to work. And based on the relatively small amount of content (compared to past versions of the game) that has been added so far, even when they do announce it there's a high chance it's not going to work quite right.
The complete irony here is that Simmers aren't all that difficult to please. If they were releasing awesome, fantastic, engaging content that actually worked as you would expect it to, even if it wasn't exactly what people were asking for, I think you would see a huge difference in the number of complaints about the game.
.
Do you use the same forums I do. They are toxic.
I'm a positive player, and person at least 40% of the time. There are about 2 areas on these forums (Off topic+creative) where I can be positive about the game, or about anything else in the case of off topic. In general, I can lay my hand to two threads in general where I'm 'allowed' to release the same positivity. If I put up a thread in General saying "I like my game" I would get at least 4 people responding to tell me what a plum I am and how bad the game is. If I complained about not being 'allowed' to be positive, I'd get told to go join one of the happy threads and stick to it. I'd get at least one person who wants toddlers telling me that I don't know what I'm talking about and I can't possibly enjoy my game without toddlers. It would then disseminate into arguing and chaos and end up locked.
I won't list the amount of things I've been told are my fault re the game and it's development or the smears on my character. Do you know what I do to deserve this? I enjoy my game.
I don't know what you consider toxic, but to me that's toxic, and if you happen to be a guru it's worse. There's a reason they don't want to come talk to us. That would be it.
how
I'm sorry if that happen to you . But it goes both ways ? Do you know how many times I witness how people in the feedback section Telling people who do not like sims 4 . That there wrong, the game oif fun . Its just us , hey I reember one said we should stop criticising the game, and just install mods . Yes there bad appels in th forum, but I wouldn't say there toxic . If they tol d your wrong for like your game . Than that s wrong
IMO they don't have the confidence to announce anything for this game because they are never sure if they can get it to work. And based on the relatively small amount of content (compared to past versions of the game) that has been added so far, even when they do announce it there's a high chance it's not going to work quite right.
The complete irony here is that Simmers aren't all that difficult to please. If they were releasing awesome, fantastic, engaging content that actually worked as you would expect it to, even if it wasn't exactly what people were asking for, I think you would see a huge difference in the number of complaints about the game.
.
Do you use the same forums I do. They are toxic.
I'm a positive player, and person at least 40% of the time. There are about 2 areas on these forums (Off topic+creative) where I can be positive about the game, or about anything else in the case of off topic. In general, I can lay my hand to two threads in general where I'm 'allowed' to release the same positivity. If I put up a thread in General saying "I like my game" I would get at least 4 people responding to tell me what a plum I am and how bad the game is. If I complained about not being 'allowed' to be positive, I'd get told to go join one of the happy threads and stick to it. I'd get at least one person who wants toddlers telling me that I don't know what I'm talking about and I can't possibly enjoy my game without toddlers. It would then disseminate into arguing and chaos and end up locked.
I won't list the amount of things I've been told are my fault re the game and it's development or the smears on my character. Do you know what I do to deserve this? I enjoy my game.
I don't know what you consider toxic, but to me that's toxic, and if you happen to be a guru it's worse. There's a reason they don't want to come talk to us. That would be it.
how
I'm sorry if that happen to you . But it goes both ways ? Do you know how many times I witness how people in the feedback section Telling people who do not like sims 4 . That there wrong, the game oif fun . Its just us , hey I reember one said we should stop criticising the game, and just install mods . Yes there bad appels in th forum, but I wouldn't say there toxic . If they tol d your wrong for like your game . Than that s wrong
Didn't say it didn't, but I can only put it in my view.
I can't help but comment on how blaringly different @Lutefisk and @HappySimmer3 posts are. I respect both of your posts.
It seems just such a big divide doesn't it? I feel a bit like one of my sims at times... bouncing from one emotion to the next trying to make sense of it all. lol. At least as a community we can say we are diverse.
Thanks! That's interesting you feel that way, because after reading her post I don't feel like we're at opposite ends of the spectrum. @Lutefisk is responding based on her experience at her job, and why the communication about the game might be less than satisfactory. I'm responding based on my assessment of the actual content - or lack thereof - they have put into the game so far.
Now whether this is due to a lack of financial resources (which s/he seems to imply) or major problems with adding content to the game, is speculation on both our parts. (And really we'd both be correct because with enough resources they could probably fix the issues with adding content.)
But my conclusion would be the same. I still say that if the game were actually fun and the content they were adding worked correctly there would be a metric ton of fewer complaints on this forum about things that players want to see added. So the way I look at it, the problem is still the game and not the customers.
Yep, can't blame customers for not enjoying the content or the game mechanics!
I'm a girl who likes to play with boys, what can I say...
“Instead of putting players in the role of Luke Skywalker, or Frodo Baggins, I'd rather put them in the role of George Lucas.”Will Wright.
I've seen a decent amount of both toxic "negative" people and toxic "positive" people. I think the underlying issue is that entire threads just get closed and no action is taken against those who were rude or drove it off-topic.
The "Feedback for SimGuruDrake" thread is a good example, there were about 2 people being very rude but otherwise it had some nice discussion. Instead of warning the rude users the whole thread was shut down. People will keep being rude and toxic as long as they see that they can get away with it.
This so much, the problum isn't really the forums . The problem is that there bad appels are not being dealt with.Instead of closng threads, the mods should be talking with the bad apples.
@Arletta I don't consider the forums toxic at all, but then, I don't let a bunch of people on a forum who I don't know and sometimes don't agree with affect me personally. I had to listen to a lot of 'toxic' comments about TS3 over the years (still do, actually) and it never affected my enjoyment of the game one bit. I think the only people who do think it's "toxic" are Maxis employees who don't want to hear feedback from unhappy customers and people who like the game. And I'm not going to label you a "positive" player because when there is discord, it's those kind of labels and attitudes that cause it most of the time IMO. This does NOT have to be the adversarial relationship that it's painted to be. People choose whether or not to look at it that way.
And really, literally everything else you said works the other way around as well. I can't count the number of threads I've seen where someone discusses something that's frustrating them about the game where other players rush into the thread to say that they like the game and people should stop complaining.
As for whether or not gurus come talk to us, personally I could care less. Every time they have done it in the past, all they've said are things like 'complexity is our enemy' and other gems like that one. I'd really rather see EA give them the resources to work on adding content to the game that actually works correctly instead, but hey, I guess that's just me.
Post edited by HappySimmer3 on
The Sims
Where are we going, and why am I in this hand basket?!
Why is that pcw thing goes way back in 2009 where's an updated because 2009 seems outdated.
Can't answer that, this is the document that both simgurudrake and simgurugraham have linked to. I don't think the date really matters inasmuch the basic information that is in there.
I'm a girl who likes to play with boys, what can I say...
“Instead of putting players in the role of Luke Skywalker, or Frodo Baggins, I'd rather put them in the role of George Lucas.”Will Wright.
Also another thing, they're only in this courner, because they can't speak about free content and they don't know what is free and what is payed till the last minute. I'm following some games that talk about upcomming expansions full year in advance. What might be a good thing to do would actually be to send a person to give a bunch of no's and then say "but this is what we are doing" and announce 2 expansions in front. One would probably we near finished and ready for announcement and the other could be talked about in the vaguest terms (if you know that you're working on a holiday expansion for example, you could go "next one will be about holidays" without actually going to details. That way you can't exactly under-deliver).
Another suggestion would be to offer suggestion threads and actually USE the suggestions. If we had seen a suggestion thread and a year later we had seen some of the suggestions get into the game, you give a lot of customers the satisfaction of going "I suggested it! They listened! They listened!", those around them that had seen it happen would also feel better about seeing other customers being listened to.
I know that there was already a comment about too many cooks in the kitchen, but with customer relations so bad at the moment, including an object or two would most definitely not kill your vision.
This is why I think it would be fantastic for the gurus to have chat sessions about what really goes into game development, how decisions are made, and how much time it takes to implement things in game.
Personally, although i'd like to know what they are planning, like you mentioned, ahead of time, it may not be possible with how game development works. The biggest issue with announcing packs ahead of time is that if they have to pull out some feature or gameplay item because it just didn't work it will create more problems.
Also, I could be wrong so I will ping @luthienrising, but I do believe that this law does not take effect until 2018. So other gaming companies may not have starting transitioning into the new law yet. EA being such a big company probably decided to play it safe and start this transition early.
I'm not 100% on the details. My understanding at the moment is that the newer version of the regulation re. when delivery is effected for software that has had an update (ie, patch, not DLC) spoken of has until 2018 to be placed in practice. It's a deadline, not a start date. And it's the deadline for the entire regulation shift on revenue recognition, not only this one element. Any sensible company will not leave this to be implemented in the last week. There's good reason they've been given years to get the shift in place.
FWIW, the nearest similar situation I've been in personally concerns major changes in the legislation governing the nonprofit I currently chair the board of (a volunteer position). We had a few years to make sure all necessary changes in governance were in place and approved by the board and membership and the paperwork finalized; it took about ... two? of those to make so for us - it was a big process, and included having to overhaul our whole membership and fee structure - after which I watched some other organizations pretty near panic over getting it all done on time. We're still not quite done some of the policy revision that falls out from that process. Close, though! I think another year and that's it. It will have been a four- to five-year process in all, IIRC. I think the only reason we were able to do it as fast as we were is that a couple of us had been there, done that with a similar overhaul of governance before.
Anyway, you "play it safe" because these are huge transitions, even if the document requiring them isn't. Every regulatory change can mean a whole lot of other change, and a lot of internal education about it. Plus you never know what other mandated or otherwise necessary change is going to show up that has an even shorter deadline, causing unexpected time pressures - or missing critical deadlines (in our case, we'd have actually lost our nonprofit status, with the attendant fallout that we weren't going to risk). Waiting to the last minute to put in place a major shift in practice that you've had years of time to do is just plain incompetent. I would hope that my membership would vote me off my board if I did anything of the sort, and that shareholders would take action in a public company. So yeah, could they have waiting? Sure. But it would have been shockingly incompetent to do so, IMO. That they did not do so looks good on EA.
Some other companies are not publicly traded firms; this set of regulations is optional for them. (FWIW, if I were running a private firm and hoping it might get bought, I'd follow the same practices as are required by publicly traded firms.) Many other companies do not produce products that have patch content (not DLC or a new game in a series or a new game entirely) announced in advance, or announced much in advance.
Anyway, this is only one of the reasons stuff doesn't get discussed in advance. But it's one that's covered by legal stuff, and in a transition process that's not telling me, personally, that EA is a plum at doing this but rather that it's doing it responsibly.
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.
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.
@NZsimm3r Yes there were, but there were also some deeply discouraging comments (at least to me) as well. Such as the one where they purposely left out complexity - what was a sim game in the past without that complexity? I mean, this is part of the problem of this game, why traits don't matter and so on. Adding those kind of details is the very definition of complexity. In order to make sims who behave in unique ways, you need different rules (code) to apply to different sims and/or situations. They've done very little of that in this game because a one-size-fits-all approach is less complex.
Not to mention statements about how complex "Carryable babies" would be or the fact it's doubtful that they will ever makes teens shorter. They said they wanted to concentrate on sim socialization instead, and boy have they ever done that!
The Sims
Where are we going, and why am I in this hand basket?!
@NZsimm3r Yes there were, but there were also some deeply discouraging comments (at least to me) as well. Such as the one where they purposely left out complexity - what was a sim game in the past without that complexity? I mean, this is part of the problem of this game, why traits don't matter and so on. Adding those kind of details is the very definition of complexity. In order to make sims who behave in unique ways, you need different rules (code) to apply to different sims and/or situations. They've done very little of that in this game because a one-size-fits-all approach is less complex.
Not to mention statements about how complex "Carryable babies" would be or the fact it's doubtful that they will ever makes teens shorter. They said they wanted to concentrate on sim socialization instead, and boy have they ever done that!
@HappySimmer3 I agree wholeheartedly with you. But for me reading about this from the gurus was important in my understanding about the game. As much as I wanted their responses to be different I personally appreciated knowing. I hate not knowing things, so I would welcome guru Question and Answer threads even if I end up reading things I really hoped for are not possible.
Also the complexity is our enemy was actually about all sims games, not just 4. Which I found pretty interesting too!
I'm a girl who likes to play with boys, what can I say...
“Instead of putting players in the role of Luke Skywalker, or Frodo Baggins, I'd rather put them in the role of George Lucas.”Will Wright.
@NZsimm3r Yes there were, but there were also some deeply discouraging comments (at least to me) as well. Such as the one where they purposely left out complexity - what was a sim game in the past without that complexity? I mean, this is part of the problem of this game, why traits don't matter and so on. Adding those kind of details is the very definition of complexity. In order to make sims who behave in unique ways, you need different rules (code) to apply to different sims and/or situations. They've done very little of that in this game because a one-size-fits-all approach is less complex.
Not to mention statements about how complex "Carryable babies" would be or the fact it's doubtful that they will ever makes teens shorter. They said they wanted to concentrate on sim socialization instead, and boy have they ever done that!
I don't recall ever reading that they leave out complexity. I recall "complexity is the enemy" - which to me meant that it's a challenge, it makes a thing you want to do harder and means there's a higher risk of it failing or costing more of your development budget than intended, or making it harder to deliver what you want when you want because things just might take longer when they affect all the other things. Sims is complex by its very nature: so much is affecting so much else, all at the same time, and at any moment of it the game needs to be prepared that you might jump to a new point of view. It's a massive web with few straight lines. And that's a challenge. But it's what the game is.
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.
That PCW thing or whatever is seven years outdated I'm suppose believe something seven years ago man I need an updated one like...wow
@SimGuruDrake will be able to answer that much better than I can but as I understand it... the document outlines the process and the constraints/laws that are in place around revenue recognition so the fact that it is from 2009 doesn't really matter as the processes etc are still the same.
I'm a girl who likes to play with boys, what can I say...
“Instead of putting players in the role of Luke Skywalker, or Frodo Baggins, I'd rather put them in the role of George Lucas.”Will Wright.
@NZsimm3r I don't remember that comment being about all the sims games. I'll have to go back and read that bit again one of these days.
You have a good point about having a realistic understanding of the game, even if it's not what you'd hoped. But I can't express how much that angered and frustrated me at the time. And it's taken me about a year and a half to finally give up on this game because I kept hoping things might change and the game would get better, but obviously (for me) that has not happened. It's far more simplistic and superficial than any of the past sims games and I'm truly saddened by the loss of what was once a fantastic game.
ETA I keep seeing posts inserted within the conversation that weren't there when I posted, so I'm adding some tags to make it clear who I'm addressing.
The Sims
Where are we going, and why am I in this hand basket?!
Comments
A slight side-issue but that must be incredibly deflating as a creative person! Having spent time and energy on something that is now basically unusable.
“Instead of putting players in the role of Luke Skywalker, or Frodo Baggins, I'd rather put them in the role of George Lucas.”Will Wright.
where did I tell them to break their contract? I told you that their manager might want to reconsider how things are run.
There are other live services out there (mainly MMOs), free patch content is known to people around 1 month before it comes out (no different to here), however they are able to be open about future payed expansion. The reason why EA can not is its their NDA agreement that their workers are under. They can, as a company, decide to lift that for more of an open relationship with their player base. Anet had to do it after releasing a lackluster expansion pack and losing peoples trust.
Thanks! That's interesting you feel that way, because after reading her post I don't feel like we're at opposite ends of the spectrum. @Lutefisk is responding based on her experience at her job, and why the communication about the game might be less than satisfactory. I'm responding based on my assessment of the actual content - or lack thereof - they have put into the game so far.
Now whether this is due to a lack of financial resources (which s/he seems to imply) or major problems with adding content to the game, is speculation on both our parts. (And really we'd both be correct because with enough resources they could probably fix the issues with adding content.)
But my conclusion would be the same. I still say that if the game were actually fun and the content they were adding worked correctly there would be a metric ton of fewer complaints on this forum about things that players want to see added. So the way I look at it, the problem is still the game and not the customers.
Where are we going, and why am I in this hand basket?!
Do you use the same forums I do. They are toxic.
I'm a positive player, and person at least 40% of the time. There are about 2 areas on these forums (Off topic+creative) where I can be positive about the game, or about anything else in the case of off topic. In general, I can lay my hand to two threads in general where I'm 'allowed' to release the same positivity. If I put up a thread in General saying "I like my game" I would get at least 4 people responding to tell me what a plum I am and how bad the game is. If I complained about not being 'allowed' to be positive, I'd get told to go join one of the happy threads and stick to it. I'd get at least one person who wants toddlers telling me that I don't know what I'm talking about and I can't possibly enjoy my game without toddlers. It would then disseminate into arguing and chaos and end up locked.
I won't list the amount of things I've been told are my fault re the game and it's development or the smears on my character. Do you know what I do to deserve this? I enjoy my game.
I don't know what you consider toxic, but to me that's toxic, and if you happen to be a guru it's worse. There's a reason they don't want to come talk to us. That would be it.
The "Feedback for SimGuruDrake" thread is a good example, there were about 2 people being very rude but otherwise it had some nice discussion. Instead of warning the rude users the whole thread was shut down. People will keep being rude and toxic as long as they see that they can get away with it.
I'm sorry if that happen to you . But it goes both ways ? Do you know how many times I witness how people in the feedback section Telling people who do not like sims 4 . That there wrong, the game oif fun . Its just us , hey I reember one said we should stop criticising the game, and just install mods . Yes there bad appels in th forum, but I wouldn't say there toxic . If they tol d your wrong for like your game . Than that s wrong
Didn't say it didn't, but I can only put it in my view.
And bedtime. Day trip tomorrow.
Yep, can't blame customers for not enjoying the content or the game mechanics!
“Instead of putting players in the role of Luke Skywalker, or Frodo Baggins, I'd rather put them in the role of George Lucas.”Will Wright.
This so much, the problum isn't really the forums . The problem is that there bad appels are not being dealt with.Instead of closng threads, the mods should be talking with the bad apples.
And really, literally everything else you said works the other way around as well. I can't count the number of threads I've seen where someone discusses something that's frustrating them about the game where other players rush into the thread to say that they like the game and people should stop complaining.
As for whether or not gurus come talk to us, personally I could care less. Every time they have done it in the past, all they've said are things like 'complexity is our enemy' and other gems like that one. I'd really rather see EA give them the resources to work on adding content to the game that actually works correctly instead, but hey, I guess that's just me.
Where are we going, and why am I in this hand basket?!
“Instead of putting players in the role of Luke Skywalker, or Frodo Baggins, I'd rather put them in the role of George Lucas.”Will Wright.
Enjoy your day trip Arleta I hope it goes well
Why is that pcw thing goes way back in 2009 where's an updated because 2009 seems outdated.
Can't answer that, this is the document that both simgurudrake and simgurugraham have linked to. I don't think the date really matters inasmuch the basic information that is in there.
“Instead of putting players in the role of Luke Skywalker, or Frodo Baggins, I'd rather put them in the role of George Lucas.”Will Wright.
I'm not 100% on the details. My understanding at the moment is that the newer version of the regulation re. when delivery is effected for software that has had an update (ie, patch, not DLC) spoken of has until 2018 to be placed in practice. It's a deadline, not a start date. And it's the deadline for the entire regulation shift on revenue recognition, not only this one element. Any sensible company will not leave this to be implemented in the last week. There's good reason they've been given years to get the shift in place.
FWIW, the nearest similar situation I've been in personally concerns major changes in the legislation governing the nonprofit I currently chair the board of (a volunteer position). We had a few years to make sure all necessary changes in governance were in place and approved by the board and membership and the paperwork finalized; it took about ... two? of those to make so for us - it was a big process, and included having to overhaul our whole membership and fee structure - after which I watched some other organizations pretty near panic over getting it all done on time. We're still not quite done some of the policy revision that falls out from that process. Close, though! I think another year and that's it. It will have been a four- to five-year process in all, IIRC. I think the only reason we were able to do it as fast as we were is that a couple of us had been there, done that with a similar overhaul of governance before.
Anyway, you "play it safe" because these are huge transitions, even if the document requiring them isn't. Every regulatory change can mean a whole lot of other change, and a lot of internal education about it. Plus you never know what other mandated or otherwise necessary change is going to show up that has an even shorter deadline, causing unexpected time pressures - or missing critical deadlines (in our case, we'd have actually lost our nonprofit status, with the attendant fallout that we weren't going to risk). Waiting to the last minute to put in place a major shift in practice that you've had years of time to do is just plain incompetent. I would hope that my membership would vote me off my board if I did anything of the sort, and that shareholders would take action in a public company. So yeah, could they have waiting? Sure. But it would have been shockingly incompetent to do so, IMO. That they did not do so looks good on EA.
Some other companies are not publicly traded firms; this set of regulations is optional for them. (FWIW, if I were running a private firm and hoping it might get bought, I'd follow the same practices as are required by publicly traded firms.) Many other companies do not produce products that have patch content (not DLC or a new game in a series or a new game entirely) announced in advance, or announced much in advance.
Anyway, this is only one of the reasons stuff doesn't get discussed in advance. But it's one that's covered by legal stuff, and in a transition process that's not telling me, personally, that EA is a plum at doing this but rather that it's doing it responsibly.
I
@Lutefisk if you don't know that one it's here: http://forums.thesims.com/en_US/discussion/782859/simulation-tech-talk
Not to mention statements about how complex "Carryable babies" would be or the fact it's doubtful that they will ever makes teens shorter. They said they wanted to concentrate on sim socialization instead, and boy have they ever done that!
Where are we going, and why am I in this hand basket?!
@HappySimmer3 I agree wholeheartedly with you. But for me reading about this from the gurus was important in my understanding about the game. As much as I wanted their responses to be different I personally appreciated knowing. I hate not knowing things, so I would welcome guru Question and Answer threads even if I end up reading things I really hoped for are not possible.
Also the complexity is our enemy was actually about all sims games, not just 4. Which I found pretty interesting too!
“Instead of putting players in the role of Luke Skywalker, or Frodo Baggins, I'd rather put them in the role of George Lucas.”Will Wright.
I don't recall ever reading that they leave out complexity. I recall "complexity is the enemy" - which to me meant that it's a challenge, it makes a thing you want to do harder and means there's a higher risk of it failing or costing more of your development budget than intended, or making it harder to deliver what you want when you want because things just might take longer when they affect all the other things. Sims is complex by its very nature: so much is affecting so much else, all at the same time, and at any moment of it the game needs to be prepared that you might jump to a new point of view. It's a massive web with few straight lines. And that's a challenge. But it's what the game is.
@SimGuruDrake will be able to answer that much better than I can but as I understand it... the document outlines the process and the constraints/laws that are in place around revenue recognition so the fact that it is from 2009 doesn't really matter as the processes etc are still the same.
“Instead of putting players in the role of Luke Skywalker, or Frodo Baggins, I'd rather put them in the role of George Lucas.”Will Wright.
You have a good point about having a realistic understanding of the game, even if it's not what you'd hoped. But I can't express how much that angered and frustrated me at the time. And it's taken me about a year and a half to finally give up on this game because I kept hoping things might change and the game would get better, but obviously (for me) that has not happened. It's far more simplistic and superficial than any of the past sims games and I'm truly saddened by the loss of what was once a fantastic game.
ETA I keep seeing posts inserted within the conversation that weren't there when I posted, so I'm adding some tags to make it clear who I'm addressing.
Where are we going, and why am I in this hand basket?!