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Maxis is, yet again, removing basic features from new Sims 4

A-V-B

Member
The full career list, with branching paths:

Entertainer: Musician/Comedian
Writer: Author/Journalist
Painter: Master of the Real/Patron of the Arts
Secret Agent: Diamond Agent/Villain
Criminal: Boss/Oracle
Astronomer: Space Ranger/Smuggler
Culinary: Chef/Mixologist
Tech Guru: eSport Gamer/Start-up Entrepeneur

Missing: Military, Law Enforcement, Medicine, Athletic, Politician, Scientist and Education.

There are no rabbit hole buildings, the Sim just disappears off the lot (no car pool either.)

Sounds like this game started off on a mobile platform.
 

Delio

Member
The Sims 1 base game:

1) Business
2) Entertainment
3) Law Enforcement
4) Life of Crime
5) Medicine
6) Military
7) Politics
8) Pro Athlete
9) Science
10) Xtreme


The Sims 2 base game:

1) Athletic
2) Business
3) Criminal
4) Culinary
5) Law Enforcement
6) Medicine
7) Military
8) Politics
9) Science
10) Slacker


The Sims 3 base game:

1) Business
2) Criminal
3) Culinary
4) Journalism
5) Law Enforcement
6) Medical
7) Military
8) Music
9) Political
10) Professional Sports
11) Science


The Sims 4 base game:

1) Astronomer
2) Criminal
3) Culinary
4) Entertainer
5) Painter
6) Secret Agent
7) Tech Guru
8) Writer


One of these lists is unlike the others.

Wow what a mess this is. People being okay with those jobs being removed are stupid as hell.
 

Zareka

Member
It just keeps getting better and better! Like holy shit, it really does!

This is all I can think right now. It's unbelievable. I do not believe that multitasking and emotions were such a strain on development that they had to rip this much from the base game. Unless it was developed in like...a few months.
Which looks likely if these MMO rumours are true.
 

RE_Player

Member
I would love to be a fly on the wall during the dev meetings. Looking at what people enjoyed in The Sims 3, cut it out, give it a fancy new label and sell it separately.
 

A-V-B

Member
This is all I can think right now. It's unbelievable. I do not believe that multitasking and emotions were such a strain on development that they had to rip this much from the base game. Unless it was developed in like...a few months.
Which looks likely if these MMO rumours are true.

Basically we're buying a beta port of a canceled game.

We won't see a "whole" Sims 4 for years, and if we ever want to be a part of it, we'll be ourselves hundreds of dollars poorer.

I ain't got time for this. Sims 2 and Sims 3, cheap, already have them, I don't need Sims 4.
 
Can't wait to see additional career options open up from commercial partnerships. Buy a tube of Crest and open up the medical path. Buy some Brooks Brothers for business. Get assaulted by the police on camera and get a voucher in your email for law enforcement.

To play the Sims you have to live the Sims.
 
And the career list is shit as well. Anyone that openly pays for the expansions to get these dozens of features that are gimped or missing from the base game are just as much of a cancer to gaming as EA is.

Shit, buying the base game after all this garbage has been revealed is bad enough.
 

Zareka

Member
I ain't got time for this. Sims 2 and Sims 3, cheap, already have them, I don't need Sims 4.

This is the main reason I'm not all that bothered about The Sims 4, I think. TS3 (and hell, TS2 with the free UC) still have plenty of life left in them. I could play them till TS4 gets filled out and bargain binned, easily.

edit: wheeeeeee I'm a member now
 

Boss Doggie

all my loli wolf companions are so moe
The Sims 1 base game:

1) Business
2) Entertainment
3) Law Enforcement
4) Life of Crime
5) Medicine
6) Military
7) Politics
8) Pro Athlete
9) Science
10) Xtreme


The Sims 2 base game:

1) Athletic
2) Business
3) Criminal
4) Culinary
5) Law Enforcement
6) Medicine
7) Military
8) Politics
9) Science
10) Slacker


The Sims 3 base game:

1) Business
2) Criminal
3) Culinary
4) Journalism
5) Law Enforcement
6) Medical
7) Military
8) Music
9) Political
10) Professional Sports
11) Science


The Sims 4 base game:

1) Astronomer
2) Criminal
3) Culinary
4) Entertainer
5) Painter
6) Secret Agent
7) Tech Guru
8) Writer


One of these lists is unlike the others.

Hell, in Sims 3, two careers there (Law Enforcement and Criminal) have career branches in the base game alone!
 

Yrael

Member
This is just getting sad. :/

There is no way I am getting this game anywhere close to launch. I'm content to wait until the DLCs are cheap.
 
What were they thinking? Right now my biggest issue with this is they are calling this Sims 4 when it does less than any other edition in the series. Thats not how sequels work.
 
The Sims 4 does away with Create-a-Style, the ability to slap any combination of textures on any object. It replaces this with a set range of colour presets for every item. I don't think Maxis ever explained the change beyond the vague "We are focusing on making the base game great, stable and powerful. We want The Sims 4 to ship with a very high level of quality and we decided to focus on certain areas."

Palette presets do not seem to be a satisfactory alternative, according to this tester:

I tried to build as much as possible while I was at Creator's Camp so that I could get a genuine feel for the game. I made 5 houses...a starter, a cottage, a mansion, a modern, and a Mediterranean. I wanted to try a variety of styles to see what there was to work with in the game. And while I absolutely loved so many aspects of build mode, such as the clutter and decor objects, freedom of vertical placement, the ability to move rooms or the whole darn house anywhere on the lot....the honest truth is that all of that seemed to fade into the background as I became more and more frustrated by the planning of the presets.

The curtains are a prime example. For a base game, there is a nice variety of styles. The ability to move them up and down is incredibly helpful. However, they do not tie back to most of beds in the catalog. I chose a pink bed for one room and there were no pink curtains...which could have been ok if there had been a white option. But there was no white. There was a lamp in the same pink as the bed, but the chairs and sofa that come in pink are a whole different shade of pink. There is a very cute children/teen style bed in the catalog but there are no curtains that match any of those options. I had to go with something else.

With the wall textures, I discovered the same thing. There was a wall that was half stone, half siding. I placed it on the bottom floor of the house. For the second floor, I wanted just the siding...and that option existed. But not in the same color of green. So I couldn't use it. The foundation tool ( which is really easy to use and handy) allows you to choose several different options. But there is no continuity here either. I chose a dark brown foundation color on my modern house. The dark brown wall color is a different shade. There is no shade of paint that matches the foundation. I was surprised that the foundation colors did not ALL have a matching wall panel.

I found this to be the case over and over.
 
I'm still baffled as to what, exactly, is better about The Sims 4 in any way. Like, emotions, I guess? Which are basically the same idea as moodlets from TS3 as far as I can tell? And better Create-A-Sim maybe? They've removed both of the major additions from TS3 (open world and Create-A-Style), stripped down features from TS2, and took out stuff that's been in since TS1. Seriously, what the hell?
Expanded states of emotion and interactions tied to them.
Expanded, more sensible multitasking.
Easier to import sims/buildings/whatever.
Improved build tools.
Don't know if a consensus has been reached on the sim creation. I know they've changed the interface to be more intuitive, but I don't know if there's more or less options.

If they hadn't removed the open city and made sim personalities simpler I probably would've been content. But those two features in particular I feel are core to what's interesting about the series. I expected them to build on that. Instead they made it significantly worse. So disappointing.
 

Koomaster

Member
The Sims 4 does away with Create-a-Style, the ability to slap any combination of textures on any object. It replaces this with a set range of colour presets for every item. I don't think Maxis ever explained the change beyond the vague "We are focusing on making the base game great, stable and powerful. We want The Sims 4 to ship with a very high level of quality and we decided to focus on certain areas."

Palette presets do not seem to be a satisfactory alternative, according to this tester:
Yeah this is going to be my nightmare. No Create-a-Style is a BIG loss for people like me who can spend hours alone just building and designing houses and decorating with furniture. No white curtains as a base option - you're kidding me?! Colors that don't match for the options that are there. The hell are they smoking?!

Actually spent a few hours last night on designing some rooms of a house. But even anyone who does it for a few minutes can see how powerful the Create-a-Style was and what an improvement it brings to the game. I just can't fathom why they would remove it for Sims 4.
 

Dead Man

Member
The Sims 4 does away with Create-a-Style, the ability to slap any combination of textures on any object. It replaces this with a set range of colour presets for every item. I don't think Maxis ever explained the change beyond the vague "We are focusing on making the base game great, stable and powerful. We want The Sims 4 to ship with a very high level of quality and we decided to focus on certain areas."

Palette presets do not seem to be a satisfactory alternative, according to this tester:

Bloody hell, did the producers even look at this?
 

UrbanRats

Member
Bloody hell, did the producers even look at this?

I feel like whoever is making The Sims 4 has very little idea of what was cool about The Sims in the first place.
And in general, it looks like a very confused and half assed project.

Spending so much marketing effort talking about stuff that, for the most part, was there since The Sims 2 at least (EMOTIONS!) ? It's just weird all around.
 

twobear

sputum-flecked apoplexy
The Sims 1 base game:

1) Business
2) Entertainment
3) Law Enforcement
4) Life of Crime
5) Medicine
6) Military
7) Politics
8) Pro Athlete
9) Science
10) Xtreme


The Sims 2 base game:

1) Athletic
2) Business
3) Criminal
4) Culinary
5) Law Enforcement
6) Medicine
7) Military
8) Politics
9) Science
10) Slacker


The Sims 3 base game:

1) Business
2) Criminal
3) Culinary
4) Journalism
5) Law Enforcement
6) Medical
7) Military
8) Music
9) Political
10) Professional Sports
11) Science


The Sims 4 base game:

1) Astronomer
2) Criminal
3) Culinary
4) Entertainer
5) Painter
6) Secret Agent
7) Tech Guru
8) Writer


One of these lists is unlike the others.

Unfortunately they seem to really be 'normalizing' the fantastical elements of the game. I guess there was always a strong contingent of fans who liked all the magic/zombies/vampires etc. but I personally always played for the designing and 'people simulator' aspects of the game.

Sigh, sounds like TS4 is just not for me.
 

Revven

Member
Unfortunately they seem to really be 'normalizing' the fantastical elements of the game. I guess there was always a strong contingent of fans who liked all the magic/zombies/vampires etc. but I personally always played for the designing and 'people simulator' aspects of the game.

Sigh, sounds like TS4 is just not for me.

That's how I played The Sims as well (maybe with a little bit of fun every now and again like in terms of how they die and everything). They've really been about making The Sims (more recently, anyway) more "mythical" and "magical" than an actual simulator first. =\
 

Karak

Member
I agree with others this is starting to feel like it was a mobile game and then switched to a full game and they are just leaking details as if its them making decisions. This will be something to discuss for years once it is release because something very very strange is occurring here.
 

McNum

Member
I agree with others this is starting to feel like it was a mobile game and then switched to a full game and they are just leaking details as if its them making decisions. This will be something to discuss for years once it is release because something very very strange is occurring here.
Not a mobile game, an MMO.

The Sims 4, as far as I can tell, was originally an MMO, but after SimCity showed that EA's servers couldn't handle that kind of pressure, and the Sims community started making noise that they wouldn't buy a SimCity like Sims 4, EA made an announcement that Sims 4 would be an offline single player game. When the Sims 4 they had in development clearly was NOT. So the game had to be retooled as a single player game in about a year.
 

AlexMogil

Member
Maybe WE are the Sims now. Some cruel overlord just keeps taking stuff away from us bit by bit. We complain to the skies in a voice our creator doesn't understand but nothing happens. In fact, the more we complain it feels like we are laughed at and more stuff is taken away.

At least they can't drown us.
 
Not a mobile game, an MMO.

The Sims 4, as far as I can tell, was originally an MMO, but after SimCity showed that EA's servers couldn't handle that kind of pressure, and the Sims community started making noise that they wouldn't buy a SimCity like Sims 4, EA made an announcement that Sims 4 would be an offline single player game. When the Sims 4 they had in development clearly was NOT. So the game had to be retooled as a single player game in about a year.

It looks like its more based on Sim Social than anything else.
 
I was thinking about the lack of car pooling... do we actually have any confirmation there are useable vehicles in this game? Or even taxis / buses?

I can't recall seeing any in the footage shown so far - do we get any vehicles? Any at all?

Or is the first DLC a free Nissan Leaf® promotion like Sim City?
 
I was thinking about the lack of car pooling... do we actually have any confirmation there are useable vehicles in this game? Or even taxis / buses?

I can't recall seeing any in the footage shown so far - do we get any vehicles? Any at all?

Or is the first DLC a free Nissan Leaf® promotion like Sim City?
There are vehicles but they are deco for the neighborhood. Your Sims walk everywhere.
 

massoluk

Banned
Wow, no mainstay careers like Business or Athelic careers in the base games? Fucking hell. They can't possibly be that resource intensive to implement.

First The Sims game I'll skip for sure.
 

Telecinision

Neo Member
How much money do they expect us to spend to get the same basic feature set included in previous Sims titles?

By the end of the Sims 4 lifespan, how many hundreds of dollars do they expect us to dump into this single game to get a full feature set? In the past, they haven't even done the season pass garbage for these titles, which would likely be preferable pricing to how they released Sims 3 "expansions".
 
I seem to have totally missed the fact that there are load screens when moving lot to lot - wtf?! I thought it was just when you were leaving a neighbourhood.
 

McNum

Member
I was thinking about the lack of car pooling... do we actually have any confirmation there are useable vehicles in this game? Or even taxis / buses?

I can't recall seeing any in the footage shown so far - do we get any vehicles? Any at all?

Or is the first DLC a free Nissan Leaf® promotion like Sim City?
Yes! You get a rocketship. You can use the rocketship to go into space. Space will be off-screen and related to you through text popups.

There are no cars in the game.
 
I'll still buy it, part of the problem yeah yeah. I see all this shit talk and can't help but smh at Maxis but here I am eagerly awaiting this fucking game, a year after getting screwed in the pooper with Sim City. I am shame.
I'm in the same boat. I have more than enough money to buy this. So yeah. Sorry guys.
 

MrBali

Neo Member
Well this thread stopped me from making a huge mistake, thanks OP! I just got myself free Sims 2 complete anyways
 
Hmmm reading more on it I may simply play my Sims 3 copy I got in a humble bundle that I never played. I'll see how the release goes before I decide to make a purchase.
 
I opened this thread expecting to see knee jerker,...... but......

No create a style? Testers already complaining about lack of ability to coordinate a room? My OCD Already hurts....

Off screen jobs?

Loading between lots?

No frigging cars?


The gameplay needs to be unbelievably, inconceivably good to warrant so many generational leaps backwards.
 
What are some good mods to use for Sims 2? I've used a bunch of NRaas mods for Sims 3, considering playing 2 after getting the Ultimate Collection.
 

Berordn

Member
What are some good mods to use for Sims 2? I've used a bunch of NRaas mods for Sims 3, considering playing 2 after getting the Ultimate Collection.

Sims 2 doesn't really have any mandatory mods like 3 does with overwatch and story progression replacements. You might want to go down the list at modthesims and grab anything that jumps out, but by and large the stock game runs fine albeit with quirks.
 
It amazes me the people that defend all the features removed. It seems like the original Sims has more things to do than this game. EA, this is why us gamers hate you. Maxis, sorry but you are probably going to be killed off because of EA.

Edit: Which Sims should I get if I have not played since the original, 2 or 3?
 

McNum

Member
Why, though?
If you're looking for something along the lines of a AAA modern life simulator... what else is there but The Sims? Sims 4 might look lacking at best, but it's the only game in town.

The Sims so needs a direct competitor to keep it honest.
 

Berordn

Member
Edit: Which Sims should I get if I have not played since the original, 2 or 3?

If you can still get the complete collection for 2, nab that. Otherwise grab 3, which adds the seamless town and story progression, plus a bunch of other quality of life features.
 
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