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

U

UrbanRats

Member
jgwhiteus said:
Another entry in the parade of missing features: no more school, work, or grocery store lots:

http://simsvip.com/2014/07/02/the-sims-4-no-grocery-store-work-or-school-lots/

Seriously... what's the point? I mean, I'm one of the complainers who liked TS2 more than TS3, but I didn't expect EA to remove gameplay features until the game resembled TS2's base game more. I thought sequels usually added things to improve upon their predecessors...

Combined with the way neighborhoods and loading screens are described:
http://simsvip.com/2014/07/02/the-sims-4-loading-screens-the-world-explained/#more-38380
- one neighborhood playable at a time
- only up to five lots in each neighborhood, only one lot playable at a time
- loading screens will "take less than 30 seconds of your time", and "only" appear when traveling between worlds, neighborhoods, and lots (wow! really? less than 30 seconds? That's some amazing performance there!)

I totally missed EA's E3 presentation, so for someone who watched it or has been keeping up with the PR - could anyone provide a short list of the features that are actually selling points for this game? Like, what's the big change that's supposed to make me want to spend another $60 plus hundreds more on expansions and content?
Click to expand...
Wat? This has to be a practical joke from EA.

Or a social experiment.
 
R

Revven

Member
jgwhiteus said:
Another entry in the parade of missing features: no more school, work, or grocery store lots:

http://simsvip.com/2014/07/02/the-sims-4-no-grocery-store-work-or-school-lots/

Seriously... what's the point? I mean, I'm one of the complainers who liked TS2 more than TS3, but I didn't expect EA to remove gameplay features until the game resembled TS2's base game more. I thought sequels usually added things to improve upon their predecessors...

Combined with the way neighborhoods and loading screens are described:
http://simsvip.com/2014/07/02/the-sims-4-loading-screens-the-world-explained/#more-38380
- one neighborhood playable at a time
- only up to five lots in each neighborhood, only one lot playable at a time
- loading screens will "take less than 30 seconds of your time", and "only" appear when traveling between worlds, neighborhoods, and lots (wow! really? less than 30 seconds? That's some amazing performance there!)

I totally missed EA's E3 presentation, so for someone who watched it or has been keeping up with the PR - could anyone provide a short list of the features that are actually selling points for this game? Like, what's the big change that's supposed to make me want to spend another $60 plus hundreds more on expansions and content?
Click to expand...

1349110594814.gif


Really now, Maxis/EA? Why would I ever buy this? Hell, why would anyone buy this knowing that Sims 3 (even with all its resource hogging problems) has all of this already and more?

The new coat of paint and CaS and building stuff isn't enough to make up for all the losses. What the fuck, Maxis?


Capella said:
So far, the Maxis devs have been openly saying that they aren't doing anything to prevent mods. No idea how mod friendly that makes the game but it seems like they are embracing custom content and fully expect mods to be present in the game. I think the Gallery feature that is built into the game is going to feature CC as well. They seemed to be opening up to it again around the Ambitions expansion pack when they made it so we could put our mods in the Documents folder again.
Click to expand...

I mean, I know there is some level of modding for Sims 3 and you can obviously put them in the game and stuff. But originally the game was definitely not the same kind of mod-friendliness that Sims 1 and Sims 2 were (well, Sims 1 is more of a "happy accident" that it was, Sims 2 though at least was clearly open to modding).

It's good to know they seem to be open to it at the start this time around but mere clothing or hair/body meshes isn't quite the level of modding that appeals to me. Hopefully maybe this will expand beyond what they've shown of it but I'm not too hopeful.
 
D

dmg04

#DEADWRONG
My first memory of "The Sims" was trapping my sim in a pool.

I think that's most everyone's first memory of a sims game.


That's like taking plasma grenades out of Halo.
 
A

Aquamarine

Member
jgwhiteus said:
Another entry in the parade of missing features: no more school, work, or grocery store lots:

http://simsvip.com/2014/07/02/the-sims-4-no-grocery-store-work-or-school-lots/

Seriously... what's the point? I mean, I'm one of the complainers who liked TS2 more than TS3, but I didn't expect EA to remove gameplay features until the game resembled TS2's base game more. I thought sequels usually added things to improve upon their predecessors...

Combined with the way neighborhoods and loading screens are described:
http://simsvip.com/2014/07/02/the-sims-4-loading-screens-the-world-explained/#more-38380
- one neighborhood playable at a time
- only up to five lots in each neighborhood, only one lot playable at a time
- loading screens will "take less than 30 seconds of your time", and "only" appear when traveling between worlds, neighborhoods, and lots (wow! really? less than 30 seconds? That's some amazing performance there!)

I totally missed EA's E3 presentation, so for someone who watched it or has been keeping up with the PR - could anyone provide a short list of the features that are actually selling points for this game? Like, what's the big change that's supposed to make me want to spend another $60 plus hundreds more on expansions and content?
Click to expand...

So what you're pretty much telling me is that the series is progressing like this:


1) The Sims - 2000

2) The Sims 2 - 2004

3) The Sims 3 - 2009

4) The Sims 2.5 - 2014
 
F

fader

Member
jgwhiteus said:
Another entry in the parade of missing features: no more school, work, or grocery store lots:

http://simsvip.com/2014/07/02/the-sims-4-no-grocery-store-work-or-school-lots/

Seriously... what's the point? I mean, I'm one of the complainers who liked TS2 more than TS3, but I didn't expect EA to remove gameplay features until the game resembled TS2's base game more. I thought sequels usually added things to improve upon their predecessors...

Combined with the way neighborhoods and loading screens are described:
http://simsvip.com/2014/07/02/the-sims-4-loading-screens-the-world-explained/#more-38380
- one neighborhood playable at a time
- only up to five lots in each neighborhood, only one lot playable at a time
- loading screens will "take less than 30 seconds of your time", and "only" appear when traveling between worlds, neighborhoods, and lots (wow! really? less than 30 seconds? That's some amazing performance there!)

I totally missed EA's E3 presentation, so for someone who watched it or has been keeping up with the PR - could anyone provide a short list of the features that are actually selling points for this game? Like, what's the big change that's supposed to make me want to spend another $60 plus hundreds more on expansions and content?
Click to expand...

but...but.... THE CREATE A SIM & HOUSE THO!

seriously, this was a nice post. I'm completely numb to this this game. I'm just going to continue playing TS2 with a smile and let the game die by that. The ONLY thing I like about TS4 is the change in art direction but that alone is not strong enough to make me buy this game especially with the HUGE list of games being released for PC around that time.
 
Alex

Alex

Member
jgwhiteus said:
Another entry in the parade of missing features: no more school, work, or grocery store lots:

http://simsvip.com/2014/07/02/the-sims-4-no-grocery-store-work-or-school-lots/

Seriously... what's the point? I mean, I'm one of the complainers who liked TS2 more than TS3, but I didn't expect EA to remove gameplay features until the game resembled TS2's base game more. I thought sequels usually added things to improve upon their predecessors...

Combined with the way neighborhoods and loading screens are described:
http://simsvip.com/2014/07/02/the-sims-4-loading-screens-the-world-explained/#more-38380
- one neighborhood playable at a time
- only up to five lots in each neighborhood, only one lot playable at a time
- loading screens will "take less than 30 seconds of your time", and "only" appear when traveling between worlds, neighborhoods, and lots (wow! really? less than 30 seconds? That's some amazing performance there!)

I totally missed EA's E3 presentation, so for someone who watched it or has been keeping up with the PR - could anyone provide a short list of the features that are actually selling points for this game? Like, what's the big change that's supposed to make me want to spend another $60 plus hundreds more on expansions and content?
Click to expand...

If I were them I'd just stop answering questions.
 
Boss Doggie

Boss Doggie

all my loli wolf companions are so moe
massoluk said:
Not how I remember it, but nostalgia may be playing with my mind there. I just remember the Sims 2 had First Kiss and First Woohoo cutscenes, and the Sims 3 did not. I was really bummed out by the fact.
Click to expand...

Ah yeah Sims 3 has no cutscenes, but back then if you didn't have high settings Sims 2 will auto skip cutscenes too.

Revven said:
It's sickening, to be honest. I haven't bought a Sims game since Sims 2 and this is just an example of why. The developers behind the series have become money grubbing and would rather make more money by reselling you features that were even in The Sims 1 from the start than keeping consumer trust and relationship up.

Actually the Sims community was asking for this to happen when tons of them were open to buying things off The Sims Store. Everything Maxis/EA sells you on there are overpriced as hell (neighborhoods costing an upwards of $20+? The cost of a Stuff pack practically and you don't get any new furniture or gameplay to play with -- just aesthetic differences). I mean, yes, the people who make those things have to be paid somehow and so they have to factor in the time spent to make them and the effort required but that doesn't mean it's still shitty for the consumer in the end. But people buy them! They buy recolored furniture... stuff that was free to them as custom objects or mods in previous games.

In fact, the developers made Sims 3 even less mod-friendly than Sims 2. There's still nothing super interesting in Sims 3, from the modding community, that's on the level of what could be done in Sims 1 or Sims 2. It's extremely sad how bad it has gotten. I can't wait to hear how much more mod-unfriendly The Sims 4 is. They should be embracing that stuff, not closing it off and making it harder. But EA wants to make long-term money off the series so they can't be having modders making free content that's better than what they're selling. :|

Story progression being near non-existent is just... wow. That feature was really nice, to me anyway. I don't really like having to play multiple households in a single neighborhood to make them do what I think they should do (like what type of job they should have or skills or whatever). It made things easier for me -- knowing that I could just plop a copy of a family in a different save/neighborhood and not have to worry about them and just use them as adding to the population of the world was great (all while noticing what they've been doing)! But now knowing that's not really going to work all too well in Sims 4 really... makes me just... ugh I don't know. Gutting more features that were in Sims 3's base game is just a disgusting practice.
Click to expand...

Gameplay fixes aside, doesn't Sims 3 have a bunch of custom content?
 
K

kingkitty

Member
Y'all will look like fools when Sims 4 is actually revealed as a remake of Sims 2.

The real Sims 4 is coming out next year, and will be fucking amazing. The user will control a planet, and that planet will have hundreds of different towns and cities, across different continents, with their own unique cultures. The user can create hundreds of different planets, eventually forming a galaxy. Through advanced story progression, created sims from different solar systems can visit each other through space travel.

There will also be pools.
 
A

Anachronox

Member
Revven said:
Actually the Sims community was asking for this to happen when tons of them were open to buying things off The Sims Store. Everything Maxis/EA sells you on there are overpriced as hell (neighborhoods costing an upwards of $20+? The cost of a Stuff pack practically and you don't get any new furniture or gameplay to play with -- just aesthetic differences). I mean, yes, the people who make those things have to be paid somehow and so they have to factor in the time spent to make them and the effort required but that doesn't mean it's still shitty for the consumer in the end. But people buy them! They buy recolored furniture... stuff that was free to them as custom objects or mods in previous games.
Click to expand...
I'm no fan of EA, the store or it's prices but most of this is just wrong. The store worlds are way above stuff packs content wise and they all include objects/decor/clothing/items with new gameplay.

The store doesn't sell recolour's. TS3 has Create-a-Style (one of the removed features people are upset about in TS4) which allows you to recolour, change pattern etc of anything in the game. All the furniture sets in the store are original.
 
C

Capella

Member
Boss Doggie said:
Ah yeah Sims 3 has no cutscenes, but back then if you didn't have high settings Sims 2 will auto skip cutscenes too.



Gameplay fixes aside, doesn't Sims 3 have a bunch of custom content?
Click to expand...
It does. You have to sift through a lot of crap and be wary of bad cc to get to the good stuff though. It's just unfortunate that some of the really good CC and mod creators didn't move over to the Sims 3 or stopped modding for the sims altogether.

As far as mods go, I can't really compare them to the Sims 2 since I didn't have that many mods, but there are a lot of them for the Sims 3 that do little things like fix balancing issues, add careers, or remove autonomous interactions but there are also bigger mods like the Story Progression mod from NRaas.
 
T

TetraGenesis

Member
When they first announced Sims 4 it honestly seemed like everything I ever wanted out of a Sims game. It felt like such a dream.

Now it's a nightmare.
 
R

Revven

Member
Boss Doggie said:
Gameplay fixes aside, doesn't Sims 3 have a bunch of custom content?
Click to expand...

I didn't say that it doesn't. It does but it's not on the same level as Sims 2. There's hardly any objects with new interactions and animations made by the modders themselves. Custom content for Sims 3 largely consists of objects based on the existing ones with the same interactions and just a different model (so basically any furniture in the game), skin stuff (hair, skintone, sliders, eye colors, etc), global overrides (so script stuff that changes some things to have different desired effects or allow certain things to happen that couldn't before), and... of course houses. That's just me having looked through stuff on various websites for Sims 3 over the years.

But all of that doesn't really add a lot to the game. Maybe I'm just very particular about what kind of CC I want in a Sims game but the flexibility of the first two games is what allowed for a lot of cool stuff and actual new stuff that Maxis didn't make or think of.

I'm just saying there's less of that actual cool stuff and more of the more... boring and simple stuff (e.g making a room set like a living room) and global overrides that I honestly don't care too much about unless it actually adds something new to the game -- not just fixing issues Maxis created.

Like, for example, on modthesims somewhere there's a Sims 3 mod that adds new interactions for Sims and even seems to have new animations for them. That's the kind of stuff I like but it's very limited in Sims 3... because from the beginning Maxis/EA didn't make the game very mod-friendly at all. Creating new animations and inserting them into the game isn't very... I guess open, like everything else seems to be. Whereas in Sims 1 and Sims 2 it was and there's plenty of different objects you could find in both those games that added new gameplay interactions which didn't exist previously. They're hard to find nowadays for those games, though (because many of the sites that hosted them are dead).
 
S

smokeandmirrors

Banned
Man the create a house tool is amazing but that's the only redeeming thing about the game at this point.

fuck maxis and fuck ea. ruin sim city and now the sims.
 
S

starmud

Member
honestly, pools and toddlers are still my piss off. i dont mind going back to the sims 2 and acting as if 3 never happened. let that shit be added in an expansion. if they can create a good foundation for the game and move forward from sims 2 era-ish... im ok with that.

also, the bit about 5 lots per neighborhood has to be lost in communication... theres no way.... i mean, absolutely no way. even the screens show more than 5 lots/houses in willow bend(creek?), New Orleans D:<
 
S

SuperSonic1305

Member
Traveling to any lot without loads was one of the best things about 3. What is this shit? Is this some half-assed way to deal with the performance issues without actually optimizing the game?
 
D

Deleted member 80556

Unconfirmed Member
jgwhiteus said:
Another entry in the parade of missing features: no more school, work, or grocery store lots:

http://simsvip.com/2014/07/02/the-sims-4-no-grocery-store-work-or-school-lots/

Seriously... what's the point? I mean, I'm one of the complainers who liked TS2 more than TS3, but I didn't expect EA to remove gameplay features until the game resembled TS2's base game more. I thought sequels usually added things to improve upon their predecessors...

Combined with the way neighborhoods and loading screens are described:
http://simsvip.com/2014/07/02/the-sims-4-loading-screens-the-world-explained/#more-38380
- one neighborhood playable at a time
- only up to five lots in each neighborhood, only one lot playable at a time
- loading screens will "take less than 30 seconds of your time", and "only" appear when traveling between worlds, neighborhoods, and lots (wow! really? less than 30 seconds? That's some amazing performance there!)

I totally missed EA's E3 presentation, so for someone who watched it or has been keeping up with the PR - could anyone provide a short list of the features that are actually selling points for this game? Like, what's the big change that's supposed to make me want to spend another $60 plus hundreds more on expansions and content?
Click to expand...

Fuck. This. Shit.

Hell, I was going to wait for some months, but I guess I'll just wait until The Sims 5, if they decide not to fuck their costumers over again.
 
D

Dead Man

Member
Capella said:
So far, the Maxis devs have been openly saying that they aren't doing anything to prevent mods. No idea how mod friendly that makes the game but it seems like they are embracing custom content and fully expect mods to be present in the game. I think the Gallery feature that is built into the game is going to feature CC as well. They seemed to be opening up to it again around the Ambitions expansion pack when they made it so we could put our mods in the Documents folder again.
Click to expand...

Maybe that's why all these features aren't there. They know they won't be able to sell dresses so they have to sell gameplay features?
 
A

Amazeballs

Member
The regression to only processing single neighborhoods makes sense because the persistent world of the Sims 3 is not worth the all the errors, bugs and memory issues it created. But 5 lots per neighborhood? You can do better than that, Maxis. Definitely not cause to boast about those load times.
 
mysteriousmage09

mysteriousmage09

Member
jgwhiteus said:
Another entry in the parade of missing features: no more school, work, or grocery store lots:

http://simsvip.com/2014/07/02/the-sims-4-no-grocery-store-work-or-school-lots/

Seriously... what's the point? I mean, I'm one of the complainers who liked TS2 more than TS3, but I didn't expect EA to remove gameplay features until the game resembled TS2's base game more. I thought sequels usually added things to improve upon their predecessors...

Combined with the way neighborhoods and loading screens are described:
http://simsvip.com/2014/07/02/the-sims-4-loading-screens-the-world-explained/#more-38380
- one neighborhood playable at a time
- only up to five lots in each neighborhood, only one lot playable at a time
- loading screens will "take less than 30 seconds of your time", and "only" appear when traveling between worlds, neighborhoods, and lots (wow! really? less than 30 seconds? That's some amazing performance there!)

I totally missed EA's E3 presentation, so for someone who watched it or has been keeping up with the PR - could anyone provide a short list of the features that are actually selling points for this game? Like, what's the big change that's supposed to make me want to spend another $60 plus hundreds more on expansions and content?
Click to expand...

No pools
No toddlers
No markets
No school
No basements
Limited lot size
Garbage story progression
Go fuck yourself EA
No sale from me
Seriously, fuck off
 
Karak

Karak

Member
UrbanRats said:
Wat? This has to be a practical joke from EA.

Or a social experiment.
Click to expand...

I will have to redo my video rant. Because this is some straight up gangsta stealing shit.
Honestly as others said it is like an experiment or something. I mean it makes you fucking wonder what they are even thinking at all.
 
S

shanew21

Member
As a person who played The Sims 2 a ton and The Sims 3 a decent amount, I can say for certain I will not be buying 4. They've taken a massive step backwards in almost every area. I forgave 3 because even while they removed some features, the new ones they added in (full living neighborhood, create a style, etc) were great features.

And now they're removing all of it. It seriously looks no different than 2.
 
Karak

Karak

Member
Honestly these fuckers are going to end up just throwing a camera on a couple busy city streetcorners and pretend they are sims and sell it.
 
Karak

Karak

Member
I almost always play as a Sim with a job of some kind.
Then I go and relax in the pool usually. After time spent with my toddler, then I go see how the other sims are doing and many times like to go explore, I also like to go to the market and get stuff, that is of course if I have time when I am not going to school. If I have time I like to tinker in the basement which is where I usually have my workshed and different odds and ends because you know...basements and shit.
 
D

Delio

Member
jgwhiteus said:
Another entry in the parade of missing features: no more school, work, or grocery store lots:

http://simsvip.com/2014/07/02/the-sims-4-no-grocery-store-work-or-school-lots/

Seriously... what's the point? I mean, I'm one of the complainers who liked TS2 more than TS3, but I didn't expect EA to remove gameplay features until the game resembled TS2's base game more. I thought sequels usually added things to improve upon their predecessors...

Combined with the way neighborhoods and loading screens are described:
http://simsvip.com/2014/07/02/the-sims-4-loading-screens-the-world-explained/#more-38380
- one neighborhood playable at a time
- only up to five lots in each neighborhood, only one lot playable at a time
- loading screens will "take less than 30 seconds of your time", and "only" appear when traveling between worlds, neighborhoods, and lots (wow! really? less than 30 seconds? That's some amazing performance there!)

I totally missed EA's E3 presentation, so for someone who watched it or has been keeping up with the PR - could anyone provide a short list of the features that are actually selling points for this game? Like, what's the big change that's supposed to make me want to spend another $60 plus hundreds more on expansions and content?
Click to expand...

There goes the last ounce of hype i had for this game. Way to ruin it EA. I'll just stick to Sims 3 for now.
 
D

Drpunch

Neo Member
Maybe off topic somewhat... Is Sims 3 worth installing? Kinda looking for a game I can piss around in for a bit and I have always enjoyed playing the Sims. Shame what EA/Maxis is doing to the Sims 4, always been a good game to play around in.
 
J

Jintor

Member
Drpunch said:
Maybe off topic somewhat... Is Sims 3 worth installing? Kinda looking for a game I can piss around in for a bit and I have always enjoyed playing the Sims. Shame what EA/Maxis is doing to the Sims 4, always been a good game to play around in.
Click to expand...

it runs like a dog.

it's not too bad gamewise with enough expansions but it will still and always run like a dog
 
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