They do! they send them in a rocket!

No, townies are bad. They are the reason the sims are born with an inbuilt mobile phone. All sims should be based in a house, no randomly generated homeless sims. But they should make different neighbourhoods, like Downtown, or vacation hoods, and sims should be able to travel between them and visit other sims.

I remember I did that on The Sims 2. Every guest had to order a VIP ticket! xD

Really? Because it doesn't feel like EAxis is doing SHIT to please me as a customer. Taking my personal bias about the game aside, The Sims 3 was broken on it's launch. The game constantly crashed and when it didn't do that,there were numerous game breaking bugs. It doesn't really feel like they cared about the quality in which their customer have to deal with. Then off course there is EAxis doing garbage like releasing the overpriced broken bakery that they knew fans wanted instead of making it an expansion pack like fans really wanted.

The reason why things like "Assassins Creed" and "GTA V" sells as well is because they do everything EA is either to stupid to do or just refuses to. They actually have something called quality control and just don't rush shit out to maximize profit. In "Assassins Creed"s case, they actually listened to what consumer liked and didn't like about the previous incarnation. They legitimately TRIED to make consumers happy as well as profit from it. The reason the Sims won't ever do that is because they don't ever see the BIG picture of things. They don't understand that making things more affordable in the long run instead of making everything overpriced is way more beneficial in the long run. Plus fans can TRUST in a franchise from a company like Rockstar. But EA....need I tell you why consumers don't trust EA?

That's why I said it could be turned on or off. I know not everyone plays like me.

OK, as a big Assassin's Creed fan, I might say things aren't that smooth - there's a lot of rage against Ubisoft and not everybody trusts them, especially because the games having been plagued with bugs that are never fixed, especially on the PC. They also introduced online features that are really messed up and prevents people from completing the game, which sucks and weren't necessary in the first place, although it came from good ideias.

I will say, however, that I witnessed AC4's development (as a fan, through the forums) and it was a thing of beauty. Regardless of UBI's decisions, developers were really in touch with the fans. They released trailers or pictures or even small walkthorughs - then, they held Q&A's with fans (even if was through simple tweets, for no reason at all other than replying to someone's complain) to hear what everyone thought about it. In the end, they would have promises of what they could do to change whatever people didn't like. It was awesome, they updated everyone just to say if they managed to change what was asked or if they couldn't make it for whatever reason. It felt like they were at least trying, which counted for a lot. The game's freaking leading director was just like one of us.

One of the examples that really stuck to me was something that caught them by surprised. When the first trailers and images were released, fans were really bugged that there was no holsters for the two weapons on Edward's chests - it looked like they were glued on:



They gave the technical explanation for that and in the end, they said that would require them to change some codes within the model that was really hard to reach that far into development. On the following months they came back to fans saying they were really trying to change it and then, when they released a new gameplay video down the road, there were the holsters fans wanted. The game's release date was near, they were probably rushing in time for everything to work by release and still gave people attention. It wasn't something that would compromise the quality. It wasn't something that would hurt reviews or hurt sales. It's just a silly thing that bugged fans and they fixed it. It's just one of a freaking lot of examples, and it was great to see that. Assassin's Creed is an annual franchise that sees little change to its core - but the games keep selling 10 million + each year because they have found a balance between the market and the fans, even if it doesn't always work out for everyone.

With that in mind, this type of care and transparency should really happenTS too, especially when we are talking about basegames. They can't fail at a base game because the sales for the next 5 years of EP's count on that. If a base game doesn't sell well, they are probably loosing way more than just its own sales. But development for TS4 has been really weird. Sometimes, it seems like they are seriously blind to the fans wants and wishes, it's just... weird.

Well, one thing we know is EA is no Ubisoft.

I know I going to some flack for this but the Sims 1 and 2 restaurants; other lots were very livable compared to Sims 3. It gets really crowded which is amazing. Now after seeing that, I want to see the party meter from the Sims 2 to make a huge surprise comeback .


As long as the townies do not have the same face then I'm for it. Screw it I down for more townies too as long as you can control it and optional.

YES. I hate throwing parties in Sims 3 for a number of reasons, but the biggest is probably that I don't have any idea how the party is going until people leave saying it was boring. And without the timer I don't know how long the guests are going to be there.

[QUOTE=rodrigues] The game's freaking leading director was just like one of us.

I love this – oh how I wish we had that sort of relationship with EA…….. Like where is Lucy Bradshaw? Pops up at Gamescom but what else? Have I missed the passion from the senior vice president, Maxis? Maybe just too busy……

Or maybe that is reaching a bit too high

Probably the best feature The Sims 4 could have would be to not use Origin...

Are EA's losses from making their games exclusive to this pathetic service really lower than the 30% they'd have given Valve to distribute their games digitally?

Is this legit? EA using Disqus for information?

http://ts4news.com/post/81520918009...n-option-in-ts4

If there is no direct link to the survey and the question it must be a load of crap.

As if EA would give away all the Store content for a start for a $100 let allow EP's and SP's for a year! Word is it is a BS post about the bundle survey.

It's always felt weird to me that EA has had next to zero fan-to-dev interaction for TS3 or TS4. Back in TS2 days you could actually sit down on the BBS and talk to people who were passionate about the game they were working on. I remember the Nightlife contest to design two CC dresses in Bodyshop - the red tank with the black skirt and silver stuff, and the blue halter one with sequins were the winners. They were included in the game as part of fan participation. That's a tiny fact all but lost on some people who play the game today. TS3 has been very professional and disjointed with little off-script interaction. Everybody put out there on the official forums feels very scripted, forced, and just not as passionate or engaged. They feel false and we all felt that in the live broadcasts. There was one woman who knew the game really well. I can't remember her SimGuru name but she was just very passionate and you could tell she was from the old days. TS4 has been like ramming our heads against a perpetually thickening brick wall. I hate the idea that unless you're in some exclusive EA promotional club (Yibsims) you don't DESERVE to know what's going on with the game.

Any other studio would be punished severely and ruthlessly by its fans for not interacting with them. I've seen people bail out of games in development en masse just because the official forum people were misinformed or out of touch with the game. With EA, it feels like a sort of professional wincing smile that you see on hired secretaries and salespeople as they try to ignore the "non-productive" commentary that's being screamed to them from all sides.

It seems to me, though, that even the Yibs are not really much more favored with real two way communication. Apart from the fact they were royally hosted with good food and accommodation, the extent of their Sims4 insight would appear to be predigested images and fact sheets that they were allowed to regurgitate to us on some specified date. Unless some EA employee accidentally let something extra slip during a shared drinking session, I doubt whether they were able to learn anything we don't all know now.

true. Some ppl still believe they do have information hidden from us. The thing is that... they totally not know anything new either. And some of them are really strating to show their "emotions" on twitter... of course, in a passive non agressive way so they don't upset EA.

On the conference call announce they told the yibs that they'd be updated periodically on the progression and actually be .. more or less part of the production of the game. Giving feedback etc. I think that when Gamescom rolled around and they realized a LARGE amount of fans were kinda peeved by this favoritism that wasn't entirely obvious in the olden days..so they decided to stop the yibsim thing.

I just remember VERY clearly it was supposed to be a long term flow of info (possibly) until the game is released kind of deal. They might reneged on the whole info part. I mean I saw somewhere, likely here, that the marketing guy stepped down (or was forced out) right after it started.

Edit -
I think this is odd. There is SOME marketing for the game, but not from official sources or prominent sites. I set up a google news alert for anything containing "The Sims 4" and over the last 2 months I've seen an article come out every day or so just recycling the information we already know from a handful of websites. They don't have anything to show and it's repeated hype about a release date and expansion pack near release, but no real info and the sites are usually sourcing other pages in an endless loop.

Including the link cause it's kinda crazy - Google News Search

As I said.. it's odd.

I remember EA in the Sims 1 days were giving out new objects for free including new animations with them. Those were the days.

Aw, remember when Maxis gave out the Running With Scissors playset, animated and everything, for TS2?

http://ts1depot.hfguide.net/getcoolstuffarchive.html

This is the TS1 archive for all the stuff they released. *sniff*

I was thinking about the Running w/ Scissors playset earlier. Dat nostalgia. Also, seeing anything from TS1 gives me this intense feeling in my chest and I feel like I'm 15 again.

Holy crap I totally forgot that the Sim 1 had a art studio tool where you can import you own pics and export them in the Sims 1. I hope the Creators see this and add the art studio tool in the Sims 4. I'm still wondering why this tool hasn't been released in the Sims 3. Plus there's other stuff too like the menu edit, weird. Yep they really cared back then.

This is EXACTLY what I'm getting at in my big post, too - they don't give a damn like they used to. Back then, it was quirky, it was humble, it was for fans by fans. People played the game they were building and fell in love with every moment. In my time on a gigantic turn-based RPG mod project years ago, if you were not 100% passionate about it, you were either given a chance to present your case or they'd get somebody who cared about the game to replace you on the project. We were doing something as fans of other similar RPG's. It scares me to death that TS4 is being handled by people who know nothing. They may know how to make a game. But they don't know how to make our game.

I haven't checked in for a minute. I see there's no news. Should I check back in around E3 time?

This is kinda off topic but it's Easter today so Happy Easter everybody.....

But doesn't this in the end make EA more money?
If the first year (lets say 2014 autumn is free because it's only 1/4 year) you pay 100§, you are paying for base game, 2 EPs and 12 PC (if they continue with 1 set/month).
Second year you pay the same amount, and get 2 new EP's and 12 sets.

If you pay individually, you might not buy all EP's or sets. Now regardless do you like what EA gives you or not, EA gets money. The sets and EP's will be made regardless.

If you are one of those people who do buy everything, you feel like you are saving money.

If this news is legit, then what happens if you pay years 1 and 2, can you still play the game in year 3 if you don't want to pay? I'm happy buying individual things from EA but to make a deal with them, I wouldn't.