I totally agree with you. All of my sims used to wear make-up for contours/texture, from children to elders, male and female. And because, you know... I love eyeliner.

Fair enough. In that case, let me just commend you on having a lot of natural marketing mojo for a hands-on person.

Correction- to get them to the first empty house or business on the side of the road.

Oh snap! Although I thought they optimized that a little better after it became apparent it was a Bad Idea?

I stand corrected

I wonder if Graham already realized that this sentence will hunt him forever, now...

hAhahhAHaHHAhHAHHAHahAHHhaHAHhahHAhAHAhaHAHAHahhHAhAHAHhahahaHAHHAHAHAa

Technically, the phrase won't bite him in the butt too much if they never implement it. They can easily chalk it up to "lack of resources", "time restraints", "focus on [insert other feature]", etc. Basically what they've been doing this whole time.

Even if he had straight up said, "Yup! Pools will be included someday!" it wouldn't matter. They've outright confirmed features only to take them away before.

Today is the 12th. Any demo yet?

Nothing for me yet. It's still a little early in the day, so perhaps later.

Or, Things Change™

I really have a bad feeling they're not going to keep their word...

You know what? The toddler skills could have easily worked in the goal-oriented system. Actually, wait, that would make those skills even grindier than before. The skills themselves are the goals. Here's what I would do:

Walking - you'd have "Attempt to Walk" and the kid falls down. You have to help him/her for the first few times.

Talking - Should come naturally unless you never talk to your kid. The TV can help, but it doesn't raise relationship...

Potty Training - The Bladder motive would be invisible until potty-trained. The challenge would be to make sure you get the kid to the toilet. If that means sitting there all day waiting, then so be it. That would be a little more realistic. If the Bladder bar is over halfway, the kid can't, um, produce anything. To make it easier, if the kid has learned to talk, you will see the toilet icon in the little speech bubbles as a hint.

About the demo, tomorrow EA is giving their conference @gamescon (around 8-9am GMT time), If they have plans on releasing the CAS demo for everyone, i'm sure you'll hear the date there (hopefully they'll give a "demo will be free to download for everyone after the conference" speech...
since i'm still expecting them to release it during gamescon hours/days

It was never officially their word though. It made sense, and we all kind of just... Assumed.

yep alot of people lost a part of their childhood today that's for sure...
Was in shock myself for a few hours, cried like a kid (wich i never do whenever there's a celeb. dieying newsflash) grew up with him as mork watched alot of his movies growing up, watched aladdin in the afternoon and it cheered me up suprisingly (genie sheep still makes me laugh )

anyway sorry for the offtopic ramble

Took advantage of Origin's giveaway and reinstalled the full Sims 2 experience. I'm sorry to say, it is a better game experience than Sims 3. Sure, the sims are fugly broad-mouthed frogs, the clothing is horrid and dated, and the technology even more so, but the interaction, the things you need to consider, the choices... It feels more Simmy. I loved 3's open world and collecting, but the empty venues and the ease of money making and the lack of an OFB kind of adventure...

I'm back to 2, and 4 will have to work hard to convince me to change opinions.

1. Thanks for clearing up my question, Graham. I'm gonna have to read through it again because that's a lot of shit to read when you first wake up but give it about an hour and I'll know exactly what your job entails XD




So....moodlets with slightly bigger consequences (aka emotions) took priority over things that people have come to see as staples in the franchise? Mmmmhm....*keeps that quote secure for future use*

Aww, I loved those lots, so dollish :lovestruc

The next question then is why so many AAA base games - including TS3 in 2009 - can seem so fullsome compared with TS4, which seems horrendously sparse. It all sounds suspiciously like bad resource allocation (or ample resources wasted on a very limited engine designed primarily for online co-op). In either case, I'm not letting EA push the costs of whatever went wrong - cos something has obviously gone horribly wrong on your guys' end - into my meagre wallet.

... Right, work on the cover "Pools Expansion"... I know, I'm being sarcastic... Sorry for that! Still love you though, not especially the game you're working on, but you, I still do, you look like a nice dude! ^^ You had me at hello the day I saw you wearing this hot-dog suit!

I like it better than the old forum as well... but that.... GREEN!!!! ~~gropes for her sunglasses~~

And don't say anything about having a wide screen monitor and to resize my browser. I have a wide screen monitor and I've resized my browser and I'm still seeing green!!

I wish Graham could respond to things like this. Unfortunately, I don't think we'd be able to get a completely honest answer out of him, or any of the Gurus for that matter, until he stops working for EA. Something tells me there's more going on that we don't know about (or rather we've speculated but wont ever get a clear answer until we find another whistle-blower like P. Kelly) So until that day comes, I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that this should probably answer all questions regarding this game and the odd choices made by the devs.


I'd normally chalk something like that up to somebody being salty over getting fired but based on what we've seen, he might be right.

I'd normally blame corporate intervention for this but then Grant opened his big mouth again and let us all know that EA actually doesn't interfere with Maxis. Good to know