What is bothering me is how completely hopeless the series seems to be from now on.

Every single feature and detail everyone is missing was cut because the developers think they are either too difficult, too expensive, too time consuming, not worth it and not the best place to allocate resources at.

How can you escape from that? 3 was simpler than 2, now 4 is simpler than 3... and all because everything is "too dificult" now. What can we expect for EPs? For TS5? That doesn't sound like the type of problem that can be easily fixed.

And from there, you can see why many people are holding against the gurus, namely Grant. It's like they are saying "deal with it, we are proud of our incomplete game and there's no time to spend on those things you are moaning for".

My hype train crashed when i saw the first TS4 trailer.

If Maxis was left alone it could have folded. Would they have even have had the budget to create the sims? They were not doing well then.





I think you are a little too harsh on him though for not knowing him personally. It seems like he just wanted to retire and not make games any more and just do something else.






I think we have to remember that they are not businessmen. They are digital artists with a vision. So a lot of times these smaller businesses get in financial trouble and have to be bought out to even continue their vision. Yeah, the original employees go off but that isn't something unique to any company. What Nintendo was then isn't the same as Nintendo is now. Old people moved on to retire or do something else, new people are promoted and given a chance at creating something. It's not always such a bad thing.

Maxis benefited definitely and what about BioWare? AAA titles are very costly to make, teaming up with big publishers is not always this boogeyman, it has bought us Bioware games, Current Day Elder Scrolls, and various other titles that just would not have been made without a backer. Yes there are cons to being taken in by a publisher, such as deadlines and whatnot...but it's not all bad and we've seen where and how it can work out. You say that what makes a company filters out and leaves, but games like Dragon Age: Inquisition I feel say otherwise. i'm not disagreeing with you about Ultima, but I think each case is different.

nitromon in his earlier post mentioned the decline of the Ultima Series it is interesting to revisit the last game in the franchise Ultima VIII: Pagan which is the one Richard Garriott said “I sacrificed everything to appease stockholders, which was a mistake. We probably shipped it three months unfinished."
Then add two of the biggest complaints
The world is much smaller than in the preceding games
There are far fewer NPCs to interact with.
Hmmm sound familiar, at the time Ultima was a giant however one bad release killed the franchise could we be seeing history repeating, and maybe one day someone who worked on the Sims 4 game admitting it shipped way too early and unfinished for the development teams liking?

Don't get me wrong, I completely understand limited resources. Although we're doing okay now I've spent most of my adult life with barely two nickels to rub together. Having said that I had to click disagree on your post, not because of total disagreement, but the exception I take to the first paragraph. I've been playing Sims since a while after the original game released. Granted, I didn't always have a computer that ran my Sims games extremely well but I had one plenty good enough by the time TS2 came out I didn't have Sims with paddle hands (low graphics settings). By the time TS3 had rolled around I'd upgraded again and only had to change out my graphics card to have the game running smoothly.

Over the years I've known a lot of players who sunk money into expensive computers just so they could play their Sims games. Sure, not everyone can afford to do that but if we have a few dollars to spare it's something we've generally made a priority on the non-essential side of the monthly budget.

Nitromon brought up the 32-bit thing a few posts back and I am so with him on this. Hardly anyone who uses a desktop/laptop computer these days is stuck in a 32-bit system. Shoot, my own computer is probably four years old and is 64-bit. I could've built 64-bit as far back as 2005 when I put together my XP system (yes, I'm always way behind) but I didn't want the hefty price tag that went with the new tech so didn't go that route until 2011. In a nutshell, if I run a 64-bit system then almost every other person who uses a non-handheld computer does too. A game made in 2014 should only be 64-bit. I really feel like that by trying to include everyone with low-end computers the devs have pretty much shot themselves in the foot because since TS4 doesn't make usage of current technology it's nigh on impossible for it to be anything but mediocre. As time progresses and more content is added via game packs or whatever they want to call them the game will get to the point where it doesn't perform acceptably. If the game had been programmed in 64-bit and fleshed out the way so many of us would like to have seen it, someone with older equipment could possibly have looked toward upgrading while it would originally be more attractive to many more players than it is now.

Show of hands: Who here uses a 32-bit computer?

This is my take on the "too difficult, too expensive" comment we've seen so often.

I can't help but think this is something that was devised to explain to the masses, masses whom the developers seriously under-estimated the age range of, to explain why various features were cut. They seem to have tried putting it into language for five-year-olds. (Oh, and Graham, if you happen to read this, please know I'm five plus fifty and I represent a huge part of your Sims market share, the part of the market share you all have been known to ignore over the years, the part of the market share that has spent hundreds, maybe even more, dollars on Sims games over the years, also the part of the market share than when given a survey wouldn't let me go beyond answering the question of my age because apparently I'm too old to matter.)

Unfortunately what we don't see in any of these explanations is that the dev team apparently spent something like four years creating a game for online play and when that was changed not only still had at least a year's worth of work on said game but also had to revamp it for single player.

Granted, I throw rocks at the devs every once in a while, mainly for their really lame comments like "what are toddlers?" and "please, please, please" "it's our vision" (because frankly, I couldn't give a care about their vision, as a player I'm very selfish and think my vision should trump theirs every time) but one thing I don't do is blame them for constraints on time and money. They aren't the ones in charge of that. They pitch their ideas and someone else decides how much time and how much money they get to do it with. Then they have to figure out how to work with those limits. I obviously can't speak from the financial aspect of things but based on what I see time-wise it seems the developers were a lot better at time management with TS2 and TS3 than they were with TS4, but then again if they had originally planned on a single-player game things could have turned out much differently.

Heh, I remember savouring the thought that they'd surely make a return to mendelian genetics if they really were putting the focus back on The Sims. Given how much they took away from the basics of a sim (access to their geneology, effectively two whole life stages, any visual signifiers of being a teenager, etc) I still struggle to work out what they might have meant. Emotions strike me as kinda neat, but they look like the kind of feature that cost much more to develop than they give back to the player in terms of gameplay - ie, it looks to me like emotions are exactly the kind of feature EA claims every other feature they cut was. I would happily ditch emotions for mendelian genetics and a family tree. Plain old moodlets indicating emotional states weren't great or anything, but they worked about as well (if not better at times) than the new system.

I certainly don't! And this beast is not young, from 2007 or so and it's 64 bit! I also had a laptop in 2009 that was 64 bit as well. I honestly don't know why they don't use it. My PC is considered a toaster by today's standards. How old does EA think Simmer's PCs are anyway? 15 years old?

Well thanks, I appreciate the answer and didn't really expect it. But, i'm gonna be honest here and this is no attempt at a personal attack, the Guru thing just doesn't make any sense to me still. I understand it's supposed to make it easier for fans to talk to those who are actually in development with the game, but it really doesn't. Because, as I and many people agree, the Guru's often aren't on the same page when it comes to the game. One Guru understands what one person ask, but another has NO idea what the fan is even asking about. The Guru's seem to be doing qutie a bit of PR so i'm unsure what the PR people actually do. You guys need to really organize yourself and talk about what you actually are going to release as a whole. Many of the Guru's contradict themselves and each other, so that really isn't better.

Also I had to bold that last part because, honestly, there is no way anyone can think that's true. The Sims team has been anything but transparent with fans. How many answers to questions have been "we can't discuss that" or some variation of the such?

I was not making it personal to anyone. Just so you know. That said, over all the Sims forums are players who do not want to up tick the computer they have. I was knocked about a great deal in the official Sims 2 forums when Bon Voyage made the change to DVD. I even linked to newegg to show that you could get a dvd drive for $20 US. The out pouring of hate was alarming. I was not saying to kill your puppy just how to get a DVD drive to run the new tech. When makers of tech hear and see such things then no we are not going to get a spot at E3.. It is at the end of the day a place to sell better computer gear.

So no I am not bashing anyone or saying step up our game, just that if this is not a money venue its not going to get red carpet treatment. I want it to get the red carpet as much as anyone but facts are facts.

64 bit would be wonderful but we know that most simmers don't own a 64 bit system. I got a bunch of friends that can only run TS4 at medium or less and they insist to crank it to ultra leading to crashes(I'm not saying that bugs and crashes are exclusive to a less potent PC but I built my current one two years ago and it runs on Ultra and it never crashed a single time, I only had that bug of loading screens that seems to be fixed right now)

Not everyone can afford upgrading their PCs(for many different reasons- I can't right now and I need to if I ever want to play DAI on Ultra)...and there's The Sims main audience, the young ones(kids, tweens, teens) that depend on their parents.

So a 64 bits TS4 would exclude the majority of players and potential players. EA gets data while we play, remember? Meatball came here(once, I guess...) and he said that we had no idea about the PCs most simmers run the game(let's not forget of players that never even go to any forums to give any feedback about performance). Not everyone is a game enthusiast, and TS4 biggest audience is said to be casual gamers because of their PC set up, that leads to the conclusion that they don't play a large variety of games otherwise they'll need a stronger one.

I've seen people say that they should've done a 32 bit and a 64 bit version but I think this wouldn't work. 64 bit would run better and have more potential to expand, while 32 bit would be stuck at some point, what would they do? Stop releasing EPs/GPs/dlc/whatever content to the 32 bit and keep doing for the 64 bit? Not only it would be an outrage to their majority of consumers, but it would be totally impracticable. Spend resources in content that would have less buyers? So even if there was a 32 bit and a 64 bit, we would still be limited to what could be offered to the 32 bit game. I can only imagine people rioting about gameplay differences and textures.

There's even a laptop mode for Christ's sake(I know there are some gaming laptop but this is not what this mode is for), you can see that they're trying to cater to the widest possible number of consumers. And that's what any company would do, they have the data to justify this decision.

64 bit users are still minority(at least in The Sims franchise)...and what about PC sales decreasing? Microsoft is still worried. There's lot of people nowadays that rather buy tablets and smartphones upgrading to a new one with each new release. No wonder those micro transactions game make so much money.


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Now let me imagine a TS4 timeline(just my POV):



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I swear I won't ever comment any of this again. I'm back to lurking.

Well, don't expect to hear it from Lucy Bradshaw. From her perspective, for 2014, after exercising her option rights, and selling either open or non open market, she collected ~$1.3M off her options (EDGAR is really fun sometimes). Not too shabby given the reception for 4 in the marketplace. Maybe if those options had been tied to sales performance, she might have had some incentive to direct a more creative and inventive approach to the sequel. But, hell, if I walked away with $1.3 mil with a dud of a release, I wouldn't be following these community forums with any real interest in their opinions either.

Then again, that is how big corporations usually function. All those stock options get granted and are not necessarily tied to actual performance criteria. At least in the financial industry, hardly a model of corporate ethical behavior, yearly bonuses are calculated on financial performance. Lost the bank a couple of billion, well, you're not getting a piece of the pie. Hey, maybe bad performance actually hurt her and she could have gotten even more in options? Nah, probably not.

I'm taking this with a grain of salt, but if true, it's just another sign that gaming and EA is becoming a complete farce: http://www.gamnesia.com/news/ea-wil...ts#.VMbkVv7Ld9Z

That's insulting!

Yep pretty much this and all of this. Sorry, me endorsing this post probably means it'll get disagrees :P

With how much evidence also that the main thing of this game was going to be an online version of this game, it seems pretty obvious what happened here. They scrapped that, but the deadline remained, they had to get in what they could get into the game. It's not always on just the devs, and for people that are going to blame EA...it's not always the easiest decision. We really don't know the numbers some finance guy was looking at when they set that release date, the budgets and all that boring stuff. I think everyone can agree that this game would probably be a lot more fleshed out if they never tried to do the online thing in the first place, since they had to it forced them to likely cut out some things.



But even if that is true what does that help? Nothing really, it's a marketing disaster to say that. If you think about it, EA have done this before and it doesn't really help at all to admit that the game you released is a failure (Despite what you think, people do like this game) and to say that would just do more harm than good. EA did this with it's basketball series and it has supposedly never been the same since then. So I don't see how Graham or Grant apologizing would help anything except to tell everyone who is considering to buy the game in the future "Don't buy it." and effectively killing the game which is supposed to have all these EPs and GPs based on previous sims titles, so you are going to lose trust in the fans that actually are happy with it.

Also, you are assuming that they are not proud with what they have done. That when Graham says (paraphrase) "I'm proud with what we've created" that he's lying. Maybe he really is? Again, there are people that are enjoying TS4 and it's first gamepack Outdoor Retreat so it's not that far from a stretch that they feel like it is a good game and that they do not have to apologize for it's creation. To expect that Graham or Grant or anyone on the Sims 4 team didn't try is like saying admit that you did nothing and you did not work hard on the game.

I mean just look at the Amazon reviews, 209 people gave it 1 star...212 people gave it 5 star...so you can't operate on the opinion that everyone just hates the game and thinks it is a massive failure. So perhaps when they say they are happy with the game or defending the quality of the game maybe they are being truthful? It's an opinion so it's possible that they are. If you made something and you liked it would you stand behind it or would you just fold and agree with everyone that told you it sucked? Even if there were people telling you from the other side that they liked what you've made?

Even if they hate it, upset with it, as Quezia is saying...who is going to badmouth the company they work for unless they are planning on moving on and losing their job?

So I found this interesting quote from another user on MTS that I couldn't believe



So this whole "vision" bullshit they're feeding us is purely that..because they said the same thing to the disappointed fans of SimsCity 2013. How stupid do they think we are> Did they really think we'd believe the SAME excuse from before?

Re: Lucy Bradshaw making out like a bandit after the stock options - I just can't express how much more I hate her.


So it's turning out Wilson "Tennis Balls" is worse than Mad Emperor Riccitellus...

[Empty The] Player[']s [Wallets] First.

That's it! It's 1982 all over again, and the new gaming crash is imminent. Sadly, the music is nowhere near as good to make up for it.

EA just following the mobile gaming trend, make it free and charge for everything in the game. South Park actually made a episode about those games tablet/phone games.

At last we know how lucky we are - there are no cars in TS4! Just imagine getting stuck in the icy wilderness between the two hamlets. A new bug you've never encountered before? No, there is a notice from EAxis dangling on the screen: "You ran out of gas. Send twenty bucks immediately or else. Happy simming!"

Yep, EA's at it again! And I though the whole Dungeon Keeper and SimCity Buildit fiascos was bad enough.

Er, so has anyone actually played the Outdoor pack? Does it actually do anything to fix some of the problems with the lack of anything to do? I'm curious to know if there is anything worth even a passing glance. Are the new items it comes with any good at all?

I appreciate the fact you are not a money guy and that you are making an educated guess. But it is only rookies or those that have nothing to lose who would adopt a "release it now and hope it pays in the long run." business model. That's a bit "Vegas or bust," is it not? EA's business model would never be based on such a "hope in the face of uncertainty" approach. If that were true, the Sims 4 would have come jam-packed loaded with fantastic, expensive, hard-to-make features (Including real bears and super cute chipmunks.) because of the belief it will all work out in the end. (Financially.) There's no evidence EA trusts this game for a long term pay out. And that's just not how EA does business anyway. Short term, big profits, must pay for itself quickly or it does not get produced at all, are the evident key factors. And if Sims 4 slumps even more, there's the real factor they'll pull the plug to break even, not take a gamble on releasing all manner of enhancing, reasonably-priced peripherals to save the long term life of Sims 4 out of some sentimental duty to their product. (Never mind a sentimental duty to the fans.)

And we all know the way the Sims 3's long term pay off came as EA saw the "must have" mentality of the players, and punished them with incredulous prices at the Sims Store. There's a fine line between pay off and rip off, and EA oversteps it by miles. That's EA's business model. Don't plan long term, but certainly milk it mercilessly dry if the long term presents itself.

Is this some sort of blackmail? Or what is it? A guilt trip for all of us who don't enjoy it?

We didn't make this game, we are IN NO WAY responsible for what it is. Not in the slightest. NO! We're just like you - its consumers. Well, I am not, cause I am protesting it in the way you'd find acceptable, I guess: by not buying it. And I am not buying their excuses either. One good reason to mention their online debacle is this: to lift this guilt trip off of our, the players', backs. THEY wasted money and time on things that got cut out. This is the main reason why the game is what it is. Not our PCs, or our wishes, or our being hyenas/wolves/dragons. They are the producers - in every way responsible for their final product, especially for the decision to again make it a 32-bit exe. It was inexcusable already for TS3 - especially for TS3, since it would benefit so much from an 64-bit exe. In TS4, it is beyond inexcusable. To me personally, it's a big no-no - even if it were perfect in every other aspect, this would make it unacceptable for me. Remove the Origin, add all the missing content and leave it at 32-bit, and I still wouldn't buy.

From my perspective, this is an ancient tech, obsolete. My PC operates on a 64-bit processor for more than 10 years. I wasn't using it, however, for most of that time, because the software, including the operating system, Windows XP in my case, didn't use it. I have long decided that I'm going to support, by a purchase, only that software which uses up all of the tech I have at my disposal. No lame excuses anymore, software makers. You have the tech, work with it already!

Yup, a protester, that's me, right here. A protester hyena/she-wolf/dragoness that wants only 64-bit software. I must be scary.

Are you sure this is what people think? I thought the idea was to put off upgrading until you have to, and then go for top spec so you can put off upgrading again for a longer time.