One thing that got me worried on the GameMaster magazine (August 2014 edition) is that they state the game is 70% Complete with 2 months to launch. As shown in the spoiler.

Isn't this odd? I mean the game is already 5 years under development and 2 months to go developers launch in the air this 70% Completion number?

70 percent isn't too bad, it probably means that they're in a debugging mode.

Then again, recent news probably makes it feel like they're nowhere near that stage.

Isn't bad? That is bad. game will be unstable and glitchy as f*ck

Oh my god.

This can also explain why TS4 events got cancelled, they are mad rushing the game to be able to keep with the launch date! This is EA on its best, we will again see TS4 part of the games launched incomplete and unstable, that will need major patches to fix issues.

I'm slowly becoming anxious but not really surprised.

Maybe if you guys put out positivity about the game into the universe instead of negativity, the game will be great. Lets try, shall we?

Sorry. EA's past antics have made me way too wary to be optimistic. And if the game is crap, the game is crap. All my positive thoughts won't change it.

If EA gave me one thing ... one single thing ... that looks as good in the promo as it does in real life, and is a feature that really, really interests me, I'll reconsider. While there is no way I will pre-order this game (I'm sure other more intrepid souls here will do this, and I am looking forward to their evaluations and gameplay descriptions), I haven't ruled it out 100%. Only 95%. (This figure also depends on stability. A crashing game = no way. Not until there are some serious patches and mod fixes.)

If the game is fantastic, I will be the first to admit I'm wrong. Fair is fair. But right now, no. The game doesn't interest me at all.

The fact that you don't believe is why we can't achieve, my brother.

This game will ship on time I think. It probably wont be bug free.

It all comes down to ROI (return on investment). Of course in ideal work all the bugs are fixed - even the minor ones eventually. But new features get prioritized and known issues stay in apps until they become almost defacto working as designed. These could be bugs that sit in a feature that isn't often used and so even if it doesn't work great - there aren't likely to be many complaints. Or issues are found but are so unlikely to occur (not normal user behavior or only seen by super users with tons of data) that it may not make sense to pay thousands of dollars to fix something impacting a handful of users - no matter how bad the bug is.

I think it will be light of planned features. Maybe they are prioritising debugging at expense of features. If they are decent to us the missing features will come in a free patch later NOT be seen as a handy bit of good luck to squeeze in one more expensive EP.

Unfortunately, my last really negative experience with EA (SimSocial, 2010, major game glitch affecting a large group of players that EA never corrected), hasn't made me that positive that EA WILL be decent about it.

Sorry. I don't like people playing me. And that includes EA. Once bitten, twice shy.

But perhaps, EA is realizing that they really need to be on the ball with this game, and will give players that free patch. I do hope it will, for the sake of those who buy the game at launch time.

And you never know. The game may be 80% complete now.

"The build we saw was unstable - there are several months to go before release but it needs to sharpen up"

Whow. Must be quite devastating to read that in the press at this stage.

"...owning a football fishtank to put a child in."

For fucks sake. Bite me EA. Just bite me.

I've never seen any evidence that pre-release consumer opinion about a product has any measurable effect on the actual quality of the product.

chin up guys - maybe they only started working on the game a week ago!

maybe he gots the shinning

Relax everyone! The game is now 71% complete...

The question is 71% of what? Time required? (will miss Sept 2); Effort required? Might work if they suddenly made loads more people available. Files created? Too many variables.

They put more emotions...on a paper called: What to add in the game...

Note that they state that the version of the game they played was 70% complete, not that Maxis's overall game development was only 70% complete. It's important to realize that the review/preview build being used was likely a "most stable" build that could have been months old. Speaking as a developer/programmer, there are a lot of things that come together near the last stages of a project which, initially, may not always tie together nicely. Until a project launch, our client demos are not indicative our most recent build. And my company has not done anything as massive in scale as something like The Sims, so I can imagine that any sort of preview copies may be quite a few builds behind whatever the real current state of development it.

Granted, EA is known for pushing products out the door prior to completion or before development teams would like, but I wouldn't focus so much on this reported 70%. It's clear from other threads you have enough to complain/worry about!

70% doesn't sound very promising. But looking at the missing gameplay videos and advertising, i am not very surprised. Indeed its a shame, that EA tends to cut features and to release a bugged game to keep in their time frame. I am actually not so sure about buying the game. Without some open playtests from some magazines, before release, i have to overthink it.

BTW:
http://simsvip.com/2014/06/20/the-s...like-98-5-done/
But donno if i should interpret this now, that this is EAs view of beeing 98,5 ala we don't need the remaining unfinished freatures (we yust cutted 28.5% of the game) and we still can patch after release (or even not).

I can't get over how unimpressive this is to me, especially given the enthusiastic and excited tone of the article. Sims 3 allows a lot of the "features" that the article is touting as new, like group conversations and being able to hang your Sims' artwork in their house.

dont worry guys - they'll give us a patch!

a mighty big patch...

That 70% complete? We all know what's been completed: the credits.

Now as for the rest of the game....