The community won't shut up though. They still have to put out seasons, cars, university and other packs before moving on to the next era. And they'll keep themselves busy releasing a butt load of small, scattered stuff packs.

No, it is all about $$$ now. This game either makes enough $ to continue or it doesn't. If there is not enough profit the execs will scrap it. It won't be approved for funding. Resources at EA will go elsewhere. Shareholders want results. And if this game does not figure into that, they will concentrate on making the most profit elsewhere where they can.

Exactly, that's why they'll give simmers all they want at the very last. They'll keep stalling till they eventually run out of ideas. So far they keep milking the game as much as they can. The toddler update, the vampires and this possible pets EP are just the beginning.

Even a broken clock is right twice a day.
In other words, EA Employees: I am not so easily baited. I am not jumping on your bandwagon.

You guys realize they only have one more year before The Sims 5. Assuming they keep their track record of 4 to 5 years then 2018. 2 more expansion packs and a couple more $$$ packs.

It is the sad fate of the cash-cow to be milked until death and well beyond. Personally, though? EA can take their vision of TS5 and shove it where the sun don't shine. Too much low quality, too many burned bridges and too much content distributed as hit-or-miss breadcrumbs.
My interest would be renewed if a different company wielded control over the product.

I don't think they're gonna follow that pattern with the Sims 4. I have a strong feeling that they designed TS4 with the idea to have it span a few more years than previous generation entries. (I don't know how less features in the base game at launch equates to longevity, but I seriously don't think they're gonna end it any time soon, unless the sales drop too much I guess)
If it were to follow that pattern though, TS5 would come out sometime 2019, with the last pack for TS4 being released in 2018.
TS started Feb. 2000, and ended Oct. 2003 with Makin' Magic.
TS2 started in Sept. 2004, ended Nov. 2008 with M&G Stuff.
TS3 started June 2009 and ended Oct. 2013 with Into The Future.
TS4 started in Sept. 2014, and should end sometime 2018. (Kinda like TS2, just 10 years in the future)

I wish that was true but I don't except them to release 5 until 2020. It's a lot cheaper (and easier) for EA to keep creating DLCs for game than to make an entirely new game. And as I said above, they'll keep milking the game till it's dry.

What's really sad is that they're wasting their time and effort on too many SPs while leaving the game bland, and once they make an expansion, it does not offer as much to do in terms of gameplay as the EPs of previous games.

Anyways, It would be a pleasant surprise if they announce 5 this year and release it sometimes next year but I wouldn't anticipate that.

I don't think they'll ever get to that point. TS4 is on crutches as it is, in terms of performance and stability. Lag keeps increasing exponentially, loading screens are longer and longer, bugs/glitches pop up EVERYWHERE. This game cannot and will not resist 3 more years of DLC and updates. The game will reach a point when it's unplayable. It's happening ever since City Living, that more and more people report lag and bugs creeping out everywhere. Just watch The Sim Supply Rags to Riches Dine Out and City Living if you don't believe. So I don't see how they'll milking a cow that's already on its deathbed.

3 was buggy and unstable from the get-go, but that didn't stop them from creating 11 EPs. Not everyone buys every single pack they release.

Performance and stability I guess vary. Some people claim TS3 ran just fine, for me it didn't. You are saying this about TS4 and I've not had this problem and I have about 2 gb of CC/Mods and all TS4 content in the game. I don't know, if you just mean glitches and bugs then yes, every game has that.

I think the idea that EA will keep this game around longer is true, it's just how games seem to work nowdays. Release a core game and extend it out for as long as possible. I think it's the mentality they will take for TS4...and I know people are always ready to write its funeral but this was The Sims in december...

http://simscommunity.info/2016/12/2...r-the-holidays/

I've mentioned this before too, that when you take the users playing The Sims 4 at any given time and match it up with Steam games you see that it seems to be doing alright for itself.

But none of this is about pets!

Excuse me? Not even the infamous Skyrim at launch had the amount of bugs and game-breaking "features" (like Sim/relationship culling) TS4 has. It's a disgrace for a AAA game to be this buggy. TS3 has/had awful bugs and routing issues, but the sheer amount of glitches and bugs I've seen in TS4 is mind-blowing. It's clearly the result of releasing stuff without any sort of testing. Just very recently, I've seen toddlers receiving text messages even though they don't/can't have phones. NPCs are broken more often than not and they don't do their job (the buttler being the worst offender), restaurants are incredibly buggy and staff keeps getting culled so you have to hire new, untrained employees, musical chairs and problems with multitasking have never been completely fixed, and the disregard for collision detection in this game is laughable (Sims literally go through each other, doors, etc, all the time). Not to mention the terrible lag everyone was experiencing this past December, which had to be fixed by a modder. This is not related to your PC or any of that nonsense. These are widespread and common bugs or broken features that everyone has, whether you want to admit it or not. I could keep going for ages, mentioning and providing video evidence of all these bugs, but I don't want to waste my time. If you don't want to admit it, well, that's up to you. But TS4 is drowning in bugs.

Well, Sims going through each other is not a bug. It is intended because in TS3 what would happen is sims would all get stuck at doors trying to squeeze their way through. Culling is not a bug. Also intended. It's pretty easy to stop (just mark households as played) and if you want to talk about bugs TS3 actually had a feature called story progression that had plenty of bugs and didn't work as intended until Nrass came along. Mind-blowing feels like extreme exaggeration to me, I've played the game plenty and I don't see the 'mind-blowing' amount of bugs you speak of. I'm not denying these bugs even exist and others haven't experienced these bugs, but TS3 was just as buggy and glitchy, IMO from playing both games extensively, its bugs affected me more often.

I talk about my experience with the game. Whether you like it or not, it is mines. You said the game is struggling in performance as they add things and I tell you that's not my experience. I wonder if it is the experience of the growing playerbase of the game. I dunno. I'd be interested in hearing that.

But I'll stop, this is getting further and further away from being about the topic of the thread.

I don't think Pet's or Weather (Seasons) can fix what is wrong with TS4. I said it in another forum, and I'll say it here..... This Toddlers patch, it's like putting a little pink band aide on a huge gash requiring 50 stitches. The game engine is what is wrong with TS4. all these Stuff packs and game packs isn't going to fix the game engine. The loading screens, the culling, the crazy weird emotions....this crap is not a sims game....it's just crap.

And like a lot of you have said.... it's just about how much money they can get out of the sims fans now. I just can't put any more money into this broken game. I stopped awhile ago, and I see no reason to re-install, even if I like pets and weather....it's just not enough to fix what is really wrong and the fact that the devs and EA/Maxis will never own up to their mistake with changing this game into something that I would not categorize as a Sims game.

life states, species and age stages take time, i imagine they worked on them from the beginning, i don't see modders making this stuff

i heard from a college student looking to get into the game industry a rumor about ea scrapping the sims franchise altogether, ie. no sims 5. I hope it is just a rumor

skyrim had a ton of bugs, modders made an unofficial patch for it because the devs never got around to fixing it, at least the sims 4 gurus patch their bugs regularly

Let's hope Generations comes next. It would be awesome if they could combine University and Generations somehow, but I think that's me getting a little too optimistic

Or attempt to at least. :\


Remember that the more they combine together, the less fleshed-out each aspect will be

We have to decide whether we want a lot of pricey updates that have full depth and lots of playability, or if we want a few bigger updates that are even more expensive, but over all are better on our pocket book due to quantity. Though these ones are shallow in nature and get boring quickly because everything is half-assed and rushed.

The high number of individual updates and expansions maybe be a bit costly for people who endeavour to acquire all the TS4 content without resorting to piracy, but it's better for Simmers who like to pick and chose what they want without being bogged down with a bunch of stuff they'll never play. And if everything gets it's own pack it could be more worth it in the long run because each thing gets more special focus.



If Toddlers +Vampires +Pets come out in the same year I will be overjoyed, and if they somehow throw weather into this equation, well the game will be pretty much fixed for me. I'm pretty satisfied with Toddlers enough as it is. I just hope they can interact with the upcoming pets for more than a sniff/be sniffed by action.

lol did you just trying to compare bugs with Skyrim? One of the most famous game breaking bugs of Skyrim is that the main quest never trigger after you kill the first dragon. You are the dragonborn. Killing dragons is what you do. Without it its pretty much gamebreaking if you ask me.

Relationship culling and sims culling are not that game breaking if you ask me. It's annoying but there's people who disappear and stop talking to you all of sudden in real life too (yeah I know I am making excuses but TS4 is a game for storytellers lol).

Not to mention I imagine both bug/features/ were patched or modded out quickly.
I know the culling thing was modded out for people who want it gone, and I can't imagine both the developers and community of Skyrim allowed that bug to continue (Right? Right?!;; ). So both are non-issues now.

I'm with the crowd that senses that TS4 was built to have a longer life span than its predecessors.

All this "live service" they have been delivering screams "long term" to me for some reason, plus, this is a standart practise in the industry now even for games that historically didn't work with expansions and stuff - and The Sims basically started this model. Also, the team found a working way to almost prevent piracy without interfering with gameplay too much, so I don't think sales are suffering that much because people who could pirate TS3 now can't always do it with TS4. The games are crackable, but at such a slow and uncertain pace that basically makes pirates not invest much effort on it, only cracking it every once in a while instead of every pack/patch released.



I've said a while back that I didn't feel the game was doing half as bad as we tend to think, because support for it is still pretty strong for a game that isn't selling well according to many. This link further gives me that impression. I hope TS4 lives a bit longer, the potential is clearly there in my personal opinion. A lot of charm comes from it and its state now is miles better than it was upon launch, which was by far their biggest mistake. I certainly prefer it over TS3 so I hope they expand that further.

Seasons is definitely coming at some point.

I was browsing the different toddler books you can buy that was added in the latest Toddler Update, and one of the books was titled "When Is Winter?" The synopsis:

"Is it spring? Not now, but soon. Is it fall? Perhaps, by noon? Is it summer? The heat, seems likely. When is winter? Who knows, but it's coming."

I love that EA gave us this hint in the game. I think Pets will most likely be the next expansion pack considering the things people have found in the coding, but Seasons will probably follow it.

Well, I really disliked pets in sims 2 and 3 so lets see what they do this time around. I mean I love animals irl, but they have always just been awful to me in the sims... Not very excited about this, but it's a necessary pack and we just got toddlers so I'm pretty satisfied.

It is difficult to respond to statements like that because none of us was there and thus we don't know:

1) If the "rumour" just amounts to something that grew from Grant's (?) old statement of "If Sims 4 doesn't sell there won't be a Sims 5!"

2) If there was miscommunication at some point.

3) If there was a "my uncle works at Nintendo" story involved at any point.

I think even with Sims 4 selling less well than 3 or 2 they won't just scrap one of their major cash-cow franchises. The only question is how long we'll have to wait for Sims 5.

Case in point: Before Sims 4 was released a co-worker at my former part-time job insisted to me that there wouldn't be any CC in Sims 4 because "her friend had asked someone at EA about it and was told there wouldn't be no way to make CC for Sims 4" and she continued to insist so even after I showed her the CC I already had in my CAS demo. I have no idea how that story started and what exactly happened there. I only know that we very much do have CC in Sims 4.