The main topic between all sides should be the development philosophy being established by the developers. What kind of updates are receiving the most development attention right now? Bugs notwithstanding.

Will this become the kind of life sim we always wanted over the next several years, or will its design philosophy ultimately prioritize distinguishing itself from The Sims 4 over pursuing deeper simulation?

A lot of frustration comes from the fact that life sim fans have been waiting a very long time for a serious alternative. There have been years of disappointment, abandoned projects, and frustration with the direction of The Sims. And so expectations are extremely high.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfi.../?id=3738621391

I just saw this rather remarkable build on reddit, and found the page on steam.
It is really beautiful, but I wonder how well it might function in Live mode.

https://youtu.be/wakgxBxg2vo?si=wDaHFdleKXCMsWQS

@Buzzbugs ultimately we really don't have that much influence.
I've somewhat given up on trying back-seat drive developers to make the game I want.
At the moment, it's just really good to have something I am enjoying playing around with.
If the community organically, and as a whole decide something, then that might cause a change, but only really if the devs go along with the view-point.

What I really hope is that there are other companies out there who are spotting the gaps remaining, and planning to fill them, though of course they will have lost the early adopter advantage at this point.
There might be some mileage in a visual novel / life sim mash up, such as https://modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=693355 Midsummer studios were planning, for instance.
I think that Paralives will succeed because they do have a collective vision about what they want (and do not want) to produce.
Of course not everyone will share that aim, and mods only go so far in adapting systems.

As they already stated, the entire first 4 months of Early Access will be bug fixing.

Based on their public roadmap, the live mode section has a lot more modules, but who can say which one will go first. I don't believe they're in order.

https://paralives.notion.site/f138c...4dead4af&pvs=44

Sorry you've been permabanned from Steam forum that's ridiculous! I came here (after much difficulty logging in because I haven't been here in eons!) because I've been hanging out at the Steam forums for about a week now and noticed anything "Fun" get's removed, locked , or banned. It's a boring wasteland now.

I'm still on the fence about trying Paralives. I've seen some of the features, such as being able to import images and use them to lay down a blueprint on the ground and build over, or to stick onto objects as stickers. All very cool, genuinely. My main thing is the art style - I'm not sure yet if it's for me! Particularly the paras. I think that's not an uncommon opinion I've seen though. At the end of the day I'm very much a TS3 gal and likely always will be!

It really is going to be hard to beat the flexibility and fun of sims 3.

One thing that did strike me about the looks of the Parafolks is that it felt different seeing them in 3D, rather than 2D screenshots from somebody else's game.
However, you might be better waiting until there's a bigger choice of mods / content / hairstyles, and if necessary until modders have come up with a really good selection of ways to fundamentally change their appearance.

My daughter has purchased Paralives, and as we share a Steam account I was able to install it on my PC so that she could play it whilst she visited (she has a laptop so it lags a bit on her machine).

I really love the build tools, so intuitive to be able to adjust the size of everything, especially windows! The Para creation was wonderful too, with clothes being available for all genders, and lots of options. I still am not keen on the way the Paras appear, they still look to me at odds with the artstyle of the environment, but my daughter loves it and says it feels like "everything the Sims 3 was supposed to be, but wasn't".

Very cool and fun, plus she found out that Paras can collect stamps.

I bought it with my paycheck yesterday. Sadly, it was laggy just even getting to the main menu and then crashed while trying to load "New Game". Is this a particularly demanding game for PCs? My PC isn't brand new but is still decent for gaming so it's bizarre to me that I'd be having trouble with this. Alas... I know I need to upgrade. =(

The steam page has the recommended specs. Some people below the specs have had luck running the game, others not so much. Just like Sims 3, it is an open world game running a bunch of calculations constantly (probably), it isn't the heaviest game ever but still needs some modern power.

Paralives vs inZOI: The Reality of Their Player Numbers, an interesting and well argued video by Pixelade. The conclusion: they are roughly equal, but I was surprised by the number of positive comments about InZOI. I took a look at Steam reviews: same thing. Obviously time to reinstall it once more - I haven't touched it since September.

Another bug patch was released with a little bit of new content on the side from a collab. So far, their pace is a new update (for bugs) every 3 to 4 days.

Nah, I looked into it and I definitely meet the specs.

I don't know what the issue was. I tried booting up the game a little while ago after the most recent update and found I was now able to get past that loading screen and go through the tutorial and everything. =)

Paralives Players Shut Down Paid Mods Almost Instantly

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OzjOVReuSQQ

I didn't finish watching this; it has nothing to do with Pixelade. This game has been out for going on two weeks and this bullshit is starting already. Yuck, no thanks.

Hopefully the Paralives team will handle these kinds of issues with some grace and thought unlike Maxis who thinks it is funny to fan the flames with sarcasm. I was hoping the toxicity would stay where it started. Admittedly that was wishful thinking on my part.

It's definitely a big debate right now, but I'd say majority of people into paralives are against it.

The team themselves are lukewarm on the matter. They aren't against paid mods, but they aren't for them either and have advertised the free mods on the steam workshop since the community blow up.

I know people want them to be staunchly against paid mods, but I wonder if they're afraid or nervous about how to say it. This is, unfortunately, the Sims community after all. Mayhaps it's easier to say "they are necessarily against them buttttt here is where you get free mods."

As someone who has never paid for a mod... I don't think it will become a habit with the steam workshop so accessible

Well, there is a considerable overlap to Sims4 players, so, that was to be expected. I CAN wait once things are released after a waiting period if it's worth it for me. But that's actually unlikely for a game in Early Access that gets updated almost (bi)weekly. At least at the moment.

Still, apparently, this doesn't exist for other games.

Monetising the things that are still missing from an Early Access game is, IMO, shady.

Yeah. And I mean, I totally get making mods for early access, especialaly if we're a year or two into it (some games are in early access for agessss) but... to immediately want money from a game that hadn't been out for a week yet and is getting updated every other day is jumping the gun and very weird

Paid mods are the last thing the community should be worried about right now. The big debate needs to be about simulation depth, AI, autonomy, relationships, life stages, and development priorities. These are far more important topics than whether someone is charging a few dollars for a mod.

Once again the community has it's priorities completely backwards. Why are we arguing about this? The irony is that I spent weeks trying to start serious discussions about development priorities but the community shut the conversation down and labelled me as a troll until I was banned, and now, once again, a completely superficial topic is attracting all of the attention and that's fine, apparently?

If the community cannot discuss Paralives weaknesses in an honest way, we're going to end up with an echo chamber where everyone is just reacting emotionally to the drama of the week rather than addressing the big questions about the game. Last week it was outrage over SatchonSims. This week it's outrage over Paid mods. What will next weeks outrage be about?... Stay tuned everyone..

Is Paralives an RPG? The creator of this video has some interesting arguments.

My take on it is that it was necessary to come up with a sufficiently separate core game mechanic, so that EA couldn't legal harass the team with copyright claims.
They've been unusually firm about not changing the cards system so I'm guessing this is the key difference they would depend on in court if the big boys started playing rough.

I'm not sure if it is relevant, but Life by You's conversation system seemed to have some things in common with the together cards, and fans were talking about an overall RPG influence there too.
In fact many followers of that game were worried about the rpg flavour of the game, because Rod Humble stated 'most life simmers play as individuals not families', and that so many of that game's activities revolved around collecting, rather than everyday social situations.
Of course one of his influences on sims 3 was to add the World Adventures Expansion Pack, which is the most RPG flavoured of all the sims packs.

A company does not own autonomous characters, relationship simulation, personality systems, etc.

The cards are a design decision, not a legal decision. And so far the developers have already chosen to have cards be more prominent over simulation in the early access build.

I'm fine with the card system, but as I said, it needs some tweaks and additions.

There needs to be more animations for different kinds of cards

There needs to be time and space for other paras in the interaction to actually respond and react to what is done and said via the cards

Those, in my opinion, are the two major improvements that I think will being the card system together.

I wouldn't say Paralives is an RPG, but I will say it's a little less dollhousey as the point of the cards is giving options your individual para might want or say.

I guess the third major improvement would be more diversity in options between personality types. Each combination of vibe and talent should have unique card options, behaviors, and animations

I think there is always some overlap with a RPG once there is some form of character/role progression. Career progression is similar to class/role progression in a RPG. Then there is the assigning of traits during character creation. So, RPG elements, sure, but calling Paralives a RPG would be a stretch imo. It is too open ended. You would expect an overarching story or looming threat with clear story conclusions for a RPG. Many potential buyers would be quite disappointed I think, if Paralives was sold as a RPG.