The simplified graphics options. This is 2013. Ok some people who play the Sims aren't into graphics and don't want to be overwhelmed when they click on the graphics settings tab. That's fine. But that's why game developers put in a second tab that says "Advanced Graphics Settings" for the people that want more control over their graphics. Some players want to adjust the layers of anti-aliasing, anisotropic filtering, SSAO, HDR level, particles, objects, shader detail, field of view, maximum frames per second, post-processing, dynamic shadows, different types of reflections. But instead they get a simplified page that clumps different features together into one single button with 3 different levels. Why not let payers who want advanced graphics tweaking have it if their computers can handle it.

Personly I quite liked that you could create supernaturals straight away. What if you want to have an ancient vampire in your neighbourhood? would be silly if you have to start them out as human and they need to get bitten first.
No need to use the supernatural neighbourhood either, and sims becomeing supernaturals automaticly can be disabled.

Potions did make it a bit easy to create supernaturals though. Not so much the alchemy skill, but the potion store makes it too easy to get them and kind of makes the alchemy skill and all the gathering of ingredients obsolete.

A good way to go about supernaturals however, aside from grouping them in themed packs instead of in all expansions, would be that you need to get one in your household before the supernatural state gets unlocked in CAS. And it should be able to add them all to CAS and not a select few.

personally, i could do without the buildup of lag over time (because TS3 likes to bork itself), and constant routing issues. if we're making a christmas wishlist, i might as well add the always-completely-mutual-all-the-time relationship bars. i miss being able to have unrequited friendships/romances.
the only other things i really have a problem with are the incredibly stupid things sims do when left to their own devices. usually it seems like a toss-up between sprinkler molestation, computer molestation, or cooking overly simplistic food for their cooking level (i once had a maxed out cook who knew every recipe, but only ever seemed to want grilled cheese/mac n cheese/waffles). while this AI was a step up from TS2/TS1 AI, it could still seriously use further honing. i would love to see an AI that could prioritize its needs...for example, if the sim REALLY had to pee but is also really hungry, the AI will make it go to the toilet first because the sim peeing itself will happen faster than the sim cooking and eating some food will.


if only.

Agreed, they still act as toddlers in sims 3, no matter what age group they are.

With professions they should also do the work on their own instead of constantly being told to stop watching tv at a client's house and constantly needing to be told do even go to work.

All stupid idle interactions. I'm not even talking about the typical idles - I mean the default-to-play-with-Imaginary-Friend-or-smartphone idles. In reality, a bookworm would prefer a book, etc. I also wish I.F.s were a bit more "imaginary" - i.m.o it'd be more fun seeing the kid interact with an empty space if you're controlling another Sim and then see the I.F. as a "real" (uncontrollable) Sim when you switch to the kid. Smartphones should be buyable, and occur with a certain percentage more likelihood in the younger neighbourhood population. There should also be different price ranges and interaction sets for the phones, going from 90s Nokia (or even beige brick) to the latest iPhone, the same as we have with computers. If it isn't going to work like this, as far as I'm concerned we would be better off without mobiles and imaginary friends - I don't expect to have to mod these things out because the Sims default to messing around with them.

- The focus on fame and other big, flashy themes that felt like EA was really trying to sell to the same crowd that the Disney Channel has these past few years. I don't like having half the game feel like its about a single thing. I'd rather have a much simpler fame feature than we ended up with in TS3 in exchange for more features.
- Automatically giving every sim a mobile phone. It just felt weird, kids and sims without a lot of money just automatically having smartphones and it made an entire category of objects (home phones) redundant.

How about this time not crashing in CAS on Macs? . I ending having to run the game on my Windows partition it got so bad,

The celebrities. Way too easy to become famous in TS3. Ugh!!! Realism!

Vampires (from Late Night (and witches and werewolves and fairies and WTF ever else the Supernatural EP introduced into TS3!)). Double Ugh!!! Realism!

If a meteor is going to fall on your house or sim (the size of the ones in TS3) then the whole damn neighborhood needs to be blown the @#$% away; not just the damn house or sim that it hits! Leave a crater. Realism!

Is it OK if I say Lisa from the store team? She sounds like a lovely person but her LB's

IF's already work the way you describe. If you are controlling another Sim while someone is interacting with their IF, it will seem like they are reacting to nothing. Sometimes they even make the "he's crazy" face when they walk past.

Noooo!! Not my Lisa - she makes me laugh :D

I just wish sims who don't see the imaginary friend could route through it. It makes no sense they have to wait for him to move out of the way


But wouldn't you rather have that tall girl who knows he way around stuff she's presenting?

Well not unless they also change the purpose of the LBs to become truly informative rather than just cheerleading. I'd rather have Ryan's "awwwwsome"s interspersed with light entertainment. No much point having someone knowledgeable presenting when they're not really allowed to share their knowledge.

You know that bit in one LB where Dustin comes in and scolds Graham for telling us too much? Well, that was just scripted in for entertainment, but weirdly enough if could have been almost true, cos Graham's about the only one who's ever actually told us anything. And on his own admission he's having to be careful not to say more than he's meant to.

Routing tantrums. And not an EA solution for that please (which would be getting rid of the tantrum animation, but leaving in the crappy routing problem).



Oh, never looked that close. Can they also do a convincing ? I mean, that would be awesome. I usually outsource toddlers in TS3, because they require a house that is built with special toddler/burrito specs so you can actually pick them up without having your sim first walking 3 times around the block. But if they can do a convincing I might reconsider :p

Can we not have sims treat occults completely normally this time around? If I transform into a werewolf in the middle of the supermarket I expect people to freaking run.

Agreed, dont understand why average sims often WANT to see a vampire and such. Only those that love the occult should want that.

Would be nice if most supernaturals could have ways to disguise themselves so people wont freak out when seeing them. Like fairies being able to hide their wings, undead using make up so it looks they have a healthy skintone, aliens wearing a mask or being able to temporary take on the form of a sim they see to blend in.

Story Progression!!! I seriously don't see why EA thought all of us control freaks would enjoy having completely random stuff happen to our households when we're not playing them! I understand that some people like story progression, but they should at least have a button that ACTUALLY WORKS to turn it off.
Also, random asking out on dates. I was playing one of my favorite sims, a single girl, and her cellphone rings. It's Geoffrey Landgrabb asking to go out on a date. I wanted to say no right off the bat, seeing his picture as an old man. Second, she had never even met him. I decided to look him up on the sims wiki. Turned out he was not only an old man, he was married, which makes him a really creepy old man asking a young lady out on a date without ever meeting her before.
The time it takes to make food. Like, okay I'm going to spend 2 hours making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich! Seriously. Who takes that long?
Singing in the shower. It just kind of annoys me to be hearing "abatunalala" every 2 seconds while my sim takes a shower.
Speaking of annoying sounds, the angels that play every. single. time you fulfill a wish. You ordered pizza. Let me sing about that. You made pancakes. Let's sing about that too. I liked the sound in Sims 2 a lot better.

Okay, that's most of the things that annoy me. I'll probably think of more. :p

I love Lisa to death but I agree that she needs to go.

Yeah! Let's watch our Sims in traffic! Realism!

Realtime Gameplay! I want to wait 8-12 hours for my Sims to wake up! Realism!

What about Sexually Transmitted Diseases, Dead-End Jobs, Cubicles, Paper Work, Racism, and sitting on their computers playing video games all day! I totally want that.

I'm so sick and tired of gamers who whine about realism, or praise a game because of realism. Not only has The Sims never been fully realistic, but every time it's tried to get closer to real life, the results have been lack-luster. Real Life is all around me, I play video games to escape the tedium for a little while. To do things I can't do in real life. If I were you, I'd try to do some of the things you want your Sims to do, in real life. Also, before someone brings up the whole, "Some people play the Sims to escape the issues in their real life" argument, yes, that's true. But if they want to recreate every facet of real life, only better, I have one thing to say about that. Try to improve your own actual real life.

This constantly bugged me in Sims 3... it was one of the first things I asked them to overhaul when we were building the demo we showed at Gamescom. As things currently stand, the further your camera is zoomed out, the less the camera bounces when moving across different floor levels. Personally I think it feels a lot better in-game now; I hope you'll agree when you get your hands on it

Well the difference is maybe because TS3 occults are not the ones you normally expect. For example if a TS3 zombie shows up in that same supermarket, only the vegetables would be in danger. All the kids would probably start to cheer instead of running away.
This makes me wonder btw. How do sims parents convince kids that vegetables are healthy, while the kids might suspect eating veggies turns you into a zombie?

Graham, it's always nice to get your input here. And thanks for recognizing the camera isn't always the most pleasant to work with.

I have two requests of you, and I understand if you can't comment on them here, but please, keep them in mind as the deadline for wrapping up the final for 4 approaches.

First, please try to, if you have not already, use some common mods that are in use in 3 right now. If you go with the more popular mods (specifically, Twallan's stuff, and things around here) you'll find two themes that, in my mind, come through. One, players like more control over the game. For example, look at Twallan's Story Progression. Yes, it is big, and a resource hog. And yes, it has multiple options to adjust to your style of play, to a degree that some players find overwhelming (although if you leave the default choices alone, it will still do just about everything you would want in a SP module) and don't use it. So please, give us more control within the game over options. Sometimes the tuning chosen might make sense when a new activity is added, but as even you have commented, it would be nice to be able to go and readjust those behaviors after a while. Right now we need mods to do this. Granted, typically tuning mods, and not impossible for a knowledgeable player to accomplish, but still, it's frequently easier to get a tuning mod from someone more experienced than working it out on your own. Doing it in game, with EA supplied tools, would be far more efficient. In addition, obtaining demographic information about your town is, IMO, indispensable. With an open world, and the decrease of rotation in game play, getting basic statistical information regarding the health of your town (population, distribution, lot availability, etc.) as you can with Twallan's MasterController) provides the player with some control over the health of their entire neighborhood, without having to switch to each family to see what's up. I know there are those players who love rotation play, and stayed with TS2, and are hoping for a comeback, but there are some of us who were not enamored of rotational play (there were just some families I didn't feel like playing, yet if I didn't, my whole town could get out of balance, and caking folks up to maintain some population balance felt like too much work to me) and drifted away from TS2 for that very reason. Having demographics supplied in game goes a long way for providing a way to monitor world health, and with some tools, keeping it all on track, without the need for rotation play. Hopefully you can come up with something that satisfies the rotation players, but still provides for a deep and vibrant progression of the town for those of us who prefer the TS3 style of play. But really, the more control over "tuning" and built in demographic tools, along with a more thoughtfully developed story progression module, will go a long way in keeping the riffraff content.

Second, play around with some of the custom content available both for TS2 and TS3. Notice how folks are using high quality meshes and textures to create objects from hairs to chairs. Look at what folks achieve, even in building while maintaining base game compatibility, just using a tool like CAST, the appearance of high quality environments for our sim to "inhabit". If 4 is to be successful, even if you do not provide such high quality meshes in the base game for performance purposes, do not close the door to it for those of us who have invested in hardware that likely greatly exceeds your base game requirements. Most games these days provide for varying visual effects, depending on the hardware available. Even TS3 does that, to a degree. But if we're forced to return to the types of low res meshes and textures we've been shown in the TS4 "leaks", and have no option to alter that as the engine simply won't support it, it will severely limit the appeal of 4 to a bunch of gamers who expect, and, IMHO, have the right to expect, more.

I believe you have already done the above. You seem like someone who wants to reach out to the wider community that does like to individualize the game play (which is why we hang out on MTS). So you are aware of what these tools and visual effects can mean to players. Please keep taking that message back into the development meetings, as the time is approaching when it will not be possible to address any of these items in the time remaining until release. Even if it means just leaving the hooks in place to be exploited as part of further game development, by both EA through EPs and patches, as well as the community, so that if these items don't make the cut before release, they are still possible as the game matures. But if it's locked out by the game engine on release, this franchise will have no place to go for growth.

I'm sure you are aware I have been a vocal critic of what we've seen so far of TS4. However, while perhaps harsh at times I think I've been reasonable, and have based my criticisms on concrete issues of appearance and game play. That does not mean I'm hoping for a flop. Far from it. I'm still hoping that things can be pulled together to make 4 a worthy successor in the franchise, and a game I will be anxious to play. But for that to happen, I need to see some concrete steps from you folks on the issues raised before I can consider continuing with the franchise. I really hope you do it. And maybe the problem lies with the way marketing has laid out the introduction of the game, and not within the game itself. If so, it should be easier to get this pre-release information flow back on track easily, because if the functionality is already there, the hard work is already done. You just have to tell us that. And if that's the case, your marketing department isn't doing a good job on this build up to release.

Lisa is a bright and shining Star in my books. I love her laugh and she has become so great on camera from when she first started. The first time I saw her was on a Hidden Springs LB - I liked her even then, but I could tell she was very nervous. She has become much more professional over time, yet she still has that special charm and the smile in her voice that I find endearing. I can only wish that she would come and work on my team!

Lawd Jaysuz if I was to make a list we'd be here for a while. Don't get me wrong, there's a lot of good, it's just sometimes over shadowed with the really, really, really bad. A lot of that is mainly terrible bugs and glitches, just waiting to destroy your game. Obviously nobody wants that. Some other creative ideas that were just asinine:

- Curfew. Great. My teens lose several hours each day, confined to their homes because of telepathic, buggy police and a law straight out of an Orwell novel. I noticed not as many people posted about it as I expected, I figured because most immediately modded it out. Still, why it was there in the first place I don't know. Maybe it reminded them of a simpler, nicer time spent in North Korea.

- The Weather Stone. Oh. It's been placed. No, purple tag, go away, I don't want to see it and you're up in my grill on my screen. And then when I do give in to go look at it I find it stuck next to town hall. This hideous, gaudy, cartoonish rock thing stuck on the perfectly manicured lawns in the city square. And it's unmovable because...reasons.

- The Store. I know. I know. Fool's gold, me wishing it into oblivious, back to the layer of hell it was congened in. I like the idea of a Store where it would sell separate pieces of furniture or clothing that was available in expansion packs. Like that hair but don't want to buy an entire pack? Go to the Store! Taking stuff out of expansion packs then selling it for insane amounts? Not nice. I'm looking at you, greenhouse. "Oh, gee, sad you don't have a place to keep your plans in the cold winters? Well guess what's on sale for $20 at the Store! *Note, doesn't work as intended*"

- Can we have a more user-friendly CAW? Also maybe something that worked like in Sims 2 where we could place down a few empty worlds and fill it up. I liked having empty towns where I was able to just build at my own leisure.

- COMMUNITY RABBIT HOLES. I nearly forgot it, the Caps was my mind screaming at me to put it down. WTF, EA? You cut out functioning restaurants? Something that had been around since the beginning of Hot Date, way back when? Why? I don't care about not seeing inside the office or school - I understand rabbit holing that - but the spa, grocery store, bookstore, cinema, diner, bistro?

tealdeer:Graham probably did not read .