Loading screens are probably more to reduce the number of sims that have to be fully simulated at one time while still making the neighborhood look lively. That is, an available CPU power issue, not RAM.

Yassss!! :lovestruc

I didn't say RAM was unnecessary. I said other things were more important (which is precisely why the PC gaming industry, for the most part, has not rushed to release 64-bit-only games). Such as utilizing memory properly and not having memory leaks, or at least minimizing them.

Getting a bigger bucket doesn't help if you're not using the bucket right in the first place. Or at best, it just postpones the problem.

I can see you guys are really invested in this as a solution, though, so I'll bow out now.

Heck, even just making them taller would help. Consort's Grow mod already makes a huge improvement.

Oh my god.

If teens and adults are the same height, wouldn't that make teen to adult romance mods the freaking easiest it's ever been?

Wouldn't surprise me if teens and adults have the same voices too.

So, four age groups all looking pretty much the same? (Teens, YA, Adults, Elders)

Man, that re-used online-game engine you guys are stuck with is really forcing some brutal compromises.

They do only have 9 voice actors for the Sims in game.

I hope the added toddler stage won't leave them just sitting there like bumps on a log. Would like to have some type of gameplay for that age stage. I have to see it to believe, way before buying the game for myself.

Looks like the teen romance mods will work out right for them. I don't play teen romance but now there will be no height difference and odd animations with the teens being the same height. Hmm.

My opinion is with a sandbox game you can't have too many options. The game is whatever choices the player makes, so I don't understand limiting that by leaving out and changing features that added gameplay value. I am not comprehending how leaving out one life stage and screwing up another is a step forward?

Yesterday I was sad and today I'm just pissed, is that what they meant by emotions? He'll I thought they were talking about the sims not the customers.

I don't see the baby-to-child jump being any more drastic than the child-to-teenager jump. The toddler stage did a lot to improve upon that. Like the young adult stage eased the transition from teen to adult nicely, giving your Sim a little more time to do the college, party and dating thing before settling down to focus on family and career. I appreciated having that opportunity in TS3, it added a layer of authenticity to the game.

Someone pointed out earlier that the children in TS4 look no older than 8 or 9 or something (I'm not sure exactly what age they said) and then suddenly - bam! - they're fully grown and appear to be in their late teens? That's a big and rather awkward change. I can understand wanting to smooth that out with a pre-teen stage.

I also think the adult to elder transition is a bit... sudden. You're popping out kids one day, the next you're a hunchbacked granny. I wouldn't mind an intermediate stage there, either.

Drive-thru?!?! The only time I go into a bank is to open an account which I did years and years ago. Paycheque is direct deposit, bills get paid online. I get cash at the ATM... who needs to go into a bank?
And back on topic:

No kidding... what's next? Cars? Toilets? Showers? Schools?

EMOTIONS?

Never got Error 12 since I have 6GB RAM. What's Error 16?

This is what SGRuskii wrote on one of the official's threads: "I asked for respect for the moderators of this forums. Because the threads were insulting them for doing their jobs. the insults violate the agreement you made when you joined the community of this site to have a code of conduct. that is undeniable proof.

Note that in no shape or form we said not to express your opinions (in fact I encourage it), but do so with respect.

I have in no way insulted you or other people on this forum. I have acted within my rights as an admin (even though I did not delete a single thread today) yet I did get insulted for it.

I had a "nerve" to demand respect because the moderators of this forum and my fellow Gurus did nothing to deserve the insults you guys were throwing around.

You have a right to be angry, I didn't say you didn't have the right (show me proof of that). But you don't have the right to insult people that are doing their job applying the code of conduct of this website. They don't deserve it. You have the right to be angry, upset, and you can talk to us about it, but you don't have the right to insult me or my fellow gurus in order to "get a point across" because no point is made when people cannot speak without insulting one another.

I don't know why it is taken as something that is "not allowing you to express yourself" do you talk like that everyday, to everyone?

One thing is to tell us what you don't like about the game, another is to act poorly with deplorable behavior towards people that don't deserve any of it. Plus you are not really saying anything constructive, which doesn't help in anyway. The insults and the trolling threads are noise.

Those are my two cents, if you have a problem with what I just said. We can talk about it."

And a lot of these simmers are kids. If they need a lecture, I'm sure they can already get one from their parents.

The professional way to handle "insults" is to ignore it and not engage. This is part of the Gurus' job! And they get paid quite well. Also, the customer is not obligated to say anything constructive at all. They are the PAYING customer! EA/Gurus don't have a right to tell customers how to react to shoddy workmanship.

I occasionally get bad saves with a message about Error code 16. I'm not sure what causes it.

Ohgod really?! Baby bumps?! Sims 2 style again?!

So not even gradually growing belly?! Ohgod.

Everyone speaking about RAM, Error 12 and 64bit. Why haven't they released the system requirements yet? We got the SR for TS3 in December 2008.

As far as I know, Watch_Dogs is the only game that is 64-bit only. That is, it will not run at all on 32-bit OSes.

Several games have a 64-bit option (Far Cry, Thief, Crysis, etc), but it's unclear what the benefits of the 64-bit option are.

I agree, it would make a smoother transition, but pre-teen is a stage of development following childhood and prior to adolescence. It generally ends with the beginning of puberty, and it lasts 3 or 4 years.

I don't want a lifestage all about puberty, I also doubt they are going to include things like puberty in a The Sims game, considering people have already complained about something as natural as breastfeeding, while a smoother age transition might be nice, I would prefer gradual aging. instead of there being 8 or 9 lifestages to define more periods in life. Especially if this meant that lifestages didn't have animations, objects or clothes because there is too many or they aren't as much as a priority as creating every thing else and trying to make the game stable for release.

For example: Newborn, baby, toddler, child, pre-teen, teenager, young adult, adult, middle aged, elder,

Now, saying if the "pre-teen" life stage included interesting and new interactions, and wasn't just plopped in with no difference except height only for a smoother transition, I would probably be excited for that.

Considering the fact toddlers are out, I sincerely hope babies and children have an abundance of new interactions and objects specifically designed for them, and we don't just twirl them in the air to change babies, it would be nice if those monkey-bars and the little ship clubhouse aren't the only things children get to play with.

Adult is middle-aged.

Correct me if I'm wrong but it's always been like that hasn't it? TS3 never had gradual growing bumps...

My PC is now about 3 years old but it's a gaming pc with 8mg RAM. I never used to get error 12s but now if my game runs too long I do. It's pretty well known that TS3 (which I still play, so not a hater) has a memory leak and is very poorly optimized.

The Sims 4 elders look more middle-aged.

Well, it wasn't ever something in the Sims 3 when the Sim stops to have the bump happen, it just sort of kept getting bigger.

We girls get heavy in the butt. Men suffer from butt lose. My husband is 64 this year and looks daggers of hate at me when I tell him I am going to get suspenders for him. He is always tugging his pants back up. At 56 I now have my moms butt and I also miss her dearly. Every time my grandson does some adorable thing I want to call her and her death is fresh again.

On topic full. To say the best base game we can does not mean the best base game. To me it means its broke all to hell and we are trying to do something, anything to make it shoehorn into the Sims 4 game and not a total different game - Sims Alcoholics, Why not do that? Make it "Sims Drunk" and take out every age group but young adult. Seems that players don't like anything but young adults and Hey Hey, Sims now have a appletini stuck on them from the time they stumble out of bed tell they pass out at night. Here I was thinking that Sims 3 had too many bars.