If only more people thought like you.

Quite simply, E.A.'s going to E.A. It's do what it's going to do. People giving them their money only encourages them.

TS1 had emotions too. I remember my very first game of The Sims. I played with the Goths, and Mortimer burned to death trying to cook breakfast for his wife and daughter. Bella was completely unfussed, but poor Cassandra spent days wandering off to sob in her parents' room. And then Bella moved out (and in with her pink-haired girlfriend, my first sim ever, Froglips) and left Cassandra alone to cry about her dead dad. Maybe not as complex as what they're doing for TS3, but... that was 14 years ago and I still remember that poor little pixel girl whose daddy died and mama didn't care.

I think what this was intended to mean is that the "rule" says that Sims should not be aware of their plumbotb. It's a non-diegetic element (or rather part of a different diegetic layer). Awareness of the plumbotb by the characters in-game would break the fourth wall, roughly speaking.

If there were a clapping emoticon, I'd use it here.

The fourth wall is already somewhat broken by sims looking up at the camera and waving and shouting about not being able to route somewhere. I don't remember them doing that in TS3 much but they definitely did in TS2.

Indeed. I see all these reasons why the predecessors are better than TS4, but no reasons why TS4 is better than its predecessors.

And TS1. In TS2 they were horrid about it - you tell a sim to do something he didn't enjoy and he'd turn and pull a sulky "why me?" face at you. Graham was indicating that traditions were handed down to each new team member - but I think in a verbal sense. I think a lot gets lost in the telling that would be rediscovered in the playing.

And he's gone. Feel better, Graham!

Thanks for stopping by!

Sorry I said that over 100 pages ago - I'm afraid I'm more godlike than you.
https://www.modthesims.info/show...647#post4423647

So do Sims actually need cars at all? Given they way the neighbourhood is constructed. I'm nervous about things being added in patches as well, patches were a bit hit and miss in Sims 3. And I wonder if the exp packs will combine at all like in Sims 2? At the moment Sims 4 feels like a kickstarter game , only most of those actually add what they promise in my experience. We need to actually see some evidence of what remains playable rather than hearing "yes lots and lots in there" every five minutes.
I think it would have been better to release this as an online game standalone, it would have made money, got the tablet crowd etc and then the team could have put their time and efforts into a true next gen life simulator sandbox for the real Sims 4 we were expecting. I dunno, I didn't want any online stuff but I probably would have bought it out of interest anyway, as long as the full simulator was also available later on.
You can't make a hybrid of life sim and rpg and throw in online stuff and do any of those elements justice.
EA has the absolute monopoly on this life sim little people thing, just stick to making that the most powerful, flexible and versatile beast it can be and stop being greedy

Also... I wanted to take a moment to address "weirder stories." Because it seems to be a MAJOR selling point of TS4 and I think it's a huge, wild mistake.

There's always been weird in the sims series. Taking away the pool ladder, sims peeing themselves at weddings, changing into a diving costume to greet the headmaster when he comes to visit... I have a picture somewhere from TS3:IP where my sim finished diving and plopped down on the couch in his wetsuit and flippers to watch tv, with hot dogs (I think they were dog toys?) all over the floor. Weird is fun, weird is awesome. But the weird came, not from deliberate attempts at making weird happen, but just out of the normal gameplay. An entire party would end up in the bathroom with everyone having a shoo-fight because they all had to pee, and that was weird, and it was funny.

But when you push weird, it cheapens it. It makes it no longer fun. The promo with the sims playing chess in mexican wrestling masks? WHY? It just smacks of a bouncy 13 year old shouting "POTATO!" and then laughing their asses off at themselves, going, "I'M SO RANDOM, HAHAHAHA." It's not more fun or funny, and it doesn't grow organically out of regular gameplay.

Saints Row 3 had weird. It was intensely weird - missions to spray raw sewage to destroy property, running around in a bowler hat and tutu and with a tommy gun, flinging yourself off an overpass on a motorcycle to land on an old lady... But it was also within the bounds of the game, and there wasn't anything that stood out TOO MUCH as super weird. Saints Row 4, however, went, "Hey, people really like the silly elements, let's give them nothing but silly!" and then suddenly there was a dildo bat and bobblehead mode and... okay, it was still fun, but it felt like the devs were over your shoulder going "ARE YOU HAVING FUN YET, THIS IS SUPER FUN RIGHT?" and... it was fun, but it had completely lost the charm of the weird and silly because it was trying WAY TOO HARD. I played it for only a couple days before I gave up and went back to SR3, because it was just so WEEHOOWEEEWACKYTIEM!!!! about everything.

Put away the damned mexican wrestler masks. Let sims pee themselves on dates and fall asleep on the dance floor, and let us enjoy it. Stop trying so hard. Stop trying to make fetch happen.

I agree. The entire game is a huge, wild mistake.

Halle-cocking-lleujah! More HystericalParoxysm and less E.A.!

I love the sound of the consequences for not paying bills. And sympathise over shitty broken keyboards. Thanks Graham, your posts often give me a little hope in the future of the game. Either way, I know you guys will do your best to get/keep it on track, it's just not my thing as it is. I do know in the end the game will find an audience, and may become something quite great. I just still think that we, as consumers, need to push back against what's been going on. I'm sorry for the headache it must be for you guys.

Yeah, that's why I said "roughly speaking". There's a PhD dissertation dedicated to this whole way The Sims series builds multiple levels of diegesis or narratological layers and how these levels interact with each other and under what conditions and to what effect this structure can be dissolved, reverted or changed within the course of a game. In broad terms, the Sim being aware of the plumbotb is actually not the same as them being aware of you as their player. The player and the plumbotb are on different levels.

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Edit: plumbob, plumbob, plumbob. Ok, I hope I got it now.

I'm thinking that what he meant is that the plumbob is present in sculptures etc through out the worlds/neighborhoods and that's how the sims are aware of it? or something...

Don't you mean plumbob? The green diamond?

In TS2 sims were aware of you. I found it creepy. Sometimes they'd be chatting away and the second you'd point the camera at them they'd stop and turn their heads to you... And if you rotate the camera down to get a birds eye view, their heads would snap up too, so your looking down at them and they're like "wazzzzuuup"

it was terrifying and I had no idea this was supposed to happen, thought it was a glitch or that my sims are evil and will come and get me.

I was just talking to my boyfriend yesterday about how this kind of thing happens in almost every franchise, be it books or TV or films or games. As soon as the people in charge realize what audiences love - usually something that they didn't realize was going to be as popular as it was - they go overboard with it. And then it ceases to be what it was. Jack Sparrow in the Pirates movies, Claptrap in the Borderlands games, Jack and Karen from Will & Grace, etc.

I know some people probably love all of those things, but they're all examples to me of taking something funny and subtracting all the subtlety because nothing is funnier than something funny IN YOUR FACE ALL THE TIME, right?

I thought it was a cute detail :lovestruc

The creepiest was when the stuck nannies would do it. They'd be standing there in several days worth of pee puddle, in a cloud of green vapor, and whichever way you'd turn the camera they'd turn to squint right into it with a mean look that said "if I die here, I am going to haunt you".

Yes, of course. Plumbot, Simstember - what else to confuse my aging brain?

Hopefully, the ability to mod those masks out the game is easy as an XML is in Sims 3. I really hate those masks.

Thank you Graham for your input. It was nice to learn some of the gameplay possibilities. I am apprehensive because of the microtransactions but that is another story.

It was a nice detail but sometimes I wasn't sure whether it was me watching them or them watching me...

Weirdness is sims pissing themselves or dying of hunger in front of the fridge. Not this Mexicanwrestler grannyhipster laughterdeath bullshit.


Ah, yes. The scourge of Flanderization.

Good morning! Anyone know if we have ghosts or aliens yet?