Well, hats off to you for trying to see your posts from other people's perspective and being honest about it, because that's a rare thing on the interwebz indeed. That said, I'd still stay away from the should exclamations if it were me...

As for your feelings about the series in general, I can understand that. I've played since shortly after the release of TS1 and care a great deal about sims. I still enjoy TS2 and I'd like to get back to TS3 again some day too, when I'm able to get a new desktop setup so I can have both. That doesn't change no matter how I feel about TS4.

Not to dog pile you Averex, but many who are not happy are also emotionally invested in the Sims. Many, not all, of us have also played from 1999 in this and some even earlier with Sim City and Sim Ant and so on. Those who did are feeling like we are told that we are no longer important. Our play style and likes are not important, we need to die off and leave it to the better generation.

The brilliance of the Sims 1, 2, and even 3 to a lesser degree was it let the player lead the game. Player ARE diverse, we like and play in many different ways. That with modding and CC are what made the Sims so long lasting. Sure making a game is hard, most things you do in real life are hard, work is a four letter word for a reason.

As far as toddlers later in the game? I fell for that in 3 when they said "we hear you and know you want open venues, we will add them later" Gross paraphrasing but it was the gest of what they said. Later is was No, not in the base can not be done. In fact most of 3 was put down to well, sure it does not work, its not the base so yeah.

Earn my money, earn my loyalty.

You are right OP, it's not as bad as it looks, it's worse than it looks.

The excitement for the Sims series extends to the brilliant marketing of Maxis way back. They had Sim everything. Sim Copter, Sim Farm, Sim Tower, Sim Town.... The list goes on into the double digits. The popularity of The Sims was born out of the well thought out model that Maxis came up with, not EA. EA is the "slayer of worlds" in my opinion. Everything they get their claws into turns to $hit eventually. I can't honestly give EA any credit other than being responsible for ruining a brilliant and well loved series. They tainted it with greed and still do that to this day. I did truly enjoy the Sim(s) series well before EA, and I do still enjoy TS3. But I refuse to further fund the mindless drivel that EA pumps out these days, TS4 being no exception.

I could be wrong about this, but I think it's the younger players who are more likely to be giving EA more chances and it's us older players closing our wallets. I'm sure some younger ones are too, but maybe those of us over 30-40 have had enough slaps in life to close our's sooner.

In this particular case, younger means naive.

Interesting. Hopefully you aren't referring to me, if so, you are indeed wrong. Perhaps it's just about attitude, rather than age?

I assume that you're correct. I'm 14, which is extremely young in the Sims universe....

Kind of selling yourself down the river there, don't you think?

I don't really care anymore. Looking back, I was wrong anyway. Most of the things I said were rude and obnoxious. I may still be looking forward to the game, but that doesn't mean I have to make those who aren't switch positions so that I feel less awkward being one of the significant few.

I was referring to the OP who said they were 6-7 when they played Sims 1, but you had come to mind as I had thought you were one of the younger crowd. I did say, not everyone.

I wasn't even 6/7 in 2000. I played the game when TS2 was out already. By the time I got TS2 it was like the last year it was the current game, 2008.

/grandma hug. Sweetheart you are not one of the few. The world is like that. Some like changes some do not. Bravo to you and your parents for raising such a wonderful child.

I hope that this game will be every thing that you want. I hope that you will find years of things to enjoy! Like what you want and look at what others have to say and then make up your own mind. You have a great future ahead of you.

HATRED ORIGINATING FROM DISRESPUTABLE GENTLEMEN IS GOING TO CONTINUALLY PERSIST!

I'm 21 (though it's my birthday in 8 days, yay) so I guess I'm still in the whippersnapper category, but my wallet is closed like a liquor store on Sunday

Not really sure what that link is supposed to mean?

I'm 14 too and it's interesting that the younger people here allow other people to say what they mean and make some points while the older ones think they have the only "right" attitude.

Hopefully you aren't trying to suggest something there

It's like.. a meme.. and stuff.
I guess that makes me a hypocrite since I complained about an overuse of memes in TS3 in that other thread, but o well.

I suppose there is a little bit of a correlation between support for The Sims 4 and age, but I'm nearly 15 and I'm not excited for the game.

I'm wondering if we're getting off-topic or not...

If you're still impressed by TS4 after this whole debacle of an advertising campaign that EA's been running, more power to you. I'll be joining you years from now when prices are dropped, mods are released, and features that were important to me are brought back. As for now? No thank you. I've been on board with this franchise since the very beginning but it's gonna take more than having Sims in the title for me to shell out 60 bucks (which may not be a lot to some but I only work part time....through student employment) If I'm spending 60 bucks on a game it has to be something I already know I'm gonna love like Smash Bros or Pokemon. You know how I already know I'll love them? Because Nintendo hasn't been shy about giving us actual gameplay footage. Because the things they add to the games outweigh what they remove. Because if something they removed seems unreasonable, they don't give us the runaround for weeks/months before finally regurgitating bullshit excuse after bullshit excuse. Because they respect their customers enough to not release a demo to only a select group of people in the hopes that we'll all spiral into total anarchy and be so busy killing each other out of envy that we forget that we're not even interested in the damn game. From a business standpoint that was pretty genius but it's so fucking evil, it's turned me off to the game even more. You could at least pretend to care about the people you're selling your game to. That's why Smash Bros isn't released until October and yet game stores are already running out of pre-orders. And that's why, on EA's side, people are CANCELLING their pre-orders.

Yes, this. You should be suspicious that they're giving us gameplay footage this late in the production stage. And goodness knows if it'll be scripted or not.

Have we seen actual gameplay? I thought it was just CAS, mini-movies, and Build/Buy Mode.

Things to win me over:
- Unscripted, preferably live gameplay video, one day cycle.
- Full, uncut video of a house being constructed from the ground up. No short snippets of rooms being dragged around.
- Full reveal on at least two neighbourhoods, plus demonstration on how they work.
- No more demonstrations of CAS, the demo's out and people can come to their own conclusions.

All of this should be technically possible, it's whether or not they have the will to do it.

Things to win me over:
- Anything that isn't ~*emotions*~

:/