If certain CVs floating around the internet at one stage bear any reflection on the early development of the game, then a LOT of time and money was probably wasted doing the hard work involved with it being online. In particular, Gil Colgate's Linkedin , which Honeywell linked to in some of her coverage, which states:



Now, plenty of what they did towards an online game might actually be making it into the final product, thus not being totally wasted dev time, but... ...who really cares? Hardly anyone wanted all this multiplayer bulldooky in the first place, especially not if it comes at the cost of the game's more essential organs, which it seems to have. Add to that the question of whether this was the only thing that got in the way of deving the game... ...and really... ...it's a clusterfuck. It shouldn't be going to market in this state. It's not a Sims base game, it's clearly something short of 3/4s of a Sims base game, and that's not our cross to bear or our financial burden to accept, it's EA's.

If they've fucked up in deving the game, they have to unfuck up all by themselves, or least not shove quite such an enormous portion of their fuck up into our wallets.

Edit: Don't get me wrong, there's some degree of "fucked up product development" I'm always willing to pay for. But in this particular case: Fuck no. No way. Not like this, and not this much. I already paid through the nose for a decidedly mediocre gaming experience in TS3, and felt ripped off most of the way through that. It's risible to even imagine that EA has earned the kind of goodwill and trust it would take for its customers to accept this kind of cost-shifting. Risible!

No. Basegame is an operating system for fun stuff to come.
If they made a design decision to combine the toddler/baby stage to have the other hand free to make this life stage more exciting and more affordable to work with and to make it enjoyable.. yea. Would be cool.
Snot the case.

We don't even have teens.

This isn't in regard to your post but your avatar... for some reason it's huge. I can see the individual furs.

Adorable dog, though. XD

Really? Y'all don't act like it :/

As I stated back on page 147, I no longer purchase ANYTHING distributed by Electronic Arts, but am so happy to see all the Simmers a.k.a. consumers, asking questions, ranting, demanding answers or whatever helps them get their frustrations out; because guess what?...when you are/plan on spending your money on a product, you have EVERY right to know what you are getting/paying for.

Which at the moment, seems to be an inferior product to it's predecessors, with misleading adverts/renders, inconsistent statements/news bits by a company with a dodgy track record in quality control and customer service.

So, good luck in getting an honest response. At this point, can't help but picturing the Gurus with a list of 'What's safe to talk about'.

http://youtu.be/yI-8LWlgGGA

FTR, money is not an issue for me either. I'm not saying that I'm rich or anything, but I can afford a new Sims game.
I was never one of those people who would wait two years for a game to be on sale and then buy it. If I've been looking forward to a new game I'm usually too impatient to wait and will more often buy it the same day that it's released.
This will not be the case with The Sims 4.

So it was a sad day for me when I realized that I had lost all my excitement for the release of this game, and I know A LOT of people are feeling the same way.

@SimGuruGraham I actually want to buy sims 4, but you aint helping <snip>

OMG! When the comment was made about not being able to sell good intentions, I just knew the response would be Kimbra's Good Intent! I didn't anticipate the Similish version though!

I'm a lurker but all of you have kept me so very entertained. Also, I'm on ebay looking to buy more TS2 games because I don't think TS4 is for me. I've already decided to not buy on release.

Holy shit! Kimbra sung that song?!

I'd go straight for her.

They say there are only two constants, death and taxes. It should be three, because there is always someone who will disagree.

EDIT: What?! Only 10 disagrees?! Sheesh! There's no pleasing some people...

But unfortunately it seems that EA's leader at that time was one of those who did want multiplayer, remember his statement that he refused to greenlight any single-player-only games?

When the big dog strongly believes the company and all its IP should head one way, it's pretty tough for a team to argue that they're the exception.

However, that doesn't excuse current management from trying to stick to a now-unrealistic deadline once the project had been converted to a more traditional Sims off-line game.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought he meant he wouldn't green light anything without an online component, so if Maxis had said "okay, we have the Gallery and the Store" there wouldn't have been any problems.

I'm going by memory, so I may have it wrong, but my impression was that he believed that only MMO's would provide decent returns for the company, so a single-player type game had better introduce strongly integrated multiplayer elements. Not just peripheral features like the Store and Gallery, but something deeply intertwined with the game, like SimCity 2013's regional gameplay.

Edit: I seem to recall that the day after he made this pronouncement during an investor call, EA's PR folks had to hurriedly "clarify" what he really meant to say, since gamers and reviewers were already starting to freak out.

Well.. the small little details (like the tram and the boat, and also the water and electricity cut off stuff) are nice, but they never should be the main priority when clearly other big parts of the game aren't even in.
With all the uproar in the community about toddlers/pools, best bet for them is to add them within expansion packs... but it isn't right.

It feels like EA cutting some big things out of the base game, to sell them later in expansion packs. It's like they are so out of idea's for new 'intuitive' expansion packs, that they need to cut out big things out of the base game, to put them into EP's to make people buy them.

Also why even release a game when it's clearly not done. We all can see it. Teens same height as adults and the rest, toddlers cut out and the list goes on and on.
Why not just add extra time and release a finished solid game with a good foundation. I said it earlier (to bad we didn't get a response from Graham regarding my wall-o-text, but nvm) : Expansion packs are to expand the game with, to give players more possibilities, more things to do. But the core of the game, the foundation should offer all the core elements for all the playstyles.

Builders are missing pools and generational players, legacy players, story tellers, are missing toddlers and got teens the same height as adults... it's not right.

And I am really curious about how long we have to wait for all the expansion packs to get a complete game again. Adding toddlers after 2/3 years doesn't make sense, it should have full priority.

So I probably fell for a bunch of PR bullwharky. Sigh.

That's amazing! No 8 sided legs in the right hand picture! They look round!
I wish everyone could use CASt to make Sims 3 look that cool!
o wait.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H8zyF0ZOy3k

Well, it probably depends on whether there are still meteor strikes

From Graham's twitter.

Goodbye, story progression. It's going to take something miraculously huge to get me to buy this game now.

I feel you. Definitely don't want a game I have to maintain and play every family in the world. They can take that game and shove it.

SimGuruGraham said no resources, not enough skills. Really? Do they let a bunch of kids to program the best selling game of all times?

So EA gave the Game developers not enough time and resources to for there to be basic features that sold in the last two prequels which are player’s basic game play.
They have also managed stripping: Worlds Building, Lots and more back to very basic level instead of expanding the series, due to a lack of Funds and Resources. Maybe if EA are so burden by the Sims they should sell the License?
I am sure Sims 4 will still sell well in the first week or more of release based mainly on its prequels reputation, However it will be interesting to see where the Game ranks come the 2nd November 2014. More interested how many purchases in the next 6 six weeks or so after release, and then who will still be playing six – twelve months down the track.

Because their financial model requires them to realise some income against their costs at this point.



Because you don't have minors in an online player-controlled game, in order to avoid inappropriate roleplay. Therefore other age groups could only *start* being designed after last year's decision to take it offline.