(Posting this here because it's mainly about the criticisms about The Sims 4.)

Every time there is a discussion about what people wants for Project Rene, I read people saying "open world" and almost no time "better personalities and sims". Every time I read about The Sims 3 vs 4, people says "There is no open world at 4." but almost never "Sims are more intelligent in the Sims 4." or "The Sims 4's emotions are better than The Sims 3's mood system."

Why people care more about open world than how our sims act? Wouldn't it be better to have a very good personality system, better autonomy or more in-depth relationships?

Imagine a Sims game where sims have complex(not as much as IRL humans of course!) personalities and children gets personalities based around experiences. And sims having a well designed memory system and it effecting relationships.

Why people doesn't wants features more than open world? I mean, it makes sense to have open world features or at least some of them. But The Sims always had very basic systems for sims, why people are still OK with all we have in The Sims 3 or 4?

I see you joined just to post this. I have never seen people say they care more about an open world than having well done Sims. Ideally, people want all. And on this site you will find that most posters are not a fan of what is in Sims 4. And many people favor 3 to 4 and some feel 2 was the best version done.

Renee is clearly being done to be a step down from even 4 in many ways. So, at least on this site, most here are not OK with what was done with 4 in many ways, and what will be done with Renee probably in many ways.

And back to open world, many here find it irritating that even in the coming EP there will be loading screens between units on the same lot. Most Simmers, raises hand, do not like loading screens. And Sims will always be basic as this is a game, and not real life.

Yeah. I've been using MTS for years but never had a reason to open an account until today!


Understandable, but I created this post with all of Sims community in mind. There are parts of the community where discussions like happens in exactly how I described. Maybe it's not entirely accurate for MTS, it's understandable.


Same. Who wants more loading screens? Even if they don't implement open worlds to Project Renee, I really want them to shorten loading screen durations. But I would care more about having better sims, to be honest, Sims still feel like extremely dumb versions of humans even though they made them better in The Sims 4. Open world in The Sims 3 feels like it haves big limitations, at least for me. I play The Sims games mainly because of the limitation of playing a household at same time. It makes sure that I need to send my sims to other households if my family gets bigger and other families existing at same time too. I like to see world around my household evolving. In my opinion, open world would be way better for this. However, The Sims 3's open world, if I remember right, limits each save to a single world, without mods. There isn't even an option to go to other worlds. I definitely don't like that fact.

Just use Nraas Traveler.

As for Renee, my expections are very low as it is being designed to be played as an app also as I recall, and to appeal to a different audience than most experienced Simmers. Odds are it will not have better Sims and probably (?) not an open world. It is being designed to get the most $$$$ from mostly new players as I see it. They really do not care about depth in any way.

NRAAS Traveler or Porter allow people to move between worlds in TS3. Traveler however causes bloat with saves, so if a person wants to move their sims on a more permanent basis, Porter is a better option. There are videos about this that breaks these points down and how to use either one correctly.

If TS4 is the crystal ball for what Project Nay-Nay will be like, it's a hard pass. I'm not going to post all my thoughts about TS4 and what I don't like about it, but I'm also not willing to dump over $1,000.00 into a game only to feel like I have to stay in a house or apartment as loading screens are a pain in the ass. This is not me suggesting that I was interested in Project Nay-Nay to begin with, but again, if TS4 is being used as gateway, then absolutely not.

TS2 did loading screens in a 'good way'. There were actual loading screens when sims were traveling, but when they moved between apartments on the same lot, the loading screen was simply waiting for a sim to answer the door, then the contents of the apartment would load. If a sim wasn't home, sleeping or whatever, the contents of the apartment wouldn't load and the player would get a pop-up telling them to come back later or something along those lines.

If Maxis did things this way, it wouldn't have made everybody happy as there is no such thing as making all people happy all of the time, but it would have been better than that has been happening in TS4 land now. EA / Maxis don't care any of this. All that matters is how much cash they can pull out of the masses' pockets.

With all of this said, I wouldn't spend $1,000.00-plus on any game that made me feel confined to a single space. WTF is the point? This is why TS4 has become less of a life simulator and more of a dollie and build simulator. Nobody actually plays the game. It's all about how to make sims look however and building to make things look a certain why. While I do enjoy taking screenshots in TS3 because open worlds are fun to play in, I do actually play the game which I didn't spend anywhere near $1,000.00 for. I haven't done the math in a long time but for all EPs the total came to under $400.00.

But that is a mod. Travelling to other worlds is a feature in 4.


Can't disagree. EHaving compatibility between mobile and computer kinda shows how barebones it's probably going to be in terms of sims. I fear that it will be only used for designing lots and sims by experienced players. Even worse , probably it isn't even going to support mods. If it's going to have worse sims, what could be the reason of playing it, even on a mobile device?

That is what I posted above, that now all they are looking for is the $$$$$ they can get from mostly new players in Renee. And odds are a heck of a lot of 12s and so on will play it and spend for stuff. Most experienced Simmers probably will not have much interest in it, is my guess. We are not the target market.

People do play 4. A heck of a lot of people including me when I do play it. The game would not be going still after 10 years or whatever now if people were not playing it.

It was a definite shock to come from Sims 2, where players could make worlds in-game, and Sims 3, where players could make new worlds with a free tool, to Sims 4, where we can't even demolish a tree that's outside of the lot. This curbs the freedom of the way a lot of players play- it would be difficult to have a medieval game or a Silent-hill style game in Sims 4, whereas we could play out our imagination in the previous iterations.

2 is way back in my rear view mirror, but we could do that? I did some worlds in SC4 or whatever I know. If we could do one in game, my memory has gone blank on that.

Yes, you could choose one of the provided SC4 templates, choose your terrain type (dirt, desert, grass etc) and place or remove trees and hood deco, and most importantly as many or as few lots as you like. With M&G we could even sculpt the land.

I have totally forgotten about that! I probably did and just do not remember. Brain lapse here! But we are talking what, about 20 years ago now? And do not ask me what I had for lunch yesterday?

Playing it and only buying packs, kits, blah, blah, blah to build with or have CAS items are completely different. Both of them make EA money, but one involves dealing with all all the bugs, the others are used as a way of avoiding all the bugs.

The game has some bugs but is playable and people are playing it. People do not buy, buy, buy for 10 years for a game they cannot play. It was the same with 3 in that some people said it was not a playable game due to problems. It lasted for all the years and people bought all the way up to ITF. Games do not survive that long if problems for everyone. And companies do not keep cranking them out if not profitable.

I pointed out how playing or just building or creating pixel dollies makes profit. I don't know why you insist on trying to spin what I said any other way. Profit is profit regardless of how EA gets there.

I'm going to agree to disagree on the some bugs part.

https://answers.ea.com/t5/Bug-Repor...es/td-p/3445209

That's a long list....

I never played The Sims 2. If I mod it enough, could I create a completely medieval town? With new sims and households using medieval content of course.
,

A game with a lot of mechanics and content of course going to have a long list of bugs. This is not exclusive to The Sims 4. But, you can argue about it being more than other The Sims games though.

Yes indeed, this site is pretty much all you'll need:
http://www.medievalsims.com/

Open world is not only so much more immersive, but also allows me more freedom to multitask my sims, as I can control a sim on a community lot, while another sim is back at home.

Perhaps what's most glaring about the world format in The Sims 4 is the sheer lack of any customization aspect of it. We have gone backwards from The Sims 2 and 3 all of the way to The Sims 1 when there were only a set number of lots of set size and set in place in each neighborhood. While I do appreciate the aesthetic work that the TS4 team puts into world scenery, there must be a way to have customization without compromising so much scenery. The limited way that The Sims 4's worlds are set up is simply awful, for both builders and people that enjoy playing sims and families alike.

I've never played Sims 4 so I can't speak to how smart they are or how their emotions are handled in general.

Overall, I think Sims 2 did a great job with making the characters people. The memories system is just fantastic way to create long lasting effects on the characters and their lives. Sims 3 did it pretty good as well with moodlets that can heavily effect your characters but moodlets are designed to be temporary so don't have the long term implications that memories do. From what I heard, Sims 4 is a combination of these two concepts but the separate emotions system can easily overwrite them? From the outside looking in, it feels.... shallow.

I think an open world system CAN contribute to characterization as well. It becomes a little problematic when the world is too big or there's too many lots, but seeing other characters out in the wild going to and from work, to school, to the theater, to the club outside of your household... it's like "Yeah. That Sim over there has their own life. Their own wants, desires and relationships. Yesiree."

From an outsiders perspective for the Sims 4, it feels a like more like Sims 1 and 2. It's like those Sims are in a storage cabinet somewhere waiting for you to call them over or go to a community lot where they can pretend to be doing something.

I remember back in 2014 when news was slowly being released about Sims 4, at first I wasn't too concerned about the open world. It was at one point described as "semi-open world". I thought, "You know, that might be a good optimization for Sim 4. Only load in you, all your surrounding neighbors, and a community lot or two at a time to help with loading times". As I described above, seeing your neighbors living their lives along side you is what attracts me to the concept of open world in the first place. But Sims 4 isn't even that.

I so wish I could forget the feeling of the town changing around me so that I could plays Sims 2 again. I tried but it was.... surprisingly difficult. Before Sims 3, I didn't really care about that kind of thing and played for hours.

I truly feel open world in a life simulator is valuable to the entire concept of "life". It's a major part of what makes characters feel "alive". At least it is for me.

TS1 and TS2 have depth. The fact that TS1 sims couldn't leave the lot doesn't matter because the game is fun to play. TS4 will never have all the things that TS1 has. TS2 was built on the shoulders of TS1, so again, it doesn't matter if a sim cannot walk to their neighbors house because there is tons of stuff to do.

I suppose my bias is showing because I have been playing sims since 2000, but there is huge difference between then and now. Nobody needed 70 DLC ( while still demanding more) to make them play. It isn't necessary because those games are not shallow. There is actual game play as opposed to now where people get excited about a mullet because TS4 doesn't have enough of those. Or how about yet another recolor of yet another bar, ect...

I like my TS3 puddings. Is the game perfect? Hell no! Does it have bugs? Absolutely, but most problems people have with TS3 is because they're trying to play it on a potato with all expansion packs and gigs upon gigs of custom content. These very same problems are complained about on the daily for TS4. People trying to play all 70 DLC on their laptop that has 2 gigs of RAM. Yeah, no... it's not going to work even with settings on the lowest.

Project Nay-Nay is not going to reflect TS1, TS2 or TS3. It is going to be Sims Mobile on steroids with assets from TS4. Sims Mobile already uses assets from TS4 so if people play both TS4 and Sims Mobile, they are paying for the same stuff twice, when Sims Mobile actually works that is.

Give me a ugly game with tons of actual game play than one that spends all of its time projecting how "perfect people" should look. I could be wrong, but I also don't recall people wasting all of their time fighting about how much beige is too much beige. If a game is that boring that people have to fight about such things, perhaps it is time move on and do something else.

'cause loading screens suck?

I know I'm minority here but I don't mind loading screens and found the open world in Sims 3 to be just glorified loading screen simulator that just really highlighted how awfully bad the coding for how sim travels from place A to B was. (I remember how one time I was watched my sim go to work and he hopped to a taxi, drove to the opposite end of the map for no reason, hopped out of the taxi, ran through some random forest to another road, hopped back in to a taxi going to the opposite direction this time, past his own house and finally to his workplace - arriving there finally 3 hours late.) I hated it so much that I just started zooming the camera to the lot I wanted my Sims on and teleported them there to save time.

I still feel that Sims 4 should have had semi-open neighborhood as in: you could walk freely around the whole city area without any loading, but the lot insides wouldn't be visible to you unless you knock on the door or enter building at which point the dark room would be lit up and you'd see what's happening there, maybe the further surrounding area could be dimmed out instead or something? That way they wouldn't need to simulate everything that happens around you at once and we could have had the game with no, or at least less, loading screens.

I'd still take better Sims over no-loading-screens though, the Sims in 4 feel shallow and lack any personality no matter how many new traits they give us. Your athletic sim will pretty much behave just the same as your foodie or artistic sim, maybe obsessively doing more pushups than the rest because they're more likely to have energized moodlet but as far as interacting with others it's all the same. Moodlets in general felt like downgrade to me already in Sims 3, I want to see my sims feeling things not read that hey Lizzy here is feeling very shy because there's strange sim on the other edge of the lot and then you look at Lizzy and she's there smiling like with no signs that she's feeling slightest bit shy or awkward aside of the moodlet listed in her info. In Sims 2 they could animate shy Sims differently, you knew someone was shy before you even talked to them because they had their special head down, fidgeting hands movement style while outgoing sims would go around finger gunning everybody they met, why isn't that a thing anymore? Same deal with all those rabbit hole adventures, I'd care a lot more if I could see my sim walking through a cave instead of getting occasional pop ups telling me that my sim got lost and a bit later he is now fighting a bear. Like okay, and? Should I care? Show me the damn bear he's supposedly fighting! Have it chase my Sim out or something and have him fight for his damn life. Instead he'll later pop out little messy and have a moodlet telling he fought a bear and lost. "Show, don't tell" is one most important thing in making engaging content of any kind but instead Sims nowadays just offers us pop notifications and little icons telling you how they're feeling and I hate it.

It's pretty damn clear that Rene will be more of that same or more like less of that same since it's pretty sure they're going to dumb the whole thing down even more, maybe now our sims can only be happy, sad and angry, who cares there are other moods too right? You can buy them each later for $1.99 then to get a moodlet next to their icon telling that today they feel awkward for no reason, all while the sim will stand there with neutral expression on their face showing no signs of the said awkwardness at all. That's how I predict it'll turn out to be.

I totally agree. I have played 4 but it does not hold my attention long due to the lack of depth and other factors. And I think you are spot on that IMO dumbed down 4 will be even more dumbed down in Renee for the mobile crowd.

So back to the original topic of this post, I do not expect to see much if any of an open world in Renee or better Sims. Those days are probably long gone.

Because the foundation for better sims was laid back in 2004 with those innovations TS2 introduced. TS3 built on that foundation to expand the Sims world like never before. It brought life into a life simulation by making the world itself a character. Imagine Batman and his rogue gallery without Gotham. The setting adds just as much meaning to the stories we engage in as the characters.

Totally agree and one of my favorite things to do in 3 is to follow/watch a Sim drive somewhere, especially at night.

In one of my TS3 games grandma was a cop and her grandchildren loved to drive around the town at night with siren blasting. (Am I childish? Yes, I am childish.)

To get back to OP: my "problem" is that I am quite happy playing TS2 and TS3. They are different enough and both together they scratch all of my Sims wants (I use mods for both of them, of course) and therefore I don't feel I need yet another Sims or Sims-like game; I would like to get an open world (and CAS) but the only thing that would really change my mind would be great AI, and neither TS5 nor any of its competitors are there yet. InZOI is the most beautifulest of them all but Sims (or Zois or whatever) can hardly move (they can slap each other, though). Paralives building looks great, but we still don't know much about interactions. LBY is somewhere in between and feels like more of the same. Tiny Life is quite nice (I played the demo) but so far (still in EA) it feels just like a better version of TS1. All of them will develop further but I wonder if any will get there.