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The Sims 3

Started by mariesalias, June 16, 2014, 01:40:15 AM

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mariesalias

Quote from: Kaldir on June 27, 2014, 11:24:59 AM
@mariesalias: Thanks for your long and detailed opinion about the upcoming Sims 4. The lack of Create-A-Style was already a game-breaker for me, but some of the other things you mentioned makes me want to stay away from the game even more.

As I understood it, CASt is what makes Sims 3 such a slow and laggy game, and that was the reason they took it out. That, and a new feature altering colors with emotions, but I didn't really understood that part when I read it somewhere.
I doubt it has much to do with EA's greadiness. With CASt in The Sims 3 they still made a lot of money, probably much more than with The Sims 2 due to the excessive number of store items.

After people got so upset, they said[/i} it was taken out because of lag. The thing is CASt (create-a-style) does not cause lag to games at all. If you have tons of extra CC patterns, it can add to the loading time for the patterns when you go into CASt, but that is it. There is always render time in game, but that happens whether you change the pattern/color or not. CASt does not cause lag in the game.

Now CAS (create-a-sim) itself is laggy and takes forever to load all the presets if you have a lot of store content and/or CC. Luckily, there are mods to help with that (<3 MC)!  Sims 4 will still have CAS and will still have all the presets to load and after a few years and a dozen EPs and SPs, it will load a lot slower too. Load up CAS with just the base game installed and it loads fast (assuming your computer is decent)! EA is BSing everyone about the exclusion of CASt and/or a color wheel.

CAS does not slow down the game when you are playing though. Unless there are improper outfits, maybe, but that usually is poor coding on EA's part and CC makers mis-labeling categories. What causes lag the most in games is faulty CC and the game's horrible engine and sometimes sketchy coding. People like Twallan can re-code parts of the game to take out so much of the lag! Why can't the Dev's? It is pretty evident that EA's policy is to push out their games whether they are ready or not. They may delay a little, but it usually ends to be for financial reasons rather then because they care about the quality of their games.

Look at a company like Blizzard, who will delay a game's release for years if they need to, to get it fully done with the quality they seem proud to deliver. And when there are issues, as there is with every game, they patch and update as soon as possible to fix the issues.

With Sims 3, they kept their games and EPs on a deadline for financial reasons. If time is not enough to implement things properly,t hey remove it or push it through broken/partially working. Almost every patch they did for Sims 3 to fix some issues (never enough of them though), broke as much (if not more) then it fixed!   I have no reason to believe Sims 4 will be any different. EA as a company, sees all it's players as wallets, not as gamers. This is especially true with Simmers! Consider that they have had the pre-order for Sims 4 up for about  a year now and have not yet released one live-play demo. They keep showing the same stuff they've already shown! They give us a little tidbit of information here and then, then drop big bombs about what will not be in the game. Two months before release, they should be showing off this game like crazy, stirring up interest! But they still have not shown a live demo. 

Seriously, there is no way this game is anywhere near ready to ship.  They are cutting more and more stuff out (like toddlers) and cutting corners (using same models for teens and elders as adults) and  re-spinning their fluff because that is all they have. I will be shocked if Sims 4 is in any way a complete game when it ships.

But without having seen live play, without knowing much about what actually is in the game, lots of Simmers are willing to spend $70 on a pre-order for a game by a company who has continuously put out a bug-ridden and broken previous version with all its EP's. To EA's executives we are all walking wallets, and may of us do act that way and will buy anything they push out.

I love the Sims series and if they had included CASt, I would have probably bought it at release. But there is no other game I could say that for. There is no other game I would put up with all the bad coding, bugs, poor patches, incomplete EP's and everything that I have with TS3!

Unfortunately, they are the only ones with a game anywhere near like it. I wish some other game company could make a true competitor to/for The Sims, as it would force EA to get out of the pool or improve their policies.  I absolutely believe EA is a greedy company. They have proved that many times over. I will be truly amazed if they do not offer re-colors for cash with Sims 4!


I don't mind Expansion Packs and such with the Sims games, it has used that model from the beginning and it works for that game.  A sandbox life-simulator games needs to have lots of options and appeal to a wide-range of people, more then could be fit into one base game.  Expansion packs are (should be) a way to add to the content of a game and keep it an interesting and 'fresh' experience for the players.

Kaldir

I too believe EA is "greedy" in that they want the most money for their product, but I don't know any major company that doesn't. One of the WoW expansions from Blizzard that went live had a terrible talent balance because they changed it during beta, a few weeks before release, and they didn't postpone it like they should have. The same Blizzard dares to charge 20 euro's for an in-game mount. Two of those mounts cost the same as a full Sims expansion. And Blizzard left many exploits in WoW for months if not years, allowing huge numbers of gold hunters and spam bots to do their dirty business. And despite all this I actually think Blizzard is one of the better (or less bad) game companies.

All major companies do things like that. It's how they become major in the first place. And EA has some pretty decent support (as does Blizzard).

I do agree with you though that The Sims 4 seems stripped of too many features and rushed to completion. Sadly, that seems the way with many games these days, Banished being a very nice exception.

And regarding CASt and lag, I could imagine that without CASt a much more efficient rendering system could be used, because all objects would have fixed/known colors. I can very much imagine the two are totally unrelated though and EA was just making excuses. The biggest issue I have with EA's Sims studio is that they don't seem to have enough good programmers, and a lousy QA department. There's so many bugs in that game for way too long.

salamander

Quote from: Kaldir on June 27, 2014, 11:41:40 AM
I actually like it when a game has expansions. It means there is still development taking place after release, which makes the patches usually much better (The Sims being an exception to this) and keeps the game fresh. It's better than a developer abandonning a game and moving on to a next project.
I agree -- there are many expansions to games that really improve on the original experience, or give it something new to keep your interest.  I don't mean to say I'm against any sort of game content after the original sale, but it bothers me when it's too obvious that the additional content probably should have been in the original.

Bobbi

Wow, maybe I will never get Sims 4 either. Or maybe I should have bought Sims 3 when it was on flash sales. The long load times killed me in Sims 2, though. And most of the original hair, clothing, furniture etc was so ugly. I spent hours finding CC and sorting/organizing CC.

canis39

In case anyone is interested, EA/Origin has all Sims 3 content on sale right now, presumably in preparation for the release of Sims 4.

mariesalias

@Kaldir  I know you had talked about getting Sims 4 (I think your wife wanted it?), I wanted to let you know, if you have not already heard, that EA is not allowing reviews until after the game releases on Tuesday.

This seems pretty shady, and the few let's play videos EA has put up have shown quite a few glitches and bugs. This site has links to the videos and information on the game. In case you or your wife wants to check them out before you buy the game.

Haven't seen you in a while, I hope you are doing well!

mariesalias

Quote from: canis39 on July 12, 2014, 12:22:37 PM
In case anyone is interested, EA/Origin has all Sims 3 content on sale right now, presumably in preparation for the release of Sims 4.

I need Steam to put Into the Future, Ambitions, and Showtime on sale. I promised my son I'd get them for him (he wants Plumbots, time machines, and Genies). Hopefully after Sims 4 releases, they'll go on sale.

Mmdrgtobldrgn

Late to the conversation

Long time simmer here, still have all of my sims 2 stuff as well as sims 3. I caved on sims 4 ... and don't recommend it, now that I've gotten some decent play time on it to explore some of the game features that I was interested in. I still play sims 3 a fair bit ... okay a lot.  ;D

And yes I am using the same avi here that I use on Sims. :)
~ Mama Dragon
Mother, Grandmother, Gamer, always Myself