Re: Will it be open world
The open world was hyped so much with the launch of Sims 3, that everyone now believes the game wouldn't be playable without it. I prefer the rotational gameplay style that was possible in The Sims 2.
The first thing people think of when they play a non open world is why can't my sims just walk down the street, or into the neighboring lot? It's right there. But this is superficial. Once you go down the street, there is nothing to do but come back. There is nothing on a community lot that you can't do at home with the purchase of an item. If you must go to a community lot, the Sims 2 had places you could go (with a loading screen, which I will get back to later), but again, these offered little additional gameplay. The Sims 3, for example, offered a gym to work out, a library to read books, and a park to play chess; or you could place a treadmill, a bookcase, and a chess set in your living room, and use them right away, instead of travelling 20 minutes to and from.
No loading screens? There may not be a loading screen while your sim is travelling, but there certainly is lag while the new lot loads up. The only difference is that the curtain is lifted, and you get to watch the messy preparations on stage. This makes it more frustrating, not less.
When confined to the home lot, it is possible to view all your sims on one screen, and see what they are all doing. If one of them runs out of queued actions, it is immediately apparent, and you can switch sims effortlessly (and without lag) to set up their next actions. It is a pleasant experience to watch multiple sims in the same family going about their business at home. In the later games, having the sims travel all over the map made it nearly impossible to focus on more than one sim at a time.
Indirectly, creating the open world meant that playing multiple households in a rotational style was no longer an option. Yes, it is still technically possible, but the game is no longer designed in such a way as to make it a fun experience. Let me explain: The original game was based on time management. The fun of the experience was in keeping your sims' motives full; when the hunger motive was low, you had the sim eat; when the hygiene motive was low, you had them take a shower, etc. A sim's chosen career had a series of levels you had to achieve. Advancing each level was contingent on going to work with full motive bars, and meeting a minimum standard of certain skills, and maybe social contacts. The goal, as I saw it, was to first, fill your sims' motives, and second, hone whatever extra skills they needed for their next promotion, while also timing everything so that your sim's motives would be full at the beginning of their work day. In the Sims 2, when you saved the game and exited the lot, the game file for that household would be paused, awaiting your return. With an open world, this is no longer the case, because the whole neighbourhood is in one save file. It doesn't have to be this way, but the development team did not deem it important to have nested save files, once they dreamed up the idea of the open world. In the later games, the motives are not preserved in a household, once you leave, so even if you play in a rotational style, your progress is not maintained, and each time you go back to a household, you have to regain your bearings.The developers and modders made some efforts to bring back the magic of The Sims 2 rotational play. They created toggles for aging and story progression, but they were never able to achieve motive preservation.
In the Sims 5, I implore you to bring back rotational style play the way it was meant to be. This means using nested save files for each household, within the larger neighbourhood file. It is important to understand which sim-related files should go in the world folder, and which should go in the household folder. This is what made Sims 2 work so well. Although I am not happy with the open world scenario for several other reasons, it is still possible to build a game with both an open world, and nested save files for rotational play.
