Bring back Whims!!!

"fruitsbasket101;c-17262391" wrote:

"Felicity;c-17262364" wrote:

"Pamtastic72;c-17262228" wrote:

"comicsforlife;c-17261671" wrote:

"Pamtastic72;c-17261661" wrote:
I thought we still had them...they’re just on a toggle in game settings where you can turn them off or on.

the issue is there not adding new ones @Pamtastic72

They’ve often indicated they can see what features we use in game, like they stopped adding secret lots because they had some kind of data that showed few players visited them. Perhaps it’s the same with whims. They may have data that shows that few players interact with them, especially since being able to toggle them off, and so they haven’t bothered to add new ones. I turned mine off a long time ago and hav never given them a second thought because I found them boring and repetitive and the constant cycling of them was intrusive.

Problem with the secret lots is there is nothing to do in them -- had they made them interesting places to go, they'd be used more. Same with whims. If they were relevant and interesting, they'd be used. Sims 2 had incredible depth, with wants, fears, etc. Sims 3 had a lot of depth as well, with whims being based on personality and current interests. Sim on a reading jag? They'll get wishes to read more. They stop reading for awhile and move onto painting? They'll roll fewer book-related wishes and more painting-related ones. Sims 4? They are just not interesting at all, and are quite repetitive.

I was going to comment something like this. I totally agree. The problem with the way they get their game data is that it doesn't show why people aren't using things just that they aren't. They seem to think that people not playing much with something means we don't want it. So instead of improving on something they take it out which, to me, is just a lazy way of thinking. Find out why your players don't use certain items. They may find that with slight improvements these things would get used more often.

My favorite example of telemetry fail is for Dragon Age Origins. The devs were shocked at how popular the romance with Leliana was, with over 90% of players ending the game in a romance with her. They brought her back because they saw her as so beloved. The thing is, Leliana had a lot of really nasty bugs -- a few were related to her romance. One would switch on her romance flag inadvertently in a certain conversation with her. Then there was one where she'd confront you, and when your surprised warden would then break up with her, the flag to break up the romance was not set, leaving the warden in a romance with her and that conversation would never trigger again. So yes, the only way to avoid that scenario in an unmodded game is to not talk to her very much. And what's worse is the devs knew these bugs existed, there were endless complaints about the ending slides mentioning her over Morrigan and Zevran (slides were triggered in alphabetical order so only Alistair romances avoided the incorrect slides), yet they kept insisting that she really was that popular. Probably because one of the lead devs adored her.

Edit: The way this relates to the Sims is that looking at the telemetry without understanding WHY the data looks the way it does means there's a lot of bad information out there. Most people are not statisticians and do not really know how to interpret data. It's not nearly as simple and straight forward as most people believe. You can see trends, of course, but that gives you a starting point, not an ending one, if you want to know what your numbers are actually saying.