Controlling Your Cats & Dogs: New Blog 8/31

"DegrassiGen;c-16003294" wrote:
Aside from the fact that creative control is yet again being taken away from us this line is what I find even more offensive "We think The Sims 4 Cats & Dogs is the best pets expansion we’ve ever made, and a big reason for that is the freedom we were granted by removing control."

Seriously EA your saying taking gameplay from storytellers is what makes an awesome expansion pack! And what's worst Simmers are supporting this because they believe that it's ok to control people but it's not ok to control a pet it's too unrealistic. I am so upset! The Sims used to be about giving the tools to give the players what they want to do and how to tell their own stories. I don't care how laggy The Sims 3 was cause we had so much freedom but more and more are we being told what to do and simply not being allowed to do what we could before. Why Simmers are supporting the idea of taking away gameplay from players I will never understand. And just as bad EA saying removing a feature is what makes a best expansion is truly heartbreaking. This is coming from someone who up until now always avoided these backlashes but I have to say my piece on this. We storytellers were let down badly.

I don't expect you to agree with the arguments for it, but I think the salient points are more or less that:

1) Even among their own devs, there was some impassioned disagreement. It's not just simmers. This was a polarizing question, even for them. In other words, it's not as though they flipped a coin and said who shall we throw under the bus.

2) The decision that was made, whether for better or worse, enabled them to make design decisions that simply wouldn't have otherwise been an option. Whether you, Degrassi, would enjoy the results of those design decisions is anyone's guess, especially since we haven't seen the feature set yet.

But it does sound like you can control your pet to a certain extent, just not in the literal, switch to their portrait and give them commands, meaning of control. They compared it to a real person's relationship with their sims, if I'm remembering correctly (I read the article earlier). So it may be a little bit like the Parenthood pack with children, where you can "influence" them to do certain things or (hopefully, though I'm speculating wildly now) you can train behavioral patterns or actions.

My recommendation is, give it some time and see what the feature set looks like when it comes out. Maybe you'll still abhor the idea of it, but you never know.