EA's not doing itself any favours in the Gallery

"pepperjax1230;c-16432921" wrote:
I have houses that came with the base game im Willow Creek that I have redone and added things from other packs in.

"stilljustme2;c-16432860" wrote:
My problem with the Gallery is that even when I keep the Show Custom Content box unchecked, when I'm looking for Sims to populate my world I end up seeing Sims loaded down with CC makeup and such.

I usually have a habit of doing that and loading them with CC everything and then uploading them. But I don't find it a bad thing because it won't come in your game if you use them off the gallery.

I prefer to find Sims that I don't have to tweak all that much, especially when I'm looking for Sims to provide extra population. I don't want to have to deal with nekkid Sims because they've got CC outfits or have to look for appropriate hair to replace whatever is on the Sim.

We need more and better filters and categories, that's all. No need to call for a general cleanout.

On top of my head half of the lots I've downloaded have download numbers in the double digits only, either because they cover niche themes or are just mediocre. The mediocre ones were great starting bases for venues I had in mind but couldn't really find a starting point. To lose the amazing ideas quarry that the gallery is now just to make the search for top rated items quicker is really too much to ask.

As for sims, many folks host modeling, bachelor or murder mystery challenges and sometimes basegame only is an actual requirement in those. The gallery is the most convenient way to share sims for such events. I'd be very angry if a quality control pruner culled half of my participants from the gallery and I'd have to fetch them from a dozen other hosting sites one by one. Another anecdote: Recently a friend made two families for me and messed up with the tray files, in effect cluttering my library with what looked like incomplete files (households couldn't be opened). And that was a normally computer-literate person.

@EnkiSchmidt

The mediocre ones are therefore more valuable to download? You may think they are mediocre but usually the creators are very proud of them and may be by youngsters being allowed to play. I find very creative work difficult to play due to too much decoration, sometimes routing issues and leaving no space for my imagination to work on them.

Re: Letting people play your game.
That's a lesson for copying your tray and Save files to somewhere safe before letting anyone else play with it! (Reminds me of when learning Microsoft Word, my tutor turned the PC off to teach me to keep saving my work).

"Simburian;c-16434629" wrote:
@EnkiSchmidt

The mediocre ones are therefore more valuable to download?

For me, yes, oftentimes. But that doesn't make any lot or sim worth more than another period. Downloadvalue depends on what you need in your game and is not related to quality (which is an elusive and highly subjective criterion anyway) or the effort put into a sim or venue.
That's what I wanted to point out with my examples. For the OP a given gallery item may be "only" basegame and thus not worth keeping in the database, but to another simmer this "only" basegame might just be what they need at the moment.

EDIT: Nah, I didn't let that friend access my game in person, they uploaded the families on SFS and I grabbed them from there. Along with aforementioned datajunk.

"EnkiSchmidt;c-16436180" wrote:

"Simburian;c-16434629" wrote:
@EnkiSchmidt

The mediocre ones are therefore more valuable to download?

For me, yes, oftentimes. But that doesn't make any lot or sim worth more than another period. Downloadvalue depends on what you need in your game and is not related to quality (which is an elusive and highly subjective criterion anyway) or the effort put into a sim or venue.
That's what I wanted to point out with my examples. For the OP a given gallery item may be "only" basegame and thus not worth keeping in the database, but to another simmer this "only" basegame might just be what they need at the moment.

EDIT: Nah, I didn't let that friend access my game in person, they uploaded the families on SFS and I grabbed them from there. Along with aforementioned datajunk.

Yes, I uploaded some old first, try basegame lots from the old PC and they were the most popular downloads for others. Borrowers should avoid my lots as I use everything, even hamster cages. I hope you still get on with your friend. :)

"Francl27;c-16432832" wrote:
It just needs to be improved dramatically to have search parameters that are way more varied - so that you can pick the lots that match your EP/GP/SPs exactly.

This! It makes searching for things pretty pointless when a lot of creators use just about every pack and there's no way to exclude them from the results.

I save my builds on the gallery. If EA didn't want us to then they wouldn't allow it. I do think they should overhaul the pictures of both the lots and the sims so we can see them better. And give them better expressions.