Everyone loses without a CAW tool

I get tired of their telemetry. lol I used CAW in TS3 for myself but never shared my worlds, so how do they know since 99% of all the time I never played while online, and I never let that dang launcher connect to internet, it was blocked. I'm smart enough to know they call home even if the game isn't being played but anytime my pc is connected to internet, but also smart enough to know how to block those hidden things from dialing out or sending any sort of message. So, their telemetry has to be skewed. :p

I totally agree. I didn't use CAW myself in TS2 or TS4, but that was because I used to only play with a single world in previous iterations. In TS4, I wouldn't need the new world we get with most EPs, I hardly have to time to fill them with builds I like (I'm very picky with that) so they end up unused and I end up frustrated because of the half empty worlds.

The creation of new worlds takes up an incredible amount of resscources that could easily spend with expanding the actual game play. With CAW, those players who like a lot of different worls could download custom created ones, choose the size and amount to their liking and players with lower end computers could maybe even delete some of the EA premade worlds and play with some of them. For instance, I heard of many people not playing in Oasis Springs at all, or not liking New Crest or Magnolian Promenade.

I never looked at it that way before (as I don't need CAW, so thanks a lot for opening my eyes to the extend of this issue, @DreamaDove . I hope EA will notice it, too, and react accordingly.

I absolutely agree. I continually used to make worlds in CAW for myself and used them often. Very often! I absolutely loved being able to create my own environments for my sims and so miss this tool. The players imaginations used to be allowed to run free! Sims 4 is so restricted as it is, even though developers work hard to provide stuff for the players. However, no matter how much they add to the game, (necessarily restricted by developers' time) to offer tools which would allow players to expand their own creativity within the game would be amazing and I'm sure would gain many more players' votes.

Myself, I wish they still left in the ability to texture our own clothes and such. Like that flower print? Put it on a skirt. Like that cheetah texture? Put it on a rug. I personally feel the 10 or so choices in colors for things is rather restrictive, and wish we could be as creative as we were in Sims3. Honestly it wouldn't matter if they even gave us just 1 choice of color if we could retexture things like we could before. :/

I also get how they probably had to make the loading screens so there's no point in having transportation anymore, but it'd still be nice to get a car and make a garage. Guess the best we can do now is buy a toy car and make it bigger and just pretend. I heard tho we might be able to edit the terrain again like we could before in sims 3 when I agonized over a underground garage for my fallout shelter styled home.

I agree. In TS2, I've never played the pre-made worlds...even before I knew about the save corruption issues they have if you don't clean them up. I recently got TS3 to see what about that game people find so appealing (so far, I'm not particularly impressed...but I haven't gotten too far in my test saves yet because of school, so I'm reserving final judgement until I'm at least 50-100 hours into things) and downloaded CAW, but I'm still learning to use it properly. My main criticism of the TS3 CAW tool is that you don't get a decent preview of the map templates in the starting menu, just this weird grayscale thing that doesn't give you a good idea of what the land templates look like before you load them up, and it's difficult to discern the actual scale of the landmass when you do load it up in the program, so I can see why it might have been underused--it's not that intuitive. You really do need to read those tutorials to know how to use the thing. Better map template previews and some form of visual scaling element would have done wonders for TS3 CAW's intuitiveness and ease of use. Give me a bare chunk of land in the middle of a blue field of ocean, I have a hard time discerning how big that chunk of land is. Put a clump of trees or a strip of road down, then I can get a better picture of what I'm working with...and whoever had the "brilliant" idea of having those grayscale height maps instead of a decent picture of the landscape you're about to open up should be sent to bed without desert. No cake for that one.

If TS4 had a world creation tool that was intuitive to use and well-designed on a visual level, that would definitely enhance the game enormously. But, they need to learn from the poor design decisions that make TS3's incarnation of the tool confusing and cumbersome to use for more visually-oriented people like me.

The way worlds work, I struggle to think of a way for them to implement a CAW style tool. Most things are just decorations, the road system is basically decorative, the lot system looks very basic and rudimentary. Granted it could be done, but I just can't see it in this iteration.

I also don't think they lose much in terms of time. Since most things in a world are deco, it means the FX and modeling team does most of the work. They have 0 impact on gameplay or coding.

I will disagree however on the lack of gameplay with EPs. Previous iterations also had worlds involved in packs as well as certain aspects being gameplay lacking or with no depth. This is nothing new, they just need to change up how much depth is put into gameplay additions. Many things are very fleshed out and detailed, others not so much. This trend began with TS3 sadly. In every iteration the packs have plenty of content including TS4. Of course some of it is very shallow, some of it is very detailed.

"Archieonic;c-16861534" wrote:
The way worlds work, I struggle to think of a way for them to implement a CAW style tool. Most things are just decorations, the road system is basically decorative, the lot system looks very basic and rudimentary. Granted it could be done, but I just can't see it in this iteration.

I also don't think they lose much in terms of time. Since most things in a world are deco, it means the FX and modeling team does most of the work. They have 0 impact on gameplay or coding.

I will disagree however on the lack of gameplay with EPs. Previous iterations also had worlds involved in packs as well as certain aspects being gameplay lacking or with no depth. This is nothing new, they just need to change up how much depth is put into gameplay additions. Many things are very fleshed out and detailed, others not so much. This trend began with TS3 sadly. In every iteration the packs have plenty of content including TS4. Of course some of it is very shallow, some of it is very detailed.

World building takes a lot of time and budget, that much they've admitted in the past. And if there's not so much to them, then it makes sense that even WE could put those together had we the neighborhood building tools that the team uses.

I thought TS3 packs were quite, well, packed. I don't think that ts3 teams spent as much time world building since they already had a world making system their disposal. Plus, ts3 had a larger team and budget so they could 'afford' to give a chunk to world creation. The ts4 team is much smaller and has a smaller budget, so the money it takes to create 'worlds' has a bigger impact.

@"Archieonic;c-16861534" wrote:
The way worlds work, I struggle to think of a way for them to implement a CAW style tool. Most things are just decorations, the road system is basically decorative, the lot system looks very basic and rudimentary. Granted it could be done, but I just can't see it in this iteration.

A modular system similar to TS2's could work well. In TS2, you choose a template for your neighborhood which includes roads and geological features, then you choose a terrain type (desert, lush, concrete or dirt). TS4's could allow for these choices, as well as choice of skybox, road style, neighborhood decorations, and secret location. Collectables would spawn in pre-determined spots on the map depending on the world template you choose, and the type of collectables that would spawn would be determined by the terrain type chosen (desert, lush, etc.). It could work quite well if the devs could find a way to implement a system like that. Meanwhile, a more in-depth CAW that would be a true improved successor to TS3's could be developed to launch with TS5...if they make a TS5.

"SimsLovinLycan;c-16861568" wrote:

@"Archieonic;c-16861534" wrote:
The way worlds work, I struggle to think of a way for them to implement a CAW style tool. Most things are just decorations, the road system is basically decorative, the lot system looks very basic and rudimentary. Granted it could be done, but I just can't see it in this iteration.

A modular system similar to TS2's could work well. In TS2, you choose a template for your neighborhood which includes roads and geological features, then you choose a terrain type (desert, lush, concrete or dirt). TS4's could allow for these choices, as well as choice of skybox, road style, neighborhood decorations, and secret location. Collectables would spawn in pre-determined spots on the map depending on the world template you choose, and the type of collectables that would spawn would be determined by the terrain type chosen (desert, lush, etc.). It could work quite well if the devs could find a way to implement a system like that. Meanwhile, a more in-depth CAW that would be a true improved successor to TS3's could be developed to launch with TS5...if they make a TS5.

I would be okay with that. I don't require super complex worlds with lots of effects. Just something simple that fits the story that I want to tell.

"DreamaDove;c-16861551" wrote:

"Archieonic;c-16861534" wrote:
The way worlds work, I struggle to think of a way for them to implement a CAW style tool. Most things are just decorations, the road system is basically decorative, the lot system looks very basic and rudimentary. Granted it could be done, but I just can't see it in this iteration.

I also don't think they lose much in terms of time. Since most things in a world are deco, it means the FX and modeling team does most of the work. They have 0 impact on gameplay or coding.

I will disagree however on the lack of gameplay with EPs. Previous iterations also had worlds involved in packs as well as certain aspects being gameplay lacking or with no depth. This is nothing new, they just need to change up how much depth is put into gameplay additions. Many things are very fleshed out and detailed, others not so much. This trend began with TS3 sadly. In every iteration the packs have plenty of content including TS4. Of course some of it is very shallow, some of it is very detailed.

World building takes a lot of time and budget, that much they've admitted in the past. And if there's not so much to them, then it makes sense that even WE could put those together had we the neighborhood building tools that the team uses.

I thought TS3 packs were quite, well, packed. I don't think that ts3 teams spent as much time world building since they already had a world making system their disposal. Plus, ts3 had a larger team and budget so they could 'afford' to give a chunk to world creation. The ts4 team is much smaller and has a smaller budget, so the money it takes to create 'worlds' has a bigger impact.

Agree to disagree then. To me things like Showtime were really superficial and shallow. Supernatural which is easily my favorite pack had things like werewolves being so basic and uninteresting, and fairies were not anywhere near in-depth as I would have hoped. Then things like Savvy Seller which IMO was a horrible offense to TS2 OFB. I hated how certain places like Spas were rabbit holes as that is just almost empty content. I much prefer fleshing out things like Vampires (which I welcomed only due to how indepth they are in comparison to previous iterations and sparkling nonsense) or Get Together that make day to day more unique than the usual. But I'll put that aside as that becomes an argument of quantity or quality and I got my share of TS3 up until 2017 so no major complaints.

Also they must have a world building tool for TS4 too, just not public nor tailored for users. The whole "world building takes a lot" IMO is an excuse to justify other short-comings. A 5 lot world with 90% decoration cannot be a hit on anything other than the designers and FX team. On the other hand having packs with worlds in them is another way to incentivize buyers, which EA certainly wants. Without stats we really can't tell if their strategy is working but given how long they want to stretch this iteration, I'd say they are making it rain. For us though, it sucks. I too miss CAW and the worlds that were made.

Even with the larger team and budget, the team that works on world building would have little impact on gameplay or coding. Programmers have little to do with world building in this iteration because the worlds are so simplistic. So really I don't believe everything they say at all. One single modder was able to create and fix so many things by himself on TS3 where I had a multiple world save going for 2 years without corruption or bloating that it is impossible for me to believe they couldn't fix the myriad of issues in TS3.

I am in favor of CAW in TS4 don't get me wrong there. Being able to have other worlds with highrises would be phenomenal for example.