Everyone loses without a CAW tool

"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.