Future Development post My Wedding Stories

Please just hurry and get Sims 5 developed. I was excited at first for an attraction system in Wedding Stories. Without one, I am not interested in the pack in any way or form, and I have bought everything up to now hoping for additional gameplay. I still love Sims 3, it has a depth Sims 4 does not and I don't think it ever will be capable of having. It is great for builders from what I have seen, but I want it to actually play characters and have them come to life for me and I can't seem to find that with this iteration.

I have three teenagers in Gen 3 in a History challenge and this is the furthest I have ever gotten. I have gotten bored and stopped playing for months after just one generations in previous plays after each new pack.

I see so many calls for pack refreshes, but why are they even needed, how many other games have fans asking for almost every pack to be refreshed. Don't even get me started on cars. Where are we supposed to drive them? One block on most neighborhoods? Paranormals? I would love fairies, dragons, werewolves, etc... but each one would likely take up a complete pack, and mess up the game even more.

When a game requires mods for certain packs to be playable, it is time to move on.

I've seen several comments here indicating that they think TS5 will be muti-player and/or more console focused. What makes you think that? I'm genuinely curious. Personally, I have no interest in playing multi-player or console games. I don't like console controllers and part of the joy of playing the sims is that I'm alone and don't have to deal with other people. There are other games for collaborative gameplay, teamwork, or battles/duels. I don't want my sims time to have to correspond to my friend's time zone and work schedule. Part of the fun of the sims is that I can be left alone and zone out when I'm playing it. It's perfect for my little introverted self.

If I'm speculating on where TS4 will go post wedding stories, then I'd have to say that I hope they put a lot of development into much-needed fixes or, better yet, lengthen the development schedule between new releases. I also think they really need to step up their QA. The base game launch was a disaster. Wedding stories was a disaster. Dine out has never worked properly. Remember the Pets add-on stuff pack? All these little cash grabs make it seem like EA is so devoted to sticking to a schedule that they have a habit of putting out half-baked, buggy content and then never going back to properly fix it. There's a lot to love about The Sims, but I think they'd benefit from either leaving more time between packs so that they can really develop them fully OR hiring more devs and QA teams to really make sure that what they do release actually works.

One of the things I've really liked in S4 are the worlds. I love the Snowy Escape world and Sulani! I'd love it if they expanded on some of the occult sims and their worlds. For instance, an Atlantis world for the mer sims would be great. An expanded Sixam that actually has aliens living on it would be awesome. It would be nice if we could check a "culture" box for each world, so that Mer sims would be most likely to spawn as NPCs and townies and whatnot on the Mer world, aliens on the alien world, star wars characters on the star wars world, spellcasters in the spellcaster world, vampires in the vampire world, etc. And maybe the reverse could be available, as well. Maybe a preference against occult sims in non-occult worlds would be a good addition. I'd also like another blank world, like Newcrest, but maybe with the option to choose different backgrounds/set dressings? I'd love it if you could use an interface kind of like the club uniform interface from Get Together to choose a few cultural outfits for each world. I'd also love to be able to set seasonal weather patterns for each world. Townies sometimes spawn up looking kinda silly; having some control over townie clothing options would make worlds feel more cohesive. I feel like TS4 feels pretty complete in terms of gameplay. Where it can really expand and shine, I think, is in adding more and more diverse worlds. Remember how beautiful Egypt and China were in previous games? Why not add something like a Safari world, with fun new animals? Or a river world, like the Amazon? Or a canal world, like Venice? A Greek-inspired world, full of beautiful blue seas and white-domed buildings! A mountain world, like the Alps or the Himalayas? TS4 has some really lovely art design. I would love it if they would expand the worlds so that we have more to explore.

@Palabra

The answer to your question very complex, but I'll try to sum it up succinctly:


The sims 4 was originally supposed to be an online game. It was called Project Olympus. For various reasons, including the fact that many people did not want that style of gaming for the Sims and the fact that Sim City, a game that implemented that playstyle failed and also that other online branches of the main Sims games all failed, the Sims team decided late in the development stage to keep with the single player format.

Some Simmers believe that the game engine was not designed for this kind of complex gameplay and thus they blame the engine and the team's early design choices for the technical limitations of game play, things like loading screens, closed worlds, AI, etc. There is also the fact that Sims 4 base game is far less expansive than the Sims 3, which had many features that do not exist even now in the Sims 4.

In addition, EA as a company is well known for preferring its games to have online gaming and microtransactions, which bring in a great deal more money than games and other types of packs. Unfortunately, EA have proven that they have not abandoned this practice for the Sims as they introduced kits, which are expensive for their content and require less work than other packs because they have no gameplay, which people naturally want.

Console play does not allow for mods or custom content. Many people very much want those things in their games for fixing bugs and customising gameplay. Some believe that Custom content, which is free, competes with kits and potentially causes a loss of revenue for EA. Recent evidence suggests that for the first time, Console players rival PC players in their numbers. Incentives taken by EA in encouraging new console based players seems to have been successful. We have recently had some confirmation that the game will have online features and that makes people nervous.

The issue of quality control and bug fixing is self explanatory, some major bugs have been in the game for years and have not been resolved. However, some people think that the recent poor performance of newly released packs is due to budget constraints and possibly the fact that the team is slowly shifting over to Sims 5 production, but we have received a great deal of messaging that the Sims 4 is expected to continue for years to come, but the question is in what manner?

It is undeniable in my opinion, that the aesthetics of the game are solid, but you need more than icing to make a cake. If you consider all of these things together, then perhaps you can understand why some people fear the future of the franchise.

But, don't take my word for it, look it up and confirm or refute it for yourself.

Edited for typos

I'm wondering, was their a steep drop in quality for the Sims 3 before the Sims 4 was released? Because I can't remember any decline in quality.

I remember them releasing some interesting packs (Into the Future, Island Paradise) towards the end of the Sims 3. I know that Island Paradise was very buggy when it came out and still is, but overall it was a fantastic pack, one of the best of the Sims 3 in my opinion. And Into the Future didn't personally appeal to me, but I don't remember it being a bad pack.

If the reason for Sims 4 declining quality is that they're now working on the Sims 5, I'm a bit concerned. My Wedding Stories is probably the most buggy Sims pack to date, and the steep drop in quality is huge. It almost seems like their abandoning the game. Sims 2 and Sims 3 weren't abandoned like this.

I don't trust companies that just abandon games, like EA is doing with the Sims 4. They should at least make them stable for the people that enjoy them.
And no, I doubt Sims 5 will be any better. If they can just treat their old games so badly, what makes you think they'll treat the Sims 5 any better?

I was doing some research. So around the release of sims 4 a bunch of maxis studios closed down. For a long time there was only one Maxis studio. Now there seems to be 2 Maxis studios (California, US and europe) working on Sims 4. The Europe one is recent so Im thinking we will start seeing maybe an increase in quality or at least a decrease in the time between packs sometime in the future. And the Europe studio is probably gonna work on Sims 5 too. There is another studio in Texas and they are working on a separate Maxis IP. And I think they might be working on Sims 5 too. The California studio is also working on Sims 5.

This is all speculation but you can clearly see it just from ea job postings. Some will specifically say Sims 4 while some say The Sims. And then others don't mention either which probably means it's related to the separate maxis IP. Based on ea job postings there is mostly postings for engineers and designers for sims 4. And designers are usually making the UI and game systems. For Sims 5 there is a mixture with postings for producers, engineers, modelers, designers, lighting artist (I can't remember the specific name). For the new Maxis IP I think there is also a mixture but then also for cloud engineers (for online services).

So yeah I guess knowing this is interesting. I hope the Europe studio starts producing content soon because it seems like the current devs are overworked and understaffed and are struggling to meet deadlines. Also apparently in game you can look at the credits to see the amount of ppl that worked on each pack so you can use that to compare the recent pack to previous ones that launched better.

Can you guys just listen to occult players and stop nerfing them whenever people whine about their existence? It's really frustrating. I miss TS2 and 3 when we'd get occults with almost every EP.

"PlayerSinger2010;c-18069592" wrote:
Can you guys just listen to occult players and stop nerfing them whenever people whine about their existence? It's really frustrating. I miss TS2 and 3 when we'd get occults with almost every EP.

I miss those too

"temporalgod;c-18069712" wrote:
We're getting a bit off track, so let's talk about Wedding Stories, your Bachelor parties are boring, there's no Temptation at all where are the Entertainers or gambling machines, because drinking juice at the counter just ain't going to cut it.

This thread is actually not about wedding stories .It was more about how were ready for sims 5 or how this game is non tstable. How we are afraid that the more packs they will release .The buggier the game becomes that the packs will be broken.

I think we all have every reason to be concerned about the possibility of "spaghetti code" where the game becomes overloaded and each new pack added causes multiple bugs and performance issues, because it's exactly what we saw at the end of the Sims 3 lifespan. The question is are we approaching that stage now or not?

"PlayerSinger2010;c-18069592" wrote:
Can you guys just listen to occult players and stop nerfing them whenever people whine about their existence? It's really frustrating. I miss TS2 and 3 when we'd get occults with almost every EP.

I agree. I rarely play with occults but i sympathise with occult players and at times I feel I am the minority with this issue. I hate this attitude of occults don’t belong in the game it’s been in the game since sims 1 making’ magic. Although I don’t play occults they are a huge part of the game. Sims 4 seems very lacklustre for occult players and I wish you guys have more content. Sadly I do t think this will be a big priority in sims 5 either ?