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7 years ago
"Writin_Reg;c-16222093" wrote:"Deshong04;c-16222051" wrote:"Writin_Reg;c-16221495" wrote:
They did. One at Maxis in Redwood City and one in Salt Lake City EA studios. They also had the store team at Salt Lake City Studios.
Personally I think the issue stems from the Smart Technology engine - that is the issue - made for multi-tasking, emotions, walk styles, and communicating between characters. There sounds to me there is little in this game engine that focuses on anything else we need our sims to do - so it is no wonder when we want sims to actually do something besides those things above - it all has to be made from scratch.
Okay, thanks."Erpe;c-16221590" wrote:
Yes Grant is a producer who just is in charge of the production and coordinates things. So in the beginning it sounds correct that he can’t do much because things just are chaos and experiments about inventing a new technology.
Maxis only has two studios left after EA closed both the Maxis studio in Emeryville (who made Spore and Darkspore) and the Maxis studio in Salt Lake City who made 4 EPs for TS3. So now Maxis only has the studio in Redwood (who makes the PC version of TS4) and the studio in Helsinki (who makes SimCity BuildIt, the console version of TS4 and maybe also most of the work on the Sims Mobile).
But to say that this is the reason why TS4 only gets one EP a year is to turn things around because EA didn’t “lose” the studios in Emeryville and Salt Lake. EA deliberately chose to close those studios because EA didn’t want to release 2 EPs a year anymore! The reason must be that EA didn’t think that it would be a profitable strategy anymore. So EA planned to release GPs as half priced “EPs” instead of one of the full priced EPs and apparently the GPs sell better than EPs because EA has now chosen to release twice as many GPs a year compared to the original strategy which EA used in the beginning.
So no! I don’t accept the idea that EPs are more difficult to make for TS4 than they were for TS2 and TS3 ;) That is in no way the reason why EA chose to close the studio in Salt Lake! EA just don’t want to release more yearly expansions than EA does now because then EA would expect sales numbers to go down too much. There is a limit to how much the average simmer will spend on the game each year!
So EA just gives Maxis more time to make each EA or let Maxis use fewer developers on making the EPs - and probably especially in the first months after each release of an EP.
I said the reason why I think TS4 is getting one EP a year is because of the limiting game engine. If every time they want to add something major, the case seems to be they have to first rewrite some things in order for it to be possible then incorporate the EP. But the game engine should already be what the game needs. When it comes to technology, TS4 already started out with something incapable of real innovation and was never meant to be a life simulator in the first place.
You can believe whatever you want and I'm going to come to my own conclusions.
Deshong her some reading for you - here is an article popular Mechanics mag did on the Sims 4 engine - as you can see it is as I described.
http://www.popularmechanics.com/culture/gaming/a10698/inside-the-mind-of-the-sims-4-16906802/
And in comparison - here is what was involved in the making of the Sims 2 and it's engine. And why we feel they went in a totally wrong direction for the Sims 4. This design was pretty much the same for Sims 3, just more enhanced as they used an enhanced version of the same engine Sims 2 had. Sims 4 they went off the beaten path totally with the brand new smart technology engine.
http://aigamedev.com/open/highlights/the-sims-ai/
The first link points to a source from even before the Sims 4 basegame was finished and it says that the game engine is more advanced because other characters than those controlled by the player now are more intelligent. This is probably correct and even the player controlled characters now can ignore us and act on their own.
But the price for those “improvements” was IMO way too high because it came on the cost of the open world and I don’t want the sims that are under my control to ignore me anyway. If we then consider the reduced content in both the basegame and in all the expansions then there is no doubt in my mind that the extended autonomy of the sims came for a way too high price. Therefore I just gave up on TS4 after only having bought the first GP and the first EP because I knew that later expansions never would be able to solve the problems that I had with this version of the game.
We don’t know what EA will focus on instead in the next version (TS5). But I don’t believe that EA once more will focus on more autonomy for such a huge cost. So at least I don’t think that TS5 can become worse than TS4 and we are allowed to hope ;)
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