Forum Discussion

6 years ago

"Happy Haunts lost, I guess you can't please everyone!" Predictable poll results article

I don't really see a specific place to put this so here it is, as expected Arts & Crafts won the player poll, which honestly seems practically by design.

Something I learned about reading a news article this morning with a sentence that was almost word for word the quoted portion of the topic title ending it is that the likelihood of occult jobs coming in the near future just tanked.. again... Because when it comes to it the number of people who will vote realism is marginally higher

And I'm not even slightly surprised, honestly I actually want arts and crafts but I voted as well as I was able on the oddly formatted poll for happy haunts and entirely excluded everything else as much as possible because I figured that something like arts and crafts would come along in the future anyway while anything occult has to be practically /begged/ for

And that's just it, happy haunts reportedly came in just after arts & crafts, again as predicted because there is always around a 60/40 split between people in the community on what they want with realism players nearly always winning out simply because there are a few more and they tend to be /much/ louder with their demands.

And it makes me question why they would pair up occult themed possibilities with realism based possibilities at all unless it's just to say "well we did give the occults a chance to get what they wanted but they lost so... oh well, moving on."

A better and much more fair method would be to make a bunch of realism based packs and do a poll for them to let people decide on what out of those they want, then do the same for a bunch of occult themed packs, because as things stand now the occult side of things gets relatively ignored and underdeveloped even in packs built around occults (which again.. look at the realism content, now look at the occult content)

Almost half of the sims players are excluded from getting content and it seems like there is a huge disconnect between them and the dev's over /why/ that is the case, you'll almost never see dozens of occult players in every comment section of every YouTube video or tweet yelling over new realism packs the way others do over occult packs, you'll almost never see more than a few people being flat out /toxic/ the way people were over additions like RoM or mermaids being added or vampires being given some love because "This is s***! /We/ want cars! /We/ want university! Stop all this occult trash!"

It's frustrating that because some players are that venomous and that toxic they get catered to with a great deal of content while because occults tend towards being quieter and waiting to be drip-fed literally anything they rarely /get/ anything as a result

And when they do it's usually tagged on to a realism pack and is underdeveloped like mermaids or just seemingly unfinished like RoM which really could have had things like careers and a couple more skills added in--- like for example most everything advertised in happy haunts, or heck.. even just making it so that occults have some special interactions with other occults like vampires and spellcasters having some sort of special magic duel since both have magic since honestly most people who have one occult based pack probably have them all so having those sorts of interactions would be far from wasted and at least then they could all be shoehorned in /together/

This is probably just me venting my frustration, honestly I'm just kind of done with expecting that occult players will ever be given any kind of deep content of pretty much any kind until probably around the time when the game is running low as far as shelf-life goes, it has been years already and things haven't changed much, and I'm pessimistic about things ever doing so.

I'm not saying there is nothing that I like about the game or its content I love sims 4, I've been working on turning every world on one file into a medieval fantasy of sorts and I love it

I'm just saying that it seems like most of the content a large but undervalued portion of the fanbase would like to see is largely ignored in favor of the rest and it's kind of bs.

janyses
New Observer
5 years ago
"LiELF;c-17338509" wrote:
Nope. :D You picked out one sentence from my entire conversation, a sentence (that followed a short summary of information from developers) that was clearly speculative theory and was said in passing to the topic, while still referring to Sims 4, and you turned a magnifying glass on it and jumped on it because it didn't shine fairy lights on Sims 3, and you started talking about Sims 3 gameplay, claiming I was talking about Sims 3, which I really wasn't. You could have just let it pass by, it hardly mattered. Truly.

But since we're discussing it now, I'll add that just because you haven't seen players have problems with the toggles doesn't mean it didn't cause issues in development. Which is why I said, "Neither of us is a Sims developer so neither of us can actually say for sure what did or didn't cause issues, or what will or won't cause issues in the future." I'll also point out that even you yourself said that the devs were referencing the inability to use toggles in Sims 4... because you said this: "The problem is, apparently toggles in Sims 4 aren't possible," which is exactly what my point was in the first place, lol. So I think we can both agree that Sims 3 has no relevance here.

The actual topic, by the way, is the community voting poll, why realism players seem to get their way over Occult players, and if we're ever going to see the Happy Haunts content in the future. Toggles were spoken of in reference to Sims 4 Occult-based gameplay. It's not about Sims 3 in this thread, it's about Sims 4, and the single Sims 3 sentence I wrote was still in reference to Sims 4 and the topic. Now, are we done?

?????? Stanning.
Aryalandi
5 years ago
@ChadSims2 I'm not even going to argue with you, I'll just be equally passive aggressive with my reply.

if you want to pop in acting like you've been somehow wronged, I'm pretty sure I've mentioned before that /content in general could be fleshed out a great deal more than it is/ which if you'd bothered to read a few comments would be clear to you but I'm sorry you're such a hateful boy who never gets anything you want.

And perhaps it's too much to expect certain people not to come in with a flame bait response to the topic so I am deeply apologetic over anything I may have done to hurt your deep feelings.

Occults don't ignore strangerville, most just don't consider the pack occult.. because it's not. I actually liked strangerville as I said before. I'd like to see more storyline/RPG built packs come along..

I'd also love to have a go to work style military job, and several other follow to work styled jobs in general because newsflash /I have a military sim family, they are my second most played/ so agreed with you~ except for how it's laughable that you make it sound like you have no options, I must have missed the twenty occult jobs that are clearly in plain view on the careers list that my various occults can do.

>.> Also.. discovering aliens is the gameplay for them? Lol I always love how several aliens walk around in their real form and don't get discovered unless they use their powers, I must have missed where it's a huge discovery, maybe I can just naturally see through their disguises all the time.

Vampires are boring - wow it's almost like they were neutered or something in favor of realism players complaining about how they didn't want them in "their real life simulator" and just kind of aimlessly wander around just like every other sim even if they are literally starving to death.

Spellcasters cast spells - OooOooo~ .....lol... and the magic realm has so much to do even compared to Sulani with it's two new careers, change over time system where the island gets prettier, ability to go and do things that are unique to the islands in general, even if they are a rabbit hole... goodness I'd better rush back and take up that wizard career and get some nice robes for my spellcasters--- oh wait... that's not a thing.

Mermaids - *dolphin noises*
Aliens- *threaten with probe*

Lightning powers that take effort to get are a side feature - ReeeEeeaAalLy?? Its almost as though you said exactly what I said about them, for a side feature they sure do require a lot of carefully timed getting stricken by lightning or a lot of luck to not die, it's almost as though I think there should just be a way to lock those powers in or something~

You didn't want university - you're a special special snowflake.
SimsLovinLycan
5 years ago
I agree with the OP so, so much. I've been very busy with school lately, so I haven't been keeping up with everything on the forums, but it does not surprise me in the least that a crafting pack beat out a pack full of supernaturally-oriented activities. I mean, the last time there was a pack that the players were to vote on, we ended up with a whole stuff pack centered around one of the top five most boring chores in the modern world (Laundry is right up there with Washing the Dishes by Hand, Sweeping, Mopping, and Mowing the Lawn on the top five of tedium and drudgery).

Realism players (family and single-life players both) get way more content than supernatural players in TS4, way more often. The heavy fragmentation and slow-drip of content for this game in general doesn't help. However, we also have a dev team who are biased toward softer, more "slice-of-life" themed content, and a loud contingent of the realism player base who actively protest against the presence of anything even slightly supernatural, but still want to buy basically every one of the packs that come out for the Build/Buy and CAS stuff.

The thing is, we supernatural players don't want much compared to what realism players already have to play with. Most of us can agree, we want at least the major core supernaturals in the game and properly fleshed out by the end of its run. We also want a few skills, activities, and jobs that relate to magical/sci-fi themes for both our supernatural sims and our normie sims. These are things that can be achieved in 2-3 more GP's or a GP and an EP at most. That's all we really want at minimum. We know we probably won't won't get an East Asian Mythology pack; or a pack where we can upgrade our rockets into full-on, "Yo, this is my ride AND my crib!" starships; or a Superhero/Mad Science pack; or pet dragons; or unicorns/pegasi; or centaur sims; or an entire pack of Medieval through 18th Century stuff for our fantasy world building pleasure. Many of us want some or all of those bigger things exploring and expanding on both old and new supernatural territory, but here we are fighting just to get some BASIC stuff that we should have HAD already!!

And why? Because a few people didn't like alien abductions, which were subsequently nerfed...just like ANYTHING remotely cool or challenging in TS4 when the Sob Squad whines that "It's too hard!!" or "I don't like weird things!" It's like someone decided to clone Caillou over and over and over, then let said army of whining clones play a Sims game and make all the decisions about how the game should be made going forward...(and if you don't know who Caillou is, a quick search will bring you to all the reasons people can't stand him in very, very short order.) Wasn't the entire stated point of things like GP's and giving players the ability to install packs in any order they want supposed to be that every individual player can set their game up with the features they want, skip the ones they don't, and add in ones they skipped later if they changed their minds? Well, that went out the window as soon as the first realism player had a pity party over their hunky digital husbando getting knocked up by E.T.

I sure hope Paralives doesn't wimp out on supernatural content like TS4 did when the Caillou Army gets to crying...
ChadSims2
Seasoned Novice
5 years ago
"Amavari;c-17340758" wrote:
@ChadSims2 I'm not even going to argue with you, I'll just be equally passive aggressive with my reply.

if you want to pop in acting like you've been somehow wronged, I'm pretty sure I've mentioned before that /content in general could be fleshed out a great deal more than it is/ which if you'd bothered to read a few comments would be clear to you but I'm sorry you're such a hateful boy who never gets anything you want.

And perhaps it's too much to expect certain people not to come in with a flame bait response to the topic so I am deeply apologetic over anything I may have done to hurt your deep feelings.

Occults don't ignore strangerville, most just don't consider the pack occult.. because it's not. I actually liked strangerville as I said before. I'd like to see more storyline/RPG built packs come along..

I'd also love to have a go to work style military job, and several other follow to work styled jobs in general because newsflash /I have a military sim family, they are my second most played/ so agreed with you~ except for how it's laughable that you make it sound like you have no options, I must have missed the twenty occult jobs that are clearly in plain view on the careers list that my various occults can do.

>.> Also.. discovering aliens is the gameplay for them? Lol I always love how several aliens walk around in their real form and don't get discovered unless they use their powers, I must have missed where it's a huge discovery, maybe I can just naturally see through their disguises all the time.

Vampires are boring - wow it's almost like they were neutered or something in favor of realism players complaining about how they didn't want them in "their real life simulator" and just kind of aimlessly wander around just like every other sim even if they are literally starving to death.

Spellcasters cast spells - OooOooo~ .....lol... and the magic realm has so much to do even compared to Sulani with it's two new careers, change over time system where the island gets prettier, ability to go and do things that are unique to the islands in general, even if they are a rabbit hole... goodness I'd better rush back and take up that wizard career and get some nice robes for my spellcasters--- oh wait... that's not a thing.

Mermaids - *dolphin noises*
Aliens- *threaten with probe*

Lightning powers that take effort to get are a side feature - ReeeEeeaAalLy?? Its almost as though you said exactly what I said about them, for a side feature they sure do require a lot of carefully timed getting stricken by lightning or a lot of luck to not die, it's almost as though I think there should just be a way to lock those powers in or something~

You didn't want university - you're a special special snowflake.

Funny how angry you got when I actually agreed with you on a lot of the stuff my point is supernatural players complaining about the game supernatural features being basic with no depth while telling us how great the realistic game play is better, its not. No real effort is being put into any of it as I said, you say we get City Living no one asked for that we wanted to make our own apartments in the City and everywhere else as much as you wanted your witches to have robes sad that you cant see this fact. Seeing as you blame non supernatural players for poor vampires can I blame supernatural players for no apartments in Oasis Springs or should that be directed at the team who made both choices to put out a limited game.
Aryalandi
5 years ago
@ChadSims2 XD I wasn't the least bit angry in that reply, or you would know the difference. >.> fact is however that it absolutely /is/ on the realism players complaints about anything supernatural existing in sims 4 that has caused a lot of things to be nerfed, though I'll also concede that the team making things is at fault as well for watered down content.

I don't recall ever seeing occults screaming that they didn't want apartments, I've seen plenty of people however screaming that they don't want anything supernatural in their game.

And you know what? The dev's listened, I don't need to argue my point, frankly all I'll ever have to do to win this sort of debate is point to the list of available content between occults and realism players and I'll win most every time.
astridentanja
5 years ago
I still think nobody would have to have this conversation if they’d think things like this through a bit better. No spontaneous spawning, leave the decision to add supernaturals that come with a pack (and how they behave) with the player by adding toggles and triggers. I don’t believe in this realistic player - occult player polarisation anyway. Of course there will be players who want their game strictly realistic. Playing Sims will be a problem then regardless, it has so many unrealistic elements I don’t even know where to start. But I think a great deal of us are in a grey area: we like/love them but in a dosed amount. And the dosing is exactly what should lie in the player’s hands. Which is perfectly possible as we’ve seen in the past. The real problem here is not players wanting different things. The problem is EA throwing in things without taking the effort to add ways to control and canalize it. Whenever they did (supernatural toggles, a good triggering system like with TS3 genies), nobody complained.
Scobren
5 years ago
"JoAnne65;c-17341400" wrote:
I still think nobody would have to have this conversation if they’d think things like this through a bit better. No spontaneous spawning, leave the decision to add supernaturals that come with a pack (and how they behave) with the player by adding toggles and triggers. I don’t believe in this realistic player - occult player polarisation anyway. Of course there will be players who want their game strictly realistic. Playing Sims will be a problem then regardless, it has so many unrealistic elements I don’t even know where to start. But I think a great deal of us are in a grey area: we like/love them but in a dosed amount. And the dosing is exactly what should lie in the player’s hands. Which is perfectly possible as we’ve seen in the past. The real problem here is not players wanting different things. The problem is EA throwing in things without taking the effort to add ways to control and canalize it. Whenever they did (supernatural toggles, a good triggering system like with TS3 genies), nobody complained.

I agree about toggles helping with packs. I am an occult player too, but I wouldn't mind a toggle either for storytelling purposes. It would be kind of cool if Simmers could turn off packs too which also was a nice toggle in TS3. I do hate how the response to voting is making people polarize Simmers and assume their play styles. The voting is supposed to bring Simmers together not divide them into political party sides. Bad enough being around that kindergarten drama in real life. I rather keep politics out of my Sims games and experience as much as possible and keep that stuff to Twitter not have other people bring their Twitter drama to forums. I like occults too, but confining it just to a tiny SP is lame. The realistic little things can be squished to the tiny packs. I want more depth for the occult Sims and I want more toggles for them too which probably would have to be done in a patch. I have noticed a big fear of anything different during the Sims 4 lifetime which is very interesting to observe considering marketing supports the differences but the community does not. Something that Gurus and fans disagree with I guess.
Cemirror
5 years ago
Oof man, there really seems to an occult vs realism divide in this community...

I feel for the realism people. There's a lot of games out there about the occult, and Sims is one of the few ones that relish in the mundane elements of life. That said, I think the lack of challenge and stakes in the games really affects everyone.

I've tried to play two stories so far. One, more realistic, features a family of four who've just lost both parents. Another featured a trio of witches. In the more realistic one, it was impossible to ignore how uninteresting romance was and how easily all characters could get everything they wanted and how when someone died it took barely any time to recover. In the "occult" story, it was impossible not to note how unspecial being a witch seemed to be with random townies showing up and getting powers and how it seemed like being a witch gave you absolutely every power and advantage you ever wanted. Not to mention there are no consequences to mortals finding out you're magical, which, like, what? That's a staple of the witch genre!

Laundry was a surprisingly great pack to me because it added much needed difficulty. Clothes pile up and you actually have to do more work to just live comfortably! I don't think anyone's going to be grateful for a werewolf pack if the werewolf has to be friends with someone to turn them, can change forms whenever it feels like it, can be immortal for whatever reason, and can go to the supermarket in a horrifying wolf form without anyone blinking an eye - which I'm guessing is how it will turn out. The only way to move forward with the occult is to move backwards and say "What's consistently missing in this game that should have been here all along?"

I'm not sad Happy Haunts lost, because in my opinion, it seems like the Sims does a MUCH worse job at the occult then at realistic play. Witches, werewolves, vampires, fairies - these all need enemies, rules, limitations. And if Sims 4 won't up the stakes/difficulty of the, it will just be weird roaming the streets in wolf form and howling and having passerbys be like "Oh, hi Mark!" Obviously Happy Haunts wasn't werewolf related, but I strongly suspect the same point might have applied. But who knows? Maybe the close voting margin will inspire them to create another stuff pack for Happy Haunts?
pensive_gamer2
5 years ago
I definitely miss some of the wackier content of previous games, the unusual lifestates especially. All they really need to do is put some checkboxes in the Options menus about whether you want certain things to exist in your games or not. They could even do this for base-game stuff like ghosts if you want a completely mundane experience. Didn't Sims 2 or 3 have something that let you cap how many nonhumans you could have in a game?
astridentanja
5 years ago
"Scobre;c-17342016" wrote:
"JoAnne65;c-17341400" wrote:
I still think nobody would have to have this conversation if they’d think things like this through a bit better. No spontaneous spawning, leave the decision to add supernaturals that come with a pack (and how they behave) with the player by adding toggles and triggers. I don’t believe in this realistic player - occult player polarisation anyway. Of course there will be players who want their game strictly realistic. Playing Sims will be a problem then regardless, it has so many unrealistic elements I don’t even know where to start. But I think a great deal of us are in a grey area: we like/love them but in a dosed amount. And the dosing is exactly what should lie in the player’s hands. Which is perfectly possible as we’ve seen in the past. The real problem here is not players wanting different things. The problem is EA throwing in things without taking the effort to add ways to control and canalize it. Whenever they did (supernatural toggles, a good triggering system like with TS3 genies), nobody complained.

I agree about toggles helping with packs. I am an occult player too, but I wouldn't mind a toggle either for storytelling purposes. It would be kind of cool if Simmers could turn off packs too which also was a nice toggle in TS3. I do hate how the response to voting is making people polarize Simmers and assume their play styles. The voting is supposed to bring Simmers together not divide them into political party sides. Bad enough being around that kindergarten drama in real life. I rather keep politics out of my Sims games and experience as much as possible and keep that stuff to Twitter not have other people bring their Twitter drama to forums. I like occults too, but confining it just to a tiny SP is lame. The realistic little things can be squished to the tiny packs. I want more depth for the occult Sims and I want more toggles for them too which probably would have to be done in a patch. I have noticed a big fear of anything different during the Sims 4 lifetime which is very interesting to observe considering marketing supports the differences but the community does not. Something that Gurus and fans disagree with I guess.

Missed your post, is the voting really supposed to bring simmers together, they said that? Because voting never will, voting will always cause people to choose sides, digging their heels in to defend their choice. Less inclined to open up to the view and opinion of the ‘other side’ (creating one if necessary, which is what this whole topic is about in my opinion), because that will feel like undermining your own. I can’t tell you how much I HATE this whole voting for content business and how utterly glad I am I don’t have to be a part of it because I’m indifferent where it comes to content for Sims 4.

Anyway, totally agree with your arguments there.