"ACruelButLovingGod;c-17911785" wrote:
"Naus;c-17911665" wrote:
"ACruelButLovingGod;c-17911352" wrote:
The moral of the story is that you're guaranteed to anger someone whenever you have to deal with a super long-running game that's active many years after you launch it (heck, look at World of Warcraft, which came out in 2004 and which Blizzard has to keep current so it doesn't feel and look like a relic today compared to other MMO games). Keep it accessible and people complain about the technical restraints. Keep up with developments in tech and game design and older players feel left behind or like they have to buy a new computer. You're pretty much boned either way.
Sorry, but the moral of the story is that games SHOULD NOT run for so long. This Games-As-A-Live-Service model may work for MMOs like WoW, but it's a terrible idea for single-player games. They should be released, expanded for a few years, and then move on to a new version.
I don't believe should be made to buy the same basic stuff such as weather over and over either. A basic weather system should be part of the base game like it's part of MOST games nowadays. Just because The Sims has been doing something for years, it doesn't mean it's a good thing.
If they keep up, they're going to end up killing the franchise, especially if competition comes out such as Paralives or whatever game Paradox is developing with Rod Humble.
See, I disagree with that idea. I love single-player games with massively long tails that are nearly endlessly expandable and get new content support many years after initial release form a good chunk of my actual gaming time.
@ACruelButLovingGod You do realize though that there are big issues that come with such games running for a long time. First of all, the game cannot evolve and become better and we see that in the Sims 4, how difficult it is for it to be something more than it's predecesors. We can never change the engine/fountation of the Sims 4. It's there and it will be there until we decide to evolve and move on. All we can do is throw things over it to make it seem like it's changing. There is no fundamental change in the Sims 4 and there will never be unless we decide to move on.
Then there is the problem of newer machines having trouble running such old software. It is already happening with the Sims 4 not running well enough on newer machines.
And then most importantly there is the issues of "spaghetti code", which is a huge problem the Sims 4 has been facing for so many years and there is no way to overcome it unless we start over.
In theory it is a nice concept to be adding to a game so you "make it better" but in reality it doesn't work like that.
I understand people are very attached to their money, especially when they have spent so much but I think it's important to realize that the products you bought will not be taken away from you if the Sims team decides to move on from this game.
