Henford-on-Bagley is a new ridiculously small world again

"EnigmaOFFC;c-17909275" wrote:
I really hate how the community agreed to pretend that a world with 11/12 lots is ok. its not ok guys. It should always be at least the same size as Windenburg or bigger.

Well, you have to realise that some people aren't pretending. It's the way I really feel, for one, so I'm sure others do too. My gameplay is such that I only need small worlds. I have a couple of residential lots in a world for my active family and their friends/relatives, and then I have the community lots I need. Because each world is connected (so that my world will be populated with Sims even if they aren't homed in my current world) and we no longer have rabbit hole schools/career places, 12 is plenty for me. And if I really need extra lots, I can just have an out-of-town shopping district or family who live in another part of the country/world, as it's so easy to travel between them.

Personally, with each world being connected and broken down into hoods (and for the reasons I explained above), I can't understand why people desperately want large worlds, but I don't say they're wrong or pretending or lying. I understand that our viewpoints are different on this matter and you probably don't understand my viewpoint either, but it doesn't mean that either of us are pretending.

"SimmerGeorge;c-17909191" wrote:

"Jyotai;c-17909132" wrote:

My thought. At 5 years in, Sims 3 was no longer a game capable of stability on even that year's newest hardware if one ran the whole game. It was rapidly spinning out of control with excessive load on a machine's hardware. Yet Sims 4 is now 6 or 7 years old, and still rock stable on even less than current PCs.

@Jyotai The Sims 3 came out in 2009 so even the fact that it had an open-world was very ambitious but from 2009 to 2014 to 2021 technology has evolved sooooo much, there is not way EA can't make bigger worlds, while keeping the game stable. It's just the bad engine they use in my opinion.

Also the Sims 4 ain't so "rock stable". It causes problems with newer hardware cause it's so obsolete, not well-optimized and it suffering under a very big, yet still ignored, case of "spaghetti code". I mean the game is so full of bugs and oversights at this point that no matter how easy it is on the PC, it's still doesn't matter when you have simulation lag etc.

Finally, yes it's a good thing that players with older systems can play. But, even in 2014 when the game came out it could be played on a potato. Imo they kind of overdid it with the "holding back so it runs on older systems". I mean if your system is from 2010-2012 I'm sorry but I don't think any company should be obligated to make games for you. EA proudly says the Sims 4 is one of the only games that runs on older systems but that's a negative thing, the reason why the Sims 4 is the only one is cause all other gaming companies are willing to take a step further and make games for the future.
It's like telling a company that develops phone apps to make it so the app runs on a Nokia phone with buttons. That means the quality of the product will drop in order to increase the "audience".
The game will never evolve if they keep making it so it runs on decade old systems. But only the Sims 4 is willing to sacrifice evolution to have a broader audience. All other companies put the product in the forefront and find a good middle way to handle this.

I agree as for me EA/Maxis is stuck in 2014 and too nervous to move forward and I feel they may not evolve Sims 5 properly.

"crocobaura;c-17909293" wrote:

"filipomel;c-17909287" wrote:
This wouldn't be such a bother if we had the ability to at least duplicate worlds. If a modder can do it so can the developers.

Isn't that what new saves are for?

Only if you're not a rotational player with one main save. Which many of us are.

"Goldmoldar;c-17909312" wrote:

"EnigmaOFFC;c-17909275" wrote:
@crocobaura sims won't be able to swim or skate on podes when frozen.

I really hate how the community agreed to pretend that a world with 11/12 lots is ok. its not ok guys. It should always be at least the same size as Windenburg or bigger.

That is their choice, but I have choices too as I glad I still have Sims 3 still installed as Sims 4 for me is an lost cause as it future is already written and EA/Maxis nervous in messing with the performance of Sims 4. I do not give kudos to an program that can't do what an program in 2009 can do and is capable.

@goldmoldar to me this problem with performance could be fixed by letting us manage our worlds, and by that I mean adding/removing which worlds we want in our save files and a warning after we add to many big worlds in a single save like they do when we surpass the sim count limit. It could be a simple + button, or something similar to Sims 2 when we were prompted to add the uni, shopping district, travel destination or downtown.
But anyway, i don't have the same choice as u, my laptop can't handle sims 2, imagine sims 3... even with all the fixes made by modders it still lags a bunch.

I'm hoping fewer lots translates into more large lots that have enough space for ponds, chicken coops, llama and cow barns, and crops. 30x20 lots are fine for venues and starter homes, but our farming Sims are going to need lots that are at least 30x40 and larger, in order to use everything in this pack. Not all my Sims will be full time farmers, of course. But I do want the world to feel and look like a real farming community. My knitting Sims will need llamas so the cost of knitting items is decreased which means more profit. But we don't know how many llamas a full time knitter will need. Can our Sims' canned goods be sold on Plopsy? And which crops can be canned? How many crops are needed per batch? These are things we don't know yet, but can make a difference in the size of the lots we'll need. I'd like to know these things before I buy the pack. It's important for me to know as that will affect my decision to buy the pack at forty dollars versus waiting for it to go on sale.

I realize the gurus can't reveal everything before the live game play stream, but lot size is more important when it comes to this particular pack. We have been begging for larger worlds with more big lots for a couple of years. A couple of 30x20 lots is fine. But if half of the twelve lots in this world are 30x20, I won't be very happy. What's the point of having the new features if we can't use them on more than two or three lots in an entire world created for this pack? If that is true, the value of this pack goes way down in my book.

"Simtanium;c-17909296" wrote:
And if I really need extra lots, I can just have an out-of-town shopping district or family who live in another part of the country/world, as it's so easy to travel between them.

Newcrest is my “catch-all” location for commercial lots (no residential there), and I really like using the green screens that come with Get Famous to set up the exterior scenery so it looks like any one of those lots could be in another one of the worlds when I do my screen shots. I can set rooms up too so they’re a bit like a movie stage for scenes without needing to be “on location” in that other world. It’s a tiny bit more work, but not too much more and I’ve never felt the need to have huge worlds.

I like small worlds. I honestly don’t think I’ve ever used all the lots that came with the base game much less all of the lots in Windenburg. I think I could be very happy with the 12 lots in Henford-on-Bagley. Most of them will end up being residential anyway because of how I use Newcrest as described above.

But that’s the way I play anyway. To each their own.

"Haflinger;c-17909430" wrote:

"Simtanium;c-17909296" wrote:
And if I really need extra lots, I can just have an out-of-town shopping district or family who live in another part of the country/world, as it's so easy to travel between them.

Newcrest is my “catch-all” location for commercial lots (no residential there), and I really like using the green screens that come with Get Famous to set up the exterior scenery so it looks like any one of those lots could be in another one of the worlds when I do my screen shots. I can set rooms up too so they’re a bit like a movie stage for scenes without needing to be “on location” in that other world. It’s a tiny bit more work, but not too much more and I’ve never felt the need to have huge worlds.

I like small worlds. I honestly don’t think I’ve ever used all the lots that came with the base game much less all of the lots in Windenburg. I think I could be very happy with the 12 lots in Henford-on-Bagley. Most of them will end up being residential anyway because of how I use Newcrest as described above.

But that’s the way I play anyway. To each their own.

In the movies they sometimes film in one place and make it look like another. So they can pretend thier in France without actually travelling. I imagine that’s to keep costs down.

I like the idea of having a commercial world. ?

"logion;c-17909138" wrote:

"Jyotai;c-17909132" wrote:

"dearie_blossom;c-17907331" wrote:
Yeah, I don‘t understand why the worlds are so ridiculously small neither. It‘s not like the entire map gets loaded at once. There is a loading screen everywhere we go. Big-ish Windenburg doesn’t perform any worse than small Del Sol Valley.

While someone shared the video with the reasoning above, they shared it as a twitter post of a 30 minute video.

Here's the exact video, forwarded to the point where they say why:

https://youtu.be/SKzjiiox0Fk?t=496

Watch that from :8:16 to 11:00
(YouTube's embed system is messing with me, and seems to insist on playing that back at a random incorrect point in time, if it does that for you - forward to EXACTLY 8:16 and watch until 11:00)

It's a performance trade off made for some specific reasons:

1. The game is one of the few modern games that will run on some rather old hardware, and they still value keeping those customers.
2. Even if they wanted to say, toss every customer who didn't have a 20xx nVidea CPU and AMD 2xxx or 3xxx CPU... They recall Sims 3 at this point in it's lifecycle where even on the top end machines they had to tell customers to pick and choose which packs to have enabled in any play session because the game had become 'too heavy'. A lot of the 'limits' of Sims 4 were made to allow the game to age well.

My thought. At 5 years in, Sims 3 was no longer a game capable of stability on even that year's newest hardware if one ran the whole game. It was rapidly spinning out of control with excessive load on a machine's hardware. Yet Sims 4 is now 6 or 7 years old, and still rock stable on even less than current PCs.

This is almost certainly due to the lack of an open world, the small size of the worlds, and all the loading screens - which is where you would push things into and out of memory.

Much as I want a pack with 537 new lots... I understand why I'm not getting it, and they made the right call.

I'd rather have a game I can play at all, than a game that checks every dream item on my wishlist but can't even run.

I wonder if there is a limit on how many more packs and worlds the sims4 can handle.

Probably.

But the 'closed world' with each world and then each house requiring a loading screen means there is an opportunity there to 'dump memory' on each screen transition.

That allows the game to be very stable (which btw, is about crashes, not about bugs - so yes, Sims 4 is 'rock stable' as someone else attempted to disagree on by citing the wrong metric).

I notice that as I obtain more and more packs my 'lag' in the game doesn't move that much. What does cause it to slow down is a lot of relationships and a lot of sims in the open around around the current lot or in that lot itself - things which I can use MCCC to dial up ay above Maxis' default values. For example I often have it set to allow 50 sims on a lot - and when I actually get 50, things get slow.

A healthy use of MCCC's relationship culling is advised if you've got a set of very social sims hanging out on a lot with 50 other sims... ;)

But as long as we're making good use of transitions and if they're properly dumping memory in those, then stability can remain even as we get more world. Bigger worlds though - means more things in memory at the same time. And that's where stability starts to get complicated.

"SimmerGeorge;c-17909191" wrote:

"Jyotai;c-17909132" wrote:

My thought. At 5 years in, Sims 3 was no longer a game capable of stability on even that year's newest hardware if one ran the whole game. It was rapidly spinning out of control with excessive load on a machine's hardware. Yet Sims 4 is now 6 or 7 years old, and still rock stable on even less than current PCs.

Finally, yes it's a good thing that players with older systems can play. But, even in 2014 when the game came out it could be played on a potato. Imo they kind of overdid it with the "holding back so it runs on older systems". I mean if your system is from 2010-2012 I'm sorry but I don't think any company should be obligated to make games for you. EA proudly says the Sims 4 is one of the only games that runs on older systems but that's a negative thing, the reason why the Sims 4 is the only one is cause all other gaming companies are willing to take a step further and make games for the future.
It's like telling a company that develops phone apps to make it so the app runs on a Nokia phone with buttons. That means the quality of the product will drop in order to increase the "audience".
The game will never evolve if they keep making it so it runs on decade old systems. But only the Sims 4 is willing to sacrifice evolution to have a broader audience. All other companies put the product in the forefront and find a good middle way to handle this.

Personally I'm running on a 2080 RTX, AMD 2700, with 32gbs of memory, 2 SSD drives, dual monitors, and for online 1gb unlimited internet.

So that old machine issue if not a concern for me.

It's the decision they made though. I'm not either of the people in that video.

I think the decision to conserve on resources was a smart one. Not for reasons of supporting old devices, but because it lets the game keep growing. Each pack added to an open world tons of lots game added more burden to a user's system. Each pack added to a closed world lets many features be cycled in and out of memory as resources are needed.

New forms of 'gameplay' will stay in memory - which may be another reason why most of our new packs are mostly build and cas and not new game systems.

But as long as new maps are kept smaller, the things in them can come and go from system resources. And while a modern computer could easily handle many of these maps at once, it probably couldn't handle ALL of them at once.

The game might have bugs, but it is rock stable as a result of keeping down the number of resourced loaded in at any one moment.

To everyone saying we have enough lots and enough worlds, yes, we do have a lot to pick from. But let's not forget we've had a lot of time to look at them, too. As much as I love San Myshuno, it still looks the same as it did in 2016.

Windenburg being so large is what kept it interesting for so long. Not only do all those neighborhoods offer more views, but the way the lots are spaced out, no lot feels the same, either. When you visit the park, that area looks and feels completely different from when you visit the pool or the gym in the same neighborhood. When you're in the countryside, the camera needs to scroll quite a bit before you can see any of the other lots. In some cases, you actually have to look for them.

A lot of love and thought went into that world. After years of playing it, it was still possible to discover another nook or cranny you hadn't seen before. And as pretty as Sulani is, or mt. Komorebi for instance, once you've seen it, you've seen it.

Large world = more replayability.