"Zeldaboy180;c-16352156" wrote:
The Cas update alone took them over a year.
"@drake_mccarty;c-16352176" wrote:"Zeldaboy180;c-16352156" wrote:"Erpe;c-16351354" wrote:"Zeldaboy180;c-16351284" wrote:"Erpe;c-16347184" wrote:
If EA has followed their usual plan about releasing a new basegame every 5 years and announcing each new basegame about 15 months before their release then of course it will be TS5! ;)
Many simmers just don’t believe that because they think that TS4 still is missing all the “usual” EPs now that EA has replaced them with GPs and SPs instead. Beside that those simmers haven’t yet understood that it never was EA’s intention to just let TS4 become a new version of TS2 or TS3! Instead it always has been EA’s plan to let TS4 become a new and very different Sims game.
So EA planned to let TS4 even become a Sims game without toddlers and also without all the “traditional” EPs. It should be a new game and simmers who preferred the old style were expected to just still play TS3.
Later EA decided to release toddlers anyway though because the sales numbers for TS4 had been disappointing. So has EA also changed the plan about not releasing EPs like Seasons or University? I don’t know. But EA still mainly wants to release SPs and GPs because their low prices make them sell better and because they are much cheaper for EA to make. Also I am quite sure that EA wants the GPs to have mainly new content instead of becoming reduced versions of traditional EPs. But anyway all the traditional reasons why EA wants a new basegame to be released every 5 years are still clearly valid (mainly an old basegame not appealing to new simmers, new packs for an old basegame selling less and less and EA being unable to discount old packs without hurting the sales numbers for new packs). So unless EA really wants to stop the whole series soon I can’t see why EA shouldn’t announce TS5 in the middle of 2018 and release it about 15 months later as usual?
A lot of what you said just simply isn't true.
1: Sales aren't bad for the sims 4. They've posted almost every quarter that sims 4 is doing extremely well and grows each quarter
I never said that sales were bad. The reports aren’t too convincing though because they are without actual facts about the sales numbers. Saying that the total number of sales for TS4 grows every quarter is just saying something trivial. To judge anything we need to be able to compare the quarters instead. But I agree that sales numbers aren’t too bad because EA wouldn’t release more and more packs every year if they were.2: Toddlers were planned from the beginning to be patched in as free content. This has been stated by multiple gurus.
I haven’t seen such statements? Anyway it doesn’t make any sense because then the toddlers would have been in the basegame and not released more than 2 years later. But yes, I believe that toddlers were planned originally. I just believe that they were omitted anyway because the developers got into time trouble and didn’t think that toddlers were so important. If they had planned to make them later and release them in a free patch then they would have done that within a few months. But instead they waited for years and only began to make them when all the reviews kept mentioning the missing toddlers even so long time after the release of the basegame.3: It has also been stated that sims 4 is different, and will not follow the past sims series cycles. The guru's have said that they will keep making packs for sims 4 until it no longer makes sense to.
You seem to be twisting their statements again. Yes, Sims 4 is different and it doesn’t get 2-3 EPs each year like Sims 3 did because EA decided to replace half of the EPs with SPs and the new GPs. Also the structure of the developing teams and their sizes are different because the many small packs and the free stuff means that more small teams have to work at the same time. The focus on SPs also means that more artists and fewer programmers are generally needed. So they also move developers more around between the teams than they did earlier. All this just doesn’t mean that the reasons why EA always has released a new basegame after at most 5 years have changed because those reasons have always just been about marketing:
1. An old basegame with many packs released isn’t attractive to new simmers.
2. Some of the simmers stop playing after a couple of years.
3. Sales numbers for packs usually become lower and lower after some time.
4. Many simmers will begin to buy old discounted packs instead of buying the new packs.
5. A new basegame will get better sales numbers for both the basegame and packs again.
6. A new basegame means that bugs in the old one don’t matter anymore.
7. A new basegame can be designed better for the newer and stronger computers.
Yes, it was stated by SimguruDrake and many other guru's that toddlers were planned to be patched in at a late from the start. The issue is they needed time to make them the best they could be. You claimed you could make them in 3-6 months? That is absolutely false, where do you get that assumption?
The Cas update alone took them over a year. Toddlers are a new life stage, and they had to COMPLETELY re write the engine to add them, on top of still working on other packs.
And I'm not twisting any words. It was stated by a sim guru that the Sims 4 Would not stop the development of packs until it no longer made sense to keep adding them. The sims 4 is different than sims 2 and 3, both of those had a number cap on the limit of expansions it could handle, the sims 4 has no limit on packs, it was built from the ground up to be expanded on. None of this is speculation, these are all guru quotes.
They did not rewrite the entire engine when adding in toddlers. We’re they a ton of work? Absolutely, especially since they did not have any work accomplished on them when the base game released, and had lots of DLC already released for the game that could potentially break. A complete rewrite of the engine would be for a brand new game.
I’m also going to somewhat disagree with the verbiage where you say they were planned as patch content “from the start” - could you possibly find where SGDrake said that? I find it weird that they would say that, because the omission of toddlers was originally blamed on a lack of time/staff - not as an intentional move. Do you think pools were also purposefully omitted and reserved as patch content? Ghosts? I think you might be misrepresenting what these gurus are actually saying.
"Zeldaboy180;c-16352156" wrote:"Erpe;c-16351354" wrote:"Zeldaboy180;c-16351284" wrote:"Erpe;c-16347184" wrote:
If EA has followed their usual plan about releasing a new basegame every 5 years and announcing each new basegame about 15 months before their release then of course it will be TS5! ;)
Many simmers just don’t believe that because they think that TS4 still is missing all the “usual” EPs now that EA has replaced them with GPs and SPs instead. Beside that those simmers haven’t yet understood that it never was EA’s intention to just let TS4 become a new version of TS2 or TS3! Instead it always has been EA’s plan to let TS4 become a new and very different Sims game.
So EA planned to let TS4 even become a Sims game without toddlers and also without all the “traditional” EPs. It should be a new game and simmers who preferred the old style were expected to just still play TS3.
Later EA decided to release toddlers anyway though because the sales numbers for TS4 had been disappointing. So has EA also changed the plan about not releasing EPs like Seasons or University? I don’t know. But EA still mainly wants to release SPs and GPs because their low prices make them sell better and because they are much cheaper for EA to make. Also I am quite sure that EA wants the GPs to have mainly new content instead of becoming reduced versions of traditional EPs. But anyway all the traditional reasons why EA wants a new basegame to be released every 5 years are still clearly valid (mainly an old basegame not appealing to new simmers, new packs for an old basegame selling less and less and EA being unable to discount old packs without hurting the sales numbers for new packs). So unless EA really wants to stop the whole series soon I can’t see why EA shouldn’t announce TS5 in the middle of 2018 and release it about 15 months later as usual?
A lot of what you said just simply isn't true.
1: Sales aren't bad for the sims 4. They've posted almost every quarter that sims 4 is doing extremely well and grows each quarter
I never said that sales were bad. The reports aren’t too convincing though because they are without actual facts about the sales numbers. Saying that the total number of sales for TS4 grows every quarter is just saying something trivial. To judge anything we need to be able to compare the quarters instead. But I agree that sales numbers aren’t too bad because EA wouldn’t release more and more packs every year if they were.2: Toddlers were planned from the beginning to be patched in as free content. This has been stated by multiple gurus.
I haven’t seen such statements? Anyway it doesn’t make any sense because then the toddlers would have been in the basegame and not released more than 2 years later. But yes, I believe that toddlers were planned originally. I just believe that they were omitted anyway because the developers got into time trouble and didn’t think that toddlers were so important. If they had planned to make them later and release them in a free patch then they would have done that within a few months. But instead they waited for years and only began to make them when all the reviews kept mentioning the missing toddlers even so long time after the release of the basegame.3: It has also been stated that sims 4 is different, and will not follow the past sims series cycles. The guru's have said that they will keep making packs for sims 4 until it no longer makes sense to.
You seem to be twisting their statements again. Yes, Sims 4 is different and it doesn’t get 2-3 EPs each year like Sims 3 did because EA decided to replace half of the EPs with SPs and the new GPs. Also the structure of the developing teams and their sizes are different because the many small packs and the free stuff means that more small teams have to work at the same time. The focus on SPs also means that more artists and fewer programmers are generally needed. So they also move developers more around between the teams than they did earlier. All this just doesn’t mean that the reasons why EA always has released a new basegame after at most 5 years have changed because those reasons have always just been about marketing:
1. An old basegame with many packs released isn’t attractive to new simmers.
2. Some of the simmers stop playing after a couple of years.
3. Sales numbers for packs usually become lower and lower after some time.
4. Many simmers will begin to buy old discounted packs instead of buying the new packs.
5. A new basegame will get better sales numbers for both the basegame and packs again.
6. A new basegame means that bugs in the old one don’t matter anymore.
7. A new basegame can be designed better for the newer and stronger computers.
Yes, it was stated by SimguruDrake and many other guru's that toddlers were planned to be patched in at a late from the start. The issue is they needed time to make them the best they could be. You claimed you could make them in 3-6 months? That is absolutely false, where do you get that assumption?
The Cas update alone took them over a year. Toddlers are a new life stage, and they had to COMPLETELY re write the engine to add them, on top of still working on other packs.
And I'm not twisting any words. It was stated by a sim guru that the Sims 4 Would not stop the development of packs until it no longer made sense to keep adding them. The sims 4 is different than sims 2 and 3, both of those had a number cap on the limit of expansions it could handle, the sims 4 has no limit on packs, it was built from the ground up to be expanded on. None of this is speculation, these are all guru quotes.
"Erpe;c-16352337" wrote:"Zeldaboy180;c-16352156" wrote:"Erpe;c-16351354" wrote:"Zeldaboy180;c-16351284" wrote:"Erpe;c-16347184" wrote:
If EA has followed their usual plan about releasing a new basegame every 5 years and announcing each new basegame about 15 months before their release then of course it will be TS5! ;)
Many simmers just don’t believe that because they think that TS4 still is missing all the “usual” EPs now that EA has replaced them with GPs and SPs instead. Beside that those simmers haven’t yet understood that it never was EA’s intention to just let TS4 become a new version of TS2 or TS3! Instead it always has been EA’s plan to let TS4 become a new and very different Sims game.
So EA planned to let TS4 even become a Sims game without toddlers and also without all the “traditional” EPs. It should be a new game and simmers who preferred the old style were expected to just still play TS3.
Later EA decided to release toddlers anyway though because the sales numbers for TS4 had been disappointing. So has EA also changed the plan about not releasing EPs like Seasons or University? I don’t know. But EA still mainly wants to release SPs and GPs because their low prices make them sell better and because they are much cheaper for EA to make. Also I am quite sure that EA wants the GPs to have mainly new content instead of becoming reduced versions of traditional EPs. But anyway all the traditional reasons why EA wants a new basegame to be released every 5 years are still clearly valid (mainly an old basegame not appealing to new simmers, new packs for an old basegame selling less and less and EA being unable to discount old packs without hurting the sales numbers for new packs). So unless EA really wants to stop the whole series soon I can’t see why EA shouldn’t announce TS5 in the middle of 2018 and release it about 15 months later as usual?
A lot of what you said just simply isn't true.
1: Sales aren't bad for the sims 4. They've posted almost every quarter that sims 4 is doing extremely well and grows each quarter
I never said that sales were bad. The reports aren’t too convincing though because they are without actual facts about the sales numbers. Saying that the total number of sales for TS4 grows every quarter is just saying something trivial. To judge anything we need to be able to compare the quarters instead. But I agree that sales numbers aren’t too bad because EA wouldn’t release more and more packs every year if they were.2: Toddlers were planned from the beginning to be patched in as free content. This has been stated by multiple gurus.
I haven’t seen such statements? Anyway it doesn’t make any sense because then the toddlers would have been in the basegame and not released more than 2 years later. But yes, I believe that toddlers were planned originally. I just believe that they were omitted anyway because the developers got into time trouble and didn’t think that toddlers were so important. If they had planned to make them later and release them in a free patch then they would have done that within a few months. But instead they waited for years and only began to make them when all the reviews kept mentioning the missing toddlers even so long time after the release of the basegame.3: It has also been stated that sims 4 is different, and will not follow the past sims series cycles. The guru's have said that they will keep making packs for sims 4 until it no longer makes sense to.
You seem to be twisting their statements again. Yes, Sims 4 is different and it doesn’t get 2-3 EPs each year like Sims 3 did because EA decided to replace half of the EPs with SPs and the new GPs. Also the structure of the developing teams and their sizes are different because the many small packs and the free stuff means that more small teams have to work at the same time. The focus on SPs also means that more artists and fewer programmers are generally needed. So they also move developers more around between the teams than they did earlier. All this just doesn’t mean that the reasons why EA always has released a new basegame after at most 5 years have changed because those reasons have always just been about marketing:
1. An old basegame with many packs released isn’t attractive to new simmers.
2. Some of the simmers stop playing after a couple of years.
3. Sales numbers for packs usually become lower and lower after some time.
4. Many simmers will begin to buy old discounted packs instead of buying the new packs.
5. A new basegame will get better sales numbers for both the basegame and packs again.
6. A new basegame means that bugs in the old one don’t matter anymore.
7. A new basegame can be designed better for the newer and stronger computers.
Yes, it was stated by SimguruDrake and many other guru's that toddlers were planned to be patched in at a late from the start. The issue is they needed time to make them the best they could be. You claimed you could make them in 3-6 months? That is absolutely false, where do you get that assumption?
I know that the gurus tried to avoid telling us directly when the decision to make the toddlers was made and they likely were happy that nobody asked them more directly because people just were happy that they had been released. But I am quite sure anyway that both the decision to omit them and the later decision to make them anyway were taken higher up in EA and that the gurus just didn’t want to tell us more about this.The Cas update alone took them over a year. Toddlers are a new life stage, and they had to COMPLETELY re write the engine to add them, on top of still working on other packs.
And I'm not twisting any words. It was stated by a sim guru that the Sims 4 Would not stop the development of packs until it no longer made sense to keep adding them. The sims 4 is different than sims 2 and 3, both of those had a number cap on the limit of expansions it could handle, the sims 4 has no limit on packs, it was built from the ground up to be expanded on. None of this is speculation, these are all guru quotes.
You buy everything way too easily. TS4’s game engine would have been a complete disaster if it really made it so extremely difficult to just add things like the toddlers and the CAS update when all other games can add much more in just about a month. You sound like you know nothing about programming or other games. But I am actually educated as a computer scientist on a university where we studied all about different types of computer languages and computers and I have played hundreds of games for many years too. So I don’t believe that EA ever would use an engine that made it so extremely difficult just to add a little to the game and toddlers and CAS aren’t such huge things which you seem to think that they are. EA could almost make a whole new big Sims game in those 2 yrs and 4 months that EA used just to make the toddlers ;)
"drake_mccarty;c-16352176" wrote:"Zeldaboy180;c-16352156" wrote:"Erpe;c-16351354" wrote:"Zeldaboy180;c-16351284" wrote:"Erpe;c-16347184" wrote:
If EA has followed their usual plan about releasing a new basegame every 5 years and announcing each new basegame about 15 months before their release then of course it will be TS5! ;)
Many simmers just don’t believe that because they think that TS4 still is missing all the “usual” EPs now that EA has replaced them with GPs and SPs instead. Beside that those simmers haven’t yet understood that it never was EA’s intention to just let TS4 become a new version of TS2 or TS3! Instead it always has been EA’s plan to let TS4 become a new and very different Sims game.
So EA planned to let TS4 even become a Sims game without toddlers and also without all the “traditional” EPs. It should be a new game and simmers who preferred the old style were expected to just still play TS3.
Later EA decided to release toddlers anyway though because the sales numbers for TS4 had been disappointing. So has EA also changed the plan about not releasing EPs like Seasons or University? I don’t know. But EA still mainly wants to release SPs and GPs because their low prices make them sell better and because they are much cheaper for EA to make. Also I am quite sure that EA wants the GPs to have mainly new content instead of becoming reduced versions of traditional EPs. But anyway all the traditional reasons why EA wants a new basegame to be released every 5 years are still clearly valid (mainly an old basegame not appealing to new simmers, new packs for an old basegame selling less and less and EA being unable to discount old packs without hurting the sales numbers for new packs). So unless EA really wants to stop the whole series soon I can’t see why EA shouldn’t announce TS5 in the middle of 2018 and release it about 15 months later as usual?
A lot of what you said just simply isn't true.
1: Sales aren't bad for the sims 4. They've posted almost every quarter that sims 4 is doing extremely well and grows each quarter
I never said that sales were bad. The reports aren’t too convincing though because they are without actual facts about the sales numbers. Saying that the total number of sales for TS4 grows every quarter is just saying something trivial. To judge anything we need to be able to compare the quarters instead. But I agree that sales numbers aren’t too bad because EA wouldn’t release more and more packs every year if they were.2: Toddlers were planned from the beginning to be patched in as free content. This has been stated by multiple gurus.
I haven’t seen such statements? Anyway it doesn’t make any sense because then the toddlers would have been in the basegame and not released more than 2 years later. But yes, I believe that toddlers were planned originally. I just believe that they were omitted anyway because the developers got into time trouble and didn’t think that toddlers were so important. If they had planned to make them later and release them in a free patch then they would have done that within a few months. But instead they waited for years and only began to make them when all the reviews kept mentioning the missing toddlers even so long time after the release of the basegame.3: It has also been stated that sims 4 is different, and will not follow the past sims series cycles. The guru's have said that they will keep making packs for sims 4 until it no longer makes sense to.
You seem to be twisting their statements again. Yes, Sims 4 is different and it doesn’t get 2-3 EPs each year like Sims 3 did because EA decided to replace half of the EPs with SPs and the new GPs. Also the structure of the developing teams and their sizes are different because the many small packs and the free stuff means that more small teams have to work at the same time. The focus on SPs also means that more artists and fewer programmers are generally needed. So they also move developers more around between the teams than they did earlier. All this just doesn’t mean that the reasons why EA always has released a new basegame after at most 5 years have changed because those reasons have always just been about marketing:
1. An old basegame with many packs released isn’t attractive to new simmers.
2. Some of the simmers stop playing after a couple of years.
3. Sales numbers for packs usually become lower and lower after some time.
4. Many simmers will begin to buy old discounted packs instead of buying the new packs.
5. A new basegame will get better sales numbers for both the basegame and packs again.
6. A new basegame means that bugs in the old one don’t matter anymore.
7. A new basegame can be designed better for the newer and stronger computers.
Yes, it was stated by SimguruDrake and many other guru's that toddlers were planned to be patched in at a late from the start. The issue is they needed time to make them the best they could be. You claimed you could make them in 3-6 months? That is absolutely false, where do you get that assumption?
The Cas update alone took them over a year. Toddlers are a new life stage, and they had to COMPLETELY re write the engine to add them, on top of still working on other packs.
And I'm not twisting any words. It was stated by a sim guru that the Sims 4 Would not stop the development of packs until it no longer made sense to keep adding them. The sims 4 is different than sims 2 and 3, both of those had a number cap on the limit of expansions it could handle, the sims 4 has no limit on packs, it was built from the ground up to be expanded on. None of this is speculation, these are all guru quotes.
They did not rewrite the entire engine when adding in toddlers. We’re they a ton of work? Absolutely, especially since they did not have any work accomplished on them when the base game released, and had lots of DLC already released for the game that could potentially break. A complete rewrite of the engine would be for a brand new game.
I’m also going to somewhat disagree with the verbiage where you say they were planned as patch content “from the start” - could you possibly find where SGDrake said that? I find it weird that they would say that, because the omission of toddlers was originally blamed on a lack of time/staff - not as an intentional move. Do you think pools were also purposefully omitted and reserved as patch content? Ghosts? I think you might be misrepresenting what these gurus are actually saying.
HOW LONG HAVE YOU BEEN WORKING ON TODDLERS IN THE SIMS 4? WHAT INITIATED THE TEAM TO BEGIN DEVELOPMENT?
We’ve talked about Toddlers on LOT on the Development team, and we’ve talked about them for a long time. What we’d like to do with them, what the community would like to see, what they might look like, how they might act. We always knew we were going to add Toddlers to The Sims 4 at some point, we just weren’t sure when.
"Zeldaboy180;c-16352590" wrote:"drake_mccarty;c-16352176" wrote:"Zeldaboy180;c-16352156" wrote:"Erpe;c-16351354" wrote:"Zeldaboy180;c-16351284" wrote:"Erpe;c-16347184" wrote:
If EA has followed their usual plan about releasing a new basegame every 5 years and announcing each new basegame about 15 months before their release then of course it will be TS5! ;)
Many simmers just don’t believe that because they think that TS4 still is missing all the “usual” EPs now that EA has replaced them with GPs and SPs instead. Beside that those simmers haven’t yet understood that it never was EA’s intention to just let TS4 become a new version of TS2 or TS3! Instead it always has been EA’s plan to let TS4 become a new and very different Sims game.
So EA planned to let TS4 even become a Sims game without toddlers and also without all the “traditional” EPs. It should be a new game and simmers who preferred the old style were expected to just still play TS3.
Later EA decided to release toddlers anyway though because the sales numbers for TS4 had been disappointing. So has EA also changed the plan about not releasing EPs like Seasons or University? I don’t know. But EA still mainly wants to release SPs and GPs because their low prices make them sell better and because they are much cheaper for EA to make. Also I am quite sure that EA wants the GPs to have mainly new content instead of becoming reduced versions of traditional EPs. But anyway all the traditional reasons why EA wants a new basegame to be released every 5 years are still clearly valid (mainly an old basegame not appealing to new simmers, new packs for an old basegame selling less and less and EA being unable to discount old packs without hurting the sales numbers for new packs). So unless EA really wants to stop the whole series soon I can’t see why EA shouldn’t announce TS5 in the middle of 2018 and release it about 15 months later as usual?
A lot of what you said just simply isn't true.
1: Sales aren't bad for the sims 4. They've posted almost every quarter that sims 4 is doing extremely well and grows each quarter
I never said that sales were bad. The reports aren’t too convincing though because they are without actual facts about the sales numbers. Saying that the total number of sales for TS4 grows every quarter is just saying something trivial. To judge anything we need to be able to compare the quarters instead. But I agree that sales numbers aren’t too bad because EA wouldn’t release more and more packs every year if they were.2: Toddlers were planned from the beginning to be patched in as free content. This has been stated by multiple gurus.
I haven’t seen such statements? Anyway it doesn’t make any sense because then the toddlers would have been in the basegame and not released more than 2 years later. But yes, I believe that toddlers were planned originally. I just believe that they were omitted anyway because the developers got into time trouble and didn’t think that toddlers were so important. If they had planned to make them later and release them in a free patch then they would have done that within a few months. But instead they waited for years and only began to make them when all the reviews kept mentioning the missing toddlers even so long time after the release of the basegame.3: It has also been stated that sims 4 is different, and will not follow the past sims series cycles. The guru's have said that they will keep making packs for sims 4 until it no longer makes sense to.
You seem to be twisting their statements again. Yes, Sims 4 is different and it doesn’t get 2-3 EPs each year like Sims 3 did because EA decided to replace half of the EPs with SPs and the new GPs. Also the structure of the developing teams and their sizes are different because the many small packs and the free stuff means that more small teams have to work at the same time. The focus on SPs also means that more artists and fewer programmers are generally needed. So they also move developers more around between the teams than they did earlier. All this just doesn’t mean that the reasons why EA always has released a new basegame after at most 5 years have changed because those reasons have always just been about marketing:
1. An old basegame with many packs released isn’t attractive to new simmers.
2. Some of the simmers stop playing after a couple of years.
3. Sales numbers for packs usually become lower and lower after some time.
4. Many simmers will begin to buy old discounted packs instead of buying the new packs.
5. A new basegame will get better sales numbers for both the basegame and packs again.
6. A new basegame means that bugs in the old one don’t matter anymore.
7. A new basegame can be designed better for the newer and stronger computers.
Yes, it was stated by SimguruDrake and many other guru's that toddlers were planned to be patched in at a late from the start. The issue is they needed time to make them the best they could be. You claimed you could make them in 3-6 months? That is absolutely false, where do you get that assumption?
The Cas update alone took them over a year. Toddlers are a new life stage, and they had to COMPLETELY re write the engine to add them, on top of still working on other packs.
And I'm not twisting any words. It was stated by a sim guru that the Sims 4 Would not stop the development of packs until it no longer made sense to keep adding them. The sims 4 is different than sims 2 and 3, both of those had a number cap on the limit of expansions it could handle, the sims 4 has no limit on packs, it was built from the ground up to be expanded on. None of this is speculation, these are all guru quotes.
They did not rewrite the entire engine when adding in toddlers. We’re they a ton of work? Absolutely, especially since they did not have any work accomplished on them when the base game released, and had lots of DLC already released for the game that could potentially break. A complete rewrite of the engine would be for a brand new game.
I’m also going to somewhat disagree with the verbiage where you say they were planned as patch content “from the start” - could you possibly find where SGDrake said that? I find it weird that they would say that, because the omission of toddlers was originally blamed on a lack of time/staff - not as an intentional move. Do you think pools were also purposefully omitted and reserved as patch content? Ghosts? I think you might be misrepresenting what these gurus are actually saying.
I promise you this is what was said. I will go back and dig it up, I believe it was around January, so it might take a few. Once I find it I will edit this comment with the quote.
AS @jackjack_k has said, they did not leave them out on purpose, but after they were forced to leave them out, they knew they would add them back at some point.
EDIT: The post history seems wonky, I can't find some of Drake's quotes for some reason. Someone was commenting that negative feedback is what caused us to get toddlers, and I believe SimguruDrake stated something along the lines of "That's not true, we always knew we were going to patch in toddlers, and we wanted to do it for free. Your feedback definitely helped shape them however"
But it's okay because I found another source stating it.HOW LONG HAVE YOU BEEN WORKING ON TODDLERS IN THE SIMS 4? WHAT INITIATED THE TEAM TO BEGIN DEVELOPMENT?
We’ve talked about Toddlers on LOT on the Development team, and we’ve talked about them for a long time. What we’d like to do with them, what the community would like to see, what they might look like, how they might act. We always knew we were going to add Toddlers to The Sims 4 at some point, we just weren’t sure when.
-SimGuruSarah
Source: https://beyondsims.com/2017/01/ts4-toddlers-interview/
"drake_mccarty;c-16352727" wrote:"Zeldaboy180;c-16352590" wrote:"drake_mccarty;c-16352176" wrote:"Zeldaboy180;c-16352156" wrote:"Erpe;c-16351354" wrote:"Zeldaboy180;c-16351284" wrote:"Erpe;c-16347184" wrote:
If EA has followed their usual plan about releasing a new basegame every 5 years and announcing each new basegame about 15 months before their release then of course it will be TS5! ;)
Many simmers just don’t believe that because they think that TS4 still is missing all the “usual” EPs now that EA has replaced them with GPs and SPs instead. Beside that those simmers haven’t yet understood that it never was EA’s intention to just let TS4 become a new version of TS2 or TS3! Instead it always has been EA’s plan to let TS4 become a new and very different Sims game.
So EA planned to let TS4 even become a Sims game without toddlers and also without all the “traditional” EPs. It should be a new game and simmers who preferred the old style were expected to just still play TS3.
Later EA decided to release toddlers anyway though because the sales numbers for TS4 had been disappointing. So has EA also changed the plan about not releasing EPs like Seasons or University? I don’t know. But EA still mainly wants to release SPs and GPs because their low prices make them sell better and because they are much cheaper for EA to make. Also I am quite sure that EA wants the GPs to have mainly new content instead of becoming reduced versions of traditional EPs. But anyway all the traditional reasons why EA wants a new basegame to be released every 5 years are still clearly valid (mainly an old basegame not appealing to new simmers, new packs for an old basegame selling less and less and EA being unable to discount old packs without hurting the sales numbers for new packs). So unless EA really wants to stop the whole series soon I can’t see why EA shouldn’t announce TS5 in the middle of 2018 and release it about 15 months later as usual?
A lot of what you said just simply isn't true.
1: Sales aren't bad for the sims 4. They've posted almost every quarter that sims 4 is doing extremely well and grows each quarter
I never said that sales were bad. The reports aren’t too convincing though because they are without actual facts about the sales numbers. Saying that the total number of sales for TS4 grows every quarter is just saying something trivial. To judge anything we need to be able to compare the quarters instead. But I agree that sales numbers aren’t too bad because EA wouldn’t release more and more packs every year if they were.2: Toddlers were planned from the beginning to be patched in as free content. This has been stated by multiple gurus.
I haven’t seen such statements? Anyway it doesn’t make any sense because then the toddlers would have been in the basegame and not released more than 2 years later. But yes, I believe that toddlers were planned originally. I just believe that they were omitted anyway because the developers got into time trouble and didn’t think that toddlers were so important. If they had planned to make them later and release them in a free patch then they would have done that within a few months. But instead they waited for years and only began to make them when all the reviews kept mentioning the missing toddlers even so long time after the release of the basegame.3: It has also been stated that sims 4 is different, and will not follow the past sims series cycles. The guru's have said that they will keep making packs for sims 4 until it no longer makes sense to.
You seem to be twisting their statements again. Yes, Sims 4 is different and it doesn’t get 2-3 EPs each year like Sims 3 did because EA decided to replace half of the EPs with SPs and the new GPs. Also the structure of the developing teams and their sizes are different because the many small packs and the free stuff means that more small teams have to work at the same time. The focus on SPs also means that more artists and fewer programmers are generally needed. So they also move developers more around between the teams than they did earlier. All this just doesn’t mean that the reasons why EA always has released a new basegame after at most 5 years have changed because those reasons have always just been about marketing:
1. An old basegame with many packs released isn’t attractive to new simmers.
2. Some of the simmers stop playing after a couple of years.
3. Sales numbers for packs usually become lower and lower after some time.
4. Many simmers will begin to buy old discounted packs instead of buying the new packs.
5. A new basegame will get better sales numbers for both the basegame and packs again.
6. A new basegame means that bugs in the old one don’t matter anymore.
7. A new basegame can be designed better for the newer and stronger computers.
Yes, it was stated by SimguruDrake and many other guru's that toddlers were planned to be patched in at a late from the start. The issue is they needed time to make them the best they could be. You claimed you could make them in 3-6 months? That is absolutely false, where do you get that assumption?
The Cas update alone took them over a year. Toddlers are a new life stage, and they had to COMPLETELY re write the engine to add them, on top of still working on other packs.
And I'm not twisting any words. It was stated by a sim guru that the Sims 4 Would not stop the development of packs until it no longer made sense to keep adding them. The sims 4 is different than sims 2 and 3, both of those had a number cap on the limit of expansions it could handle, the sims 4 has no limit on packs, it was built from the ground up to be expanded on. None of this is speculation, these are all guru quotes.
They did not rewrite the entire engine when adding in toddlers. We’re they a ton of work? Absolutely, especially since they did not have any work accomplished on them when the base game released, and had lots of DLC already released for the game that could potentially break. A complete rewrite of the engine would be for a brand new game.
I’m also going to somewhat disagree with the verbiage where you say they were planned as patch content “from the start” - could you possibly find where SGDrake said that? I find it weird that they would say that, because the omission of toddlers was originally blamed on a lack of time/staff - not as an intentional move. Do you think pools were also purposefully omitted and reserved as patch content? Ghosts? I think you might be misrepresenting what these gurus are actually saying.
I promise you this is what was said. I will go back and dig it up, I believe it was around January, so it might take a few. Once I find it I will edit this comment with the quote.
AS @jackjack_k has said, they did not leave them out on purpose, but after they were forced to leave them out, they knew they would add them back at some point.
EDIT: The post history seems wonky, I can't find some of Drake's quotes for some reason. Someone was commenting that negative feedback is what caused us to get toddlers, and I believe SimguruDrake stated something along the lines of "That's not true, we always knew we were going to patch in toddlers, and we wanted to do it for free. Your feedback definitely helped shape them however"
But it's okay because I found another source stating it.HOW LONG HAVE YOU BEEN WORKING ON TODDLERS IN THE SIMS 4? WHAT INITIATED THE TEAM TO BEGIN DEVELOPMENT?
We’ve talked about Toddlers on LOT on the Development team, and we’ve talked about them for a long time. What we’d like to do with them, what the community would like to see, what they might look like, how they might act. We always knew we were going to add Toddlers to The Sims 4 at some point, we just weren’t sure when.
-SimGuruSarah
Source: https://beyondsims.com/2017/01/ts4-toddlers-interview/
Neither what they said, or what you said corroborates your post. “We knew we were going to add them, we just weren’t sure when” does not equate to “they were planned as patch content from the very start” such a quote would imply that toddlers were axed from the beginning of the game’s development. I’m not disagreeing on the facts, they wanted them - couldn’t make them in time, so they didn’t make them in favor of other things. They were then trapped in limbo while the developers decided on what they wanted to make and where toddlers fell on that list. That isn’t what you said, and that isn’t what you said SGDrake said, which she clearly didn’t say since you can’t actually find the quote.
You were misrepresenting what was said. The quotes you provided just show that.
"paradiseplanet;c-16348142" wrote:
I swear if they've already started developing Sims 5 then I will simply just laugh condescendingly, when the Sims 4 is nowhere near "finished" as is. Sims 4 has so much potential to be a great game and to think they would go ahead and reveal Sims 5 already is an absurd joke that's nowhere near funny. Typical EA mindset though.
"aprilrose;c-16353012" wrote:"paradiseplanet;c-16348142" wrote:
I swear if they've already started developing Sims 5 then I will simply just laugh condescendingly, when the Sims 4 is nowhere near "finished" as is. Sims 4 has so much potential to be a great game and to think they would go ahead and reveal Sims 5 already is an absurd joke that's nowhere near funny. Typical EA mindset though.
I agree. It's not time for Sims 5 when Sims 4 isn't even complete.
