It's official- No hail this time

The lack of hail isn't really a dealbreaker IMO. But I can understand why some would want it since both previous iterations had it, and it rounds out the weather experience

Sims 2 didn't have fog though. Sims 3 Seasons seems to be the only one that had it all.

"Sk8rblaze;c-16505809" wrote:

"filipomel;c-16505790" wrote:

"06Bon06;c-16505547" wrote:

"filipomel;c-16505541" wrote:

"MidnightAura;c-16505460" wrote:
Another disappointment. The trade off being FX fog doesn't seem fair. What about the game play? Why bother having rain at this point?

Hail didn’t do anything in previous games except add a new death type and had sims react to the hail by being pelted by it. Hail didn’t really do anything in previous games so they probably left it out this time because they probably didn’t think it was necessary. They saved that little extra time and resources they would’ve spent on hail and adding proper reactions to hail to make other parts of the pack more detailed.

Which parts of the pack is more detailed. I mean there is less and less by the day they spend all this time on.

Trees blowing in the wind, sims animations reflecting the current climate (hot sims walk in a slouchy kind of way, wind blowing against the sim the sim is blocking the wind), lightning strikes actually emitting real light causing a brighter environment and more intense shadows, heat waves during hot weather, etc. all of these can be seen in the trailer.

"Sk8rblaze;c-16505771" wrote:

"filipomel;c-16505541" wrote:

"MidnightAura;c-16505460" wrote:
Another disappointment. The trade off being FX fog doesn't seem fair. What about the game play? Why bother having rain at this point?

Hail didn’t do anything in previous games except add a new death type and had sims react to the hail by being pelted by it. Hail didn’t really do anything in previous games so they probably left it out this time because they probably didn’t think it was necessary. They saved that little extra time and resources they would’ve spent on hail and adding proper reactions to hail to make other parts of the pack more detailed.

Hail wasn’t that big of a deal. Snow depth wasn’t that big of a deal. Yet, all of these “no big deal” omissions are starting to add up.

My question remains, and I mean this in the most non-toxic/bashing way, what are they spending their resources on over these basic weather effects? I really hope we find the answer soon.

Take a simple look at the trailer and you'll see all the great extra features and details they added, I already mentioned a few, all those details have never been in the previous games might I add.

All of the "features" you listed are better weather effects. I would expect better weather effects in a pack they are re-releasing, not once, but twice; 11 years after the original version. It seems very strange to me we would defend these omissions for things that should be improved off the bat with no question..

And mind you, they are omitting weather conditions here. That's really questionable for a pack surrounding around weather itself.

Well the developers believed this time around, not adding snow depth is an improvement taking into consideration The Sims 4 art style, their words, and I trust what they say is true. If they are openly comfortable saying it wasn't a performance issue but purely a visual issue then I have no reason not to believe them, and so I take their word for it, after seeing a recent picture of how the snow looks within the game, I must say the snow looks very good, how it glistens, how not only sims, but pets as well leave foot prints in it, how snow objects around the environment like snow angels are contrasted against the flatness by being real 3D objects. As for no hail I already mentioned my speculative reasoning for not including it, perhaps they didn't believe it was necessary to make an appearance this time around, as hail is essentially the same as rain but with a few different sounds, visual effects, and effects on the sims themselves.

"filipomel;c-16505829" wrote:

Well the developers believed this time around, not adding snow depth is an improvement taking into consideration The Sims 4 art style, their words, and I trust what they say is true. If they are openly comfortable saying it wasn't a performance issue but purely a visual issue then I have no reason not to believe them, and so I take their word for it, after seeing a recent picture of how the snow looks within the game, I must say the snow looks very good, how it glistens, how not only sims, but pets as well leave foot prints in it, how snow objects around the environment like snow angels are contrasted against the flatness by being real 3D objects. As for no hail I already mentioned my speculative reasoning for not including it, perhaps they didn't believe it was necessary to make an appearance this time around, as hail is essentially the same as rain but with a few different sounds, visual effects, and effects on the sims themselves.

At no time Grant Rodiek or another producer said that not adding snow depth is an improvement taking into account the art style of the game. I can read all the tweets and find absolutely no part where that is said.

Grant was direct in stating that he knew the depth of the snow was important and sought out many ways to implement it, but they were never able to get the best way to do it because they did not find the best level of visual quality they expected. But no one said it was an "improvement taking into account the style of art".

Certainly the non-addition of deep snow had to do with the way the worlds are created. In The Sims 3, snow was automatically applied, but in The Sims 4 I think it would require a great deal of manual work that would take a very large part of the development, especially because the world was covered with a very large amount of objects.

:D

Now I'm really worried about what else they've neglected to mention is missing.

"filipomel;c-16505541" wrote:

"MidnightAura;c-16505460" wrote:
Another disappointment. The trade off being FX fog doesn't seem fair. What about the game play? Why bother having rain at this point?

Hail didn’t do anything in previous games except add a new death type and had sims react to the hail by being pelted by it. Hail didn’t really do anything in previous games so they probably left it out this time because they probably didn’t think it was necessary. They saved that little extra time and resources they would’ve spent on hail and adding proper reactions to hail to make other parts of the pack more detailed.

You have just contradicted yourself.

Hail did have an impact on previous games. As you said yourself a death and sims reacting to it and wanting to get indoors.

That’s not a case of “not really doing anything”

I would love to see where this pack is detailed, because every time a guru tweets it’s another “x isn’t in the game this time around”

"mika;c-16505893" wrote:
Now I'm really worried about what else they've neglected to mention is missing.

The trailer isn't meant to show what's missing in the EP, and ever since the trailer they've been going through the info of what we have and no longer have with this EP for TS4 Seasons. So they haven't neglected to mention anything, they might yet reveal something you aren't happy with, though.

I never expected hail either. If we got it I'd want it for a devious effect but in my "nicer" games I wouldn't want it all all... Would have been nice though to be able to use it in the weather machine feature.. but definitely not something that matters to me. I really don't want anything that forces my sims indoors or that they can't prepare for and actually kind of worried about lightening storms in that respect. I want some measure of control in my games not chaos.

I can deal with light snow as I get that the lack of terrain makes it hard and there will be blizzards to sort of make it up with game play. I can even get no tans or sunburns as you can always include them with a beach world/town that also have swimming in the ocean as they said that swimming in ocean would be set in a specific town. But no hail? Well at least hope that the weather actually does something to affect sims as isn't that the point of seasons. I also don't see why we don't have lounge chairs if there will be pool parties. I mean I hope there will at least be some other things though.

Well I guess we will see more once the game is live streamed, etc....and there are still way more pros then cons; but that is slightly disappointing.

Well like I said for no snow depth - "that's disappointing". I mean idk at this point I can't even create a reaction past that.

I see several saying they're glad their Sims don't have to deal with it but iirc in Sims 3 you could turn off certain weather (snow, rain, hail, etc). As long as they included options like that I don't see the problem. But at this point I'm wondering if we'll even have weather options like that?

"Sk8rblaze;c-16505809" wrote:

"filipomel;c-16505790" wrote:

"06Bon06;c-16505547" wrote:

"filipomel;c-16505541" wrote:

"MidnightAura;c-16505460" wrote:
Another disappointment. The trade off being FX fog doesn't seem fair. What about the game play? Why bother having rain at this point?

Hail didn’t do anything in previous games except add a new death type and had sims react to the hail by being pelted by it. Hail didn’t really do anything in previous games so they probably left it out this time because they probably didn’t think it was necessary. They saved that little extra time and resources they would’ve spent on hail and adding proper reactions to hail to make other parts of the pack more detailed.

Which parts of the pack is more detailed. I mean there is less and less by the day they spend all this time on.

Trees blowing in the wind, sims animations reflecting the current climate (hot sims walk in a slouchy kind of way, wind blowing against the sim the sim is blocking the wind), lightning strikes actually emitting real light causing a brighter environment and more intense shadows, heat waves during hot weather, etc. all of these can be seen in the trailer.

"Sk8rblaze;c-16505771" wrote:

"filipomel;c-16505541" wrote:

"MidnightAura;c-16505460" wrote:
Another disappointment. The trade off being FX fog doesn't seem fair. What about the game play? Why bother having rain at this point?

Hail didn’t do anything in previous games except add a new death type and had sims react to the hail by being pelted by it. Hail didn’t really do anything in previous games so they probably left it out this time because they probably didn’t think it was necessary. They saved that little extra time and resources they would’ve spent on hail and adding proper reactions to hail to make other parts of the pack more detailed.

Hail wasn’t that big of a deal. Snow depth wasn’t that big of a deal. Yet, all of these “no big deal” omissions are starting to add up.

My question remains, and I mean this in the most non-toxic/bashing way, what are they spending their resources on over these basic weather effects? I really hope we find the answer soon.

Take a simple look at the trailer and you'll see all the great extra features and details they added, I already mentioned a few, all those details have never been in the previous games might I add.

they are omitting weather conditions here. That's really questionable for a pack surrounding around weather itself.

That's exactly what I was thinking. For a pack that's called seasons they sure are cutting out a lot of seasonal weather. You'd think that's would be the initial focus.

Well again I'm not surprised... I'm ready to just see then livestream let's see what this all looks like in action.