Forum Discussion

hestiah23's avatar
6 years ago

Lack of Create-A-World/Neighborhood, Could This Be Why?

I'm thinking they could release it, but wouldn't want to be criticized for how small we get for each sub-section of a neighborhood. As you can see (and probably already know), most of the backdrops are unplayable areas. From these zoomed-out images, you may notice which parts you can access and which ones you can't.

On a side note, if this really is the case on how these sub-sections are built, why couldn't they have made it "open world" for the different parts of the neighborhoods?

{ Press the TAB key on your keyboard. Zoom all the way out by using the Q keycap and mouse wheel down to achieve this. Each section from a neighborhood will look different and I won't post it all as to not overload the original post. }

https://i.imgur.com/YCRUn8V.png
https://i.imgur.com/5u9S5Ki.png
https://i.imgur.com/kfZVDa6.png
https://i.imgur.com/p4VGnwN.png
https://i.imgur.com/ZvscZtn.png
https://i.imgur.com/r55Ohqn.png
https://i.imgur.com/LpCJVZv.png
https://i.imgur.com/SlmoAtL.png
  • Regarding the open neighborhoods

    It was a design choice that have the game load one lot at a time. There is actually an explanation over the Sim Guru Tech Talk as far as I recall. Basically in one neighborhood objects on your lot are actually objects, meaning they are flagged to be used by the game and sims for autonomy usage. Everything is functional. owever objects on another lots aren't registered as objects but rather similar to fx. They cannot be interacted with, and since they are not considered objects by the game they are not being included with your sims autonomy and thus again since they are considered not an object but rather similar to fx, it saves performance.

    Basically since objects in The Sims 4 are not like The Sims 3 where if you leave one lot the objects will dissapear, it made clear why they go to this route. Imagine if there are Fice lots in the neighborhood, all of them was composed of mansions built by the player with tons of objects and community lots. Since every object is loaded, all objects are candidate for autonomy and sims are complex in the game. The 20 sim limit will need to be removed, and each sims and onjects are capable of chaning emotions.

    Some gameplay elements would also be removed. For example what about the Earthquake Lot Trait? They can't make one lot to only move while the rest is stationary.

    They can bypass a lot of elements but it will need a huge amount of work, which make it seem impossible.

    Alao the game currently suffers we all know from simulation lag. Making it an open neighborhood will make the game a lot more worse

    From what I understand unlike The Sims 3 where they could easily create a world thanks to worlds being created from a third party program, in The Sims 4 they are hand crafted. If they are not then the world team would spend more time in creating neighborhoods, but as we all see, creating a neighborhood seems very hard to the dev team. Juat like SimGuruGrant said, sadly the way Terrain Editing works in our Lots are Not The Same off lot. They had to be handcrafted.

    I am guessing they had a tool but since its EA dev tool they can't share it to the public. The only way we could build our own worlds is when the Dev Team created an external program for the players to use.

    Meanwhile if you ask me, I would encourage them to create a tool right now for the players because it wouldn't just benifit us but also them. If they developed a tool, they can explore their world building program and engineer its limitaions.

    (look at Island Living. Ocean swimming was impossible but thanks to the pack the engineers are able to make it possible. Its up to the producers if they are going to implement it in future/current worlds)

    Once they now and bypass the limitations things would get more stable and smooth for both the studio and the community
  • Each neighborhood is modeled by hand in external software like blender. As far as I know there is no world creator for this game. As for the backdrop, the studio spends way too much time on them seeing how they can’t be accessed and have no function other than visuals.

    The prospects of a creator coming aren’t very good either. World making was a huge outlet in Sims 3, it’s hardly a coincidence they chose a design that eliminated that with the follow up game. You would think they would capitalize on it, but they can’t make a decent world to save their lives. These days, were lucky to get a dozen lots for an entire world.
  • "TS1299;c-17197154" wrote:
    "drake_mccarty;c-17197145" wrote:
    Each neighborhood is modeled by hand in external software like blender. As far as I know there is no world creator for this game. As for the backdrop, the studio spends way too much time on them seeing how they can’t be accessed and have no function other than visuals.

    The prospects of a creator coming aren’t very good either. World making was a huge outlet in Sims 3, it’s hardly a coincidence they chose a design that eliminated that with the follow up game. You would think they would capitalize on it, but they can’t make a decent world to save their lives. These days, were lucky to get a dozen lots for an entire world.


    I am fine having them spend too much time given that the artists have soo much free time to work on it. But once you see our objects lacking in swatches, or lack of ganeplay objects in the pack then that is the problem imo.

    They really need to create CAW because it would definetly benifits both sides. Faster World building for them and more creativity for us


    The world team doesn’t make objects. The swatches we get are decided before they ever make the actual object, the concept artist does all of that. I agree with you they do a bad job. That’s the manager (Producer)’s failure though.

    I would agree, but again there is no tool to release. Developing a tool for us would basically require them to rework how worlds are built and how the game recognizes worlds. That’s a lot of work when they opted exactly against it from the beginning. They know the benefits and they chose the route where they control the worlds this game has.
  • Before they create a CAW tool. I would prefer to have placeable lots, if that is even possible in this game. To my eye, there ought to be space on all the maps, especially the newer ones, for more lots, but of course if all the scenery is just FX then that wouldn’t be true.
  • yeah I just don't see caw working with ts4 worlds since the "backgrounds" are full of things and itd be hard to make that into "just blob this here and its perfect"

    my only wish is they'd add one empty world where it doesnt matter what i want to build in it

    newcrest was supposed to be one but it has tons of fx buildings that limit building style a lot
  • "drake_mccarty;c-17197145" wrote:
    Each neighborhood is modeled by hand in external software like blender. As far as I know there is no world creator for this game. As for the backdrop, the studio spends way too much time on them seeing how they can’t be accessed and have no function other than visuals.

    The prospects of a creator coming aren’t very good either. World making was a huge outlet in Sims 3, it’s hardly a coincidence they chose a design that eliminated that with the follow up game. You would think they would capitalize on it, but they can’t make a decent world to save their lives. These days, were lucky to get a dozen lots for an entire world.


    @drake_mccarty If it wasn't for the EA games craze to make all its games online and co-operative in an attempt to prevent piracy we would probably have a much better game in every respect. It's all fault of the olympus project. That explains way better why they choose the current game restrictions than, lets say, "performance". Imagine 5/6 lots loaded at the same time in a neighborhood filled with dozens, if not hundreds, of players interacting with each other at the same time?!

    Also, i don't believe that Sims 3 CAW was previously a tool that the devs had to build worlds, i remember that its was full of bugs and crashes when released, meaning it was something new. They were probably making worlds in another way before, then we asked for a way to build world and then they made CAW.
  • "drake_mccarty;c-17197145" wrote:
    Each neighborhood is modeled by hand in external software like blender. As far as I know there is no world creator for this game. As for the backdrop, the studio spends way too much time on them seeing how they can’t be accessed and have no function other than visuals.

    The prospects of a creator coming aren’t very good either. World making was a huge outlet in Sims 3, it’s hardly a coincidence they chose a design that eliminated that with the follow up game. You would think they would capitalize on it, but they can’t make a decent world to save their lives. These days, were lucky to get a dozen lots for an entire world.


    I am fine having them spend too much time given that the artists have soo much free time to work on it. But once you see our objects lacking in swatches, or lack of ganeplay objects in the pack then that is the problem imo.

    They really need to create CAW because it would definetly benifits both sides. Faster World building for them and more creativity for us