Looking Forward To the End Of TS4

"JoAnne65;c-17143221" wrote:

"babajayne;c-17142856" wrote:
I hope whoever is in charge of The Sims franchise learns from the past failures when they develop TS5.

TS3 may have been too ambitious for what the game engine was capable of. But it feels like we’ve taken 10 steps backwards here with TS4. This is the only game in the series in which I have been repeatedly disappointed. For a while I gave up on it completely. If Seasons hadn’t come back, I would not be playing.

Before Island Living, I was more understanding about how things had gone in this series. I saw the POTENTIAL more than the omissions. I thought Strangerville was taking it in a different direction that was less sandboxy, but I wasn’t mad about it, I figured it would be known if that’s not what most Sims players are after, and they’d learn from that. The fact that it’s a choice to follow the story makes it reasonable, I thought.

But when I had played a few days of Island Living, I felt like the Sims team doesn’t know me at all. It’s mostly just eye candy. Is that all they think I care about? We used to get so many new social interactions with each expansion pack, I didn’t wonder if it was enough. That’s why small packs were called “stuff” packs - they didn’t have any new gameplay in them, just stuff. Now we have expansion packs, game packs and stuff packs, and some of the game packs have more to do than the expansions, and some stuff packs like Movie Hangout Stuff has a lot of social stuff mixed in with the stuff, so I don’t know what’s what anymore. We get some worlds for free, but that’s the main feature of Island Living, the world. It’s inconsistent and in the end, I want more gameplay so I will take what I can get, but as a rule now it will be when it’s on sale, because I have learned better. I’m glad I got a lot of TS4 packs on sale.

I look forward to TS5 only if they learn from the past, start the game off with a great foundation with room to grow, and improve the AI which is always too predictable.

If someone swoops in with a competing game, I will 100% buy it, on principle. That could be incredible to see what happens from there.

I saw a review yesterday and exactly this crossed my mind.




What’s more, it seems to me they completely forgot they are developing a game. I see amazing scenery and an amazing attempt to suggest an open world and amazing animations. But where in all that is the game? “The ‘but Sims 3 looks so ugly, I just can’t play it’ really falls into place for me now. “Solani trumps IP” someone said on Twitter. And to someone proudly posting IP pictures from their game: “I had forgotten how empty Sims 3 worlds are!” (because we may not be allowed to be ‘negative’, apparently that just goes one way) (mind you, in my view the pics looked amazing, it may be less detailed but beautiful nonetheless) It’s not about a game anymore, it’s about painting a picture and stare at it.

P.s. Another thing crossed my mind seeing this review, the part where he shows the festival. Everyone praises the game for sims being so interactive and lively. I see sims standing there doing things, completely ignoring the others. At one point I catch myself wanting to grab one of those fire stick and throw it into the sea already. It reminds me of bumping into Showtime performers in Sims 3. They just stand there and do their act. Or do they. A couple of weeks ago my sim went to a tomb in China and there was this singer guy at the entrance. Lol, very out of place. I sent my sim down and after she had opened some secret stairs, the singer unexpectedly joined her. And stepped into an arrow trap :D Does anything unexpected like that ever happen to NPC’s in Sims 4?

That review was on point honestly. At this point I have no hope for Realm of Magic or the future of TS4 in terms of replayability and depth, it's just not there. I fired up my TS2 again today and it's still a thousand times more fun than TS4.