"Erpe;c-16468977" wrote:
"JoAnne65;c-16468956" wrote:
"LiELF;c-16468793" wrote:
"JoAnne65;c-16468297" wrote:
"LiELF;c-16468262" wrote:
"Erpe;c-16468184" wrote:
The alternative to rabbit holes usually is to just let them go to work off screen. Would you really prefer that?
I would. I really don't understand the point of rabbit hole buildings. If the Sim is just going off screen anyway, why waste time having them walk to a place that is just wasting space in the neighborhood anyway? Just let them go away at home and I'll get on with the rest of the household and put a useable venue in that building space. I just don't get the appeal. But I will say that I prefer the Sims 2 method over Sims 4 (and 3) because at least the Sims got into a car and drove off the lot, and I did like how the car got upgraded as they advanced in their career. It was a nice touch.
The appeal is I guess what makes people open world fans or not: the feeling your sim is actually part of a world. For me it matters whether my kids go to school in Dragon Valley or in Sunlit Tides, because I have an image of the building they are going to. Which is why I hate the rabbit holes in Lunar Lakes (though I understand the idea): they are all identical (and therefore as dead to me as no building). Space of course is no problem in Sims 3, you can throw in lots everywhere if you feel you need more than what you got. And you don’t waste any time, working time or school time starts at the moment your sim steps into the vehicle that takes them there, exactly like in Sims 2.
I guess it just depends on the play style of each person. Rabbit holes aren't important to me and I could live without them. I just don't think they're necessary.
But now I've thought of some more things that are important to me that I really don't want them to repeat in the next Sims game.
1. Confining households to a single world/map. I don't care how big the map is, I can't stand not being able to freely move my Sims to new places. That's one thing the Sims 4 has done beautifully is they gave us the flexibility to move all of our Sims around to new environments as much as we want without consequences.
2. Eliminating rotational play. Just don't. Never, ever, ever. This is a complete deal breaker for me, non-negotiable.
3. Forcing story progression without a toggle. I like to play a lot of Sims and I don't want the game making decisions for me or changing my households and making them get married and reproducing.
4. Don't ever try to eliminate mods/CC. I feel like Sims 3 tried to do this in the beginning in order to push the store on us. That changed, of course, but when the game released, there was no mods/downloads folder and it was very difficult to add them to the game. If it wasn't for mods and CC, I never would have picked up that first Sims 2 game.
As for the first one, I indeed don’t understand why they implemented the possibility to do just that (with WA, enabling NRaas to make a mod out of it) but never actually added it to the actual game. That was a mistake indeed (as was the silly option at one point to move your sims directly from your town to another, erasing everything they left behind as many simmers unfortunately had to discover afterwards). The mistake however to replace that by tiny neighborhoods, fake backdrops, no transportation and loading screens everywhere* is a much bigger one. For me it’s in no way making up for the size of the open worlds we had and while the ability to travel between NB’s is great, I wish you wouldn’t see every family walking around everywhere and I wish travelling wouldn’t take two seconds sim time. So unrealistic.
Completely agree the game should me mod friendly.
(as for SP, Sims 3 actually has that toggle)
*ETA: which brings me to a major mistake I’d never want to return, sims in your very own household being completely uncontrollable and invisible and to make it worse, doing absolutely nothing during long periods of time.
You are describing very well why TS4 can’t be targeted at experienced simmers or made as a game that the devs would like to play themselves. Instead it is the kind of game you end up with if you think that you are designing a game for 12 yrs olds as their very first big game and attempt to make it different from the previous games. Then you don’t care about missing things because people who miss them can just play the old game too. And you also don’t care about details and depth which the new young simmers are unlikely to care about anyway.
So if you think that way then I think that you will be able to understand things that otherwise can’t be understood. The problem then just is why EA thinks that such young unexperienced simmers are the only simmers who matter?
Yeah, and I'll add this as a huge mistake too:
Making the game excessively childish, overly trendy, and way too self-conscious. The players don't need to be shielded from the dark side of realism, even the younger simmers will be able to sense the dishonesty of that. And following every trend from clothing and hair to social movements is what puts a date stamp on an otherwise ageless game.
I feel like the world of the Sims used to be more their own, more of an understood fiction, with things that mirrored our reality as well as things that are exclusive to the Sim Nation (cow plants, alien abductions, invisible beings that "rescue" them from aspiration failure, etc.) But when it becomes so self-aware that the fictional aspects of the game start to fade into the background, we're left with a bad sitcom full of rubber chickens and poop jokes. Sometimes the comedy is in the struggle of life itself, not in a forced humor pushed into the game to keep it in the happy zone. And I'm not saying it needs to be excessively deviant. I mean, life states have always been a thing, as have burglars (until now) and random accidents. Keep it classy, keep it real, and keep it honest to its roots. No doubt a tough balance, but a necessary one.
