"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.
We'll just have to disagree on which is the bigger mistake because, again, it really just comes down to play preferences. I don't have any particular problem with open world in itself, I do enjoy it in other games that I play, but as far as the Sims go, definitely not at the cost of rotational play or the freedom to move my Sims around between environments. Watching my Sims walk/drive/skip to a rabbit hole while wasting precious game time just doesn't flow with my play style but I get that it's more realistic and immersive for some players.
I don't always have long stretches of time to play my game in, so when too much time is taken on menial things, I get frustrated. Like in Sims 4, they take forever and a day to eat a sandwich, so I have UI mods installed to throw their hunger bars up, or bladder, or hygiene, etc, as needed. I'm also not into ultra realistic day-to-day life play, so I just don't care about how they get to work, just that they go. I'm more interested in playing out my own stories or exploring or making videos or experimenting and getting to the interesting stuff. I really don't mind loading screens at all, at least in Sims 4 because they're so short, but then again, I have a pretty powerful system so I know it's not the same for everyone. And the backdrops are actually something I like a lot because they fill out the background so nicely for screen shots and videos. I like the art of it all and I find it very aesthetically pleasing. I even feel that the open worlds could have benefited with some additional backdrops to really make the worlds pop.
Anyway, as far as future Sims games, I don't see why the devs couldn't explore a happy medium in making larger neighborhoods that have a much more open world feel, and then just having the loading screens for traveling between them. But I suppose that really would depend on the tech available and the cost of development and maintenance. I know that one of the devs had recently addressed open worlds in the last live stream and said something like, they caused too many issues or complicated the game too much or something... I really can't remember exactly so don't quote me on that, lol.
