Ocean swimming

"cheescaeks;c-17087675" wrote:

"drake_mccarty;c-17087666" wrote:

"icmnfrsh;c-17087383" wrote:

"drake_mccarty;c-17087353" wrote:
File this one under “careless designs that have hindered their ability to expand the game”. IMO we see WAY too much of that given the studio’s history with this one game franchise.

Exactly. It's so unfortunate that the current game suffers a lot from this, and players have been conditioned to accept the limitations brought on by the base. Players always have to temper their expectations with "but this isn't technically feasible, they don't have the resources to make this happen, or including this would take something else away from the pack", when normally this would solely be the developer's concern.

Maxis has put more effort into grooming the impressionable than they have fixing the game they made. They probably don’t know how. I mean they have done absolutely nothing with any key feature of the base game, and we’ll be on what year 5 here shortly?? Super successful game’s don’t get bottom barrel funding - which from what we hear from the developers themselves is what Sims 4 gets from EA. Contradictory statements, another one of Maxis strongest features these days.

kinda disagree with that, its been massively slow catching up to the other two basegames like sims 2 and 3 but they're slowly getting back to it. like we didn't have terrain tools or pools or toddlers at launch, yeah, but they've been adding them back in. we don't know what they're working on right now and they can't really say anything about it until its ready.

i mean, i see the gurus using the "oh we can't do that it takes up resources" excuses all the time and then it pops out of no where. pools being a prime example of it being left out cause the engine couldn't handle it and then being brought back in when the engine could.

i do agree that this should've been done before sims 4 was ever launched (which was severely hindered by them having to backtrack on the online multiplayer aspect of this game when simcity collapsed, the major source of all the engine problems) but the only thing they can do at this point is learn from their mistakes and make sure sims 5 is a completed base before launching.

The game is fundamentally flawed and no amount of slow moving catch-up is going to do anything to change that. Maxis is great at conditioning people to repeat their words and then also believe them, no offense but look at your post. Those same things were literally said in 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, and now here we are in 2019 saying the exact same things. That speaks for itself.

To be frank, I no longer find it appropriate to give Maxis the benefit of the doubt. That’s my opinion so don’t try to change my mind there. They have had plenty of time to make plenty of content and when you look at what we have there’s a ton of novelty content and barely anything that’s had a significant impact on the game. This studio is the only studio to ever make PC Sims games, they shouldn’t have this much learning to do about their only successful product in like 20 years. They want you to believe that for whatever reason even though it makes them look completely incompetent.

Yes the game was online, and yes that caused a lot of issues early on. The game has been offline since release and they STILL are making downright bad choices for it. They are able to do that because they have conditioned players to believe that there’s something better coming, and then when that doesn’t pan out they use the damage control as marketing.

"Barbie430;c-17087722" wrote:

"cheescaeks;c-17087675" wrote:

"drake_mccarty;c-17087666" wrote:

"icmnfrsh;c-17087383" wrote:

"drake_mccarty;c-17087353" wrote:
File this one under “careless designs that have hindered their ability to expand the game”. IMO we see WAY too much of that given the studio’s history with this one game franchise.

Exactly. It's so unfortunate that the current game suffers a lot from this, and players have been conditioned to accept the limitations brought on by the base. Players always have to temper their expectations with "but this isn't technically feasible, they don't have the resources to make this happen, or including this would take something else away from the pack", when normally this would solely be the developer's concern.

Maxis has put more effort into grooming the impressionable than they have fixing the game they made. They probably don’t know how. I mean they have done absolutely nothing with any key feature of the base game, and we’ll be on what year 5 here shortly?? Super successful game’s don’t get bottom barrel funding - which from what we hear from the developers themselves is what Sims 4 gets from EA. Contradictory statements, another one of Maxis strongest features these days.

kinda disagree with that, its been massively slow catching up to the other two basegames like sims 2 and 3 but they're slowly getting back to it. like we didn't have terrain tools or pools or toddlers at launch, yeah, but they've been adding them back in. we don't know what they're working on right now and they can't really say anything about it until its ready.

i mean, i see the gurus using the "oh we can't do that it takes up resources" excuses all the time and then it pops out of no where. pools being a prime example of it being left out cause the engine couldn't handle it and then being brought back in when the engine could.

i do agree that this should've been done before sims 4 was ever launched (which was severely hindered by them having to backtrack on the online multiplayer aspect of this game when simcity collapsed, the major source of all the engine problems) but the only thing they can do at this point is learn from their mistakes and make sure sims 5 is a completed base before launching.

Eh, I find it hard to believe that pools came to fruition because of a sudden breakthrough with the engine, considering the amount time between the launch of the game and the patch that added them. To me, it just seems like an excuse they threw out to appease an outraged fan base because they rushed the release and left far too much out. Time has shown that they’ve used that line over and over again to try to explain obvious shortcomings.

If they do add ocean swimming, I wouldn’t be surprised if they trotted out that same resources excuse as for why it’s confined to one world.

This 1000%

Pools weren’t finished in time for release, or perhaps they were. We don’t really know. All we know is that they had a heavily produced marketing plan ready to launch along side them less than 60 days from launch. Same for ghosts in even less time. They were sitting on that content to make players more receptive to the live service pitch. Hence why players were no longer thrilled when we stopped regularly getting stuff like that in patches.

It’s funny because I saw an entire thread in which people kept talking about it breaking saves and I was just like disappointed that we would even be speaking about ocean swimming in a video game being an issue in 2019. I’ve seen insane crap in video games and I have such high expectations of sims games and it really sucks being disappointed when we don’t receive well thought out content. It’s like with every release there’s a pros list but there’s also a huge list of stuff left out that would have gave the pack they rolled out so much more depth and character. Don’t get me wrong I love the Sims still but I’m just wondering why we have to beg for shit like ocean swimming when we had it literally in the sims 1 and 2 even though it was in early stages (but awesome at the time). Is their budget not enough for an advanced sims game? I don’t get it. We in the forums can come up with the most fun gameplay and then we are presented with stuff we play through in one day like strangerville. If they need ideas they know where to find em, yet here we are in 2019 without a lot of key features we’ve had before but my sim can now fight an alien

It would be so cool to be able to swim in the ocean. That's something that would make me fall in love with TS4 once again. It would make the game feel more free, even tho the worlds are super small and very decorated. But that would really make it more fun. Just imagining your sim snorkeling and finding random stuff in the water or cooling off in the middle of summer when it's a heatwave. Sadly we'll probably only get a world that has swimable oceans. If only TS4 wasn't so rushed because of the stupid online game design in the start.

"catloverplayer;c-17087724" wrote:

"leetamme;c-17087399" wrote:
It would be awesome if they could open up other bodies of water in other world's. They could tag it to certain fishing spots where open water swimming would make sense and it could be part of the 64bit update or any update so it's not related to and separate from a pack.

But like most everyone I doubt it will happen and will be specific to and olny in the world related pack.

Yes like Granite Falls so our sims could swim up to the waterfall.

I could deal with the rest of the older worlds not getting an update but the water in Granite Falls really should be made swimmable it would give the most boring vacation world something to do.

If ocean swimming was added to EP 7 I hope they added the option for sims to do romantic interactions in the water.

I think it's gonna be the easiest way too.

"catloverplayer;c-17087314" wrote:
I don't think we're going to see ocean swimming patched in. I think it will be specific to the Tropical World.

I wonder if there will be more then one swimmable ocean in the tropical pack eg North Beach,South Beach etc.

OP, people have confused two different discussions into one subject. To my knowledge they have never said it would break saves that was about a different thing, like moving trees, trash cans, benches etc. or whatever is placed in a common space. One guru explained they don't like to do that since it could break all our saves. That sounds reasonable. Usable objects being added or moved by gurus and patched into your game is what they were talking about early on when they used to hold those discussions.

The other discussion was specifically about swimming in water in TS4 (lakes, oceans etc. in existing worlds) they explained they would have to build an entire new texture for a world like WB. It's all FX. FX is something Sims can't use, touch, enter etc.

Other game worlds are built with above and below sea levels in their terrains. From the get go. When they are designing a game. Even if you never did dig a hole in TS1, it's terrain (world) had a sea level. Later, when they released the ablity to dig ponds in the world view you would see the 'water'. But still Sims couldn't roam the world but it had a sea level. Those ponds were not objects, either.

It's more complicated than I can relate today, with my limited knowledge. All I know is they said no they would probably never patch in swimming into existing worlds, it would be almost impossile since that is all FX. And you have to wonder if it would be cost effective to do that for every world, (since terrain tools were a pet project and not all that useful yet) why they would even try to alter every terrain into a brand new terrain for every world when people will buy a pack where it's limited to a new world. They have nothing to lose by just building one world where this can happen and not wasting time or money trying to satisfy those who would like to see swimming in bodies of water in all the worlds. It's probably never going to happen.

"Cinebar;c-17088568" wrote:
OP, people have confused two different discussions into one subject. To my knowledge they have never said it would break saves that was about a different thing, like moving trees, trash cans, benches etc. or whatever is placed in a common space. One guru explained they don't like to do that since it could break all our saves. That sounds reasonable. Usable objects being added or moved by gurus and patched into your game is what they were talking about early on when they used to hold those discussions.

The other discussion was specifically about swimming in water in TS4 (lakes, oceans etc. in existing worlds) they explained they would have to build an entire new texture for a world like WB. It's all FX. FX is something Sims can't use, touch, enter etc.

Other game worlds are built with above and below sea levels in their terrains. From the get go. When they are designing a game. Even if you never did dig a hole in TS1, it's terrain (world) had a sea level. Later, when they released the ablity to dig ponds in the world view you would see the 'water'. But still Sims couldn't roam the world but it had a sea level. Those ponds were not objects, either.

It's more complicated than I can relate today, with my limited knowledge. All I know is they said no they would probably never patch in swimming into existing worlds, it would be almost impossile since that is all FX. And you have to wonder if it would be cost effective to do that for every world, (since terrain tools were a pet project and not all that useful yet) why they would even try to alter every terrain into a brand new terrain for every world when people will buy a pack where it's limited to a new world. They have nothing to lose by just building one world where this can happen and not wasting time or money trying to satisfy those who would like to see swimming in bodies of water in all the worlds. It's probably never going to happen.

It’s not as complicated as you make it out to be. It’s also nowhere close to being impossible. Not saying it’s going to happen, because this game is developed on a shoestring budget, but if they wanted to make water usable in existing worlds they totally could. It would be costlier because of the way they chose to design the worlds, but it’s not like it would break anyone’s save game.

Also***** they can edit the objects in the worlds. They have done it several times. That won’t break anyone’s game either.