Open world totally breaks immersion for sure
Barcelona http://thumbs.modthesims2.com/img/3/2/6/9/9/3/7/MTS_Nilxis-1524211-portindustrial.jpg http://thumbs.modthesims2.com/img/3/2/6/9/9/3/7/MTS_Nilxis-1524212-postasol.jpg http://thumb...
Forum Discussion
The thing is that the lot by lot game design that they were planning to use for Olympus, is the same type of game design they used for the Sims Online. The Sims Online consisted of player made lots where Sims could go build their skills with other Sims, and the more Sims on the lot doing the same skill, the faster the Sim was able to gain skill points. The other two things that the game play was focused on were popularity and keeping that social bar up. When I was playing TSO, I tried building my own house. Not only did I spend all my starting funds (because everything was so expensive), but I took a big hit on social because I lived alone. So, I deleted that game and started a new one where my Sim just hung out on the player made lots...and that sucked when they wouldn't let my Sim in because it was an exclusive club, or the owner was offline so my Sim couldn't get in anyway.
Maxis never did get the memo that it was possible to do an open world online game the way that Origin's Ultima Online did. (And UO is still going strong, more or less). An open world online game for The Sims with a variety of activities added on would probably have been hugely popular, but I suspect EA/Maxis was concerned that they would be accused of trying to imitate Second Life. That's why I think that they were planning on using the exact same design they used for TSO, why they only had the one life stage; I sincerely doubt that they were going to include premade homes. All this was tacked on later.
My point is that there was absolutely no reason why they couldn't at least have had a semi-open world with loading screens only between neighborhoods (and even they could have been designed like the Sims 2 ones, which at least showed the Sims traveling somewhere by using the trolley or their own car...but that would have meant having actual roads instead of FX roads.
Maxis never did get the memo that it was possible to do an open world online game the way that Origin's Ultima Online did. (And UO is still going strong, more or less). An open world online game for The Sims with a variety of activities added on would probably have been hugely popular, but I suspect EA/Maxis was concerned that they would be accused of trying to imitate Second Life. That's why I think that they were planning on using the exact same design they used for TSO, why they only had the one life stage; I sincerely doubt that they were going to include premade homes. All this was tacked on later.
My point is that there was absolutely no reason why they couldn't at least have had a semi-open world with loading screens only between neighborhoods (and even they could have been designed like the Sims 2 ones, which at least showed the Sims traveling somewhere by using the trolley or their own car...but that would have meant having actual roads instead of FX roads.
