Open world totally breaks immersion for sure

I never saw the appeal of following my sims to work, or the idea of sitting there, bored out of my mind while my school aged sims go to class and actually have to watch them be taught. It seems like such an utter waste when I could be panning around my neighbourhood and watching what other sims that aren't at work or school are doing.
By doing so, I've seen fights between my sims neighbours, affairs, deaths, and rushes to hospital to give birth, and so on. That's a lot more fun than watching an NPC sim drone on at my teenagers pretending to educate them.

I love rabbitholes.
I don't get how some people don't seem to realise that the moment your sim leaves the house to go to work and vanishes ( or whatever they do in Sims 4 ) from the curb, that essentially, they have just entered a limbo rabbithole.
The difference in the open world, is that the rabbitholes give the town's character, buildings to show that there IS a lively little town or suburb down there, with sims that enter and exit these small shops and places of work, rather than just have them walk to a curb and disappear into nothingness, not even a car to drive away in. I think they at least enhance the feeling of a community, rather than just letting sims fade into non existence.

I think, Maxis underestimated the negative effect of their decision and they learned this very soon after the release of the base game, but of course they can't say "Oops, sorry guys, we made a huge mistake by taking away the open world feature. We hope you still enjoy TS4." ^^

I bet, open worlds are on the to-do list for TS5 now.

"EisbergsEnte;14396581" wrote:
I think, Maxis underestimated the negative effect of their decision and they learned this very soon after the release of the base game, but of course they can't say "Oops, sorry guys, we made a huge mistake by taking away the open world feature. We hope you still enjoy TS4." ^^

I bet, open worlds are on the to-do list for TS5 now.

Oh if only... And hopefully CASt is at the top of that to-do-list as well.
(100% agree with you there @Pary)

"Pary;14396572" wrote:
I never saw the appeal of following my sims to work, or the idea of sitting there, bored out of my mind while my school aged sims go to class and actually have to watch them be taught. It seems like such an utter waste when I could be panning around my neighbourhood and watching what other sims that aren't at work or school are doing.
By doing so, I've seen fights between my sims neighbours, affairs, deaths, and rushes to hospital to give birth, and so on. That's a lot more fun than watching an NPC sim drone on at my teenagers pretending to educate them.

I love rabbitholes.
I don't get how some people don't seem to realise that the moment your sim leaves the house to go to work and vanishes ( or whatever they do in Sims 4 ) from the curb, that essentially, they have just entered a limbo rabbithole.
The difference in the open world, is that the rabbitholes give the town's character, buildings to show that there IS a lively little town or suburb down there, with sims that enter and exit these small shops and places of work, rather than just have them walk to a curb and disappear into nothingness, not even a car to drive away in. I think they at least enhance the feeling of a community, rather than just letting sims fade into non existence.

Best reply I have seen in months! :smiley:

Indeed the rabbit holes add to the town. They sit well amongst the community lot buildings. I like sound effects such as every Sim hour at the school you can here the bell ring to signal the end of each lesson which reminds me of my own school, seeing Sims enter and leave their own place at various times of day and the mystery of the criminal's hangout be it the base game's abandoned warehouse or later EP's such as IP where the criminals had their own pirate's bay.

Each EP would bring new rabbit holes and new versions of the old ones, it was a world builders dream :smile:

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.

"king_of_simcity7;14396671" wrote:

"Pary;14396572" wrote:
I never saw the appeal of following my sims to work, or the idea of sitting there, bored out of my mind while my school aged sims go to class and actually have to watch them be taught. It seems like such an utter waste when I could be panning around my neighbourhood and watching what other sims that aren't at work or school are doing.
By doing so, I've seen fights between my sims neighbours, affairs, deaths, and rushes to hospital to give birth, and so on. That's a lot more fun than watching an NPC sim drone on at my teenagers pretending to educate them.

I love rabbitholes.
I don't get how some people don't seem to realise that the moment your sim leaves the house to go to work and vanishes ( or whatever they do in Sims 4 ) from the curb, that essentially, they have just entered a limbo rabbithole.
The difference in the open world, is that the rabbitholes give the town's character, buildings to show that there IS a lively little town or suburb down there, with sims that enter and exit these small shops and places of work, rather than just have them walk to a curb and disappear into nothingness, not even a car to drive away in. I think they at least enhance the feeling of a community, rather than just letting sims fade into non existence.

Best reply I have seen in months! :smiley:

Indeed the rabbit holes add to the town. They sit well amongst the community lot buildings. I like sound effects such as every Sim hour at the school you can here the bell ring to signal the end of each lesson which reminds me of my own school, seeing Sims enter and leave their own place at various times of day and the mystery of the criminal's hangout be it the base game's abandoned warehouse or later EP's such as IP where the criminals had their own pirate's bay.

Each EP would bring new rabbit holes and new versions of the old ones, it was a world builders dream :smile:

I have redone every EA town and the rabbit holes don't bother me a bit. Love all the tall buildings from Roaring Heights and use those in my other towns. I have plenty of venues that are open. I like a bit of realism to my town, my sim vanishing into the building for work is much better to me than going poof off the screen.

"Sk8rblaze;14396771" wrote:

"JoAnne65;14396543" wrote:

"Scobre;14395502" wrote:
Sims 4 still has rabbit holes. They didn't just go away when Sims 3 ended.

In a way there are more, because most of the time you're not following all your sims. And the sims you're not controlling aren't even doing anything. At least when I send my sim to a store in 3 he's buying things or he's learning how to fish. In Sims 2 you can live the life of every sim you play because time goes back when you return to your home lot. Can't say I'm a fan of that, but at least when you want to, you can live the life of all your sims at the fullest. All of them.

Now, that maybe not important to everyone (which I get, I'm not a micromanager myself and some of my sims get more attention than others, especially in large families), but hating rabbitholes because they are rabbitholes sounds a bit artificial to me. Making something terrible out of a similar thing that's just handled differently in the different games. Magnifying the downside just for the sake of it.

I don't think it's being overly critical or anything, I really do think rabbitholes broke the immersion a ton. The whole reason why Will Wright created The Sims was to be able to actually see inside the buildings of SimCity and get a much better glimpse of those weird creatures that roamed around each city, Sims. To go full circle back to staring at buildings again just feels like it defeats the whole purpose of the franchise.

Each Sims game has its downsides, and I see nothing wrong with pointing them out. They all have their upsides too, albeit some more than others of course.

Each Sims game has it downsides, they're all equal in that respect, but somehow some Sims games are more equal than others. Because when it concerns pointing out downsides of Sims 3, the downsides are nothing less than 'horrid', 'terrible' or 'a mess'. The downsides of the other games are 'charming', or 'nostalgic', or 'mildly annoying'. That's just completely over the top, because you can't enter some buildings in the other versions either. And it's not necessary or even desirable to enter them all (see Pary's post).

I follow what you're saying about Will Wright, I was one of his very first fans actually without knowing, even before he had had the chance to develop The Sims :# I vividly remember watching my father playing SimCity, somewhere in the 90's, literally thinking: this is so cool, I love this, but I don't want to build neighborhoods and roads and industry and stuff, I want to go inside those houses. I want to know who lives there, who are those people driving in those tiny cars. Literally this:


(such a powerful trailer by the way; just as powerful as the trailer where open world was introduced imo)
That was the idea, but that idea had to be transferred into a playable game. Rabbitholes in my opinion are the most perfect solution for places where you can't follow your sim (which is exactly the same in Sims 1, 2 and 4, only there you can't see where your sim went). In fact it contributes to the immersion for me, not breaking it 'a ton'. There goes Charlie, off to school/work. Poof, and gone is Charlie, vanished into thin air. One minute he was there, the next he was gone. Where is he? We have no idea but let's hope he'll be dropped on our porch again by the end of the day.

I understand people dislike they can't follow their sims everywhere (not because I agree, I think they are overestimating the charm of following your sims constantly, but I understand it), but I really don't get why it being an actual building makes it worse. @luthienrising explained it once (and in fact I could follow that), by stating it's the frustration of being so curious what's in there and not being able to see. Even when I don't share that curiosity, ok, I get that. But why a building would break the immersion and is worse than sims vanishing is beyond me. Besides, even though I don't like sims vanishing, I can't imagine I'd ever be that passionate about it. "Sims vanishing is horrid, I hate it!" Neh, I just prefer them going somewhere, that's all.

True, they are better than nothing at all, but TS3 used them far too much IMHO. For instance, the spa, grocery store, book store, movie theater, town hall, and other rabbitholes should have (and I believe could have) been open venues.

The town hall? You mean the place that doesn't even exist in Sims 2 and 4 ;)?
All the venues you mention are only fun 'open' when there's some kind of gameplay attached to it. The library has always been open in Sims 3 and as for me, I find it utterly boring. It isn't even a real library where my sim can borrow books. The museum is open, but the art exposed there is silly and can be found in every household because it's all available in buy mode.

One example of the greatness of rabbitholes for me is the campus. It looks and feels like a real campus, thanks to the rabbithole buildings. Buildings that could have never been built like that in build mode.

(long post, sorry, I guess I felt like babbling :p )

"JoAnne65;14396543" wrote:

In a way there are more, because most of the time you're not following all your sims. And the sims you're not controlling aren't even doing anything. At least when I send my sim to a store in 3 he's buying things or he's learning how to fish. In Sims 2 you can live the life of every sim you play because time goes back when you return to your home lot. Can't say I'm a fan of that, but at least when you want to, you can live the life of all your sims at the fullest. All of them.

Now, that maybe not important to everyone (which I get, I'm not a micromanager myself and some of my sims get more attention than others, especially in large families), but hating rabbitholes because they are rabbitholes sounds a bit artificial to me. Making something terrible out of a similar thing that's just handled differently in the different games. Magnifying the downside just for the sake of it.

Yeah I have found more of them too, which is why I don't understand when others says Sims 4 has none because it does. Why I tend to want to ignore the Sims 3 has rabbit holes complaints.

One thing that always disappointed me about rabbit holes was that there were always building details on there that I couldn't make on an actual lot. One of the town life venues had curved walls even! So if they can make them look consistent with the buildings that are actually enterable, then they'd bother me less. (Plus, you know, using them for open world.)

I also disagree there are more rabbit holes in 4. And yes, they do break immersion. I hated going out in Sims 3 because I got stuck watching a building while they were inside.