Open worlds discussion

Of course you have control over them, you left them at home, they're waiting there for you to come back to them. I didn't like the open world in TS3, the textures were meh, took time to load, and sims moving in high speed around the neighbourhood and causing the screen image to change rapidly was annoying. I wouldn't go as far as to say that it caused motion sickness, but it was close.

Personally, I hope they never make another open world sims game. Open world is a wonderful thing for a game where you play just one character, or group of characters, like in an RPG, but for the Sims, it leads to having all of the sims 'active' even if they are households that you normally play, but rotate between. Just causes no end of headaches for rotational players.

On top of that, it takes all the resources to keep track of all those sims at the same time, leading to sacrifices in other aspects of the game and/or performance issues. Without really adding anything at all other than "no loading screens". I'm sorry, I'll take the loading screens in my Sims game in that case.

I would like to see them implement open neighborhoods though, where all lots in one neighborhood are loaded when you have a sim there. And add seemless loading, rather than loading screens. Which is actually what games like Skyrim and World of Warcraft do. They have the appearance of being "open world" but the world is actually in grids, and only the grids closest to the player are loaded at any given time. The loading happens in the background as you move about, so you don't see loading screens.

I could write an essay on this topic, but its late here, so am not going to at the moment :)

In summary - give me set piece and/or hand crafted 'levels' over open world anytime.

Tho not normally thought of open world, games like Crusader Kings are what is proper open world to me - a proper persistent changing world that responds to what I as a player does.

Now if Paradox and Maxis got together and made video game babies together - I'm in.

"Stormkeep;c-18102249" wrote:
They have the appearance of being "open world" but the world is actually in grids, and only the grids closest to the player are loaded at any given time. The loading happens in the background as you move about, so you don't see loading screens.

Yes, you don't see the loading screens, but you see the textures loading, which to me is the same thing. TS3 was particularly annoying because they loaded visibly all the time whenever you moved the camera around and on very short distances. If I turned camera to the right, bam, loading textures, if I turned it the other way, again, more loading textures, and it was annoying having to always give it 5 seconds or so for the things to display properly. It also offered no benefit to play the entire neighbourhood because sims were usually occupied or stuck elsewhere and community venues were empty or simply rabbitholes.

@Stormkeep Now that's an excellent idea, even just a "semi-open world" or open neighborhoods would make the gameplay so much more enjoyable.

I would also just like the neighborhoods to be more open and have more to do in them. I like the community feel of the smaller neighborhoods. I wish there were some more lots.

Tbh I had this problem when sims was open world game because I was used to ts2 and 1 way and I was delighted when ts4 again focused on lots instead of whole world that was mega overwhelming and distracting to me in ts3 and i kept feeling so disconnected to everything in the game

one thing you can do to sort of feel more like its open world however is to build multipurpose lots in ts4 so you don't have to actually leave lot so often and you can take whole family with you when theres something for everyone to do

I was never a fan of the open world in sims 3. As soon as my family had more than one member, they could be scattered across the map and I found it a pain to zoom across the map between sims. And I couldn't ignore the sims at home because they remained active 24/7. Besides, I found the open worlds to be closed at the same time because they were self contained. Most packs brought its own world which was completely separate from the existing ones. you had to start a new save to explore the world of a new pack (or move your existing sims and cut ties with all their friends and extended families)

For sims 4, it would have been nice to have open neighbourhood. It could be an open environment on a smaller scale with the option to travel to other neighbourhoods. A loading screen to load the lot across the street is annoying.

It's funny because I loved the open world of TS3 at the time and hated it at first when it was taken away from us. But now I prefer the loading screens to the downsides of the open world.

I'm not even too fussed about having open neighbourhoods anymore - unless it is a community area. It would be nice to be able to designate an area as community and have that be open so that all shops and entertainment could be visited without loading screens but I cannot see a way for them to do that unless it was EA-designated districts.

I would love to see larger neighborhoods that we can edit (outside of the active lot) so there could be fully customizable community spaces that would be open, including any shops that were built there. I would also like more continuity between neighborhoods - they don’t really piece together as they are now, and it makes it feel disjointed. Then take it a step further and have the “worlds” fit together in an actual world map that’s not Earth. A world-building tool would be fabulous, as well, that we can shape as we like and customize the terrains and weather in defined sections. Of course, this wouldn’t be at all likely in the Sims 4 but could be in a future iteration.