"Erpe;c-16517341" wrote:
"drake_mccarty;c-16517302" wrote:
"Erpe;c-16517191" wrote:
"Evil_One;c-16517115" wrote:
"Erpe;c-16514840" wrote:
"Evil_One;c-16510913" wrote:
The snow in this pack perfectly sums up TS4... Without depth.
Yes, TS4 was too targeted at new simmers and therefore a little disappointing for us who had expected more. But I think that TS5 is about to be announced now and for the first time won’t mean the end of TS4 anyway. This makes me think that TS5 likely will be even more simplified and multiplayer because most experienced simmers apparently are expected to just stay with TS4.
Anyway we apparently can’t get the more advanced and deep game that we want and the shallow snow in TS4 alas is for me to see just one of many things that show this.
Even new simmers like depth, while changes may draw in new simmers, only depth will keep them.
I agree. But the problem is that EA thinks that new simmers are a huge majority for this game and that only a quite small minority of them will keep playing the game anyway. I don’t know what statistics EA has based this upon. But EA knows that many more than just half of the simmers have stopped every time that EA has released a new basegame. The worst example was actually the switch from TS1 to TS2 because we know that TS2 only sold about 6 million copies while TS1 sold almost twice as many. We also know that millions of simmers played TS2 as their very first Sims game. So when TS2 only sold about half as many copies as TS1 did then this must mean that likely 75% to 80% of the Sims 1 simmers never bought the Sims 2. EA of course knows this even better than we do. But EA has always released a new basegame every 5 years anyway because EA thinks that the millions of new simmers always will be more important than the decreasing number of older simmers would be anyway.
I doubt they'd try for multiplayer again, not if they want to have a fanbase left... It just can't work for a game like The Sims, there's just too much going on.
It worked for both the Sims Freeplay and the Sims Mobile. So if EA (as it seems) still will release packs for TS4 even years after the release of TS5 then I don’t see why EA wouldn’t make TS5 into a multiplayer game targeted even more at new very young simmers?
Neither Sims Freeplay or Sims Mobile are multiplayer in any sense that a PC game would be. You do not play with other people, you can visit your friends world/house and interact with things, but your friends will not see this and your interactions will have no effect in their game.
I don’t know how EA would make multiplayer in the PC game. Just that there are many possible ways to do it and that it usually is important for the youngest gamers to be able to play and communicate a little with their friends too. This was the reason why EA included multiplayer in both the Sims Freeplay and in the Sims Mobile and I suspect that EA will try something in TS5 too. TS5 will almost certainly be a much bigger game though. But I am not sure that the multiplayer part will and I also doubt that TS5 will be in real time like the mobile games are.
EA is not going to have two mainline Sims titles in active production at once. They have one development studio working on PC, and unless they contract development out to a non-Maxis studio there is no way they are going to produce a sequel while maintaining production on The Sims 4.
They have like had a Sims 5 team working for years too beside all the different Sims 4 teams. When TS5 is released then those Sims 5 developers will of course just work on more content for TS5 instead. (I don’t think that EA will let them move on to TS6 though like EA earlier did almost immediately after each release of a new basegame.)
I also heavily disagree with your assertion that they target “new very young simmers” - they are targeting the casual audience, which is about as broad as it gets.
One thing doesn’t contradict the other. I agree that they are targeting casual gamers. But TS4 surely didn’t target the Sims 3 simmers in the way it was made. So it almost exclusively targeted new simmers. Otherwise EA wouldn’t have dared to omit so many things from TS3 and simplify other things as much as EA did when they developed TS4.
I think that TS5 soon will be announced and that this was the reason why so many devs suddenly about a month ago saw a huge need to go on twitter and guarantee that TS4 will get new content for a long time yet because otherwise I couldn’t see any reason for them to do this. But if TS5 soon will be announced then I certainly can understand why they wanted to go on twitter early to prevent panic among the Sims 4 simmers ;)
TS4 was designed as an online multiplayer game, and that explains a lot of the design choices that were made for it. It has nothing to do with targeting new players, because the game was announced and promoted through the YibSim group who’s network really only extended to players of Sims 3 and fans of Sims on PC. It wasn’t until the game nearly flopped at launch when they shifted away from the YibSim marketing and tested out different ways of marketing the game to the broader, casual audience.
I don’t know where you are getting your information about a sequel, to my knowledge there has been zero information on that. We have heard of developers either leaving the studio entirely, or being moved to mobile projects. A sequel to Sims 4 won’t be a mobile game, and after the serious issues they had with the online version of this game I doubt they would go down that route a second time so quickly after it failed. As I said, there is only one studio developing the PC game, unless they are contracting development out to a non-Maxis studio there is no sequel in the works.
The Sims 4 is considered a service, which changes it’s development timeline and ultimately extends active production on the game. The repeated statements that Sims 4 is getting more content is a big indicator that there is not a sequel in production now, nor will there be one releasing for years. EA does not throw a bunch of money into Sims, developing two mainline games at once would be a significant investment which their track record does not support.
