"HappySimmer3;15439630" wrote:
"Kiwicantdie;15435551" wrote:
"Pary;15435206" wrote:
In an ideal world, games would work perfectly out of the box. Sadly, they never do. It never hurts anyone to become a little bit more savvy and learn to tweak your games to get the most out of them. TS4 seems to be heading down the same road, from what I've been reading lately, so no doubt that will probably end up as much as a shambles and as heavily band-aided as TS3 was - and without the open world or CASt to blame.
Not sure they're learning from past mistakes.
Most of the time, many EA games require external fixes or tweaks, probably because they rush things out.
Despite heading down the same road in the long run, to me there's still a huge performance gap between the two games. I own every piece of content for TS4 and the game runs at least twice as smoother, fast, stable and overall better than TS3 + 4 EPs, and I play it on high-ultra settings (while, for TS3, I played it on medium just to make sure).
I'm not saying that TS4 is heavenly optimized. It has its bugs, glitches and performance issues, of which I complain about. But on the fact that the devs are doing a constant and greatly appreaciatable work of monthly fixes for TS4, there's no doubt. It's also clear that they try to optimize it for low and high specs computers with every new piece of content released. I'm not saying that they nail it every single time, but that it shows in the overall game performance.
It's not perfect, but it's a huge improvement.
Well, to be fair, TS4 is hardly simulating anything. Sure it's going to run better; why wouldn't it? The un-played sims don't actually have lives that they're living or places they're purposely going to accomplish some goal that the game is sending them on except for the most superficial of tasks. There's only one lot at a time that's active instead of a whole world/neighborhood with an average of 100 lots. So that really needs to be taken into account or it's comparing apples to oranges.
I understand that maybe some people don't care about the rest of the sims or neighborhood and only focus on their one lot at a time - and that's perfectly fine if that's their thing. But it's really unfair to not take into account how much the two games are actively doing (or rather, not doing) in the background when you compare how they run.
You brought up another good point up, one that I didn't go too much into :)
I didn't talk much about it because I'm still a little conflicted on the matter, but I really do wish that TS4 had some sort of "background" story progression. TS4 feels like a really good game to those who enjoy rotational play the most, and I feel like it was developed with that in mind: giving us more freedom on switching and playing with different sims, without world limitations.
However, there is no doubt that this game completely lacks a sort of
progression for all unplayed sims. I went a little into it when I pointed out that I'd like for my sims to get invited to weddings from non active households, because I think it would be great and immersive seeing the world progressing a little on its own if someone is not strictly into rotational play.
I'm one of those that micromanages everything for the sake of storytelling, but I still feel like there needs to be a balance between active management of sims and played households and the unplayed world surrounding your sims. I'd rather see unplayed sims getting pregnant, for example, rather than having the same mother + teen + child household spawn every
single time I visit a park.
I'd also like to add: I didn't went much into my TS3 experience because this thread is
not a TS3 review. It's in the TS4 feedback section. I wanted to give my feedback on
TS4, while pointing out where I think it improved greatly and where it lacks. I only brought TS3 up on the specific points where I think TS4 made a clear step forward. That's it.
I was never really motivated to do it during these two years because I didn't have a real
feel of the things it had improved upon. Then I bought and played TS3. That's what formed and reinforced my current opinion.
If I wanted to give a TS3 review or make a TS3 vs TS4, I would have played that game for a couple of months after buying every single piece of content available, and only then I would have said something.
I find toddlers in TS3 absolutely horrible. Does that mean that I think people who play them and have fun with them are dumb or blind or something? No. Not at all. You simply like something that I don't (and that I wish I liked).
Stating that one feature was done really poorly and demanding it to be improved, if there's a comeback, is not being rude to a player.
Also, I don't see people "supporting" me. I only see people spending their time (or not) reading my verbose and poorly written honest opinion about TS4, and either agreeing with it or not.
You have every right to disagree with me.
As a matter of fact, my opinion is just an
opinion.
