The reusing of remodeled items/animations could be done in a productive way if they just tweaked certain animations for certain things.
One bad example is the ice cream machine from Cool Kitchen Stuff. For the ice cream itself, the Sims ate it using the same animation for fruit or something. Like they just held the ice cream cone in their palm and took chunks out of the ice cream instead of wrapping their fingers around the bottom part of the cone and licking the icecream. I think had they tweaked this animation to fit something that resembled the way most people look when they "eat ice cream", this would have been fine.
I don't mind reusing animations for a remodeled item. But at least take the time to remodel the design of the item and tweak the reused animations to make it work with each other. It should make sense. I don't care about reusing the animation for putting dishes away to something like putting laundry in the dryer/washer ... just tweak it if it needs to be tweaked. I also didn't care that the ice cream/popcorn makers were just remodels of each other. I enjoyed that we got both. That was a good decision and it made sense to reuse the animation for the popcorn/ice cream. But that's 1 good decision amongst how many bad ones...
I also agree 110% with OP that EA is a multi billion dollar game developer and shouldn't be suffering on the budget side of things. EA is in the top 5 wealthiest game devs alongside companies like Square Enix, Blizzard, Microsoft (XBOX), and Sony. The problem is that EA makes most of their money off of their sports titles. The Sims is a lot different ... obviously internal stuff was going on with the development of TS4 and even with TS3. I think people messed up internally first to give EA the impression that The Sims is too much work, which is why their teams may be struggling now. Who knows though.
I also don't mind them reusing parts of old systems and using that as a foundation to create new systems. I think it works. But a lot of problems with TS4 is the lack of versatility with their gameplay functions. Players want more options, not less, and I don't think they want to be forced to stick to linear functions. Even if that linear function is fun for a while, I think they will be bored and never use it again. So give players the tools they need to change and tweaks things to their liking so that their experience can be unique to their play style. CaW would - to me - help with creating a more dynamic feel to the game. Maybe you want to create a new world, or place objects differently in the game. If CaW existed, maybe you would be able to download worlds from the Gallery and explore the different ways people make cool worlds like they do with lots. That would be really awesome. But we don't have that for TS4. Instead we have something like OR that never changes. It always looks the same. You just go there for a vacation, and that's the only way it exists in your game. With Bon Voyage in TS2, we got 3 different vacation spots and the ability to design our own hotels. With TS4 we don't have the same abilities.
I just want TS4 to stop cutting corners by making it their main purpose to reuse and recycle content. If they are going to make that their main purpose, they should be reinventing gameplay systems first and foremost. Like DO was amazing because you could create your own restaurant and own it. It would be cooler if we actually were the chef as well, but overall it was a great pack. I don't know what Jackjack is talking about in terms of bugs and glitches though ... yeah, DO has its bugs and glitches, but NOT as much as GTW's retail system. I haven't played GTW's retail in a long time, but perhaps I'll revisit it ... but when DO was initially released, it was better than GTW's system at the time. Maybe something was updated which is why Jackjack believes it's a good sytem ... but I remember employees being completely useless. And I knew why it was happening. It was because automated actions like "sniffing the air" around good food would interrupt the retail actions. The coding should have placed retail actions at the top. I could understand with low star employees that their priority would be low, but for high star employees they should be relatively perfect, but they weren't. My high star employees were just as bad as my low star employees. Like I said, it was a technical issue. Who knows if they fixed it. Point is after the first couple of updates after GTW, I just gave up hope that they would fix the system.
Also like DeservedCrit says ... reusing systems and tweaking them to new gameplay isn't a problem until you start copypasting systems that are buggy and not that great to begin with. Imagine if they took the time to revisit the old retail system of GTW and update it, ironing out the bugs and polishing the system, and then repackaging C&D with the new and improved career and then include the fixes in their next update before C&D is released ... imagine if they approached it that way. I find it crazy that anyone thinks DO is buggier than GTW ... like yes DO has its faults in the restaurant system, but GTW is WAY more flawed in terms of its actual system. But is it even that good that we have a decent system with flaws as well as a bad system with flaws that aren't being worked on? Repackage an old system if you must, but find a way to make it new and relevant while simultaneously fixing some of the issues with it. Otherwise, what's the point? It would have been even better if they just made a retail system that worked well to begin with so that they could have reused it for the vet career. Or at least fix the issues after it is released so that reusing it down the line won't populate even more of the SAME issues in OTHER areas of the game ... it's not that difficult to understand.
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Oh, also @jackjack_k ... about TS2. I wanted to respond to some of the stuff you said directed at @DeservedCriticism.
Not to mention, The Sims 2 would recycle content as well. You realise that Bon Voyage meant that Hotel gameplay revolved around Restaurants as well? So if you already spent years with Restaurants in the Sims 2, you already played with the majority of what Hotels offer. They also made you pay for Cars as a paid feature of Nightlife, even though Cars were free with The Sims 2 (free download because of the backlash after Cars were removed from the base game, and then tried to be sold later).
#1: Hotels and restaurants had a similar gameplay style ... but hotels were legitimately revamped from the restaurant gameplay. Also the restaurant gameplay of TS2 is pretty dang solid and actually pretty in-depth. The AI was definitely a lot better in TS2 compared to TS4, and the coding was obviously better tested for bugs/glitches. Anyways, the hotel system in TS2 was pretty awesome as well ... Bon Voyage was more about doing stuff with your Sims on vacation rather than running and owning your own hotel. But you could still build your own hotel, own a vacation home, have room service, do other things AT the hotel ... there were a bunch of cool things you could do with the hotel system that went way beyond Nightlife's restaurant system. Also you could order room service. And maids cleaned up your hotel. Okay, everything about BV was just really cool and way better than any EP that has been released for TS4. I'd also like to note that TS2 was transitioning from TS1 and opened up so many new doors ... the game was extremely different than TS1 - in a good way - both in graphics and in programming. The way they made those EP's felt complete. Maybe in practicality there wasn't a lot ... but it was all new and fresh (Don't try to compare Hot Date's restaurant system to Nightlife please), and the ideas they decided to flesh out were great choices. I don't even know if there wasn't a lot to begin with anyways, I'm just going off of the way you seem to be speaking about TS2 as though they weren't really offering anything new compared to TS4. Even though TS2 was pushing beyond anything that was done before in the franchise at that point ... TS2 was really creative. More than TS4. There was the exchange, the album maker, Strangerhood ... everything just felt like making The Sims as creative and awesome as it could be was the main focus. And I don't think we should give credit to EA for the development of TS2 ... they did NOT develop TS2. That was Will Wright and the original team of Maxis devs from TS1. EA PUBLISHED The Sims - because back then funding was really hard to come by for game devs, and there were no alternatives to really obtain funding - and didn't actually start developing the game until Bon Voyage. Up until that point, Maxis was the sole developer and EA was the publisher. So that means TS1+expansions, TS2, Nightlife, University Life, Pets, and Seasons were ALL developed by Maxis. Bon Voyage, Freetime, and Apartment Life were all developed WITH the help of EA when Maxis SPLIT with Will Wright and some devs going to work on Spore while the rest went to The Sims Studio at EA. So I think before we start comparing the work of EA to Maxis ... we should recognise that Maxis/The Sims was Will Wright's brainchild and started off way back in the 80's. Meaning that anyone who was there during the creation of The Sims 1 had an entire history and experience that is vastly different to that of EA's. There is a reason TS2 and TS1 are revered by fans. Make no mistake about it. Will Wright had lead those projects, or at least was heavily invested in them, along with the people surrounding those projects, and they were moving into uncharted territory that had never been seen before. It was groundbreaking for the gaming world. They didn't have years of experience in marketing/testing to base their decisions off of. Simply their intuition and what felt good and what felt right. Of course at that time EA was merely providing the funding for Maxis ... so EA wasn't making decisions in the development of the game. They had very little to do with it other than keeping the PR image in mind.
SO ... basically what I'm trying to say is that TS1/2 was motivated by different things compared to EA's TS4. The original Maxis devs during that time had a lot more freedom because EA wasn't developing the game. So they had different motivations. And how many of those same devs or project managers are still with Maxis/EA? Very few I would imagine, if any are even still around. But I digress. Point is that TS2 was always aiming for higher and better. It was about making money, but also about providing a great game. One that reflected the psychological and philosophical nature within humanity. So if they took an older system they made in a previous pack and revamped it, whatever they did worked. The way they packaged it worked. The systems they used worked. All of it worked and felt complete. It didn't feel like a cop out. It felt like a genuine pack. Also, it's funny that you should point out the first pack that EA started to develop with the devs from Maxis ... hmm, I wonder whose idea it was to do something like that? Let's not forget who started The Sims and the history it came from ... it did not come from success, nor did anyone outside of Maxis believe the game had anything going for it ... so the success it received was due to the dedication of everyone who believed in the project. Not the publisher who had to be repeatedly convinced. The publisher who merely seized a risky opportunity to make a profit while letting other people do their work until they realised that the game started taking off, prompting them to start controlling the project which ended up pushing away the original creator of the game who realised what the publisher was doing and decided to move on to something else...
#2: I don't remember cars like that. Cars were never in the base game, and I never got the impression that they should have been. Perhaps they should have, but the only thing that TS2 added to the base game were garage doors and driveways 2 yrs after Nightlife came out. Maybe you're right. Maybe they were finally added in the base game after people complained for that long. But like I said, no cars were ever added to the base game. Only garage doors and driveways. And besides, all the vehicles added from Nightlife were just carpool or service cars/trucks/helicopters from the careers. It was a neat addition but it wasn't the reason I bought NL at all. NL was all about the vampires, bowling alleys, karaoke bars, nightclubs, new dating system, and >>RESTAURANTS<<. It was cool that NL had cars as well and maybe they should have been in base game all along but I didn't think it was that much of a game changer. I still liked NL with or without cars. I would have preferred them to be in the base game though ... especially now in TS4, I am surprised that we don't have cars. It's a shame. Even though I didn't really care for them, I still liked having them because I felt like they "completed" my house. But I never thought of a car-less TS2 base game in the same way that I did a toddler-less TS4 base game...
