"somethingstellar;c-15889592" wrote:
"Erpe;c-15889572" wrote:
"cactusjuice;c-15889480" wrote:
But Erpe aren't you also just "assuming" that your explanation is correct, until they tell us either way it could be as planned or a rehash of a failed online/multi platform game.
If you really believe that you can become the biggest game company in the world and survive as almost the only company among those who started at the same time (now 35 yrs ago) that still exist just by luck and making unintelligent decisions then I probably can't convince you. But I don't think that such things happen just by luck. Microprose and 3do were about the biggest and most popular game companies in the world. Why didn't they survive while EA did and just kept growing? Just by luck??!?
I mean even with S3 being advanced it was still a mega selling game plus also it's odd that a planned release tells you they are still going to have to include base objects weeks after they launched the game, even adding a another life stage 2 years later. Doesn't sound planned to me lol
EA knows that it will release GPs and EPs later. So the basegame should contain much more than the basic gameplay.
But you are likely talking about toddlers which I don't think EA planned to include in TS4 at all. You may think that toddlers were base objects because you likely just liked TS3 and thought that EA just should have released expansions for TS3 forever. Simmers have always thought that way and never wanted EA to release a new basegame. So when EA releases a new basegame anyway then most simmers just wait for all the same things to be added again such that the new game can be the same game as the previous one with a little more content.
But this has never been EA's way of thinking. Instead EA want to make every new game into a new game with a different focus. People already have the previous game. So why should EA just make the previous game once more?
Instead EA wants to be creative and make different kinds of Sims games. TS4 was planned to focus less on raising kids and more on other things. Therefore babies and teens were simplified and toddlers even omitted. The game was planned to focus on multitasking and new emotions. But toddlers usually don't multitask in the real world either. Besides that the main group of customers for Sims games almost certainly is young teens who want to become as high as adults and party instead of being babysitters or already get pregnant or have children. So EA's idea completely makes sense. Just not for the many adult veteran simmers in this forum who only wanted TS4 to turn into TS3 instead.
That's like saying we wanted Sims 3 to be like Sims 2 and Sims 1 because we loved them.
Correct. I began in the Sims 2 forum where a lot of simmers hated that TS2 had been released because they wanted more EPs for TS1 instead. Later EA announced TS3 and people hated it because they wanted more EPs for TS2 instead.
Despite loving them, many stiiiill loved Sims 3.
Yes. The new thing is that there still are a lot of Sims 3 discussions even now almost 3 yrs after the release of TS4 and that EA still is selling the previous game. This didn't happen before because it only took a few months before TS1 lovers surrendered and either left the Sims 2 forum or switched to TS2 anyway. And TS2 wasn't sold or discussed nearly as much in the Sims 3 forum either after just a few months. It is only now that people discuss TS2 more in the Sims 4 forum than they ever did in the Sims 3 forum ;)
Because it did what we expect games to do. Be bigger and at least you could have a decent argument for being better versions of what they were. It was similar, but not the same.
Yes. Hardcore fans of a game always want that. But it is almost impossible for a game company to just go on making the same game again and again in just bigger, nicer and more impressive versions. Therefore they often change the game instead which hardcore fans never have liked. The result often has been that the game companies put the series on hold and then only years later make new changed versions of the games anyway.
Sims 1 didn't have all the bells and whistles, the babies couldn't even age up, and it was still better than TS4. I still reminisce about that game years later in a way I and hardly anybody else ever will about TS4.
I tried TS1 after having played TS2. But I didn't really like TS1. It was harder yes. But in a for me wrong way that I mostly found tiring to play.
There's a huge difference between trying something a little different and making a well loved product unrecognizable and unrelatable and completely lacking in content for both players and builders. Most people recognize nothing is going to be exactly like the version before it. But things are supposed to progress and advance, not get worse. People joke that this should be called Sims 2 cause its like stepping backward, but it should be called Sims .5 because even Sims 1 had more substance to it and calling it Sims 2 is just an insult to a game that was actually good.
I have seen this in other game series too. An example is the Might&Magic series which topped with MM6. MM7 was similar though. But the added complexity didn't anything good for the series. Then MM8 was a step backward and MM9 was nothing but a disaster that destroyed the series. Years later MM10 was released and I think that it was better than MM9 but without in anyway restoring the original Might&Magic series which therefore now has been completely dead for many years.
People expect companies to take what worked before and what didn't work before and incorporate that with the new things they want to do, not totally demolish the whole thing. And not only did they demolish the whole thing to try these new things but half of them don't work. The multi tasking thing that they scrapped half of everything to focus on is exactly why half the forums are now complaining it takes forever to get a sim to do something. And lets not pretend they didn't spend most of their development time on planning out how they were going to squeeze out money through their new business model and how best to keep it tied to Origin.
Of course the game companies mainly make games to earn money. But they can't do that by just making the same game again and again in improved and bigger versions because this can only work in a limited number of years. Then they have to change the game and hope that they that way can invent a new and equally popular game. Sometimes this work. But in many cases people don't like the changed game and the game company has to let the series die instead.
