Smarten up TS4

"AshBoogie;c-16623584" wrote:
Does anybody know why they opted out of the online gameplay? Tbh I would've preferred that version than what we have now. I always dreamed of playing Sims with other players, I wish they could've added that as an option.

The community was never given any straight answers on that. What we know has been pieced together from different sources.

The first instance of TS4’s online past surfaced when a former Maxis employee uploaded some concept work on his website, and then went on somewhat of a Q&A bender. From him we learned the game was online until late 2012, and was unpopular with the developers. He says quality was the deciding factor, as the entire game was built to be loaded over the internet.

After Sims 4 was abruptly announced in 2013 an EA executive delivered a slightly contradictory statement saying Sims 4 would be made offline after the negative reactions to SimCity. SimCity had severe connection issues leaving players unable to load the game at all for weeks after launch. This is only contradictory because the former employee said the swap happened in 2012, but the EA exec said it was the result of SC which didn’t release until March 2013.

Being completely honest, Sims 4 as an online game would more than likely disappoint. SimCity’s multiplayer consisted of visiting neighbor cities (couldn’t do anything on these visits) and sending/receiving resources; the latter wasn’t even an instant thing it took like half an hour real world time to be delivered. Seeing how both of the games were developed at the same time under the same leadership at Maxis they probably shared that low-level multiplayer experience. The push for online from Maxis was always an anti-piracy thing and never a benefit to the player. This was exposed a few weeks after SC launched and the studios statements kept being contradicted by the game they released.