"JoAnne65;c-16431006" wrote:
"Erpe;c-16429974" wrote:
"cactusjuice;c-16429946" wrote:
But MFP and it's backlash has been in media and you honestly cant tell me they haven't a clue of the hornets nest they poked when they released MFP
I think that they badly needed an idea for the next SP and then read threads like https://forums.thesims.com/en_US/discussion/925515/small-pets/p1 Then they likely realized that small pets would be ideal for the new gameplay in a SP and Pets has always been very popular in Sims games. Also simmers who didn’t care about cats and dogs wouldn’t likely buy such a SP anyway. So they likely just decided to make MFP as an exception even though they usually won’t make SPs that depend on earlier packs.
I expect most simmers to buy MFP anyway because I don’t think that simmers are unhappy because they got more pets and more pets stuff but just a little angry because they were disappointed that this SP wasn’t just included as a part of Cats&Dogs. But simmers likely need to adjust to the fact that EA won’t make huge EPs anymore but likely soon won’t make any packs that are bigger than a GP. So it is IMO just a lot of fuss about nothing.
Because they weren’t familiar yet with the concept small animal for the game, sure ;) Sorry but I don’t believe it for a split second. “Oh, that’s right, we could also add other animals to this game than cats and dogs alone, why didn’t we think of that!? Good thing we have a community to point that out to us.”
No. But as usual they wanted packs for TS4 to be different from packs for the earlier games. They also wanted the packs to be smaller and cheaper to make and with a different focus. Therefore they changed Pets into Cats&Dogs with very few pets and reduced content but attempted to compensate by making the cats and dogs more clever and more autonomous.
Then they saw threads about simmers missing small pets in the pack. But small rodents in cages are very cheap to make and therefore suitable for SPs which EA now wants to have just a little gameplay too to become more attractive for many simmers such that they can get better sales numbers. So my guess is that this gave them the idea to make MFS too.
What I don’t believe at all is the conspiracy theories that they reduced the size of Cats&Dogs with the intention to have some things to put into an SP too because that isn’t something EA would do. EA thinks differently and just focus on each pack to make it for as less money as reasonably and to give it a new and interesting focus to compensate. But EA mainly just makes one pack at the time. They have decided to release 4-5 SP, 2 GPs and 1 EP each year (until sales numbers become too low or TS5 is ready to be released). But they haven’t decided the content of all those packs until about the time when they start making them. In that sense TS4 can be seen as a live service too even though it isn’t an online game you play with friends.
"Erpe;c-16430022" wrote:
"cactusjuice;c-16429988" wrote:
No they would plan SP's many many months ahead with concept, design, legals, testing, promotion, press releases etc. They had this as part of C&D and decided to release it separately. Even if I were to entertain the dubious possibility that it wasn't planned then its too late to sway the bad press they generated
Remember the votings about the next SP? Those votings didn’t happen very long before the SPs that won most votes were released. EA changes plans much more often than simmers usually think and also many times while a new game is under development. This has been the case both for the basegames, the packs and also for the Sims Mobile while it was soft launched and we therefore could observe all the many changes. So EA just experiments a lot instead of following some long time plans.
Voting for Laundry day (initially Recycling) started about 9 months before that pack was released.
It is the time where the voting ended that is interesting because they couldn’t start making the pack before that and likely also had to wait for another pack to be finished before they really started.
