The Comparison Thread
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Forum Discussion
"thecatsred;c-17247630" wrote:"Cynna;c-17239071" wrote:
Sidebar: I thought that it was only me who noticed the empty venues. The liveliness of public lots was one of the things that TS4 had going for it. These days, I try to take screenshots at public venues but, they are strangely empty in comparison to how they used to be. I have to use mods to spawn more Sims because the game doesn't. I wonder what changed?
I've noticed this too!
I was really excited when I first sent my sim out on the town in sims 4 and the venue they went to was PACKED, unlike sims 3 where you'd get the notice that it was a hot spot, and your sim would walk in and stare at the DJ who was the only one in there and then turn around and leave lol.
But lately this seems to be shifting... is it because there's more lots now for sims to pick from? I thought sims kinda... just Loaded In when you were loading the lot / traveling...
To my understanding, they do spawn in when a lot is loaded. The number of venues in the game shouldn't make a difference as TS4 doesn't have an open world. When Sims are not on the active lot, they are inactive. They aren't visiting other places as they did in TS3. That's why I don't understand the decreased numbers at public venues.
I use LittleMsSam's lot traits in order to control the number of Sims on lots as well as to control what they are allowed to do once they are there. The mods give the venues life and allow the NPCs to autonomously do activities that they would not do otherwise. Right now, I'm staging a scene about a young entrepreneurs conference which takes place at a large convention center that I downloaded from the Gallery. With mods, there are dozens of Sims on-site and I was able to weed out the children and the elderly.
If mods are capable of doing what I have described above, why have the EA/Maxis developers throttled the game so much? They could have provided a gameplay option that allows the player to choose between bare minimum, moderate, or loaded for bear venue populations, at the players' own risk. It could have been similar to the options that EA provided for the total population of the game. They could have added a warning to the most processor-heavy option. Instead, they've boiled the game down to the lowest common denominator which isn't fair to anyone.
