This is basically a scam....

"Wulfsimmer;d-919313" wrote:
Instead of moving forwards with the series expanding on the packs and adding more features of the same concept, we go backwards making them smaller and smaller for the same price. $40 F O U R T Y for dogs & cats. And you know what's the kicker? They will probably say something along the lines of 'We added enivormental traits that affect how they move, what they eat, how fast they learn' or some cra p and continue on saying 'We felt they deserved to be in a pack by itself to make them really fleshed out' to make it seem they are really in depth...

ETA: Yes I am depending on some retailer, the past listings have always been true and this won't be any different. Even if it is actually not real, then it gives the devs the idea that cutting packs into smaller and smaller will not please us.

"DeservedCriticism;c-15811127" wrote:
I think "scam" is a little bold, but there's definite criticisms to be had. Best is to try and understand the whole situation. First, walk through a potential premise with me:

Pre-release rumors suggested this game was mismanaged, with at least one guy commenting there were too many producers and disgusting office politics. Additional rumors suggested the game was initially supposed to be online, but that had to suddenly be changed to make this a traditional singleplayer Sims game. We also know this game has one EP team only while Sims 3 had two, so it's fair to speculate that this game simply has less funding, less workers, or some combination of the two. I don't want to debate exact cause right now, let's just agree the initial development had a fair amount of problems and absolutely could've been better, for one reason or another.

So imagine you're a developer on the Sims team. You know things could be better, you see the problems. Sometimes it's your manager making bad choices, sometimes it's EA simply not providing the time or the funding neccesary to make a quality game. Perhaps this game needed another year or two of work, but EA refused this and insisted it be released. So you, as one of the developers, are in a tight-spot. You know the product isn't quite fully polished you KNOW problems might arise or quality might suffer, but you have to work hard and try to fix it. Game Developers already work very hard, so being told to work even harder because your sponsors are unwilling to provide more manpower or time must be very depressing. I can't imagine the worker morale was at an all-time high if, for example, they petitioned for more time and got shot down.

The game releases, it kinda bombed. Sims 4 did not have a good release. You, as a developer, are realizing your job is on the line. You might not have a paycheck soon, and not through any fault of your own, but rather due to incompetence from team leads, the people holding the purse strings or upper management at EA. That plum. That really, really plum. Suddenly, you're thinking about how you have to feed your family or how hard it was to get a job in the highly competitive gaming industry to begin with, so you're losing your shame and you're very much willing to "lie" through your teeth and hide any qualms you have with this game and deny you recognize it's problems, and you're willing to say whatever's neccesary to sell it to customers. This is probably around the time we heard comments such as "PLEASE just give Sims 4 a try" and "There won't be a Sims 5 if Sims 4 doesn't sell."

Upper management, in the meantime, remains oblivious to the exact problems. They have no idea what the cause of the problem is and little empathy for the problem. They just know the game isn't generating as much money as they want and they want that fixed. Upper management might be the cause for the lack of quality and poor sales, but are they gonna own up to that? Hahahaha yeah right! These are the same people (or the same kinds of people) that took a veteran franchise such as SimCity, saw it bomb out once, and then completely discontinued it. A decades-old franchise, gone, all because no one in upper management had the self-reflection neccesary to realize that style of game is still beloved and desired, it just wasn't well managed in that case. So upper management learns absolutely nothing. They'll just crack the whip harder and tell the dev team to make do with what they have, because money money money!


The result is likely an upper management that never self-reflects to realize they're part of the problem, and complacent developers who want to give us a good product, both because they want to keep their jobs and they want to redeem themselves. I'm sure anyone here who's ever been employed can agree on one thing: feeling like a burden at your workplace or like you're doing your job poorly is the worst. I once experienced this when I tutored legal english to a law firm, but eventually they just simply didn't need to learn anything new. They wanted me around probably out of anxiety they didn't know enough, but I eventually quit because I didn't like feeling like I didn't deserve the pay.

I sincerely doubt the developers go to sleep at night thinking "hahaha, those dumb customers bought it! What losers!!" No, if they recognize flaws, they probably go to bed thinking "that's ok. I'll make things right. I'll work hard to give them the product they deserve." They bank on being able to deliver something better when the next pack comes out....and when it's clear that pack will have a lackluster budget that doesn't allow for vast improvements, they put all their hopes into the next pack, always believing "tomorrow will be better." This could potentially continue so long that we're at EP 4 and it's still happening. Will they succeed and will things change? Maybe, maybe not. In the case where they don't, they'll still cling to that hope that they can because they need to sleep at night and they need to feel like their work matters.

The problem is that....well, you could say the devs themselves may be "in denial." It's not that they can't acknowledge flaws or problems, but rather they NEED to be able to believe those problems can and will be fixed, even if the odds are stacked against them. This means we cannot rely on them for anything regarding "can Sims 4 improve or not" or "is this upcoming pack any good," because they'll feed us the answer that they need to keep going. Upper management would gladly bold-faced lie to us because they're detached enough from the product to be reasonably ignorant about the accuracy of their statements, and of course they want to make a sale. Meanwhile, we as the customers are probably in a similar boat to the developers: we WANT this game to succeed because we know it's a good franchise...but will it?

I would not call this a scam because I do not see a direct, calculated or well-orchestrated intent by any one individual or team to blatantly trick us or something. However, there's probably a manager somewhere thinking he can do the company a lot of good by cutting back on Sims 4's production expenses. If the annual report comes out and there's a drop in sales and earnings but likewise a drop in expenses...? This guy, too, is in denial. Of course he blames "those lazy game developers!!" for underperforming and simply pats himself on the back for saving money on expenses, proudly showing off the report to his boss. The potential connection between cut expenses and a dip in sales is never made, both because some of the people in charge of connecting those dots have no motivation to do so, and because in my experience I actually find a surprising amount of individuals are far too focused on short term profit to ever really realize the damage they do to long-term proft.

Is this exactly how things went down? Of course I don't know, but I find something along these lines not outside of the realm of possibility. The focus isn't so much on the exact causes though, anyways. Point is, scam paints the team as having malicious intent, and I don't think they do. We have no proof for that.

Gross negligence?? That's another story. That could be the case. Either way, I think you're within your right to feel outraged with the company and this product if you so choose, so the intent or cause doesn't really change your opinion and shouldn't change it. The product should be judged on it's own merits, regardless of intent. I just think.....it's important to remember most people have good intentions and are not out to just be total jerks. It provides a better perspective of the world, I feel. It's very easy to demonize the entire team and consider them greedy jerks trying to trick you, but I think it's much harder to see the full story, and admittedly, I imagine the full story is much more tragic and unfortunate. :(

"Sk8rblaze;c-15811283" wrote:

"Simanite;c-15811268" wrote:
Did you know that TS2 only had cats and dogs and cost that much?

Cats, dogs, small critters such as birds, snakes, hamsters, and more with lots of objects, pet shop functionality if you had OFB, and more.

That was 11 years ago -- 2006.

It's 2017. It's two generations of Sims later. I already have Sims 2 Ultimate Collection on my PC and Sims 3 Pets.

I want better for 40 dollars.