TS4 Needs
There was recently a survey about TS4 and I put in my 2 cents in the part about what needs to change for me to reccomend the game, however since that survey was mostly about management, I'll put my o...
Forum Discussion
"MadameLee;c-16853668" wrote:
@DreamaDove ever played Sims 3? (without Mods and CC) even a high end GAMING computer couldn't handle open world. What we have IS open neighbourhoods
Open worlds isn't the problem with Sims 3 -- a lot of games have massive open worlds that run fine. But Sims 3 had a couple of serious problems -- routing issues and unfixed bugs. For instance, a common fix, done by both Awesome and by NRaas, was to cut down on the massive amount of cars produced and delete them when the number got to be too crazy. It's a bug in Sims 3, and one that could have been corrected, but since it wasn't, if you play without mods, you end up with that mess bogging down your game. I could name a ton others as well.
What we have right now is not open neighborhood. You cannot leave one sim fishing or building a rocket while another visits the neighbor. Each lot has a loading screen and it instances the neighborhood, but it's most definitely not open.
Edit: I don't think Sims 4 could handle open neighborhoods, though, because they'd have to increase the number of sims allowed on a lot (which would now be a neighborhood). That number would have to raise from 20 to about 50, even on lower end machines. If you had 5 lots, you'd have to assume the maximum number of sims in that lot could be 40, which would leave room for 10 walkbys. I don't think low end machines could handle that many simulations going on at once, though it should be possible to do a cut-back version of allowable simulations for non-active sims. Or do loading without a loading screen. What I mean is this -- you have an open neighborhood and you're focused on one house. The game doesn't need to load the insides of the other houses completely, nor does it need to be doing the simulations of the sims in the house. Sims 3 did this -- if you opened a home that wasn't currently active (using NRaas) or a lot that wasn't currently in use, not only would you have to wait for furniture/textures to load, but the sims would be staring at the wall.
In fact, it was the way that Sims 3 handled this which was a complaint I often saw. People who bought retail lots had to have the camera focused on the lot in order for sims to come over and buy stuff.
