Was Open world really that bad?? Could it be made to work?

I'm not sure why you are experiencing lag in the sims4, I think the sims4 has some problems with freeing up memory in general so maybe that's the issue.

When it comes to open world, I am by no means an expert, but it basically comes down to freeing memory so the game can load other assets. When you load an area in the sims4, the game loads all textures, assets etc. if you have an open world like in the sims3, then the game needs to free assets when you are not in that area. That's why you are noticing textures loading and lagging if you switch from one sim in one place to another sim in another place. That's because the game needs to load those assets again.

GTA5 is a good example on how it works, that game only loads what the player sees around them. So when you switch to another character, the camera zooms out so it can load the assets around the character that you switched to, before zooming in again.

I think it could be possible to have open world in a sims game without lag, but that will require some good programming. The game needs to be good at freeing memory and loading assets without affecting game performance too much.

I did not think open world was bad at all - the lag was mainly routing issues in Sims 3 that could be fixed. I fixed all my worlds in Sims 3 to eliminate that lag but it did take a lot of time and fixing especially if you moved a house or worse if you placed a lot - it often broke the routing so you had to know how to find the breaks in the routing and how to fix it. Especially seeing Maxis worlds could not be put in CAW so it was a lot harder to fix. You had to have CAW files to alter a world and Maxis did not share those files with the exception of the base game world. CAW was also not very user friendly so for most of us it was a big learning experience to learn to work with it and not create worse problems than we already had.

I liked the idea of an open world. Sadly I couldn't play the game long enough to enjoy it. The performance of the Sims 3 was abysmal even on a new PC that I bought specially for it. I really didn't like that venues were mostly all rabbit holes either. I like to play with my sims not wait outside venues for them to be done.

I prefer the open world, but I also think EA solved it well in TS4, kinda giving us small open worlds that works as long as you just want top go for a walk and not visit specific lots. The common area is often crowded, and with bbq areas, fishing spots and food stalls, my sims often enjoy the common area. It could have been a tad larger, or more diverse, and it would probably not break any computer if all lots within a hood was accessible without loading, as there are rather few lots per hood. But I can live with it as is. Biggest complain is that I don't get any lot info by clicking a lot in active mode, only that I can travel there. Name of household would actually be useful some times when visiting a hood where my sims are not that often.

My ts3 lagged a lot in the end, but I played a many years old save with tons of graves that I didn't delete even if there were no relatives. So, there must have been way too many sims in my ts3 game, and too much memories etc to store. When starting a new game I think it was running much smoother, even if my computer was not top notch.

There were definitely issues with the open world in 3, especially if you had a lower end PC, but I did love being able to send my sims to different venues & still be able to follow them all, or see what's happening at the park or the gym while my sims were at work or doing menial tasks. I think an open world could work again, if the town was cut up into smaller neighborhoods, like they have in 4.

I'm getting performance drops even with my pc on TS4, sometimes i get tearing on the screen, othertimes it stutters a little. My computer can run TS4 two times over quite easily and GTA 5 with plenty to spare, so it isn't an issue of hardware and my software is more or less up to date. It might be assets loading and unloading but it could also be a lack of overall polish to the product in the form of optimising the games graphics, like they got most of the way and decided to release it like that and then move on entirely to other tasks.

i don't really know if there is truth to that or not.

I think a fully open world (as in TS3) is really hard on memory due to how much needs to be active at the same time. So while the idea is awesome, the execution tends to be really rough on the machines the game is running on.

I think having a semi-open world would work though:
The worlds could still be as they are, with Sims being able to travel between them (via loading screens) and show up as they do now. The same with the travel and movement between neighborhoods within one world. But the neighborhoods themselves, I think, could be open - no loading screens between, say, the three houses in the Pinnacles in Del Sol Valley or the houses around the Goth one. And smaller worlds like Glimmerbrook or Selvadorada could be fully open.

@Simmerville I agree about the info on neighborhood lots. It's even strange that sometimes you have the option to move in a household from the library, despite the fact that a family is already living on that lot.

@AlexSimmerman The simulation lag is unfortunately unconnected to the memory issues that would possibly cause a lag and problems with the open world. It's a bug within the code that seems to come and go and can happen even in small lots and households.

In all honesty I do not think open world was bad at all from my perspective and you will get various opinions from different players. I rather enjoyed it and felt it was the next level of evolution for the Sim series but all in in all how it is received for me is how well it is maintained and looking at the track record on how well EA/Maxis takes care of its bugs it was very poor as for me as I feel it still the same for Sims 4. I am not going to lie but I did experience some problems with the program and it is not due to my systems which was if anything was above requirements. if anything it was due to EA/Maxis programming which was beyond the end user control.

EA/Maxis decides to cut everything as if starting from scratch for various reasons such as use of properties from an project that was cancelled. The program was the last program that could scale up or down to what the end user was using and Imho it was EA/Maxis handling and also some users trying to use an program beyond what it was not built to do. The way I come to this conclusion and I was fortuate to have over 4 systems with variuos configurations that I played Sims 3 off and I would get various levels of gameplay but not the problems most players was complaining about with the expection again from problems on the developer side such as the lag in China, the release of an erronous patch released prior to Ambition release, and IP which was all EA/Maxis problem and could be solved by modders and was not properly resolved by EA/Maxis but all in all even with these problems I was able to play. Sims 4 is what it is due to poor handling of it's own program.

"ldmarko;c-17283600" wrote:
There were definitely issues with the open world in 3, especially if you had a lower end PC, but I did love being able to send my sims to different venues & still be able to follow them all, or see what's happening at the park or the gym while my sims were at work or doing menial tasks. I think an open world could work again, if the town was cut up into smaller neighborhoods, like they have in 4.

An open world would work with no issue in 64 bit. It was the 32 bit it was a problem.

Even if it worked and didn't cause performance problems and all that, it still was full rabbit holes (not just with careers but stores, etc...unless you bought a spell DLC or whatever it's called at the store. Sure they had a grocery store; but it is a rabbit hole unlike Sims 2. Probably because open world takes a lot to run it) and lots were always empty and sims are always getting stuck. I just didn't care for it. When you do had loading screens to go on vacation or University, it is a nightmare.

I tried in on other computers and Sims 3 still had problems. They aren't bad computers either.