What happened to premade lots ?

"SimsLovinLycan;c-17264595" wrote:


I love that contest idea! It would allow players to have a hand in the development of the worlds, and it would save the developers time that they could use to fine-tune the pack's other features and comb it for bugs and glitches before launch. It's win-win.

Thanks. That was the idea :)

"elanorbreton;c-17264820" wrote:
Great idea for a contest, but who would have the time to look at all the entries to narrow them down? There would be thousands!

Perhaps they could upload the homes to a special Gallery account with names removed.

When I'm 'shopping' for a new lot on the Gallery, I typically begin to narrow down my choices by how the lots look. I download the ones that I find the most visually appealing, I test run them, and the ones that I like the most, I upvote. I'm guessing that a lot of people do the same. If so, the field in a contest can be narrowed quite quickly by the community.

The most upvoted homes make it to the top five in a semi-final. Those are the only homes that the devs would be required to review directly in order to ensure that all criteria have been met and that no rules were broken. Following that, the community takes the final vote.

"happyopi;c-17264996" wrote:

That sounds terribly fun but also really complicated to put in place. How long before release would that contest take place ? Probably before we know the new world architecture or b&b, making it impossible to match the style of the pack. You'd need to make sure players won't use moveobjects or debug items. It's not just the price, it's the fluidity and practicality of the house. The best builders in the community also tend to build small cosy houses, but while it looks good, I'm assuming there are camera movement guidelines that mandate bigger rooms.

I wish that was a thing though.

You bring up very good points.

I'm pretty sure that the devs already know what the architecture will be like way before a pack is released. It would be possible to designate what kind of style they're looking for within the contest rules. The original house that the community would be using as their template for the contest should convey the general idea of the required style. After all, it's really an interior design contest, not an architectural one. A template would also solve the issue of room size. As for object cheats, the team could clearly state that the move objects cheat will disqualify an entry. Over the top clutter should also be disqualified.

As I mentioned above, the houses could be uploaded anonymously to a special EA contest account on The Gallery. Each entry should initially be submitted by file then uploaded by EA to the special EA contest account on the gallery. Each entry should have a made-up name or random number that corresponds to a list that EA has with the actual names. Since the gallery keeps track of the original creator, no one could reuse a design and then try to re-upload it as their own. The community could help to weed out the houses that use cheats or are not practical/functional by simple withholding votes on those entries. Essentially, EA could do as they always do and let the community test run the builds :D

Anyway, all jokes aside, would a home decoration contest be any harder than allowing the community to pick the contents of an entire SP? In this case, EA would be encouraging the community to pick one aspect of the pack, not the whole thing

In any case, these are simply ideas off the top of my head. I don't expect anyone at EA to implement them. I only set out to show that a little forethought could solve the issue of the janky builds that paying customers have been receiving of late. Anything is better than EA's present solution, which is to do the bare minimum.