what do you think ea should do to get back simmers who will move to the paralive game?
what do you think ea maxi needs to do to get back simmers to the sims game sims4 and sims 5 in 2021 all players opinion welcome
Forum Discussion
If they really want to keep players who are jumping ship to Paralives instead of wanting anything to do with TS5, they'll have to do the following:
1. Stop Pandering to Non-Gamers/Small Children/The Weak-Hearted: Do not be afraid to make the game challenging just because you're afraid to scare off people who've never played anything more intense than Solitaire before or frustrate/traumatize little kids. The game's rate T in the states, 13 and up, if parents let their kid who is under 13 play a game for people 13+, it's on the parents if the kid gets a nightmare from a spoopy ghost or whatever. And, both non-gamers and little kids are smart enough to adapt to a challenging game. There's trial and error, there's save scumming, and when all else fails, there's Google.
Don't shy away from negative emotions, or bad things happening, or lasting consequences, or sims with personalities that actually affect gameplay just because there are a few wimps out there that can't stand for anything negative to happen in their game or for their sim to have some hard luck with love or lose a friend over being a terrible person. Let the wimps leave, or mod the life out of their sims, or pout in the corner because they forgot to save before doing something potentially dangerous. Just don't suck the life out of the game because some people just don't have the stomach for facing adversity in any form.
2. Stop Being So Scared of Parent Groups/Ratings Boards: If the game is T in North America, but gets a 16 in Europe because PEGI is a prude, don't worry about it! Focus on making good content, and let the chips fall where they may. Oh, Christian Moms For The Family or whatever bunch of stuck-up busybodies thinks a man in a speedo/woman in a bikini popping out of a cake is scandalous and indecent or slapping someone in an arguement is too violent? Let 'em whine. There's a ratings system for a reason, folks. If those pains in the butt had their way, every game character would look like Raggedy Ann and Andy, and all games would be edutainment titles made for toddlers. Don't suffer their nonsense. If they want a "cleaner," more "child safe" version of The Sims, they should take their butts to Kickstarter and finance it themselves.
3. Make Seasons, Pets, and University All Base Game Content: You know what the three main expansion themes people always wait around for are? Seasons, Pets, and University. People want the Pets theme because most people have or have had at least one pet in their lives, and it's such a normal part of how humans live that the game feels weird without them. People want the Seasons theme because mot only does the world feel off without any seasonal changes, but the distinct lack of weather just gets tiresome after a while. People want University because for most people in the developed world, going to college is a major milestone on the path to adulthood, especially in places where decently-paid jobs for people with no higher education or specialized training are drying up like a shallow puddle in the Sahara and most of the decently paid jobs available now require something past a high school education. Put those things in the base game and, guess what? You free up three Expansion Pack slots for new themes without having to drag the game out longer or suffer the slings and arrows of fans who don't want to wait through your new ideas to just get their old standbys back!
4. Make Aliens, Vampires, Plantsims, Werewolves, Ghosts, and Magic all Base Game Content...and All Fully Fleshed Out: These are the basic six occult elements people always want back when a new game comes around...so just bring them into the base game. Make magic a skill that can be learned with CAS traits that help or hinder a sim's ability to learn it instead of having to have a sim be a certain specific lifestate to use it, make the other five occults all create-able from CAS, put options in the game menu to keep the game from auto-activating whatever elements the player doesn't want, have specific things in-game that allow the player to unlock alien abductions or becoming one of the other occults, and there we go.
And don't forget to actually flesh things out with skill trees and strong customization options in CAS so we can make our occult sims look cool. In fact, have an option where the player can create a default template that the game draws on for certain occults when randomizing appearances/alternate forms. That way, we can be confident that whenever a normal sim becomes a vampire or a werewolf or a plantsim, or the game generates an NPC occult, our basic preferences will be automatically applied and we will only have to do some minor revising in CAS to make each sim perfect instead of having to go and do a full overhaul every time to keep up immersion.
Others can be added later, but just...just get these in in the base game so you don't have to hear our mouths about them for years on end until we get 'em all.
5. Include a Custom Content Editor or Sell One As a Bonus Feature If You're Cheap: Do you know what one of my favorite features of TS2 is, to this day? BodyShop. For the uninitiated, BodyShop was a utility add-on for TS2 that allowed you to recolor clothing, hair, skintones, and eye colors to create custom ones for your game and let you create sim archetypes to work from in-game. It allowed for a high level of personalization for players, with the only additional thing required being access to a program like GIMP or Photoshop to edit the textures. To do the same with TS4, you need the graphics software, then you need to go sign up at the Sims 4 Studio forums, then you have to download the latest version of the software and install it. Also, you have to manually update it to keep it compatible with TS4. It's a pain.
So, TS5 should have its own Custom Content Editor. Let us create new swatches for CAS and Built/Buy items, add our own custom artwork (or, pictures of our favorite characters from Google searches...), maybe even add an in-app mesh sculpting mode that lets us edit object meshes or create new ones as easily as sculpting clay (no understanding of Maya or Blender required) and/or put new meshes together from pre-made parts, then live-paint the textures on them right there so we can create our own custom furniture, clothes, and hair styles. Admit it, that would beat the color wheel out by a country mile.
Ideally, this should come free with the game. However, I'd also be cool with it being a $10-$20 bonus add-on if giving such a powerful tool away for free seems like money flying out of your hands. I mean, it would certainly cut down on having to figure out how to squeeze more niche clothing and hair styles into the content roll-out...
6. Create-A-World, Create-A-World, Create-A-World!: In TS2, I never, ever played the pre-made worlds. Shocker, I know. I always picked a blank template to work from and built it up bit by bit as needed as I played. It was like the world was unfolding before me as my story progresses...and I loved it. TS3 had CAW as an exterior utility, but because they decided to use grayscale texture maps for the template previews and failed to do anything in the editor to show the actual scale of the terrain, I found it clunky and difficult to use. Then, in TS4...no world customization. I'm stuck with pre-made stuff with no way to edit the world in any way besides building houses and community lots. I hate it, especially because the devs just love taking up all the nice, big lots in the worlds with their pre-made builds and pre-made households (Quit hogging all the prime realestate, devs!!!). TS5 cannot have this.
So, yeah, Create-A-World is a must. I say it should be a mix if TS2's and TS3's systems, where it's in-game with actual visual previews that show you what the terrain actually looks like, like TS2, but it has the more powerful terrain tools and road placement tools that TS3's version gave us. Also, let us customize the skybox too--daytime sky, sunset, sunrise, nighttime, moons and suns...let us make our skies look as normal or alien as we want. Now THAT would be awesome. (I can already hear the Dark Crystal references...)
7. Make Babies a Real Life Stage: Let us make Babies in CAS. Let us give them a base personality type. Let them learn to sit up and crawl and babble and all about object permanence. Let us play them and see anything outside of their sphere of vision as a black void if they don't have a grasp on object permanence yet. Give them baby toys and playmats and walkers and playpens. Make them feel less like objects that are just there for older sims to react to and interact with, and more like real sims in their own right. Some people say it's only TS1 Babies and TS4 Babies that are objects...but the horrifying truth is that they're object in every game they've been in. They're just more portable in some games than others.
8. Make Paintable Ceilings Base Game: Because we shouldn't have to wait for an EP to make the ceiling look like something other than a blank expanse of white nothingness.
9. Let us view the upper floors through holes in the ceiling of lower floors when we're down there: Because only being able to see sky through a space where you should be able to see the room above is just...no. We're not in the 32/64 bit days anymore, people.
10. More Mobile Default Camera: I love the mobility of the Tab camera, and I wish that we could get something that mobile in normal Live and Build/Buy mode. It would not only make placing stuff like toilet paper rolls less of a chore in smaller spaces, but it would also allow us to get a better view of our sims up-close when we're playing the game without having to sacrifice access to the control panel. The stiffer cameras can still be an option for those who prefer them, but TS5 will be coming out in the 2020's, the camera controls need to be modernized.
11. Round Walls: Paralives will have these. No more excuses. Round walls need to be a thing.
12. Spiral Staircases, Elevators, and Ladders Need To Be Base Game: No more excuses, just do it.
13. Stages/Platforms Need To Be Base Game: Again, Paralives is doing it. Let us make stages, platforms, sunken living rooms, and all that craziness with some simple building options. It'll really enhance the building experience.
14. Let us Place Floors Tile by Tile Again: You know what gets on my nerves in TS4? That floors in rooms are all-or-nothing. You can't have a room where there are holes in the floor, you can't expand the awkwardly-shaped stair holes to be something more aesthetically pleasing, every room has to be all floor or no floor. I miss the versatility of the previous games when it came to flooring. You could create lofts and those entry halls with the openings that show the upper floors without having to make rooms and bust out floors to do the effect. Bring that versatility back.
15. Max Above Ground Floors--7, Max Below Ground Floors--5: You know we want more floors. Give us more floors. We have too few floors.
16. Slanted Walls/ Slanted Windows/Slanted and Irregular Doors/Attic Tool: Our builds could be so much more realistic if we had access to those sorts of assets. Attics may have fallen out of fashion for newer houses in favor of crawl spaces, but attics are so cool! They make a great bedroom or studio space or haunted spot full of creepy old dolls and spooky mannequins!! Attics in TS5 will totally entice builders.
17. Very First Expansion--Buildable Apartments: You know we're not satisfied with this not being able to build our own apartment buildings mess. Get back in our good graces with buildable apartments in the very first EP.
18. No More Hyper-Specific Lot Types: I can't make a community lot without a stupid checklist of requirements that actually attracts NPC sims. I have to follow the checklist. If a checklist-necessary item is stolen from a venue and leaves it one item short of being "functional," the freaking lot breaks and causes problems with the game itself. Don't do that in TS5. No more hyper-specific lot types. Let us make our community lots our way, no checklists allowed unless they're in the form of a list of suggested items, not required ones.
19. Do Not Make It An Online Multiplayer Game: Just, no. Not every gaming experience needs to be heavily social. Some should just be solitary and peaceful.
20. Makeup That Actually Looks Good On Dark Skin: You know those new M.A.C. Blushes? They barely even show up on skintones darker than olive. We've been over and over this. Most of the makeup doesn't come in colors that compliment darker skintones. Some are too bright, some are too warm, some barely show up at all. Test your makeup on darker skintones and make swatches to work with them accordingly. Get some Black women on the line to do it if you don't know how. Just...TS5, don't keep underserving Black sims and black simmers with your makeup selection. You've gotten better with the hair, but the makeup is still a problem.
21. Make Story Progression Options Robust, Not Just On or Off: Some people want the game to full-on play their all of their inactive households, some people don't want the game to touch any of them. Some people don't mind if the game plays unplayed NPC households, but don't want their played households touched. Some people want NPC's getting hitched and having kids and changing jobs and moving away, some don't. Give players the power to decide how much or how little story progression is in their game, then everyone can be happy.
Those fixes would definitely help TS5 compete with Paralives. Not like they'll listen, but this is what they need to do...
1. Stop Pandering to Non-Gamers/Small Children/The Weak-Hearted: Do not be afraid to make the game challenging just because you're afraid to scare off people who've never played anything more intense than Solitaire before or frustrate/traumatize little kids. The game's rate T in the states, 13 and up, if parents let their kid who is under 13 play a game for people 13+, it's on the parents if the kid gets a nightmare from a spoopy ghost or whatever. And, both non-gamers and little kids are smart enough to adapt to a challenging game. There's trial and error, there's save scumming, and when all else fails, there's Google.
Don't shy away from negative emotions, or bad things happening, or lasting consequences, or sims with personalities that actually affect gameplay just because there are a few wimps out there that can't stand for anything negative to happen in their game or for their sim to have some hard luck with love or lose a friend over being a terrible person. Let the wimps leave, or mod the life out of their sims, or pout in the corner because they forgot to save before doing something potentially dangerous. Just don't suck the life out of the game because some people just don't have the stomach for facing adversity in any form.
2. Stop Being So Scared of Parent Groups/Ratings Boards: If the game is T in North America, but gets a 16 in Europe because PEGI is a prude, don't worry about it! Focus on making good content, and let the chips fall where they may. Oh, Christian Moms For The Family or whatever bunch of stuck-up busybodies thinks a man in a speedo/woman in a bikini popping out of a cake is scandalous and indecent or slapping someone in an arguement is too violent? Let 'em whine. There's a ratings system for a reason, folks. If those pains in the butt had their way, every game character would look like Raggedy Ann and Andy, and all games would be edutainment titles made for toddlers. Don't suffer their nonsense. If they want a "cleaner," more "child safe" version of The Sims, they should take their butts to Kickstarter and finance it themselves.
3. Make Seasons, Pets, and University All Base Game Content: You know what the three main expansion themes people always wait around for are? Seasons, Pets, and University. People want the Pets theme because most people have or have had at least one pet in their lives, and it's such a normal part of how humans live that the game feels weird without them. People want the Seasons theme because mot only does the world feel off without any seasonal changes, but the distinct lack of weather just gets tiresome after a while. People want University because for most people in the developed world, going to college is a major milestone on the path to adulthood, especially in places where decently-paid jobs for people with no higher education or specialized training are drying up like a shallow puddle in the Sahara and most of the decently paid jobs available now require something past a high school education. Put those things in the base game and, guess what? You free up three Expansion Pack slots for new themes without having to drag the game out longer or suffer the slings and arrows of fans who don't want to wait through your new ideas to just get their old standbys back!
4. Make Aliens, Vampires, Plantsims, Werewolves, Ghosts, and Magic all Base Game Content...and All Fully Fleshed Out: These are the basic six occult elements people always want back when a new game comes around...so just bring them into the base game. Make magic a skill that can be learned with CAS traits that help or hinder a sim's ability to learn it instead of having to have a sim be a certain specific lifestate to use it, make the other five occults all create-able from CAS, put options in the game menu to keep the game from auto-activating whatever elements the player doesn't want, have specific things in-game that allow the player to unlock alien abductions or becoming one of the other occults, and there we go.
And don't forget to actually flesh things out with skill trees and strong customization options in CAS so we can make our occult sims look cool. In fact, have an option where the player can create a default template that the game draws on for certain occults when randomizing appearances/alternate forms. That way, we can be confident that whenever a normal sim becomes a vampire or a werewolf or a plantsim, or the game generates an NPC occult, our basic preferences will be automatically applied and we will only have to do some minor revising in CAS to make each sim perfect instead of having to go and do a full overhaul every time to keep up immersion.
Others can be added later, but just...just get these in in the base game so you don't have to hear our mouths about them for years on end until we get 'em all.
5. Include a Custom Content Editor or Sell One As a Bonus Feature If You're Cheap: Do you know what one of my favorite features of TS2 is, to this day? BodyShop. For the uninitiated, BodyShop was a utility add-on for TS2 that allowed you to recolor clothing, hair, skintones, and eye colors to create custom ones for your game and let you create sim archetypes to work from in-game. It allowed for a high level of personalization for players, with the only additional thing required being access to a program like GIMP or Photoshop to edit the textures. To do the same with TS4, you need the graphics software, then you need to go sign up at the Sims 4 Studio forums, then you have to download the latest version of the software and install it. Also, you have to manually update it to keep it compatible with TS4. It's a pain.
So, TS5 should have its own Custom Content Editor. Let us create new swatches for CAS and Built/Buy items, add our own custom artwork (or, pictures of our favorite characters from Google searches...), maybe even add an in-app mesh sculpting mode that lets us edit object meshes or create new ones as easily as sculpting clay (no understanding of Maya or Blender required) and/or put new meshes together from pre-made parts, then live-paint the textures on them right there so we can create our own custom furniture, clothes, and hair styles. Admit it, that would beat the color wheel out by a country mile.
Ideally, this should come free with the game. However, I'd also be cool with it being a $10-$20 bonus add-on if giving such a powerful tool away for free seems like money flying out of your hands. I mean, it would certainly cut down on having to figure out how to squeeze more niche clothing and hair styles into the content roll-out...
6. Create-A-World, Create-A-World, Create-A-World!: In TS2, I never, ever played the pre-made worlds. Shocker, I know. I always picked a blank template to work from and built it up bit by bit as needed as I played. It was like the world was unfolding before me as my story progresses...and I loved it. TS3 had CAW as an exterior utility, but because they decided to use grayscale texture maps for the template previews and failed to do anything in the editor to show the actual scale of the terrain, I found it clunky and difficult to use. Then, in TS4...no world customization. I'm stuck with pre-made stuff with no way to edit the world in any way besides building houses and community lots. I hate it, especially because the devs just love taking up all the nice, big lots in the worlds with their pre-made builds and pre-made households (Quit hogging all the prime realestate, devs!!!). TS5 cannot have this.
So, yeah, Create-A-World is a must. I say it should be a mix if TS2's and TS3's systems, where it's in-game with actual visual previews that show you what the terrain actually looks like, like TS2, but it has the more powerful terrain tools and road placement tools that TS3's version gave us. Also, let us customize the skybox too--daytime sky, sunset, sunrise, nighttime, moons and suns...let us make our skies look as normal or alien as we want. Now THAT would be awesome. (I can already hear the Dark Crystal references...)
7. Make Babies a Real Life Stage: Let us make Babies in CAS. Let us give them a base personality type. Let them learn to sit up and crawl and babble and all about object permanence. Let us play them and see anything outside of their sphere of vision as a black void if they don't have a grasp on object permanence yet. Give them baby toys and playmats and walkers and playpens. Make them feel less like objects that are just there for older sims to react to and interact with, and more like real sims in their own right. Some people say it's only TS1 Babies and TS4 Babies that are objects...but the horrifying truth is that they're object in every game they've been in. They're just more portable in some games than others.
8. Make Paintable Ceilings Base Game: Because we shouldn't have to wait for an EP to make the ceiling look like something other than a blank expanse of white nothingness.
9. Let us view the upper floors through holes in the ceiling of lower floors when we're down there: Because only being able to see sky through a space where you should be able to see the room above is just...no. We're not in the 32/64 bit days anymore, people.
10. More Mobile Default Camera: I love the mobility of the Tab camera, and I wish that we could get something that mobile in normal Live and Build/Buy mode. It would not only make placing stuff like toilet paper rolls less of a chore in smaller spaces, but it would also allow us to get a better view of our sims up-close when we're playing the game without having to sacrifice access to the control panel. The stiffer cameras can still be an option for those who prefer them, but TS5 will be coming out in the 2020's, the camera controls need to be modernized.
11. Round Walls: Paralives will have these. No more excuses. Round walls need to be a thing.
12. Spiral Staircases, Elevators, and Ladders Need To Be Base Game: No more excuses, just do it.
13. Stages/Platforms Need To Be Base Game: Again, Paralives is doing it. Let us make stages, platforms, sunken living rooms, and all that craziness with some simple building options. It'll really enhance the building experience.
14. Let us Place Floors Tile by Tile Again: You know what gets on my nerves in TS4? That floors in rooms are all-or-nothing. You can't have a room where there are holes in the floor, you can't expand the awkwardly-shaped stair holes to be something more aesthetically pleasing, every room has to be all floor or no floor. I miss the versatility of the previous games when it came to flooring. You could create lofts and those entry halls with the openings that show the upper floors without having to make rooms and bust out floors to do the effect. Bring that versatility back.
15. Max Above Ground Floors--7, Max Below Ground Floors--5: You know we want more floors. Give us more floors. We have too few floors.
16. Slanted Walls/ Slanted Windows/Slanted and Irregular Doors/Attic Tool: Our builds could be so much more realistic if we had access to those sorts of assets. Attics may have fallen out of fashion for newer houses in favor of crawl spaces, but attics are so cool! They make a great bedroom or studio space or haunted spot full of creepy old dolls and spooky mannequins!! Attics in TS5 will totally entice builders.
17. Very First Expansion--Buildable Apartments: You know we're not satisfied with this not being able to build our own apartment buildings mess. Get back in our good graces with buildable apartments in the very first EP.
18. No More Hyper-Specific Lot Types: I can't make a community lot without a stupid checklist of requirements that actually attracts NPC sims. I have to follow the checklist. If a checklist-necessary item is stolen from a venue and leaves it one item short of being "functional," the freaking lot breaks and causes problems with the game itself. Don't do that in TS5. No more hyper-specific lot types. Let us make our community lots our way, no checklists allowed unless they're in the form of a list of suggested items, not required ones.
19. Do Not Make It An Online Multiplayer Game: Just, no. Not every gaming experience needs to be heavily social. Some should just be solitary and peaceful.
20. Makeup That Actually Looks Good On Dark Skin: You know those new M.A.C. Blushes? They barely even show up on skintones darker than olive. We've been over and over this. Most of the makeup doesn't come in colors that compliment darker skintones. Some are too bright, some are too warm, some barely show up at all. Test your makeup on darker skintones and make swatches to work with them accordingly. Get some Black women on the line to do it if you don't know how. Just...TS5, don't keep underserving Black sims and black simmers with your makeup selection. You've gotten better with the hair, but the makeup is still a problem.
21. Make Story Progression Options Robust, Not Just On or Off: Some people want the game to full-on play their all of their inactive households, some people don't want the game to touch any of them. Some people don't mind if the game plays unplayed NPC households, but don't want their played households touched. Some people want NPC's getting hitched and having kids and changing jobs and moving away, some don't. Give players the power to decide how much or how little story progression is in their game, then everyone can be happy.
Those fixes would definitely help TS5 compete with Paralives. Not like they'll listen, but this is what they need to do...
