SIMS4 Sims4 rants and raves

This is a long screencapped rant, if you have trouble following, just read the ALL CAPS.

Rant: EA, TS4 is coming out in 6 weeks; aren't you shipping soon?! Stop using your E3 demo crap and justifying game flaws with "beta version".

   

Rant: Routing failures for stupid sims: Instead of walking up to the spot and throwing a hissy fit or shrugging shoulders and dropping queue items, now queue items stay in queue longer and sims just stand around doing nothing. My question is... can you cancel the queue item for making drinks and if so, why didn't Graham just do that rather than try to redirect the viewer's attention, which of course only reinforces the "Oh noes, TS4 is gonna suck!!!" paranoia. Also the thought of having to learn how to mod or to find a mod to remove the age old Visitor annoyances in TS2 makes me annoyed already.

   

Rant: How is this a fun party? When Sims 2 hear music at a party most of them break out the smustle, others run for the fridge and tv, and the rest queue up at the toilet. It's crazy, it's silly, and it's not always that smart when the smustling is on the sidewalk or there is already a feast on the table and drinks on the counter and those queuing up at the toilet happen to be the next door neighbours, but even so... it is way more exciting than... well, just look up. Need I say more?! Perhaps all the time and energy spent in making new dance animations could have been invested in getting the sims to actually use one or two of them instead of standing around a jukebox with only 4 stations.

Ironically the orikes13, a storyteller, posted her photo to explain why she always staged her shots and couldn't leave her sims alone at big parties because they just went wild on their own. In regards to game play, that is exactly what the AI should make sims do at a party.

   

Rant: Guests ignore fires and absurd host deaths--no dint on party score. We are told that we have to accept paying for toddlers for... this?!

"So, rather than include toddlers, we chose to go deeper on the features that make Sims come alive: meaningful and often amusing emotions; more believable motion and interactions; more tools in Create A Sim, and more realistic (and sometimes weird!) Sim behavior."

Does anyone else here think that it's more realistic that all sims react to fires and deaths at a party and that it kill the party score the way it did in TS2? How is this deeper on the features that make Sims come alive? Oh well, as least Extraordinary Cake Fan had a excellent locomotion logic to make up for her lack of reaction. I can only guess that Ollie is still dancing.


   

Rant: EA, I AM VERY ANGRY <-- since I figure you can't understand this from my rant

"No more looking at the UI to figure out how your Sims are feeling" except NOT. So what part of implementing an impossible to ignore emotional state in caps, i.e., HAPPY, VERY ANGRY, HYSTERICAL in the UI gets us looking at our sims, Rachel Franklin? Has EA rationalized that players buying TS4 who can't seem to recognize a TRAIN WRECK will therefore miss their sim's emotional state unless it has been pointed out in all caps? Please let me know, because I am DYING FROM CURIOSITY. And for anyone who thinks me typing my emotional state in caps is annoying, this will be the only time I do so, and I won't charge you $70 bucks for it.

I realize this may not be a big deal for builders or casual players, but for storytellers this UI is going to tie a heavy stone around the imagination and dump it straight into the ocean.

I mentioned in another post how one of my TS2 sims visited his sister out of the blue and at a perfect time as she was depressed having a hard time. It wasn't a walk by, he actually came up and rang the door bell right when she was too depressed to do some action I directed her to do. I was surprised and tickled at how this worked so well in the current storyline and immediately ran with it. Due to repeated unscripted actions like this, I took notice of the 'uncle' and have since given him his own story in my Crescent View game. If the minute I made him selectable and had seen VERY HAPPY in his UI, this totally absolutely entirely would have killed the moment.

I have been dreading the 'screw your own interpretations of how your sims feel' UI since August 20. However the whole "you can see it, you can see it, no UI necessary" mantra that Rachel Franklin and the gurus kept spouting gave me hope that they had removed it. I'm honestly more upset about this than I am about the toddlers and pools. EA can add stuff--and they obviously plan to... bastards (see below) but once the UI is set, that is what we are stuck with no matter how many expansion packs we buy. And there is only so much hacks can do.

   

Rant: EA didn't have time to make proper teen skeletons, but had time to make DLC to sell at a cheap price for extra. Now what, do players need an Amazon Prime type of an EA account to get preferential wallet rape treatment? I never bought any store content ever, and I downloaded the EA store from MATY after EA's first attempt at offing TS2 by shutting down the store, so it's not like this will affect me. Still, one of the biggest consumer pet-peeves against TS3 was the push to buy bits and pieces to be able to enjoy your game. The TS2 store did not have make or break your game content. It had bonus content, which is what you paid extra for. I have no problem with that. I also have no qualms with buying stuff packs. Give me another H&M and IKEA stuff pack and charge me whatever you like, EA, heck charge me $40 a piece and I'll save... no kidding. Just don't ask me to pay $70 bucks for the base game to receive a "bonus animal hat" and then on day one charge me 1050 points (translated to $10.50) to enable sims toasting like TS2, 1025 points ($10.25) to enable camping like TS2.

Let's not forget that points might need to be purchased in clean 00s meaning that you'll have to buy 3000 points to do this and can use the other points later--and later... and even later as the math will never even out. Now a $70 pre-order base game is $100 with simmers getting squat for a tenth of those bucks. And again... wth is with this premium membership?!

Just... ugh.

Future content should come in full stuff packs like TS2 and not in micro-transactions.

Anyway, as you can probably guess I was not impressed with "15 minutes of raw gameplay from The Sims 4", but to ensure that you don't interpret my rants in any other way: I WAS NOT IMPRESSED. Let me have CAS to play with so that I can avoid any more enthusiasm-slaughter thanks to EA's marketing team. Shut up, and let the fans sell this game, EA; stop posting uninspiring and worrisome E3 reruns this close to the roll-out phase.

Also, when did raw gameplay come to mean staged gameplay?

Bleh.

Just a quick rant on how i completely agree with nanashi, i mean, the gameplay had nothing new... Emotions? What emotions??? Just the same as in sims 3 except for the all-on-caps-text in the UI Very disappointed, i was *maybe* going to buy the game but after seeing the trailer: no way.

The babies! The day of the babies is coming! Run, hide! http://honeywellsims4news.tumblr.com/

Every thing I hear about Sims 4 makes me less and less likely to buy it. Everything I've seen makes it sound like it is going to be horrible (over done emotions as shown by the laughing to death, limited life stages etc).

Not so much a rant, but a bit of a sniffle and pout.

I was so excited about TS4 from Day 1. I mean how could EA go wrong taking the beautiful world of TS3 and adding to that beautiful sims with more personality and more [insert pretty much everything here]. I pinned all my hopes that the official video was just EA doing an awful job at marketing and not the game itself, but after reading up on some of the positive reviews from players who got to play the game, I'm through.

Most of the original Sims careers have been pulled from the base game, so there is no way for me to port my TS2 sims and their stories into TS4 which is what I planned to do first thing. So I'm trying to do the math here for what EA is asking me to pay: $69.99 for no toddlers, no pools, TS1 basket babies, no teen heights, no doctors, no teachers, no police officers, no mayor of sim city, and a UI that tells me how my sims feel regardless of how I want to interpret their actions. And knowing that the game will cost $100 to add TS2 toasting and camping to it... well, stick a fork in me cuz I'm done with this whole affair.

I had planned on waiting for good news and media to come out right before the game... or even for the opportunity to play the demo. But now I dunno... I'm pretty sure I've already decided that this base game isn't for me. EA is going to make a killing on the first day, then they are going to sell the base game for peanuts. If I do decide to buy the game in the future... (it definitely won't be until some EPs come out and add vanilla/family-style play back into the game) then I'll get a good deal like I did with TS2 and TS3.

I sincerely hope that the base game really does enable EA to build amazing EPs and SPs, and that I'll one day be able to enjoy this game. I'm just kinda bummed that it all turned out like this. This was the first time I ever felt like a "fan" and now I just feel like "bleh".

For those of you who are still excited and are pre-ordering your TS4 game, no offense intended and apologies for being a wet blanket here!

I just wanted to share my feelings with this forum because I did pretty much all of my ranting and raving here; maybe more raving than ranting with the exception of this past month

I'm waiting until it hits the bargain bin for $20 and even that is being generous.

Nanashi,

I know what you've been going through - I've been with-holding interest until the game is released as a part of it, because I've seen this dance with the last 2 expansions. But to be honest, this is clearly the worst release ever. So I'm thinking that my interest will not be engaged at all.

Rave: Looking at the pregnancy and new parent screenshots, it seems that a mother-to-be gets inflated mammaries (good!)
Rant: ...however they deflate back to their default size the moment she gives birth (bad!).

On this one, I think I'd rather they didn't get pregnancy inflated boobies if they don't keep them while the baby is in baby stage. 'Specially since Sims don't generally breastfeed in unmodded games and don't need milk storage anyway.

Wait what? Sims don't breastfeed in unmodded games? But they were advertising breastfeeding as a feature. I'm confused.

As far as we know, your female sim has an extra option whilst standing chained to the crib. They can breastfeed. Walk across the room holding the baby? No. Breastfeed? Yup.