When it was announced that pools and toddlers wouldn’t be in the next instalment of The Sims, longtime fans got pretty upset. Now, EA’s explaining why those elements will be missing. See, the game’s going to be totally different.
A new post on the official Sims website acknowledges the displeasure voiced by Sims devotees and tries to explain why toddlers and pools won’t be in this fall’s life-simulation game:
The fact is, we owe you a clearer explanation for why pools and toddlers will not be in The Sims 4 at launch, so here goes. It begins with new technology and systems that we built for this new base game for The Sims — a new AI system, new animation system, new audio positioning tools, new locomotion logic, new routing intelligence and much more are all entirely new in this game. The vision for The Sims 4 is a new experience that brings your Sims to life in deeper and uniquely personal ways — through emotions, personality traits, behaviours and interactions. To do that, our technology base needed a major upgrade.
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 behaviour. Instead of pools, we chose to develop key new features in Build Mode: direct manipulation, building a house room-by-room and being able to exchange your custom rooms easily, to make the immediate environment even more relatable and interactive for your Sim.
The update goes on to talk about how the new technology will make it easier to figure out how Sims are feeling simply by looking at their postures and body language. Mention is also made of a Create a Sim demo trial that will be hitting later this summer, so players will see for themselves if the changes justify the pools-and-toddlers cuts. However, one commenter reacts to EA’s explanation by saying, “I don’t really care for a completely new game. I wanted you to improve the existing game. What you’ve taken out is not worth emotions.” The emotions are probably just getting started.
Comments
46 responses to “Why Pools And Toddlers Won’t Be In The Sims 4”
So a flimsy excuse similar to the SimCity debacle.
Why not just run with, “It will be overpriced DLC we intend to charge you extra for.”
This. I can already see the announcement of 7 expansions packs where one adds pools, one adds toddlers, another adds toys in pools for toddlers, then one more for pets, then one for pets being able to interact with the pools and finally one that allows pets toddlers and pools to all interact together!
EA should give me a job.
Whoa, slow down there, Ace. If you release them all for 4, you’re not going to have any for The Sims 5 release in in 2016. You gotta pace yourself and only develop one or two of those for 4, 2 more of them for 5 (you’ll call them innovative features for 5!) and then the rest as a premium pack pre-release for Sims 6 in 2017/8.
Why spread them out when they can simply resell them to you for the new game?
Don’t forget the 20 “item packs” in between each of those releases.
Toddler clothes pack: Dress up your toddler with famous brand like LX, Lucci, Germes, Grada and many more!
Pool decoration pack: Want to have a tropical pool? Dreaming of a classic indoor pool? We got it covered in this decoration pack!
But but…..why do we care so much about pools in the first place? Is it just an excuse for people to see their sims in bathing suits? I hated pools. Having them just meant everyone who came over didn’t want to do anything else except take a swim. No one wants to hear me play the piano anymore! :'(
It’s EA…
Actual fact is because they realised they could sell it as additional DLC.
*Quizzical dog-like grunt*?
I was going to write a different comment but we already know what the sum or the argument will be….
EA killed Sim City, apologized, promised to take more care in future titles and listen to their fans and the community…. EA killed The Sims…. repeat ad nauseam
So they did the last of the Sims 3 DLC about 6 months(?) ago? In total at full price everything for the Sims 3 would be over $500 and now you start again…for the second time after The Sims 2 and all its DLC. At least The Sims didn’t have loads of DLC
Looks like there were 7 DLC packs for it… So I guess that depends on your definition of “huge”..
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_The_Sims_video_games#Expansion_packs
well they have run out of DLC ideas, they want to be able to sell them again for the sims 4
Coming soon from the creators of The Sims: Movement! Finally your sims will no longer be stationary, emotional creatures. Explore the wonders of your Sims in all axis!
$59.95 (same price in our digital store)
Hold your horses there…. It’s one axis per DLC.
$59.95 to move forward and backwards
$59.95 to move left and right
$59.95 to be able to go up and down the stairs (sold separately for $49.95, or a s a bundle for $99.95)
Still cheaper than Train Simulator.
Eh, it’s really a different market. The reason they keep doing it is because it sells. My wife very rarely plays games but the Sims she has spent a lot of time on. She loved going over to EB and picking up a new expansion and getting all excited playing with the new stuff. I never saw the appeal, but it’s just not for me.
oh I understand the appeal of getting some new DLC, but will she want to do it all again with The Sims 4 when, going by what I’ve read, the base game will be more stripped down than The Sims 3 base game and the improvements to the game aren’t really worth upgrading about?
She’s done it three times before…
don’t argue when she does for a 4th time then 😀
I’ve been married long enough to know when to shut my mouth…. Mostly.
What gets me is the wall of expansions at the JB around the corner. I can see why people make fun of sims and it’s over abundant DLC’s
“Instead of pools, we chose to develop key new features in Build Mode: direct manipulation, building a house room-by-room and being able to exchange your custom rooms easily, to make the immediate environment even more relatable and interactive for your Sim. ”
Aside from the building a house room by room, part, these words mean nothing. It’s just the kind of filler you add to make a release run to another page to make it seem more substantial than it actually is.
Also from memory… you build every other damn house room by room in Sims 1 – 3 as well.
Really, is anyone going to believe these guys any more after their Sim City fiasco? What are the odds that you’ll only be able to play the new Sims game if you sign up through Facebook to spam/advertise shit to your family?
It’ll be a cold day in hell before I buy another game published by EA. All they do is buy up good properties and turn them into crap.
EA if you’re just going to talk shit don’t bother opening your mouth.
But… then they’d never speak again!
I wonder if they’re going to require it to be online all the time for EA’s trademark online server processing. Wouldn’t want to tax your high-end machine with processing for your sims walking around or sleeping, and junk.
havnt read the article yet, but its because dlc poolparty and dlc family matters are going to be released. now to read the article to find out
having read the article im convinced its because its dlc, seeing as the excuses were technical jargon about the game. lame.
EA need to start telling the truth ” we want to gouge the money out of you after launch ” at least then i would respect them for not lying to my fucking face every time a VP from that company speak.
It would be good to sneak some sodium pentethol into their glasses of water when they’re doing live press announcements. The result would be some entertaining shit!
For fucks sake, if the game isn’t finished when you release it, don’t release it until it’s fucking finished!!
How hard is this to figure out!?
No-one’s figured that out since they realised people will buy anything to make a game complete, even after complaining about it endlessly
They have it figured out perfectly, They released the Beta for BF4 at 79 dollars AU and it was their highest selling BF game ever.
Then why haven’t they released BF4 yet?
Too many bugs I would imagine.
Never playing a Sims series again after the awful launch of simcity4.. EA totally killed this game for me & i’m not holding my breath for them to improve the sims series in anyway.
which is a shame, these games used to be fun.!
So this will be a $79 F2P game with $50 add-on packs?
Maybe that Nintendo Shareholder who doesn’t get games should trade his stocks and buy into EA instead.
the game DLC quest makes me laugh about EA games now as it shows exactly what they are currently doing to there games.
I thought the point of making a new Sims game was to improve the previous one? it’s like they’re surprised they had to put effort into the next iteration.
God EA can’t you go one freaking year without looking like America’s worst company!?
“We’re not trying to f*ck you by making features you expect DLC, I swear! We just don’t have time to finish the game so it has features that everyone expects.
Just so we’re clear on that. It’s not DLC related. We’re just knowingly releasing a full priced, unfinished product and we expect you to buy it. Cool?”
What a shameless bunch of shitbags.
I hope nobody at all is stupid enough to buy this crap.
Because the toddlers and pools are going to have complex cloud based algorithms you guys!
Fuck EA, they are going to destroy maxis with their greed.
silly me, naively thinking they removed pools and toddlers because they don’t want people to drop toddlers into pools.
looks like i’ll be pirating sims 4 and all future expansions.
im buying expansion 1 and buying the rest
Everyone is quick to say this is an attempt to turn full version features into DLC, which is fair enough given it’s EA, but if you take a look back at previous Sims expansions you can see they don’t really need to resort to that sort of trickery. They can ship with toddlers and pools and still charge for both a kids expansion pack and a pool expansion pack.
I think their explanation might actually be closer to the truth than it sounds. They’re making a deeper game which raises the bar for all features. I get the impression classic pool building looks pretty dated alongside the rest of the new engine. Likewise toddlers need to be more advanced or they’ll come out looking more like props compared to the rest of the AI.
The Sims 5: Homeless Edition
You buy the game at full price. Your character is a homeless bum on the streets with nothing.
Everything is DLC.
Will we still be able to quickscope though?
Oh its just EA being dicks again, move along.
How about, and I’m just spit balling here. You just take your time and develop it further and release it with said features? You know? Sound like a plan? Release a full game? What? I’m fired?
*Starts reading*
“The fact is, we owe you a clearer explanation for why pools and toddlers will not be in The Sims 4 at launch.”
Me: … I’m listening…
“So here goes… It begins with new technology and systems that we built for this new base game for The S-”
Me: Okay!… Okay! I think I heard enough BS for one day. *Walks out of the room*
“Aw cmon, wait, hears me out! Your sims have emotions, man… EMOTIONS!”