The Sims 4

[SlipNHonkMach2]

Man, 2000s era of Sims was soul. After that, it's either soulless or soylent

Stopped being an OG Maxis game and became an EA game by the time Sims 2 came out. Or really even before then you could tell EA realized the most lucrative playerbase were women who played the game relatively straight and the marketing for later expansions, console ports, and Sims Online started the transition to slowly morph into appealing to them, hence why Sims 2 comes off really metrosexual, tonally uplifting and cartoonish compared to the more down to earth artstyle with ominous dark humor sprinkled on top atmosphere of Sims 1, which was very much a staple of Will Wright and his prior works. And these commercials in 2000 really fit the bizarre morbid humor that it entailed.

The Sims were more or less tamagotchi's seen in a perspective on an isometric antcolony, whos lives could be smitten or made miserable by mere clown world shenaniganry at any moment and the Livin Large expansion exacerbated that to a hilarious degree. In the first expansion, Will Wright added a hidden disease with the Guinea Pig pet, that if bitten when trying to pet it, you'll slowly die as your mood crumbles without any notice with only hints of momentary coughing/sneezing. Now couple that with how clown pictures (that existed in the vanilla game) now spawned a clown when you feel like shit and you find your Sim slowly dying while being tormented by the clown because you aren't aware that clown painting decor was altered with the expansion. That was the beauty of Maxis under Will Wright.

 

[Thiletonomics]

The Sims were more or less tamagotchi's seen in a perspective on an isometric antcolony, whos lives could be smitten or made miserable by mere clown world shenaniganry at any moment and the Livin Large expansion exacerbated that to a hilarious degree. In the first expansion, Will Wright added a hidden disease with the Guinea Pig pet, that if bitten when trying to pet it, you'll slowly die as your mood crumbles without any notice with only hints of momentary coughing/sneezing. Now couple that with how clown pictures (that existed in the vanilla game) now spawned a clown when you feel like shit and you find your Sim slowly dying while being tormented by the clown because you aren't aware that clown painting decor was altered with the expansion. That was the beauty of Maxis under Will Wright.

Since you mentioned about ants, it was also very fitting, that Will Wright used some of the concepts with one of his other games, SimAnt, and applied it to the OG Sims 1. And he also voiced the Genie in Livin' Large, and the wishes he can grant usually backfire.

It was also funny that there was a Whack-A-Will! arcade game in Vacation, showing that he was also open to poke fun at himself:

 

[Unamused Bounty Hunter]

Does Sims 4 feel like that it's got feature bloat? I haven't played since Get To Work and loaded up a copy with all dlcs and get bombarded by notifications. Notifications in the main menu for every dlc installed that I have to hold down escape for a minute or two to close them all, notifications in game for every random feature they'd added for the dlcs, get random calls by people to go to Star Wars land and to invest $1000 in a scam... I'm getting bombarded by a lot of annoying stuff within minutes of playing. I went afk to see if the sim AI is still retarded and yup, they still piss and shit themselves and fail to go to bed.

 

[Thiletonomics]

Does Sims 4 feel like that it's got feature bloat? I haven't played since Get To Work and loaded up a copy with all dlcs and get bombarded by notifications. Notifications in the main menu for every dlc installed that I have to hold down escape for a minute or two to close them all, notifications in game for every random feature they'd added for the dlcs, get random calls by people to go to Star Wars land and to invest $1000 in a scam... I'm getting bombarded by a lot of annoying stuff within minutes of playing. I went afk to see if the sim AI is still retarded and yup, they still piss and shit themselves and fail to go to bed.

Given that TS4 is 9 years old, and EA has said that TS4 will still get more DLCs, even after Project Rene launches, feature bloat is a massive understatement at this point. Also, the game is effectively breaking as you play it, under the weight of the massive amount of spaghetti code. And a lot of those features don't even have cross EP/GP/SP compatibility, like how TS1-3's DLCs had.

TS4 is also another example of updating a game too much. Long-lasting live service games, i.e. Rainbow6 Siege, and World of Warcraft, also fall under this category, even though those games haven't reached the sheer buggyness that TS4 is, yet.

 

[SlipNHonkMach2]

Since you mentioned about ants, it was also very fitting, that Will Wright used some of the concepts with one of his other games, SimAnt, and applied it to the OG Sims 1. And he also voiced the Genie in Livin' Large, and the wishes he can grant usually backfire.

It was also funny that there was a Whack-A-Will! arcade game in Vacation, showing that he was also open to poke fun at himself:

View attachment 5537537

Yep exactly what I was referring to regarding ants. Will had a great sense of humor.

 

[TVB]

Stopped being an OG Maxis game and became an EA game by the time Sims 2 came out. Or really even before then you could tell EA realized the most lucrative playerbase were women who played the game relatively straight and the marketing for later expansions, console ports, and Sims Online started the transition to slowly morph into appealing to them, hence why Sims 2 comes off really metrosexual, tonally uplifting and cartoonish compared to the more down to earth artstyle with ominous dark humor sprinkled on top atmosphere of Sims 1, which was very much a staple of Will Wright and his prior works. And these commercials in 2000 really fit the bizarre morbid humor that it entailed.

The Sims were more or less tamagotchi's seen in a perspective on an isometric antcolony, whos lives could be smitten or made miserable by mere clown world shenaniganry at any moment and the Livin Large expansion exacerbated that to a hilarious degree. In the first expansion, Will Wright added a hidden disease with the Guinea Pig pet, that if bitten when trying to pet it, you'll slowly die as your mood crumbles without any notice with only hints of momentary coughing/sneezing. Now couple that with how clown pictures (that existed in the vanilla game) now spawned a clown when you feel like shit and you find your Sim slowly dying while being tormented by the clown because you aren't aware that clown painting decor was altered with the expansion. That was the beauty of Maxis under Will Wright.
View attachment 5537451

What the fuck are you talking about? Sims 2 and 3 were lit.

 

[Thiletonomics]

With the EP out now, aside from the patch and the EP breaking almost every mod out there, one notable bug is when rent goes to a 32-bit integer:



And the Sims themselves in the new neighborhood are surprisingly normal, from the looks of it. The only red flag is the one guy who can't get women pregnant for some reason (EA probably may be implying that he got his tubes tied), and ironically has a Family aspiration:

 

[Tepes Thot]

With the EP out now, aside from the patch and the EP breaking almost every mod out there, one notable bug is when rent goes to a 32-bit integer:

View attachment 5551980

And the Sims themselves in the new neighborhood are surprisingly normal, from the looks of it. The only red flag is the one guy who can't get women pregnant for some reason (EA probably may be implying that he got his tubes tied), and ironically has a Family aspiration:

View attachment 5551984

Yeah I got the rent bug right away. EA can’t get shit right, thank you Anadius.

And I haven’t touched the new world outside of looking at the map, but that’s hilarious if it’s not a bug. Even the impotent must be repped.

 

[Character from a movie]

With the EP out now, aside from the patch and the EP breaking almost every mod out there, one notable bug is when rent goes to a 32-bit integer:

I thought they already fixed that bug in a recent update? It seems that's not the case.
Here's a list of the changes and bug fixes that came with the update.

 

[Thiletonomics]

Apparently, EA created a TV Show series on Amazon, called Not Creative:



And as if The Sims Spark'd wasn't received well either, and now they're trying again at trying to make a TV show out of the series.

 

[Thiletonomics]

EA revealed the TS4 Roadmap for January-April, which includes a whopping FOUR kits, one Stuff Pack, and one Delivery Drop.

There also appears to be a major game-breaking bug in For Rent, as to be expected with a Sims game:



Apparently, going over 6 units in a single lot, can somehow cause game corruption.

 

[Internet's Boyfriend]

There also appears to be a major game-breaking bug in For Rent, as to be expected with a Sims game:

View attachment 5629002

Apparently, going over 6 units in a single lot, can somehow cause game corruption.

Six units on a single lot is the max limit set by the game, people have been using cheats to have more than six so I'm not all that surprised that going beyond the cap is affecting the stability.

As much as I'd hate to defend EA/the Sims devs, I'm not really sure what people were expecting would happen.

 

[TVB]

Apparently, EA created a TV Show series on Amazon, called Not Creative:

View attachment 5591672

And as if The Sims Spark'd wasn't received well either, and now they're trying again at trying to make a TV show out of the series.

There's only one that worked as a series, and it's a fanmade machinima from the mid-2000s

 

[D.Angus]

There's only one that worked as a series, and it's a fanmade machinima from the mid-2000s

Strangerhood was made by RoosterTeeth when they were still, you know.. Good.

Don't even try to watch "Season 2". Actually do watch it and compare it to Season 1 and you'll realise that Sims 4 absolutely sucks for Machinima.

 

[TVB]

Strangerhood was made by RoosterTeeth when they were still, you know.. Good.

Keep in mind, this was the 2000s. They made a little gem like Red vs. Blue, back when that was also good.

 

[Thiletonomics]

The Sims Mobile, which was pretty much a TS4 asset flip used to leech suckers' wallets for $$$, will no longer be receiving new updates:



Given that all (?) of EA's previous attempts to make The Sims into an online game, i.e. The Sims Online/EA-Land, The Sims Social, ended up shutting down at one point or another, this shouldn't be a surprise at all.

 

[Thiletonomics]

Bump, as long-time (and for too long) Sims Director Grant Rodiek has announced his departure from Maxis/EA:



The wording of this sounds like that it wasn't mutual, and possibly from either a severance package or lay-off. He was mostly known for making really dumb statements in regards to TS4's poor state, and was even responsible for things such as dog houses and better babies (which seemingly were added back with the Infant lifestage, after he moved away from doing TS4 work) not being a thing in TS4:

 

[Character from a movie]

The Sims 4 will turn 10 this year, right? Holly shit, now I feel like I wasted a decade of my life playing this damn game. I wonder what EA will do to celebrate the anniversary. I bet they'll release more kits, and something dumb like hats or lamps as free content.

 

[Thiletonomics]

The Sims 4 will turn 10 this year, right? Holly shit, now I feel like I wasted a decade of my life playing this damn game. I wonder what EA will do to celebrate the anniversary. I bet they'll release more kits, and something dumb stuff like hats or lamps as free content.

They already did the bare minimum with The Sims's 20th anniversary in 2020, by giving out a reskinned hot tub, and some in-game music, I think. So the lamps idea could likely happen.

 

[Character from a movie]

They already did the bare minimum with The Sims's 20th anniversary in 2020, by giving out a reskinned hot tub, and some in-game music, I think. So the lamps idea could likely happen.

I forgot to mention, if I'm not mistaken The Sims 5 will be released this year?
It's strange that it took EA a whole decade to come up with a sequel of the game. The previous ones didn't have such big gaps between them, only 4-5 years.