So funny people still complain about "we do what we want EA". The best and most effective protest is: Don´t buy their products...simple. I really do and i keep it that way. ;-)

If nobody mentioned what they wanted out of a product.
and simply stopped buying it.
Then that would leave the company to guess what the problem was.

We do not trust their judgement, and so we inform them.

Here is the problem. If we don´t trust their judgement, why do we buy their products? They know exactly, what the problem is or was. As i wrote before, EA really just do what they want. Even if we mention problems, and inform the company. EA won´t listen, in most of the cases for different reasons. There is a lot of money, and wrong decisions involved. As example: More as one year passed, until EA developed a dishwasher. Many people complained, and informed them before. But it took one year, that is a long time for a dishwasher. If i complain and don´t get what i want, i turn around and spend my money for something else. Many of us figured during all these years, how EA operate on the market. We never get everything in one go. No we must pay and pay, and if we are lucky we finaly get our goodies. EA is like a car dealer, who sells vehicles with 3 wheels. Only if the customer complains about the missing wheel, the dealer "maybe" offer the last tyre as a bonus. The customer is happy, and might come back in some years for a new car with two wheels? Who want that? It will never ever change. EA keep this alife, cause we buy their products. Even if we know they fool us, and complain after the product was developed. I simply don´t complain about this game anymore, cause i don´t spend my money for some half baked products. No frustration no anger, i made up my mind. I can´t speak for everyone here, but there comes a time, i simply don´t accept empty promises anymore. ;-)

There are not many options within this Genre.. so you can't really take your money somewhere else. The alternatives are not really better either.
And it is not like they never listen. They did give us some of the things we asked for. Just not some of the ones we really want.

Overall, customer feedback is essential within the gaming industry. Many developers understand this... .and you, as a consumer, should as well.

Let´s face it, the game is not getting any better. The thrill is gone, they might have some new good ideas. Ignore or simply forget, other important details instead. Yes customer feedback is essential, but we talk here about EA games........................they might listen, but in many cases that´s about it. We all know this. Sure they "maybe" give us "some" new tools. Like my example the dishwasher, but we had to wait one year........one year ridiculous. We are the customers, we have the money. We are not happy, if EA throw some bones in our direction. We know exactly what EA do. If we spend our money for "unfinished products" we just fool ourself. Sorry but it´s the truth. It´s always good to hope, maybe things will be better one day. Well not Sims, we can´t ignore the facts. Can we? There are three solutions: Buy a new EP, complain about missing files. Get angry if they don´t listen, and suffer it. Or keep the money, and play older Sims parts or other games. Or start your own Sim project, which is difficult, but possible like this example: https://www.kickstarter.com/project...game-about-life I can only speak for myself, i still use my sim parts, but won´t spend anymore money on EA´s products.

Personally, I like the Sims 4. I don't have a gaming computer and my computer could certainly run the Sims 3, even with all the expansions and a ton of cc, it was just really, really slow sometimes. I loved the open world and the freedom in building (constrainfloorelevation is probably what I miss the most). However, the Sims 4 is just a better game. Almost all the EA objects, clothing, hair, houses etc look like someone spent time on them. Despite having fewer traits, the sims have more personality: there are no seemingly duplicate traits, and emotions add depth to their lives. I enjoy it a lot more. In the Sims 3 I mostly liked building houses and making sims to live in them, play for maybe a generation, and repeat with a new house idea. In the Sims 4, I tend to care more about my sims.
I definitely want a Sims 5 with open world. I don't care if my computer crashes when I move the mouse too fast.

Assuming that TS5 does happen (since EA is money-hungry as fuck), I basically just want TS4 done better (aka with toddlers, open world, CASt, preteens, height sliders, teens that act like teens instead of YAs, etc). There are a lot of things I DO like about TS4, like the design of the sims, CAS, the build mode and the multitasking. But there's just so much missing from it. It's halfway through its lifespan and yet it still feels unfinished due to there only being 2 EPs and WAY too many needless and mediocre Stuff Packs. Honestly, I think if we take what makes TS4 great and just fix what doesn't make it great (and add some new things too), we could have a REALLY good game.

But who am I kidding? EA doesn't listen to us, they just want to keep manipulating fans to make a quick buck. Silly me

With how few EPs there are, I'm inclined to believe the intended lifespan for 4 is going to be longer than the previous games. They did say somewhere that 4 isn't going to follow the patterns of the old games.

What was their first hint? The lack of open world, the lack of toddlers, the fact that teens are now virtually the same as young adults/adults except for going to school, the (original) lack of pools, foundations, basements Or how about the lack of communication? Something has definitely changed in regards to the marketing and releasing of upcoming packs and it's not for the better

Sparse expansion packs are usually a sign that EA is phasing out support for the game for one reason or another. That has certainly been the case with other big flops like Spore and SimCity which certainly had players, but obviously not enough for EA to consider them worth ongoing investment. I think if TS4 had the playerbase that EA desired, they would be producing more frequent content, not less and less frequent DLC. Being fair, I have zero confidence in EA's ability to make games that real people, as opposed to the hypothetical people EA envisions its market to be, actually want. I'm biased. I can't pretend to make an objective assessment when my opinion of TS4 goes something like this:



I worry TS4 will have a longer lifespan, but not in the way you're thinking. I doubt we will see a heap of EPs for TS4, nowhere near the number we saw for TS2 and 3. And I don't see a TS5 happening at all within the next five to seven years.

The only issue I can see with keeping the game longer is that it's likely going to shrink the future customer base for The Sims 5. Although very limited in scope and not a direct indicator, activity on the Facebook page has indicated to me that there are less and less people paying attention to the posts (slowly decreasing amount of likes and comments on posts). It's likely that this correlates with player retention for The Sims 4, as well, although that's not a guarantee. But if people increasingly are dissatisfied with your current product, why should they have faith in your next one?

Of course, this is all just conjecture on my part.

The thing is, EA appears to have a weird habit of rationalising its failures as a failure of the customer base to rally to its ideas. Simcity is the kind of winning franchise formula that could, from a competent company, be paying for itself over and over without a hiatus. The Sims is obviously the same. When EA fail like this they tend to stop and regroup. They know they've failed. They go away, take stock, and don't make another entry to the franchise for a good long while. They know they need to rethink their approach before a reboot. But, bizarrely, they come back and implement ideas and features just as bad as last time. They don't learn from their mistakes, or from what's happening out in the broader market for the games they are trying to make. I am convinced they build the games they *think* their customers *should* enjoy based on fashions, trends - really shoddy market research - rather than creating a game with wide appeal to real people. There's a clear pattern between Spore, Darkspore, Simcity, The Sims 3 and 4, of EA just not being competent.

The trouble with TS3 and TS4 were that they were built on a genious concept (the Sims/Sims 2), but fell into the usual EA moneygrabbing trap. TS3 was bad enough with all the overprized store content, but TS4 is shaping up to become worse, where most of the packs aren't even available in shops, ony through Origin. Now they keep pushing out small packs of stuff that should have been included in EPs or larger SPs, calling them "stuffpacks" or "gamepacks" as if that changes anything.

The team working with the games are also somewhere deep in a jungle, not even close to a civilization (where the simmers actually live), and keep doing weird stuff, like adding things most players don't need or want, and instead trickling through things they should have included via "patches" (aka. "okay, probably we shouldn't have excluded that from the basegame - here, have a lollipop to suck on while we mess up the game some more")

I'm sure at least some of the team have their heart in the game, but that doesn't help when all EA cares about is their shameless moneygrabbing, and don't give a s**t about listening to players since the first EA-infested games came out. They pretend to, but they really don't.

Anyway, over to Sims 5. My hope for the game is a more stable game engine that doesn't mess up saves on the third try, and actually does what I tell it to, like actually pausing the game when I click the pause button (growls at TS4). A game that takes into account playability, and embraces all the best bits of the previous games without leaving the most important bits out, putting the nuttier bits and whatever is left into thightly packed, themed EPs or SPs people can buy if they want those things in their games. I do not want tiny packs for three times the price they're worth, and I want to be able to buy them in stores, so I have the ability to buy them when they get a bit cheaper, instead of having them overprized at all times. I would also like a more stable DRM or whatever s**t they're putting onto their install CDs nowadays, that lets me actually run the CD/DVD off my laptop and install/run the games (TS2, I love you! Never gave me any install troubles on 3 different computers, unlike TS3 and TS4 - although maybe I could have manged without securom, even if it technically didn't give me troubles that I know of). Oh, and of course, let a team that knows what it is doing handle the game building. And if they insist on making SPs/GPs/whatver - the packs should be filled to the brim with things the community can't add, like items with new animations or coding - not just furniture we hardly ever use anyway among maybe one or two new functions.

Other than that, it's the usual complaints - babies as a proper lifestage, more and better lifestages (instead of fewer, crappier ones), actual animations for things like car doors, a neighborhood management that's a mix between TS2's multiple playable homes and TS3's open neighborhood, some kind of color wheel option, easy house building, moddability, absolutely nothing unnaturally shining like wannabe-vamps in sunlight, nothing looking like it's been made with either play-doh (TS3 sims) or Playmobil items (TS4, everything - hairs and environment in particular), and the list just goes on and on.

Basically, a stable game with stable saves that I don't get tired of playing. Is that really so hard?

I really want more EPS and GOOD ONES that offer! Every time I want to run Sims 4 my next thought is " and do what?" I don't have all the expansions and packs but I don't even want them, they're teases. And my sims 3 saves? I've got a town that is literally just bunny people working and farming in a tight knit community located in an adorable valley. One of them runs a jam and soup shop and harvests like 20 different fruits and veggies and there's seasons he must live by for his crops. Now of course there's a bit of cc to make this happen but most of what I use for function and decoration is sims 3 store items and sets meaning EA has a hand in making it possible.

How and or when will the sims 4 ever compare? Why should I look forward to 5?

Honestly, I just feel at this point they are focusing too much on the needless, quick-cash-grabby stuff instead of focusing on the features that made the Sims great. It's akin to having a loan but paying off the interest first before you get to the actual loan.

I don't need more furniture, clothes and hairs right now. I can indulge myself off the custom content from the modding community if I wanted a new stove or change the colours myself, but what I really need are more neighbourhoods, more jobs, more vacation destinations, more lot types and that's outside of the other features that the community has been pining for such as toddlers, pets, university, seasons, etc. Those are the things EA *should* be pushing out the door and hyping us up for. Don't get me wrong, the stuff packs are nice and they do add some new items to play around with but (to me) the interest is short lived when compared to the longevity of being able to send young adult sims to college, being able to adopt that stray dog that keeps peeing on your bushes or decking your halls with bells and holly every winter.

Less fluff; more stuff!

Or having your evil witches running around casting curses

The focus for The Sims 2 was picking something and fully fleshing it out. Like the newspaper. I imagine their brainstorming went something like, "If we're going to have a newspaper someone needs to deliver it. You need to be able to read it. What else can you do? A crossword puzzle? Can you make something out of it? Anything else? Look for a job. Anything else? Well people who read the paper broadens their view so it should impact interests."

They just kept going with it until they couldn't think of another thing to add. It's the details that sell the simulation. And they did that with everything in The Sims 2 basegame. With The Sims 4 the focus seems to be on delivering a concept relying on shorthand and one or two iconic things and moving on. There's no interest in fully fleshing out a theme when marketing doesn't need it to sell the game. It's all big picture stuff.

They're not interested in creating another Sims 2 when it's more profitable to push out "quick to market" packs. But I don't think they'll put out another unfinished game like with The Sims 4 again either. That's madness. But then again, there might not be any plans for The Sims 5 at all regardless of Sims 4 sales. They didn't roll Maxis into their mobile division without reason. Who knows?

I remember really liking the gardening concept in TS2. Then TS3 came along and built upon it (I actually liked going around searching for stuff). Then TS4 just completely ruined it with the ugly planters, messy gardens, and awful seed planting system that can't even be handled properly by one sim, and gardening simply isn't fun any more. It's fine that sims are able to do more than one thing at a time now, but the system still has flaws that in some cases renders it more useless, and makes the sims spend six times as much time trying to multitask than doing all three things separately. They even managed to screw up reading skill books. In TS3 they couldn't quite access books beyond their level, but in TS4 it's almost impossible to know which level book they should be reading, and the sims are too stupid to realize this, so they just keep reading a book they don't understand. It's strange design choices like this that makes it so I just can't go around demanding them making Sims 5 when they're clearly as far from ready as it's possible to come.

What they need to do is to kick out most of the TS4 team, and get in some new ones, or perhaps even old ones from the previous teams, and make a clear idea of what they're actually making before they start the work, instead of going right ahead with building this rickety tower that's bound to collapse on them sooner rather than later. They'd also be better off doing a LOT of game testing before they let it out on the market, preferably get in some proper beta testers that don't just awe over all the new shiny stuff, but actually give some constructive criticism. I just have this strange feeling they gave up on testing the TS4 game sometime before all the bugs showed up, and left all the beta testing to paying customers. You wouldn't need to patch up a game every week or so, unless there aren't some major flaws in it. I've seriously lost track - I've had TS4 for about a month or so, and it's already updated about every other time I've played it.

This is very true. However, I don't think they are going to be as privy to putting a series on hiatus as they were before. My main reasoning behind it is because of competitors like Colossal Order. I mean, if you take a look at Cities: Skylines and SimCity, they are quite close in sales, with SimCity being two years older and critically received much worse. Colossal Order put a pretty big dent into the future potential market for the next SimCity, if there is one.

But then again, this is EA. Good decisions are few and far between, and what they should do isn't always what they actually do.

I think EA's hubris and system-wide dysfunctionality are both severe enough that they could (further) undermine their monopoly over a sims genre. I mean, it's a huge amount of work for a competitor to build a Sims alternative, and nobody has succeeded in the past, so perhaps EA feels comfortable with its shitty output. Unfortunately, I think a Sims-style game takes a LOT of resourcing behind the scenes, and I think we'd just end up with a range of mediocre titles. Cities: Skylines is a great game. A much better game than Simcity 5. However it still falls short of being a worthy successor to Simcity 4. I foresee that being the risk with The Sims. Competition, maybe, but also the golden age of the franchise far off in the past.

My other fear is the rumours are true and EA is already starting to develop TS5, because, well... ...who trusts them to do that any justice? Isn't another lacklustre Sims game made by EA slightly more likely to be the final nail in the coffin for the franchise?

EA is out of ideas... Sure Sims 4 had its upsides, but it wasn't nearly a mind-blowing experience. For the community to blossom, we need tools to create unique stuff. Building or creating things outside the boundaries of what the game itself delivers usually makes people look for communities. This results in a game that lives longer.

Nobody cares about the in-game tools for uploading stuff. The more people that can upload, the shittier quality, the less people will use the service. So if EA could just stop bothering with that and just give us some extraordinary tools to create stuff, we will take care of the community.

The absolute first tool I would love to see made is a Neighbourhood maker tool. I can only assume it's difficult to mod a new neighbourhood because I'm surprised someone hasn't found a way to even at least copy a neighbourhood and maybe re-name it? I just want more space, god-dammit >.<

I'm also assuming making new careers are difficult? I know there are the Get to School and Go to College mods but I was wondering why there aren't any custom jobs and careers yet. I'm no coder, I have no idea how modders do their, what I can only assume is, computer witchcraft. I used to recolour custom content in Sims 2 (there was no need to do it in 3 so I never learned) but for 4 it seems like such a challenge so I am assuming that the new engines, complicated coding, electronic sorcery are making it more difficult for modders to be as creative as they used to be for the previous games?

I can only guess why there are modded traits but not modded emotions, for example because I have no idea how complex it would be to do so. Which leaves me to wonder why EA made this game so difficult to mod or if they *intentionally* made this game difficult to mod so we would *have* to buy new Neighbourhoods, new emotions and new careers.

If this is true then that is a dick move on EA's part and probably attributes to why Sims 4 feels so stagnant and I'd rather play Sims 2 or Sims 3 right now...

Ah.
What a nice topic for me to comment on and come out of virtual hiding (not that I was very active in the first place, but yeah...). Thanks, OP.

TS4 is very boring to me, thus the reason I haven't wasted money on buying it yet. I may never get it but only time will tell. I'm just not impressed so far.
The 2nd and 3rd are pretty great, but even they aren't the best I feel that The Sims can be.
Here's what I'd like to see:

:lovestruc -Natural and basic things in the base game and not stuff packs/expansions
This is my biggest problem in TS series. Why do I have to pay and download...weather? Pets? JOBS (It's already rough out here, guys, come on now. I don't wanna struggle virtually too!!)? These things- to name a few- should be in the base game and stuff packs and expansions should cater to 'extras'. I would even except an expansion for travelling to another country or adding mystical creatures to the game.

:lovestruc -Seamless travelling/ connecting neighborhoods.
Let me walk/metro/bike/drive to 'X' town from 'Y' town before I got home to 'Z' town and go to bed. Let me. Stop limiting me.
You ever play a sim in one neighborhood/town and think, "They would be perfect for that other sim!!! Oh...they're in another town." That is an emotional struggle that I just do not have time for. It's 2016. I should be allowed to play out my romantic feels, EA.
-Being able to set the social status of your sim/make them rich/have money in CAS.
-Daycare for your little ones. That nanny trips sometimes and I don't have time for her, no matter her age. It would be cool to have the kids leave school/have a bus or van pick them up from home when you have to work. Then you can swing by and come get them. This shouldn't take away from the ability to have a daycare in your home, however.
-Malls/shopping centers- bring them back!
-Seeing inside of buildings...ALL of them. Would be cute to check in on your sim and watch them actually work or participate in class/field trips.
-Set reputation in CAS. Maybe I want everyone to hate my sim 'cuz she's a wench. Nothing wrong with that. (Not talking about just having a negative trait, I mean as soon as she arrives in neighborhood/town everyone is like, "Ew, girl, bye.") Or maybe I want her to be most liked 'cuz she's a sweetheart and a giver.
-Speaking of CAS...piercings! Tats! Should not have to be downloaded. Or you can go to a shop to get it done (that was a mall hint, hint, EA. Work with me.) Height? Or is everyone just...just?

That's all I can think of right now. I'll reply again if I think of anything else. Thanks for letting me vent. lol

I don't think there's any point in figuring out the details. What they need to do with the game is to go back to the basics and figure out how to make a stable game that will work with EPs and whatever else.

TS3 and TS4 are so unstable they get borked almost right away, even with patching and without CC. They must have done something right with TS2, because I've used the same game since 2008-ish, and it's still chugging along, even if I've switched computer and cranked the CC content up to dangerously high. In my experience, if you borked up something in TS2, it was usually a player mistake. But TS3 would suddely throw random bugs at me for no apparent reason, bork saves, and otherwise be very unstable. TS4 seems a little more stable, but there are still more than enough random bugs around in the game to be annoying, and I haven't even played it much yet.

And by "back to the basics" I don't mean "cut out stuff that should be in the game from the beginning" (like EA seems to think it means), but rather build a solid game engine for whatver they plan to put in. The basegame needs to be solid, and playable on its own. EPs should be icing on the cake, with concepts players can choose whether they want to add or not (like pets, playable careers, or similar), and SPs should be the sprinkles, with themed sets that adds to the enjoyment. SPs should also have some content with new gameplay (and not just 1-2 new items), to make them worth the money. There's no point to game packs - they should either be put together to make full EPs, or not exist at all.

I am just afraid that EA will never fully embrace customisation (CAST like customisation of clothes and objects) and modding again.Because they seem so hellbent on shortterm nickle and diming us with stuff packs.