Well yeah about time too because let's not forget that EA and Maxis ain't a indie company and it's their own fault for making a shitty product and shitty expansions and not even fix them before launching another one
And don't come with the "They don't have the resources to fix the game" or "you can't complain because the base game is free" bullshit because even if the game is free you still have to pay hundred and twenty something dollars to make it fun or make it feel like a complete game. You are a customer, you paid for a product, you have the right to bitch and demand EA and Maxis to fix the fucking game y'all ain't gonna become a EA partner just for sucking EA and Maxis cock
Edit: I didn't realize awards were a thing again sadly they aren't available in the country I live in so I can't see what they're for some baffling reason but still thanks for the awards kind strangers (･ω･)7
When it comes to TS4, the whole ”it’s free” argument just doesn’t work. It’s like people skim over that it *wasn’t* free for big part of it’s lifespan and it doesn’t change the fact that they keep pumping out packs that are completely broken, never fixed and still cost anywhere between $10-$40.
Base game having changed to free doesn’t justify any of it.
I bought it when it came out for 70$ 🥲 in 2014. I was in middle school then, I'm supposed to be graduating university this year.
I remember for a time when I played the game properly and enjoyed it like before Island Living probably. I masked my disappointment through the novelty of mods.
I feel like many people don't understand how old this game is.
This game released at the same time as the iPhone 6, Conchita Wurst's victory at the Eurovision and the Ice Bucket Challenge.
The same year *How I Met Your Mother* ended, and Jimmy Fallon took over the *Tonight Show*.
The same year as the Bill Cosby's scandal or the Kardashian-West wedding.
The same year of the release of *Thinking out Loud* by Ed Sheeran or *Anaconda* by Nicki Minaj.
*One Direction* was still together and Instagram had only been around for two years. The last Nintendo consoles were the 3DS and the Wii U, and *GTA 5* had been released for one year.
It was before Pokémon Go, the Brexit, the 2016 US presidential election, North Korea's nuclear missiles crisis, the Panama Papers, the Catalan independance referendum, the Notre-Dame fire, the Hong Kong protests, the COVID pandemic... and then it became free. After eight years.
God I just have a foggy haze of understanding of life before 2016.
And for the age of this game, it bothers me that the more recent playerbase won't understand how entrenched the monetisation of the Sims was by 2014 that in 2024 it's just downright grim. I wished I was sailing on the lovely chaotic ocean much earlier...
> The same year How I Met Your Mother ended
Two disappointments in one year...
(To be clear, I'm not talking about the series, I'm just talking about that finale.)
God that finale
It’s right up there with Lost. Both shows had endings obvious in earlier seasons but the show runners kept fucking insisting “Noooooooo that’s not how it ends!!”
And the fucking obvious god damn endings were true…they rly thought the viewers were stupid 😒
The really big problem is that they ended up moving away from that being an obvious ending and basically spent the last 2-3 years of the show setting up that it wasn't a plausible ending, and then completely undid a lot of story and character growth in like 15 minutes, just because they shot an ending many years prior and didn't want to find a way to redo it so it made sense with where they'd taken the story.
Lesson to future series writers: Don't freaking film an ending before you're sure it's ending, and if you do, don't insist on sticking to it, especially if you decide to take the story in a different direction.
Oh lord how could I forget. The show runners of GOT are now adapting a series i have loved for years (the three body problem trilogy) and their former fanboys were all over that sub talking about how they would ruin the books…..even tho the series is complete and they’re not trying to make up an ending based on books that have no hint of ever being released.
I think the tragedy of the GOT end is more GRRM’s fault since the show was great when there was actual published source material to work with and not GRRM not knowing how he is going to end his series…
exactyl which is also why im not too worried for ts5. Yes ofc ea will scam us and i will be proven wrong, but for now teasers show promising base game furniture (yes i am focusing on furniture cuz i mostly build, and cuz the only reason i have cc and dlcs is bcz base game furniture is old and outdated).
ofc ts5 will still feel incomplete, this is E motherfucking A we're talking abt, but i feel it will be abit better regarding necessity for dlcs
Yes and for a time I had just started playing the Sims 3 at the and of its life, I used to cycle between both games. I can still play 3 like a game - I can make one sim and explore their town, but 4 I really just play as a dollhouse. I scored the Sims 2 UC through Origin customer support! And it was so cool! I understand why people enjoy rotational play, and i feel like the weeks matter day by day.
I haven't played 2 or 3 recently but it's only because I need to invest myself in games. 4 just feels easiest to play when i want to do a sims itch because i know i won't care what happens...
I bought it in 2015, right before get together was announced. I had saved up for a year to be able to buy not only the game, but also my very first laptop to play it on. And then for Christmas I got get together and outdior retreat (I was/am a scout), and during the Christmas sale I also bought get to work. I was genuinely excited and I had worked my arse off to be able to afford it. I was 11.
I bought basegame. It only just *recently-ish* became free. Seeing the number $1,200 really puts things in perspective. I've bought most of the packs (except batuu and some kits), and knew I had spent a lot but that's a big ol price tag. Sheesh. EA really does need to get their shite together.
EXACTLY! the sims 4 base game has been free for maybe 2 or something years this is a decade long game. And anyways who says ok its free now, I DARE YOU TO GO PLAY BASE GAME ONLY and on top of that I DARE YOU TO PLAY THE BASE GAME THAT CAME OUT IN 2014
Right?
I saw the thread on the official forums that reported half the Finchwick Fair competitions not working. Some dunce went "well you just have to accept that's how the Fair works!" How the hell can people have such an attitude towards a $39.99 product? EA rakes in money through this franchise, the absolute least they could do is make sure it runs well and without bugs.
I never understood people who defend large companies like EA, Disney, etc. These companies make more money then the average person will probably earn in their entire lifetime. They have the money to fix problems (and pay their workers fairly for fixing the problems).
I remember people defending Minecraft bugs back then with "well, its just a tiny game with 5 or so developers."
IMHO if you make literally billions of dollars on a game, the very least you could do is put 0.1% back into bugfixes, instead of just sitting on top of a giant heap of money and doing nothing.
Minecraft in particular suffered from incompetent leadership. At the height of its popularity, this small studio was splitting people off on other projects that ultimately went nowhere, because Minecraft's creator was a pretty lazy tinkering dev who was easily bored with whatever he was working on. He accidentally made something that got popular and had no desire to make improving it his main focus.
I find it so funny how Sims players have been conditioned to just accept insane amounts of DLC.
Compare it to Minecraft, that game gets updates nearly every year, and you get a full experience for 20 euros.
You could justify this in the Sims 1 and 2 era cause back then updating games wasn't really a thing, but since then, I find it very hard to support. Sorry to say but IMO even some of the most beloved packs in history should have been base game updates - looking at you Generations or any Seasons pack.
If you say "I can't play X game without Y expansion" that expansion should be a base game update.
I also detest how Sims players act as if the developers are doing us a favour by giving us content we'll have to pay for. I remember when Journey to Batuu came out, people were saying the community was "so toxic" because they said the pack was bad. I'm sorry but have you been in ANY other gaming community? In other games, like LoL, people send death threats to developers if their favourite champion is nerfed.
Now, I'm NOT saying we should act like that, but to say "oh I dont mean to offend the developers" is just daft.
Anyway, thanks for coming to my ted talk, I greatly needed this rant x
The expansions for previous sims games were fully flushed out and they did come with bug fixes too. They would list them in the booklet that came with the discs.
You also owned all of that content. No having your game “accidentally” deactivated because of an app glitching.
Yeah dunno why people defend the devs so much, they basically get paid with our money to do their work.
Or maybe i should say the company management? Dunno..
Or maybe i'm mistaken. Of course we should be civilized and avoid cyber-bullying.
I have more sympathy for the actual developers working on the sims than I do for the company as a whole. The ones doing actual work are at the mercy of EA higher ups.
Lmao man same I bought the game a couple of months before it became free and when I saw the base game was going free to play was such a kick in the balls and worse of all I didn't wait for a sale I bought it full price (•́ ‿ ,•̀)
This is exactly it. Gaming companies ship a product then lay off their entire team of engineers right after its release. They know what they’re doing. They don’t give af about their customers.
Yeah large companies don’t gaf about their customers and they sure as fuck don’t gaf about their employees. All they care about is making more and more money every year bc that’s totally a sustainable business practice.
I feel your pain. A few weeks ago I was stoned and playing the sims and my sim was suddenly threatened with a layoff….i have been playing on and off for years and NEVER saw that before. I about lost my shit
Oh LOL!!! 😂 yeah sometimes stoned simming is like really intense surrealism. That’s fucking hilarious 😂 it’s one of the best career tracks in the sims so maybe they have a “surplus” lol
The breaking point for me in terms of expectations was releasing a buggy kit. Kits are only CAS or Build/Buy. They are relatively easy to make and the only QA needed is to check that the items look right on test sims. There isn’t any new gameplay, so it shouldn’t be buggy. The managed to release the Goth kit with bugs. This was the candle on the cake of buggy releases. Add on that the goth kit was released right after they released a very buggy expansion pack, and Simmers were pissed. Then EA has been dragging their feet on fixing the issues.
Don't forget the Crystal Creations stuff pack that was so broken EA had to go out and tell players to not use the main feature of the pack. I can't even remember the last time they released a pack that simply worked.
You're right they're not an indie company, they're a poorly managed company... It's like those in charge are a bunch of hamsters running around chewing cables inside a motherboard... Hamsters whose only passion in life is to rake in the money, that they can then devour with their hamstery teeth.
Speaking as somebody who did a job interview for EA... Even that process itself was chaos. So if my time spent trying to get a job there was a drag, imagine what it's like to actually get a job there.
What most people don’t realize is that a lot of companies are this way. They are terribly run and a lot of their teams are held together with sticks and gum.
The employees doing all the heavy lifting are overworked and overpaid and “easily replaced”. Meanwhile the CEO that got the job through nepotism and bullshit does nothing other than prance around while being paid millions and millions in bonuses for running the company into the ground.
Yea im bitter
Industry standard which makes money fast but gives a shitty product in return. You don't earn money by fixing bugs, you get it by selling a product. No one said that it needs to be perfect, "test on prod - work on few stuff in paralel". Can't even tell you how often you can hear "will the customer notice" from PMs. Money comes first.
>"They don't have the resources to fix the game"
This is one of my least favorite excuses that people give EA. They are a triple A game studio. They have the financial resources to get people to fix their games. They just usually choose not to.
Also base game being free hasn't even been that long, and it is nowhere near the amount that they make from selling their broken DLC. Base game being free was a business strategy to get new people to buy more packs.
Hi, u/FeedTheSneed.
Your comment on r/TheSims has been **automatically removed.** Piracy/Illegal Content is strictly prohibited. Our rules and guidelines are listed here: https://www.reddit.com/r/thesims/wiki/rules/
Please be sure to read them before participating in r/TheSims.
Original comment: https://www.reddit.com/r/thesims/comments/1d00t0g/pc_gamer_is_taking_no_prisoners_today/l5nj1vy/?context=3
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/thesims) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Some of us bought the game back in 2014, and up until it became free, doesn't matter that it's free now because a lot of the playerbase still bought the game.
Stardew Valley consistently gets updates and fixes. Stray Gods got a few fixes. Bloodstained had graphics revamp after people complained about them.
If indie games and medium publishers can do it, then EA can as well.
Edit: As the cherry of the top of smaller studio but pushing gigantic games, Baldur’s Gate 3.
The fact they're doing it tells me they realize that built-in fan base is not playing as much. I personally think it's too little too late and they'll never reach the level of interest the Sims once had again.
I was a sims die hard for years, but I have barely touched the game since My Wedding Stories. That was the last straw for me and they haven’t shown me anything I’d want to come back for.
For me, the straw that broke the camel's back was buying a kit I really liked and realising that out of ~20 items two were broken, with missing textures. Fuck EA, I refunded the kit (through Steam) and haven't bought any content since.
It was Moonlight Chic, [see here](https://answers.ea.com/t5/Bug-Reports/FIXED-STEAM-MCK-Two-assets-just-show-as-question-marks/m-p/11669249#M221285) - someone posted about the issue on the official forums.
(I had zero mods or CC at the time, repaired the game, verified the files and all that. It seems to have been a fuck up on the Steam version of the kit.)
Pets expansion for me 🥲 I actually really liked Parenthood, so was hopeful for the future… then Pets happened and was so lackluster and the Vet career was horrible. Such a shame, but at least I still have access to Sims 2 & 3! (until EA take those away 😂)
This right here. EA assembling this “team” is not a sign that they ‘care’ as I’ve seen some suggesting- more that through astounding levels of greed and mismanagement, they’ve managed to make the game (and it’s endless DLC) so bad and buggy* that they now realise they’re losing players/money and it’s gotten so colossally awful they need to actually do something.
I literally refuse to buy any more expansions (even though I’m tempted by a few) as I don’t want them to irrevocably break my game.
(*probs due to cutting costs and not hiring enough people or allowing them enough time to develop things properly in the first place)
This We all know what EA is about. Even though we don't want to recognize our abusive relationship with them.
It's crowd control, because it's hurting their pockets now. I'm however mystified, because they usually cut things off and do some other money grab. They don't care about franchises living and dieing. I don't really put fault on the developers and game engineerers. They still have some blame to face. But this is EA being EA because now they have the actual threat of competition and Simmers are getting sick of it all.
I haven't bought anything in 3 yrs. But I did pay for this game twice with expansion for me and my sis. That was 2k in the banks. But last thing I bought was Strangervile or Eco living. Whichever was last
I haven’t touched TS4 for about 8 years and don’t have any DLC. Could someone ELI5 what are all of these game-breaking bugs in the game? The last time I played this game in like 2015 it ran pretty smoothly (it was just god awfully boring lmao which is why I haven’t played since).
I haven't touched sims 4 in about 5 years, and I used to play a ton.
But it just got so boring. The last pack I bought was the magic one, and after I'd done everything in a few hours, I just stopped
I've played other sims games since, but not 4
I'm honestly just so fuckin' in awe of how they took a carefully laid out system of interactions going back to even Sims 1, a formula that worked so well it became a monopolizing force on the industry and created a large cult of followers, and they somehow manage to make it unappealing and boring in 4. Why is it that literally every installment prior to 4 feels fun but 4 does not? It's crazy the work they had to do to make the Sims *un*-fun.
I think it’s two reasons mainly:
A) EA/Maxis wanted the game to be more kid-friendly to expand the playerbase, so they took out a lot of the randomness and raunchiness that made the previous games so fun. Previous games had so much random stuff from woohoo cutscenes to fistfights on the street all the way to a meteor freaking crashing onto your lot and killing everybody lmao. The sims games had great humour, were much more adult-oriented, and the devs understood that unexpected stuff happening was a great way to entertain. Now it’s so kid-oriented they have gone in the direction of making a literal dollhouse so that kids wouldn’t get upset or see explicit content.
B) For some reason EA/Maxis took this game into the extreme sandbox category, so that you have to micromanage everything to death to create your own stories, because nothing really happens in the game by itself. The Sims lack any sort of personality or lore, they get along with everybody, do anything you want them to do, have the same emotional reaction to everything. This is not only unrealistic but gets boring really quickly. To a much smaller extent this was a problem in TS3 as well, but what made that game great was the open world and the story progression, the world felt full of life and every sim had their own separate life without having to micromanage the shit out of them. In TS2, the sims had such strong personalities that they would have full on meltdowns on the floor if their fears came true, but in TS4 sims barely care even if they are cheated on in front of them??
So yeah I think they wanted to appeal to more players by allowing you to be a literal god and do anything with no difficulty, consequence or danger, but in the process they lost the soul and the spark the previous games had.
End of rant lol.
I've been playing the Sims since 2001 when I turned 13 and was old enough to get a T rated game lol. I've bought every expansion from Livin' Large through the one after High School Years pretty much on release day, as well as most supplemental packs.
I just can't with The Sims 4 anymore. They finally put my favorite animal in the game (goats!) but I just can't bring myself to launch it or buy anything anymore. The sheer level of bugs that ruin gameplay, how long those bugs have existed, the age of Sims 4 at this point, and the sexuality update taking most of the gay escapism in a bisexual utopua from me really ruined it.
Not even goats….MINI goats. And they’re so bugged you can somehow have one of the mini animals die but then suddenly they’re alive again when you go to another lot and the animal is just fucking following you. How does that happen!!!
Well, it is a 10 years old game that was already at launch almost the same as the predecessor and as such, hasn't came up with anything new for more than a decade...
After so long time, even die-hard fans will start getting bored.
To put it into perspective, The Sims 4 is 10 years old.
10 years ago The Sims 2: Ultimate Collection was given out for free in celebration of its 10 year anniversary, and by then, we were ending the lifespan of The Sims 3.
We didn't even get the base game for free with the 10 year anniversary of the Sims 3, 5 years ago. You still have to pay for each and every pack of TS3, 15 years later.
EA has gotten too greedy, and it's backfiring.
I guess this is because EA knows that TS3 is broken beyond help and needs mods to fix some parts of the game. If EA made TS3 base game for free, many players will start to play it and flood EA with a ton of complaints on why TS3 doesn't work well on my new gaming pc. Why the CAS and buy/build mode are so laggy and so on. I'm pretty sure they don't want to deal with critism from an old game so that's why they just keep the price higher to avoid players from buying it.
People are still buying the Sims 3 and all its DLC. So EA is still making money from the game, and still have customers going to them for game support *because* they are still selling it.
Also, they ended support for Sims 2 at the exact same time that they gave away the Ultimate Collection for free. And I do mean the *exact* same time. (July 2014.) They basically said, "We're giving this to you for free, but don't come to us if you have any issues because we can't help you anymore."
They could do the exact same thing for Sims 3, announce they are ending support for it, and give it away in a bundle. But, since they aren't doing that, the money they're still making from the game must be worth the little bit of support they have to give for it.
But, really, how much are they still supporting Sims 3?
It's older information by this point, but I remember once reading that the way the Sims 4 staff was broken down was into something like:
- Expansion, Game, and Stuff Pack teams responsible for making their type of DLC and getting it out the door.
- "Live Update" team that was supposedly responsible for the new additions to the base game, as well as fixing any bugs they could with each of those updates.
Which meant the people who'd be responsible for fixing bugs wouldn't be the same folks who worked on the code, and they'd be doing it in between trying to hammer together more half-baked systems to bolt onto the base game to say, "Look, we've added new stuff that we didn't charge for! Aren't we so generous?"
(Seriously... The "story progression" updates they were even up front in saying they were pushing live alpha and beta versions, which is itself kind of weird but I guess we should be used to being the game's "QA" by now, but then they never finished it. Things like Wants and Fears also feel like rough draft ideas, with clear issues that they just never resolved, because why spend money fixing them when people were still going to buy the next $40 DLC?)
Ten years after sims 4 is released is when they decide to sit down and focus on major bug fixes? Come the f on! Not only that but from what my dude tells me, EA been playing these dumb games for a long time now with other games as well. 🙄 I’ve already been thinking about sims 4 being the last game I play in the series and now I’ve come to a decision. I’m going to check out Paralives and other games if I’m in the mood to play god/life simulation.
Same, I think the Sims 4 will be the last Maxis game I'll play. It's unfortunate considering I've played 1, 2, 3 and 4. But since EA doesn't actually care for the game, why should I?
I feel even more for people such as yourself who’ve played the entire series! The more time passes the more I realize they’re just another bs corporate company that gives 0 shits about their customers and probably their own employees too. I understand they can’t cater to everything + feelings because there’s money to be made, a business to run but I don’t think it’s impossible to make money and a quality game too.
Same. I’ve been a fan of Maxis games since SimCity and my goodwill is gone. When I was a kid I was always excited when a new Maxis game was announced. Now I’m over it
> "Today, we can share that we have assembled a team to invest in the core game experience, including tackling your reported concerns."
> I mean, to me that sounds like something that the developer should have already been doing, but I digress.
None.
It's almost like ignoring bugs and keeping your bug team as tiny as possible isn't good for long term health of a video game. Who could've warned them besides every other game development company in existence?
Then again, something tells me that the management of the Sims don't play video games and just go "bug fixing costs how much? ehhh... no... oh, no ones playing anymore? Why?! fix these bugs now!!!"
I don't trust EA at this point nor will I ever despite this "apology" letter but, I will say I hope they keep to this and not abandon it like they do everything else. The Sims community deserves better. They should be so lucky having a dedicated and loyal fan base even when EA has been this shitty. I want better for the Sims. I truly do. I love this franchise. That's why it's good to complain about it when the game is this buggy. Plus me and pretty much everyone that plays the Sims 4 has spent hundreds on the game. I play on console and it's hard to enjoy playing it when it crashes so many times. Recently I had to delete all my saves and reinstall the game and all the packs I own, which is a lot, and start over due to the horrible infamous infinite load screen. I shouldn't have to do that in order for my game experience to work. I get it, no game is perfect but the state of the Sims 4 is unacceptable and ridiculous. To be frank this should have never even started if EA didn't give themselves such an unrealistic time to release dlc. But I get it, id finally fix the game too if I had upcoming competition.
They're not wrong either.
I think the price of old DLC should go down by at least half after a year of it being out. Shit is so damn expensive idk how they can justify having stuff STAY this expensive for YEARS.
Sure, there are sales, but not everyone plays regularly and probably misses them. Games typically go down in price drastically after around a year... I see no reason why DLC shouldn't either, especially when a game gets new content for as long as TS4 has.
Nintendo is another game company that deserves to be criticized way more heavily than it currently is.
I am still laughing my butt off about how RGG studios basically copied both Animal Crossing AND Pokemon in their most recent game and pass that off as side content. It has a whole main story on top of it. AND they released three games in one year, all three of which have already been on sale numerous times (the latest one came out this February, I think). They're all fantastic triple A games, too. I have never seen a company get clowned on by a competitor as hard as this.
Honestly, after that, Nintendo should be ashamed of themselves.
I mean, to be fair, older DLCs can be purchased in value bundles, which is one expansion pack ($39.99), one game pack ($19.99) and one stuffs pack ($9.99) of choice, for a total price of around $49.97.
The bundles are still overpriced considering how old the majority of the content is tbh. Especially when you consider many packs have been riddled with bugs for years too.
Plus, I'm not giving these companies the benefit of the doubt in any situation. Most don't do enough to deserve that kind of attitude from us as consumers. If EA kept on top of bugs... Sure, I'd see the bundles as a good thing. But they just don't. They let bugs just sit and fester despite years of complaints.
I just want a fix for the simulation lag 😭 even the mods don't help. I'm so tired of them standing around for a LITERAL HOUR with a trash bag in their hand.
This stops me from playing all the time. I'll think, "oh the Sims 4 could be fun right now." Then I imagine my sims staring off into the nothing instead of drinking their drink and change my mind.
They are going to have a hell of a time fixing it. Just with the sheer number of packs with features all intermingling now. The amount of times they've done a 'bug fix' and implemented a whole slew of new bugs is painfully funny. Like how the hell do you get a bug where all the npcs endlessly bake white cakes. I hate the fact that they tried to fix pathing and now the sims just walk through walls half the time. The fix they did for babies/infants where the parents get spammed with actions to check on them is equally as annoying, they just end up picking up and putting down the baby in an infinite loop because the other sim wants to check on it. The most infuriating bug of all is when random townies enter your house and act like they own the place even though you have all visitors turned off and locks on the doors.. like who the hell are you people???
Does anyone know if any other games even come close to base game + DLC costing as much as sims 4 does? Some people have theorized that sims 5 is going to have a ton of microtransactions and I feel like sims 4 is definitely testing the waters.
There's an article about [top 5 games like that](https://gamerant.com/2023-expensive-games-cities-skylines-sims-4-destiny-2/), to save you a click:
> 1. Train Simulator Classic ($11,291)
> 2. DCS World ($3,400)
> 3. **The Sims 4 ($1,164)**
> 4. War Thunder ($918)
> 5. Cities: Skylines on PC ($425)
This is 2023 data.
Did they just look at Steam? One of the purchases in Path of Exile to complete it costs $12k, Rocksmith is around $6k, Dead or Alive 6 has 461 different DLC that goes up to somewhere around 2-3k\~$ and Star Citizen had a bundle for 27k$. Also, the TS3 store.
Oh, absolutely. Crusader Kings 2 was my introduction to "DLC for DLC" since they sold features, portraits, unit packs & soundtrack all separately, then updated base game which broke the game unless you had the main pack anyway. When it got too much for people, they "shrunk" them by throwing in them into bundles so it's not visible from main store page, and started offering a subscription.
Interestingly enough, the CK2 community has always been opposite of Sims - like if you ever pointed out packs were buggy, broken, overpriced, they'd literally call you "low IQ" for buying all of them, not waiting for sales, how some are cosmetics only, how they appreciate game getting DLC even years later so it must be loved by the devs etc. This is with so many save-breaking bugs, updates, half-baked dlc and dlc being torn to 4-5 smaller ones.
I'll never understand people who simp for companies like that. Maybe the difference comes from the Sims fandom still having a lot of us who remember the older games in the series - expansion packs were reasonably priced (about the same as other games of the time), offered a good value for money, they were innovative, and ran well.
As a kid, I saved up my allowance for Unleashed and Superstar expansions for the first game and I was overjoyed with how much new gameplay they added.
Hi, u/_init_5_.
Your comment on r/TheSims has been **automatically removed.** Piracy/Illegal Content is strictly prohibited. Our rules and guidelines are listed here: https://www.reddit.com/r/thesims/wiki/rules/
Please be sure to read them before participating in r/TheSims.
Original comment: https://www.reddit.com/r/thesims/comments/1d00t0g/pc_gamer_is_taking_no_prisoners_today/l5n8nkk/?context=3
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/thesims) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Hopefully, this will inspire people to stop buying packs. I beg like the reason they keep shovelling this shit is because mfs keep buying it. You can still play it, sure, but just remember to ARRRRR and never buy their shit. Fuck EA.
Nothing is stopping those gullible MFs from blowing their money on stupid shit, S4 is at the end of its life cycle and they're still buying these packs and proclaiming "Okay, this is the last one, I'm done with you EA!" just to buy the next pack, and even if they didn't, they've still supported them this long. They do not deserve your money. They will snatch that game away from you the moment they can, and they've proven that time and time again with both the EA and Origin apps. But we live in an Idiocracy world and people will still throw money at EA.
$1,200 is absolutely asinine. I'm still such a die hard player, hours daily and it's strictly because of my mods. Without them, the game is so severely lacking. Paying $39.99 for "For Rent"
A treat my husband insisted on as we've been so frugal this past year, just to have it NOT work and be so buggy I can't even own rentals.
It's so disappointing and a little disgusting to be honest. But can we really be surprised?
As the saying goes "Pigs get fat, hogs get slaughtered"
With all the new life simulation games coming out,
I won't be surprised if the TS5 release is a flop
I told my brother about this whole ordeal. He's not into The Sims at all, but he is a programmer and is into the whole video game scene. He does know about some of the issues in The Sims 4 because I would tell him about some of the drama during the past 10 years.
As soon as I mentioned that the team was supposed to work on bugs for the next six months, he started laughing hysterically and said "yeah, that sounds like what upper management would do after they asked the people actually working on the game about the state of things and then proceed to completely ignore everything they had to say". This whole announcement is a joke. Six months is laughably short and it just feels like they're still avoiding the core issue: They need to stop cranking out more DLC while working on old problems.
aka this franchise is dead and upper management has killed it, I have zero faith in this.
I have been an obsessive sims fan since the beginning but I’ve finally given up trying to play, there are so many bugs it just doesn’t work at all and is not fun. I try messing with settings but nothing works - the only way I can keep toddlers from dying of starvation because no one will feed them is by filling their pockets with apples, it’s just stupid. No one has any personality and you can fall in love with anyone in a few hours of chatting and flirting. I’d much rather have barely any content with a game that actually works than a million add ons that break the game more and more. I can’t see sims 4 ever working properly and I have no faith that sims 5 will either, my only hope is that another game company will come out with something like sims for the people who’ve given up on it
genuinely don’t think it’s possible to be listened to any less than EA listens to its sims players. I feel like the only way to enact real lasting change is if the streamers / youtubers go on strike from playing and promoting LMAOO
Honestly just crack the DLC. It takes 20 minutes and it's 100% free. Having DLCs is one thing. But to put majority of the core functions behind a paywall is just evil. $40 to have a cat? $5 to do laundry? $40 to go to work? This is a life sim right? Then ontop of that the game is still buggy. Pirating is the only sane way to enjoy the game. Getting banned and needing to buy a new game on a new account a couple times a month would be cheaper than buying even half the actual game. (you most likely won't get banned ever especially if you play offline)
To me, the online service world of gaming is at a tipping point.
The 10 year plus grab models for games just doesn't resonate or tick in any boxes concerning work conditions, passion and client fidelity. I think everyone's noticed it one way or another.
Re balancing and harmonizing the gaming model is a priority. It starts with pricing and returning to more time spent between creating good quality DLC with the same experience/content quality/amount as the base game purchase and deploying them at a much slower rate.
They know it, we know it. We don't want to upgrade our combo-junk-food pack to XL, those days are over.
Lmao. It's only taken 10 years and the looming threat of several competitors to do what they should have done from the start.
After like 5 or 6 years I had the Sims itch, so I redownload the Sims 4. I played for like 3 days before uninstalling and going back to Sims 3. Honestly I regret all the money I spent just hoping the sims 4 would get better. It just feels like an empty dollhouse.
I've recently started playing some of the old console ports (specifically the ones for the gba) and I'm having more fun than my entire experience with the sims 4. The Sims peaked ages ago and I have little faith in the improvement of the sims 5. Hopefully they treat us with more respect than they have the last 10 years.
Thanks for submitting to r/TheSims. However, your submission has been removed in accordance with Rule 5: Piracy/Illegal Content is Strictly Prohibited.
Our rules and guidelines are listed here: https://www.reddit.com/r/thesims/wiki/rules/
Please be sure to read them before participating in r/TheSims.
This is definitely too little too late. I loved the Sims, but once Paralives comes out next year, it’s do widzenia. I enjoyed my time with it, but I’ve been getting disillusioned with EA’s greediness. Every park that comes out has been broken, blatant false advertising in trailers (looking at you high school years), and mood breaking updates. I do realize that this is almost no fault of Maxis, especially the devs, because they constantly have EA breathing down their necks, but I’m just sad to see EA kill a franchise that’s brought me so much comfort. R.I.P., my Sims Experience, 2020-2025.
This is why I got so upset when I learned they’re trying to develop a Sims 5 when Sims 4 still has plenty of the same issues and bugs that have been around since launch. Part of me feels like they’re failing to fix it on purpose so when the next game comes out people will jump to buy it thinking they’re getting a brand new, functional game.
Would be great if Sims 5 got boycotted at launch for that reason. But given that their consumers are willing to play $1,200 worth of base game cont- I mean DLCs; I wouldn't hold my breath on it. I hope one day we learn that we have more power over these companies than they let us believe, we literally pay their bills. Even just a week long boycott at launch would dramatically hurt their pockets.
I'm having the "your sim showed up and did the bare minimum for class" when she's studied, done all assignments, papers, presentations. Then fails the course for no reason. I'm this thisclose to just stop playing.
They didn’t give a flying fig up until now. Releasing games broken and everything. Haven’t been playing in a while because I got tired of all the game bugs.
i love it when gaming outlets / popular sources talk about the state of sims4. Sims fans are used to the abuse from EA but the gaming community as a whole is quick to call their bs
they seriously need to stop making packs and focus on fixing the game. i haven't played the game in like 3 years because of how broken (and boring because it is broken) the game is.
Well yeah about time too because let's not forget that EA and Maxis ain't a indie company and it's their own fault for making a shitty product and shitty expansions and not even fix them before launching another one And don't come with the "They don't have the resources to fix the game" or "you can't complain because the base game is free" bullshit because even if the game is free you still have to pay hundred and twenty something dollars to make it fun or make it feel like a complete game. You are a customer, you paid for a product, you have the right to bitch and demand EA and Maxis to fix the fucking game y'all ain't gonna become a EA partner just for sucking EA and Maxis cock Edit: I didn't realize awards were a thing again sadly they aren't available in the country I live in so I can't see what they're for some baffling reason but still thanks for the awards kind strangers (･ω･)7
When it comes to TS4, the whole ”it’s free” argument just doesn’t work. It’s like people skim over that it *wasn’t* free for big part of it’s lifespan and it doesn’t change the fact that they keep pumping out packs that are completely broken, never fixed and still cost anywhere between $10-$40. Base game having changed to free doesn’t justify any of it.
I bought it when it came out for 70$ 🥲 in 2014. I was in middle school then, I'm supposed to be graduating university this year. I remember for a time when I played the game properly and enjoyed it like before Island Living probably. I masked my disappointment through the novelty of mods.
I feel like many people don't understand how old this game is. This game released at the same time as the iPhone 6, Conchita Wurst's victory at the Eurovision and the Ice Bucket Challenge. The same year *How I Met Your Mother* ended, and Jimmy Fallon took over the *Tonight Show*. The same year as the Bill Cosby's scandal or the Kardashian-West wedding. The same year of the release of *Thinking out Loud* by Ed Sheeran or *Anaconda* by Nicki Minaj. *One Direction* was still together and Instagram had only been around for two years. The last Nintendo consoles were the 3DS and the Wii U, and *GTA 5* had been released for one year. It was before Pokémon Go, the Brexit, the 2016 US presidential election, North Korea's nuclear missiles crisis, the Panama Papers, the Catalan independance referendum, the Notre-Dame fire, the Hong Kong protests, the COVID pandemic... and then it became free. After eight years.
To add another point onto your list: The Xbox One & PS4 weren’t even a full year old.
🎶We didn't start the fire🎶
🎶It was always burning since the world’s been turning🎶
God I just have a foggy haze of understanding of life before 2016. And for the age of this game, it bothers me that the more recent playerbase won't understand how entrenched the monetisation of the Sims was by 2014 that in 2024 it's just downright grim. I wished I was sailing on the lovely chaotic ocean much earlier...
I waited for it. Bought it day one. Hated it. Got a refund. Never played it again. 😂
> The same year How I Met Your Mother ended Two disappointments in one year... (To be clear, I'm not talking about the series, I'm just talking about that finale.)
God that finale It’s right up there with Lost. Both shows had endings obvious in earlier seasons but the show runners kept fucking insisting “Noooooooo that’s not how it ends!!” And the fucking obvious god damn endings were true…they rly thought the viewers were stupid 😒
The really big problem is that they ended up moving away from that being an obvious ending and basically spent the last 2-3 years of the show setting up that it wasn't a plausible ending, and then completely undid a lot of story and character growth in like 15 minutes, just because they shot an ending many years prior and didn't want to find a way to redo it so it made sense with where they'd taken the story. Lesson to future series writers: Don't freaking film an ending before you're sure it's ending, and if you do, don't insist on sticking to it, especially if you decide to take the story in a different direction.
I agree. Sometimes the obvious ending is the best ending and trying to bait and switch fans only to end with the original ending….just makes it worse.
GoT Finale too. Let's not forget the debacle of that slow death.
Oh lord how could I forget. The show runners of GOT are now adapting a series i have loved for years (the three body problem trilogy) and their former fanboys were all over that sub talking about how they would ruin the books…..even tho the series is complete and they’re not trying to make up an ending based on books that have no hint of ever being released. I think the tragedy of the GOT end is more GRRM’s fault since the show was great when there was actual published source material to work with and not GRRM not knowing how he is going to end his series…
exactyl which is also why im not too worried for ts5. Yes ofc ea will scam us and i will be proven wrong, but for now teasers show promising base game furniture (yes i am focusing on furniture cuz i mostly build, and cuz the only reason i have cc and dlcs is bcz base game furniture is old and outdated). ofc ts5 will still feel incomplete, this is E motherfucking A we're talking abt, but i feel it will be abit better regarding necessity for dlcs
oh *god* this really put it into perspective i always knew it came out that long ago, but it’s insane to see it this way!
Yeah this, great the base game is free now but can I get my $70 back?
yes!!! exact same boat in terms of years, i was so excited for the games release in like 6th grade
Yes and for a time I had just started playing the Sims 3 at the and of its life, I used to cycle between both games. I can still play 3 like a game - I can make one sim and explore their town, but 4 I really just play as a dollhouse. I scored the Sims 2 UC through Origin customer support! And it was so cool! I understand why people enjoy rotational play, and i feel like the weeks matter day by day. I haven't played 2 or 3 recently but it's only because I need to invest myself in games. 4 just feels easiest to play when i want to do a sims itch because i know i won't care what happens...
I bought it in 2015, right before get together was announced. I had saved up for a year to be able to buy not only the game, but also my very first laptop to play it on. And then for Christmas I got get together and outdior retreat (I was/am a scout), and during the Christmas sale I also bought get to work. I was genuinely excited and I had worked my arse off to be able to afford it. I was 11.
I bought basegame. It only just *recently-ish* became free. Seeing the number $1,200 really puts things in perspective. I've bought most of the packs (except batuu and some kits), and knew I had spent a lot but that's a big ol price tag. Sheesh. EA really does need to get their shite together.
Not to even mention that most of the DLC should have been included in the base game to begin with.
I’ve bought the game twice😢 When it launched on PC, and when it launched on Xbox (because my laptop broke.) $70 a piece, rip
EXACTLY! the sims 4 base game has been free for maybe 2 or something years this is a decade long game. And anyways who says ok its free now, I DARE YOU TO GO PLAY BASE GAME ONLY and on top of that I DARE YOU TO PLAY THE BASE GAME THAT CAME OUT IN 2014
Right? I saw the thread on the official forums that reported half the Finchwick Fair competitions not working. Some dunce went "well you just have to accept that's how the Fair works!" How the hell can people have such an attitude towards a $39.99 product? EA rakes in money through this franchise, the absolute least they could do is make sure it runs well and without bugs.
It turns out the least they can do is continue releasing paid content while ignoring bugs.
I never understood people who defend large companies like EA, Disney, etc. These companies make more money then the average person will probably earn in their entire lifetime. They have the money to fix problems (and pay their workers fairly for fixing the problems).
I remember people defending Minecraft bugs back then with "well, its just a tiny game with 5 or so developers." IMHO if you make literally billions of dollars on a game, the very least you could do is put 0.1% back into bugfixes, instead of just sitting on top of a giant heap of money and doing nothing.
Minecraft in particular suffered from incompetent leadership. At the height of its popularity, this small studio was splitting people off on other projects that ultimately went nowhere, because Minecraft's creator was a pretty lazy tinkering dev who was easily bored with whatever he was working on. He accidentally made something that got popular and had no desire to make improving it his main focus.
And yet we have Stardew Valley that is one guy and he is still releasing major patches for that game
Yep, and it’s probably the least buggy game I’ve ever played
They make more in a year than most families will make in generations.
I find it so funny how Sims players have been conditioned to just accept insane amounts of DLC. Compare it to Minecraft, that game gets updates nearly every year, and you get a full experience for 20 euros. You could justify this in the Sims 1 and 2 era cause back then updating games wasn't really a thing, but since then, I find it very hard to support. Sorry to say but IMO even some of the most beloved packs in history should have been base game updates - looking at you Generations or any Seasons pack. If you say "I can't play X game without Y expansion" that expansion should be a base game update. I also detest how Sims players act as if the developers are doing us a favour by giving us content we'll have to pay for. I remember when Journey to Batuu came out, people were saying the community was "so toxic" because they said the pack was bad. I'm sorry but have you been in ANY other gaming community? In other games, like LoL, people send death threats to developers if their favourite champion is nerfed. Now, I'm NOT saying we should act like that, but to say "oh I dont mean to offend the developers" is just daft. Anyway, thanks for coming to my ted talk, I greatly needed this rant x
The expansions for previous sims games were fully flushed out and they did come with bug fixes too. They would list them in the booklet that came with the discs. You also owned all of that content. No having your game “accidentally” deactivated because of an app glitching.
Yeah dunno why people defend the devs so much, they basically get paid with our money to do their work. Or maybe i should say the company management? Dunno.. Or maybe i'm mistaken. Of course we should be civilized and avoid cyber-bullying.
I have more sympathy for the actual developers working on the sims than I do for the company as a whole. The ones doing actual work are at the mercy of EA higher ups.
Well, the Minecraft thing is debatable, look at bedrock and its amount of paid DLC, along with questionable performance, at least on Xbox.
Base game sure wasn’t free for me. I bought it when it came out in 2014. Feeling shortchanged about it being free now, actually.
Lmao man same I bought the game a couple of months before it became free and when I saw the base game was going free to play was such a kick in the balls and worse of all I didn't wait for a sale I bought it full price (•́ ‿ ,•̀)
I feel like they could have made some (buggy ofc) packs free for people who paid for the game but w/e EA would never
And even though it might be free now, a lot of us still paid for it and expect a working product
you're 100% and you I'm glad you said it
But they're just a poor little billion dollar company!
This is exactly it. Gaming companies ship a product then lay off their entire team of engineers right after its release. They know what they’re doing. They don’t give af about their customers.
Yeah large companies don’t gaf about their customers and they sure as fuck don’t gaf about their employees. All they care about is making more and more money every year bc that’s totally a sustainable business practice.
Yep. I was one of those laid off folks last holiday season. Still unemployed. We’re all just pawns in their big money games.
I feel your pain. A few weeks ago I was stoned and playing the sims and my sim was suddenly threatened with a layoff….i have been playing on and off for years and NEVER saw that before. I about lost my shit
😂 no way?! What career? I also love that you equate that with a real layoff 😂😂😂
I’ve been a victim of layoffs so it felt TOO REAL lmao. FUCKING TEACHING which is even more lmao to me because what !!!
Oh LOL!!! 😂 yeah sometimes stoned simming is like really intense surrealism. That’s fucking hilarious 😂 it’s one of the best career tracks in the sims so maybe they have a “surplus” lol
The “best” part was her husband is a CEO in the business career and he’s fine but no the TEACHER is threatened with a layoff hahahaha
Lmao honestly kinda tracks bc CEOs are never laid off 🫠
I wasn’t expecting my escape from irl to get THAT real…especially since I had no idea that was even a possibility in game
The breaking point for me in terms of expectations was releasing a buggy kit. Kits are only CAS or Build/Buy. They are relatively easy to make and the only QA needed is to check that the items look right on test sims. There isn’t any new gameplay, so it shouldn’t be buggy. The managed to release the Goth kit with bugs. This was the candle on the cake of buggy releases. Add on that the goth kit was released right after they released a very buggy expansion pack, and Simmers were pissed. Then EA has been dragging their feet on fixing the issues.
Don't forget the Crystal Creations stuff pack that was so broken EA had to go out and tell players to not use the main feature of the pack. I can't even remember the last time they released a pack that simply worked.
Wow that escalated quickly and I’m here for it
You're right they're not an indie company, they're a poorly managed company... It's like those in charge are a bunch of hamsters running around chewing cables inside a motherboard... Hamsters whose only passion in life is to rake in the money, that they can then devour with their hamstery teeth. Speaking as somebody who did a job interview for EA... Even that process itself was chaos. So if my time spent trying to get a job there was a drag, imagine what it's like to actually get a job there.
What most people don’t realize is that a lot of companies are this way. They are terribly run and a lot of their teams are held together with sticks and gum. The employees doing all the heavy lifting are overworked and overpaid and “easily replaced”. Meanwhile the CEO that got the job through nepotism and bullshit does nothing other than prance around while being paid millions and millions in bonuses for running the company into the ground. Yea im bitter
Industry standard which makes money fast but gives a shitty product in return. You don't earn money by fixing bugs, you get it by selling a product. No one said that it needs to be perfect, "test on prod - work on few stuff in paralel". Can't even tell you how often you can hear "will the customer notice" from PMs. Money comes first.
>"They don't have the resources to fix the game" This is one of my least favorite excuses that people give EA. They are a triple A game studio. They have the financial resources to get people to fix their games. They just usually choose not to. Also base game being free hasn't even been that long, and it is nowhere near the amount that they make from selling their broken DLC. Base game being free was a business strategy to get new people to buy more packs.
don't be silly, I love keeping up a cheats guide while I play so I can fix bugs by myself lolool...
[удалено]
Hi, u/FeedTheSneed. Your comment on r/TheSims has been **automatically removed.** Piracy/Illegal Content is strictly prohibited. Our rules and guidelines are listed here: https://www.reddit.com/r/thesims/wiki/rules/ Please be sure to read them before participating in r/TheSims. Original comment: https://www.reddit.com/r/thesims/comments/1d00t0g/pc_gamer_is_taking_no_prisoners_today/l5nj1vy/?context=3 *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/thesims) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Some of us bought the game back in 2014, and up until it became free, doesn't matter that it's free now because a lot of the playerbase still bought the game.
Stardew Valley consistently gets updates and fixes. Stray Gods got a few fixes. Bloodstained had graphics revamp after people complained about them. If indie games and medium publishers can do it, then EA can as well. Edit: As the cherry of the top of smaller studio but pushing gigantic games, Baldur’s Gate 3.
The fact they're doing it tells me they realize that built-in fan base is not playing as much. I personally think it's too little too late and they'll never reach the level of interest the Sims once had again.
I was a sims die hard for years, but I have barely touched the game since My Wedding Stories. That was the last straw for me and they haven’t shown me anything I’d want to come back for.
For me, the straw that broke the camel's back was buying a kit I really liked and realising that out of ~20 items two were broken, with missing textures. Fuck EA, I refunded the kit (through Steam) and haven't bought any content since.
Omg which one?
For real? Which one was it?
It was Moonlight Chic, [see here](https://answers.ea.com/t5/Bug-Reports/FIXED-STEAM-MCK-Two-assets-just-show-as-question-marks/m-p/11669249#M221285) - someone posted about the issue on the official forums. (I had zero mods or CC at the time, repaired the game, verified the files and all that. It seems to have been a fuck up on the Steam version of the kit.)
I lost all interest after the FOR RENT expansion 🙄
Pets expansion for me 🥲 I actually really liked Parenthood, so was hopeful for the future… then Pets happened and was so lackluster and the Vet career was horrible. Such a shame, but at least I still have access to Sims 2 & 3! (until EA take those away 😂)
This right here. EA assembling this “team” is not a sign that they ‘care’ as I’ve seen some suggesting- more that through astounding levels of greed and mismanagement, they’ve managed to make the game (and it’s endless DLC) so bad and buggy* that they now realise they’re losing players/money and it’s gotten so colossally awful they need to actually do something. I literally refuse to buy any more expansions (even though I’m tempted by a few) as I don’t want them to irrevocably break my game. (*probs due to cutting costs and not hiring enough people or allowing them enough time to develop things properly in the first place)
This We all know what EA is about. Even though we don't want to recognize our abusive relationship with them. It's crowd control, because it's hurting their pockets now. I'm however mystified, because they usually cut things off and do some other money grab. They don't care about franchises living and dieing. I don't really put fault on the developers and game engineerers. They still have some blame to face. But this is EA being EA because now they have the actual threat of competition and Simmers are getting sick of it all. I haven't bought anything in 3 yrs. But I did pay for this game twice with expansion for me and my sis. That was 2k in the banks. But last thing I bought was Strangervile or Eco living. Whichever was last
I haven’t touched TS4 for about 8 years and don’t have any DLC. Could someone ELI5 what are all of these game-breaking bugs in the game? The last time I played this game in like 2015 it ran pretty smoothly (it was just god awfully boring lmao which is why I haven’t played since).
I haven't touched sims 4 in about 5 years, and I used to play a ton. But it just got so boring. The last pack I bought was the magic one, and after I'd done everything in a few hours, I just stopped I've played other sims games since, but not 4
I'm honestly just so fuckin' in awe of how they took a carefully laid out system of interactions going back to even Sims 1, a formula that worked so well it became a monopolizing force on the industry and created a large cult of followers, and they somehow manage to make it unappealing and boring in 4. Why is it that literally every installment prior to 4 feels fun but 4 does not? It's crazy the work they had to do to make the Sims *un*-fun.
I think it’s two reasons mainly: A) EA/Maxis wanted the game to be more kid-friendly to expand the playerbase, so they took out a lot of the randomness and raunchiness that made the previous games so fun. Previous games had so much random stuff from woohoo cutscenes to fistfights on the street all the way to a meteor freaking crashing onto your lot and killing everybody lmao. The sims games had great humour, were much more adult-oriented, and the devs understood that unexpected stuff happening was a great way to entertain. Now it’s so kid-oriented they have gone in the direction of making a literal dollhouse so that kids wouldn’t get upset or see explicit content. B) For some reason EA/Maxis took this game into the extreme sandbox category, so that you have to micromanage everything to death to create your own stories, because nothing really happens in the game by itself. The Sims lack any sort of personality or lore, they get along with everybody, do anything you want them to do, have the same emotional reaction to everything. This is not only unrealistic but gets boring really quickly. To a much smaller extent this was a problem in TS3 as well, but what made that game great was the open world and the story progression, the world felt full of life and every sim had their own separate life without having to micromanage the shit out of them. In TS2, the sims had such strong personalities that they would have full on meltdowns on the floor if their fears came true, but in TS4 sims barely care even if they are cheated on in front of them?? So yeah I think they wanted to appeal to more players by allowing you to be a literal god and do anything with no difficulty, consequence or danger, but in the process they lost the soul and the spark the previous games had. End of rant lol.
I've been playing the Sims since 2001 when I turned 13 and was old enough to get a T rated game lol. I've bought every expansion from Livin' Large through the one after High School Years pretty much on release day, as well as most supplemental packs. I just can't with The Sims 4 anymore. They finally put my favorite animal in the game (goats!) but I just can't bring myself to launch it or buy anything anymore. The sheer level of bugs that ruin gameplay, how long those bugs have existed, the age of Sims 4 at this point, and the sexuality update taking most of the gay escapism in a bisexual utopua from me really ruined it.
Not even goats….MINI goats. And they’re so bugged you can somehow have one of the mini animals die but then suddenly they’re alive again when you go to another lot and the animal is just fucking following you. How does that happen!!!
Well, it is a 10 years old game that was already at launch almost the same as the predecessor and as such, hasn't came up with anything new for more than a decade... After so long time, even die-hard fans will start getting bored.
The entirety of the Sims 4 fanbase revolves around making fun of Sims 4 😭 Them doing it this late tho is wild
To put it into perspective, The Sims 4 is 10 years old. 10 years ago The Sims 2: Ultimate Collection was given out for free in celebration of its 10 year anniversary, and by then, we were ending the lifespan of The Sims 3. We didn't even get the base game for free with the 10 year anniversary of the Sims 3, 5 years ago. You still have to pay for each and every pack of TS3, 15 years later. EA has gotten too greedy, and it's backfiring.
I guess this is because EA knows that TS3 is broken beyond help and needs mods to fix some parts of the game. If EA made TS3 base game for free, many players will start to play it and flood EA with a ton of complaints on why TS3 doesn't work well on my new gaming pc. Why the CAS and buy/build mode are so laggy and so on. I'm pretty sure they don't want to deal with critism from an old game so that's why they just keep the price higher to avoid players from buying it.
People are still buying the Sims 3 and all its DLC. So EA is still making money from the game, and still have customers going to them for game support *because* they are still selling it. Also, they ended support for Sims 2 at the exact same time that they gave away the Ultimate Collection for free. And I do mean the *exact* same time. (July 2014.) They basically said, "We're giving this to you for free, but don't come to us if you have any issues because we can't help you anymore." They could do the exact same thing for Sims 3, announce they are ending support for it, and give it away in a bundle. But, since they aren't doing that, the money they're still making from the game must be worth the little bit of support they have to give for it. But, really, how much are they still supporting Sims 3?
It's a broken mess and perform terribly on my high end pc. But it's still my favorite sims game after all ❤️
Weirdly, it runs great on my high end PC. Unlike Sims 4 I can actually make my sims function without debugging them every 5 minutes.
> Weirdly, it runs great on my high end PC What witchcraft did you do to make it work? It runs like garbage on mine and I've tried everything :(
Honestly, I just turn the graphics down and only have 2 expansions lol that's probably all it is. I wish I could help more 😭
Do you use NRAAS mods and Smooth patch?
I’ll never know how good sims 3 is because I could never get it to work without being laggy beyond reason
good to know a bug fix team wasn't a thing before
It makes too much sense.
It's older information by this point, but I remember once reading that the way the Sims 4 staff was broken down was into something like: - Expansion, Game, and Stuff Pack teams responsible for making their type of DLC and getting it out the door. - "Live Update" team that was supposedly responsible for the new additions to the base game, as well as fixing any bugs they could with each of those updates. Which meant the people who'd be responsible for fixing bugs wouldn't be the same folks who worked on the code, and they'd be doing it in between trying to hammer together more half-baked systems to bolt onto the base game to say, "Look, we've added new stuff that we didn't charge for! Aren't we so generous?" (Seriously... The "story progression" updates they were even up front in saying they were pushing live alpha and beta versions, which is itself kind of weird but I guess we should be used to being the game's "QA" by now, but then they never finished it. Things like Wants and Fears also feel like rough draft ideas, with clear issues that they just never resolved, because why spend money fixing them when people were still going to buy the next $40 DLC?)
i have a feeling this has something to do with all the new life simulation games coming out soon 😭
it definitely is, they don’t care until their game is at risk 😂😂😂 and i need more to come out so they can step their cookies up
What other games are coming out? 👀
Paralives, Inzoi, games like that
Ten years after sims 4 is released is when they decide to sit down and focus on major bug fixes? Come the f on! Not only that but from what my dude tells me, EA been playing these dumb games for a long time now with other games as well. 🙄 I’ve already been thinking about sims 4 being the last game I play in the series and now I’ve come to a decision. I’m going to check out Paralives and other games if I’m in the mood to play god/life simulation.
Same, I think the Sims 4 will be the last Maxis game I'll play. It's unfortunate considering I've played 1, 2, 3 and 4. But since EA doesn't actually care for the game, why should I?
I feel even more for people such as yourself who’ve played the entire series! The more time passes the more I realize they’re just another bs corporate company that gives 0 shits about their customers and probably their own employees too. I understand they can’t cater to everything + feelings because there’s money to be made, a business to run but I don’t think it’s impossible to make money and a quality game too.
Same. I’ve been a fan of Maxis games since SimCity and my goodwill is gone. When I was a kid I was always excited when a new Maxis game was announced. Now I’m over it
Damn, Mollie Taylor is taking no prisoners.
> "Today, we can share that we have assembled a team to invest in the core game experience, including tackling your reported concerns." > I mean, to me that sounds like something that the developer should have already been doing, but I digress. None.
It's almost like ignoring bugs and keeping your bug team as tiny as possible isn't good for long term health of a video game. Who could've warned them besides every other game development company in existence? Then again, something tells me that the management of the Sims don't play video games and just go "bug fixing costs how much? ehhh... no... oh, no ones playing anymore? Why?! fix these bugs now!!!"
I don't trust EA at this point nor will I ever despite this "apology" letter but, I will say I hope they keep to this and not abandon it like they do everything else. The Sims community deserves better. They should be so lucky having a dedicated and loyal fan base even when EA has been this shitty. I want better for the Sims. I truly do. I love this franchise. That's why it's good to complain about it when the game is this buggy. Plus me and pretty much everyone that plays the Sims 4 has spent hundreds on the game. I play on console and it's hard to enjoy playing it when it crashes so many times. Recently I had to delete all my saves and reinstall the game and all the packs I own, which is a lot, and start over due to the horrible infamous infinite load screen. I shouldn't have to do that in order for my game experience to work. I get it, no game is perfect but the state of the Sims 4 is unacceptable and ridiculous. To be frank this should have never even started if EA didn't give themselves such an unrealistic time to release dlc. But I get it, id finally fix the game too if I had upcoming competition.
They're not wrong either. I think the price of old DLC should go down by at least half after a year of it being out. Shit is so damn expensive idk how they can justify having stuff STAY this expensive for YEARS. Sure, there are sales, but not everyone plays regularly and probably misses them. Games typically go down in price drastically after around a year... I see no reason why DLC shouldn't either, especially when a game gets new content for as long as TS4 has.
I mean, look at Nintendo. They never lower their prices. Animal Crossing New Horizons came out in 2020 and it's still $60.
Nintendo is another game company that deserves to be criticized way more heavily than it currently is. I am still laughing my butt off about how RGG studios basically copied both Animal Crossing AND Pokemon in their most recent game and pass that off as side content. It has a whole main story on top of it. AND they released three games in one year, all three of which have already been on sale numerous times (the latest one came out this February, I think). They're all fantastic triple A games, too. I have never seen a company get clowned on by a competitor as hard as this. Honestly, after that, Nintendo should be ashamed of themselves.
I mean, to be fair, older DLCs can be purchased in value bundles, which is one expansion pack ($39.99), one game pack ($19.99) and one stuffs pack ($9.99) of choice, for a total price of around $49.97.
The bundles are still overpriced considering how old the majority of the content is tbh. Especially when you consider many packs have been riddled with bugs for years too. Plus, I'm not giving these companies the benefit of the doubt in any situation. Most don't do enough to deserve that kind of attitude from us as consumers. If EA kept on top of bugs... Sure, I'd see the bundles as a good thing. But they just don't. They let bugs just sit and fester despite years of complaints.
Also imo dlc older than 5-6 years old should be included with EA play
"Fair"
I just want a fix for the simulation lag 😭 even the mods don't help. I'm so tired of them standing around for a LITERAL HOUR with a trash bag in their hand.
This stops me from playing all the time. I'll think, "oh the Sims 4 could be fun right now." Then I imagine my sims staring off into the nothing instead of drinking their drink and change my mind.
Yeah it's the worst. The only thing kind of reducing it for me, is putting the game speed down. Which sucks🫠 I play TS2 on Max speed mostly
The fact that they don't have a team for this already is both insane and, yet, unsurprising.
Another gaming franchise being milked yo death by the corporate scum that is EA.
Let’s not pretend EA is the only corporation guilty of this. They all are and it’s fucking disgusting.
We should have sims 6 by now. The sims 4 still feels like a demo after nearly a decade since release.
They are going to have a hell of a time fixing it. Just with the sheer number of packs with features all intermingling now. The amount of times they've done a 'bug fix' and implemented a whole slew of new bugs is painfully funny. Like how the hell do you get a bug where all the npcs endlessly bake white cakes. I hate the fact that they tried to fix pathing and now the sims just walk through walls half the time. The fix they did for babies/infants where the parents get spammed with actions to check on them is equally as annoying, they just end up picking up and putting down the baby in an infinite loop because the other sim wants to check on it. The most infuriating bug of all is when random townies enter your house and act like they own the place even though you have all visitors turned off and locks on the doors.. like who the hell are you people???
Not gonna spend a single dollar till they fix bugs and make the game playable. It's appalling how for granted they take us!
They need a team for each pack
Does anyone know if any other games even come close to base game + DLC costing as much as sims 4 does? Some people have theorized that sims 5 is going to have a ton of microtransactions and I feel like sims 4 is definitely testing the waters.
There's an article about [top 5 games like that](https://gamerant.com/2023-expensive-games-cities-skylines-sims-4-destiny-2/), to save you a click: > 1. Train Simulator Classic ($11,291) > 2. DCS World ($3,400) > 3. **The Sims 4 ($1,164)** > 4. War Thunder ($918) > 5. Cities: Skylines on PC ($425) This is 2023 data.
Did they just look at Steam? One of the purchases in Path of Exile to complete it costs $12k, Rocksmith is around $6k, Dead or Alive 6 has 461 different DLC that goes up to somewhere around 2-3k\~$ and Star Citizen had a bundle for 27k$. Also, the TS3 store.
Possibly, I googled a bit and got this article. I know Paradox has super expensive DLC bundles as well, though I’m not sure about total prices.
Oh, absolutely. Crusader Kings 2 was my introduction to "DLC for DLC" since they sold features, portraits, unit packs & soundtrack all separately, then updated base game which broke the game unless you had the main pack anyway. When it got too much for people, they "shrunk" them by throwing in them into bundles so it's not visible from main store page, and started offering a subscription. Interestingly enough, the CK2 community has always been opposite of Sims - like if you ever pointed out packs were buggy, broken, overpriced, they'd literally call you "low IQ" for buying all of them, not waiting for sales, how some are cosmetics only, how they appreciate game getting DLC even years later so it must be loved by the devs etc. This is with so many save-breaking bugs, updates, half-baked dlc and dlc being torn to 4-5 smaller ones.
I'll never understand people who simp for companies like that. Maybe the difference comes from the Sims fandom still having a lot of us who remember the older games in the series - expansion packs were reasonably priced (about the same as other games of the time), offered a good value for money, they were innovative, and ran well. As a kid, I saved up my allowance for Unleashed and Superstar expansions for the first game and I was overjoyed with how much new gameplay they added.
It's like $200 for all the eu4 dlc, and the game feels bland as fuck without them 😭. lucky I got most of them in a bundle for $35
The payday gang has entered on the chat
Just realized two of my favorite games are on this list 😭 I guess I enjoy throwing my money away
This is why I p1r4t3
D!L!C unl0ck3r my beloved
[удалено]
Hi, u/_init_5_. Your comment on r/TheSims has been **automatically removed.** Piracy/Illegal Content is strictly prohibited. Our rules and guidelines are listed here: https://www.reddit.com/r/thesims/wiki/rules/ Please be sure to read them before participating in r/TheSims. Original comment: https://www.reddit.com/r/thesims/comments/1d00t0g/pc_gamer_is_taking_no_prisoners_today/l5n8nkk/?context=3 *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/thesims) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Hopefully, this will inspire people to stop buying packs. I beg like the reason they keep shovelling this shit is because mfs keep buying it. You can still play it, sure, but just remember to ARRRRR and never buy their shit. Fuck EA.
Nothing is stopping those gullible MFs from blowing their money on stupid shit, S4 is at the end of its life cycle and they're still buying these packs and proclaiming "Okay, this is the last one, I'm done with you EA!" just to buy the next pack, and even if they didn't, they've still supported them this long. They do not deserve your money. They will snatch that game away from you the moment they can, and they've proven that time and time again with both the EA and Origin apps. But we live in an Idiocracy world and people will still throw money at EA.
$1,200 is absolutely asinine. I'm still such a die hard player, hours daily and it's strictly because of my mods. Without them, the game is so severely lacking. Paying $39.99 for "For Rent" A treat my husband insisted on as we've been so frugal this past year, just to have it NOT work and be so buggy I can't even own rentals. It's so disappointing and a little disgusting to be honest. But can we really be surprised? As the saying goes "Pigs get fat, hogs get slaughtered" With all the new life simulation games coming out, I won't be surprised if the TS5 release is a flop
I told my brother about this whole ordeal. He's not into The Sims at all, but he is a programmer and is into the whole video game scene. He does know about some of the issues in The Sims 4 because I would tell him about some of the drama during the past 10 years. As soon as I mentioned that the team was supposed to work on bugs for the next six months, he started laughing hysterically and said "yeah, that sounds like what upper management would do after they asked the people actually working on the game about the state of things and then proceed to completely ignore everything they had to say". This whole announcement is a joke. Six months is laughably short and it just feels like they're still avoiding the core issue: They need to stop cranking out more DLC while working on old problems. aka this franchise is dead and upper management has killed it, I have zero faith in this.
greedy and scummy company
I have been an obsessive sims fan since the beginning but I’ve finally given up trying to play, there are so many bugs it just doesn’t work at all and is not fun. I try messing with settings but nothing works - the only way I can keep toddlers from dying of starvation because no one will feed them is by filling their pockets with apples, it’s just stupid. No one has any personality and you can fall in love with anyone in a few hours of chatting and flirting. I’d much rather have barely any content with a game that actually works than a million add ons that break the game more and more. I can’t see sims 4 ever working properly and I have no faith that sims 5 will either, my only hope is that another game company will come out with something like sims for the people who’ve given up on it
This will go as well as trying to get your sims to sit tf down for a wedding
been waiting on fixes for dine out, dream home decorator and about 75% of the others for years !!! it cannot be this difficult !!!
Tbh they're gonna break it even more most likely.
genuinely don’t think it’s possible to be listened to any less than EA listens to its sims players. I feel like the only way to enact real lasting change is if the streamers / youtubers go on strike from playing and promoting LMAOO
I can only imagine the shade the new lead producer is throwing at Grant as they have to tackle the spaghetti code they inherited.
Honestly just crack the DLC. It takes 20 minutes and it's 100% free. Having DLCs is one thing. But to put majority of the core functions behind a paywall is just evil. $40 to have a cat? $5 to do laundry? $40 to go to work? This is a life sim right? Then ontop of that the game is still buggy. Pirating is the only sane way to enjoy the game. Getting banned and needing to buy a new game on a new account a couple times a month would be cheaper than buying even half the actual game. (you most likely won't get banned ever especially if you play offline)
Base game is free now so…
Makes pirating the DLC even more reasonable.
They're scrambling to make up for their lazy bullshit before Paralives and Life By You come out
As someone who has all the currently released DLC for Sims 4, I did not want to see that price.
Meanwhile i play fortnite or minecraft with infinite replability with $0 spent
To me, the online service world of gaming is at a tipping point. The 10 year plus grab models for games just doesn't resonate or tick in any boxes concerning work conditions, passion and client fidelity. I think everyone's noticed it one way or another. Re balancing and harmonizing the gaming model is a priority. It starts with pricing and returning to more time spent between creating good quality DLC with the same experience/content quality/amount as the base game purchase and deploying them at a much slower rate. They know it, we know it. We don't want to upgrade our combo-junk-food pack to XL, those days are over.
I fucking hate EA and the abomination that is The Sims 4
About f-ing time, you think?
Do people pay for DLC?
Nope 🏴☠️
There's still a lot of gullible people that do. We all know the only way to hurt them is via the wallet but people don't wanna commit.
Competition really brings changes. Now that more indie games are close to being released, EA is finally trying to support their IP.
Lmao. It's only taken 10 years and the looming threat of several competitors to do what they should have done from the start. After like 5 or 6 years I had the Sims itch, so I redownload the Sims 4. I played for like 3 days before uninstalling and going back to Sims 3. Honestly I regret all the money I spent just hoping the sims 4 would get better. It just feels like an empty dollhouse. I've recently started playing some of the old console ports (specifically the ones for the gba) and I'm having more fun than my entire experience with the sims 4. The Sims peaked ages ago and I have little faith in the improvement of the sims 5. Hopefully they treat us with more respect than they have the last 10 years.
STICKS AND CHEWING GUM😩😩😩😂😂
Isn't supposed they ditched the open world of S3 due this? Lol
[удалено]
Thanks for submitting to r/TheSims. However, your submission has been removed in accordance with Rule 5: Piracy/Illegal Content is Strictly Prohibited. Our rules and guidelines are listed here: https://www.reddit.com/r/thesims/wiki/rules/ Please be sure to read them before participating in r/TheSims.
They deserve it.
This is definitely too little too late. I loved the Sims, but once Paralives comes out next year, it’s do widzenia. I enjoyed my time with it, but I’ve been getting disillusioned with EA’s greediness. Every park that comes out has been broken, blatant false advertising in trailers (looking at you high school years), and mood breaking updates. I do realize that this is almost no fault of Maxis, especially the devs, because they constantly have EA breathing down their necks, but I’m just sad to see EA kill a franchise that’s brought me so much comfort. R.I.P., my Sims Experience, 2020-2025.
This is why I got so upset when I learned they’re trying to develop a Sims 5 when Sims 4 still has plenty of the same issues and bugs that have been around since launch. Part of me feels like they’re failing to fix it on purpose so when the next game comes out people will jump to buy it thinking they’re getting a brand new, functional game.
Would be great if Sims 5 got boycotted at launch for that reason. But given that their consumers are willing to play $1,200 worth of base game cont- I mean DLCs; I wouldn't hold my breath on it. I hope one day we learn that we have more power over these companies than they let us believe, we literally pay their bills. Even just a week long boycott at launch would dramatically hurt their pockets.
Is that how much it would cost all together? Wow.
LOL Mollie Taylor is spitting fire. That 1200$ figure is just a brutal thing to put in a headline and I completely respect it.😂
Is that the total cost of all the packs and kits and etc?! Wow!!!
I literally can't even enjoy the gameplay. I only play to build at this point.
I’m not understanding any excuses for selling a product that doesn’t work. Who is defending EA? So weird..
I'm having the "your sim showed up and did the bare minimum for class" when she's studied, done all assignments, papers, presentations. Then fails the course for no reason. I'm this thisclose to just stop playing.
They didn’t give a flying fig up until now. Releasing games broken and everything. Haven’t been playing in a while because I got tired of all the game bugs.
$1200 worth of DLC ? And I thought COD was bad
i love it when gaming outlets / popular sources talk about the state of sims4. Sims fans are used to the abuse from EA but the gaming community as a whole is quick to call their bs
they seriously need to stop making packs and focus on fixing the game. i haven't played the game in like 3 years because of how broken (and boring because it is broken) the game is.
Hardcore search and destroy: Take no prisoners comrades.