in the eyes of some of its biggest fans
the sims 4 has suffered hundreds of
blows to its reputation
i mean look at the poor thing it's being
destroyed
bit by bit what led to this is there a
failure of leadership at ea
or are things going just fine on their
end
this is just a visualization and i don't
think that ea are
actually demons of course not
join me fellow sims castaways as we
explore our little island and why the
ship that sailed away
probably isn't coming back this tale
starts with simcity because it was
under development at the same time as
the sims 4 and released
about a year ahead of the new sims title
there was
a huge backlash due to the online
requirement given
simcity is generally viewed as a single
player game
and to make matters worse the servers on
this online only game couldn't handle
players at launch
simcity released two week sales which
put maxis in a precarious position
shortly before the sims 4's launch
players knew
that create a style a popular feature
from sims 3 that let players customize
objects would not be coming to the new
game
this fact actually made it onto the sims
4's wikipedia page
under controversies because of an
interview we also knew there wouldn't be
story progression
grocery stores schools or work locations
so basically everywhere but your house
was make believe
and not even a rabbit hole at least you
can see
rabbit holes their make-believe on the
inside but not on the outside
in september 2014 the sims 4 launched to
a very uh
lukewarm reception it was review bombed
with one star by many players that felt
it was far
too buggy and hollow to begin to replace
sims 2 or 3.
usually a franchise moves forward
sims always dropped things that were
added in expansions when moving to a new
base game
but tended to advance the series both
technologically
and in terms of gameplay while i was
working on the first coverage for the
new guide
my five-year-old community was losing
veteran members
anyone i talked to who left said the
game was missing far too much and
far too simple and they were right
the game launched missing a lot there
was no
family tree so your sim would have to
think carefully when dating
never know who might be your cousin
basements pools toddlers and ghosts were
entirely
absent players who bought sims 4 found a
much smaller
game world it went from dozens of lots
in an open layout that encouraged
exploration
to a tiny sad six or seven lots per
neighborhood
and only a handful of those to choose
from we only had
willow creek and oasis springs of course
some players felt the game was smoother
but it was
hiding things under the hood a void of
nothingness
if there's no world to explore and
hardly anything complex to the game
itself
of course it performs better the sims
4's major upside over its predecessor
came with its own massive downside and
that's not a great position to be in
of course the game has a solid build
mode
now and the create-a-sim tools were good
even then
but those are the environment and
character creation phases of the game
not the game itself kevin vanord wrote
on gamespot that sims 4's biggest
problem
is that the sims 3 exists so you could
not take this many steps backward and
still somehow feel like 4 was an upgrade
all in all based on missing features and
unfinished coding that meant the game
was a mess to play
it was clear the game was released with
ea share price in mind more than
creating a satisfying product
it needed to be delayed but i suppose
the simcity thing made ea
afraid of taking risks the money flow
from sims 3 was stopping due to the
release of the final pack which was
into the future and those pack sales
would inevitably drop off
developers did acknowledge the game had
problems and said they had to make
sacrifices due to new technologies like
the emotion system and more advanced
behaviors
those smarter sims but there was just so
much missing for this excuse it wasn't
ready at all
bottom line there were just two tiny
worlds
boring game play buggy gameplay lack of
story progression dishwashers burglars
firemen repairmen repo men nannies half
walls graveyards bikes paid time off for
jobs creative style pools basements
rabbit holes for work and
toddlers and what am i missing oh yeah
cars in a game people can play
so that's the state sims 4 was in at
launch and it's
crazy to look back and list it all out
the sims 4 was thank god moddable and a
modern name twisted mexi
actually was the first to publish
extended cheats for the game
that's right among all the other
problems we barely had
any cheats and he found a ton that made
the game more enjoyable
but while digging around in simsuar's
code a couple years later
he found reference to the online game
sims 4 was going to be
this is relevant as before sims 4 was
released a maxis employee leaked details
on a blog about
project olympus the max's code name for
a game that was to become an
online sims game remember that thing
with
simcity this is all happening right
around the simcity fiasco
with its online only requirement and
heavy hate from the player base
so online only games were a no-no right
now
at that point in time especially for
single-player games
all in all the theory is that ea
scrapped the online game and used
systems from it for sims 4.
they didn't have enough time for
development they marketed the things
that were best developed like
create a sim and worked hard to get
something out the door by september 2nd
for release day
reusing things from other game
prototypes is a typical practice
in the video gaming industry so it's
relevant to sims 4 development
but not necessarily something they did
wrong
it just explains a few things
so we're less than a month after a
fairly crappy release
you know what the first thing the sims
team patch in the game was
a gnome with all that missing they added
a gnome
thankfully a few weeks after the sims
4's release they patched
ghosts into the game and added ambrosia
and death flowers
in november they finally added a pull
tool it was clear they were working
frantically to get things that were
missing back into the game
in order to please players because it
had already been released prematurely to
please shareholders
it took five months in total to get
ghosts pools
and family trees meanwhile they were
working on the game's first two major
packs
the first pack to release for the sims 4
was outdoor
retreat which added the first vacation
to the game
this was a game pack not an expansion
sims 4
ditched the sims 3 store but added a
third type of pack that was
meant to have a narrow focus on one
gameplay idea
in this case camping and a wilderness
destination
outdoor retreat featured an aspiration
new reward traits and it really wasn't
all that bad in itself
but the timing was awful the game was in
a bad state and adding vacations was not
going to fix
any of the complaints the players had
the bad sim city launch had taken its
toll by this point and
in march 2015 max's emoryville the
studio
that had created many of the games we
loved from maxis
was closed and consolidated into maxis's
redwood shore studio
emeryville was not the sims studio but
you can see restructuring within ea to
fix its profit margins after some
disastrous launches
jason schreier reported that ea was not
very happy with both the sims 4 and sim
city sales
they deserved poor sales it was two
months after this before the game had
basements i mean good god man
it's march 2015 and get to work is sims
4's first expansion
and it was actually pretty good it
didn't relieve the base game's massive
problems but i did enjoy
all three active careers and retail it's
not
saying much but other than gardening it
was pretty much the best thing we had to
do
at the time something about get to work
is it probably has the most animations
of any pack we've had
this points to one of several reasons
about why sims 4 is so weak
the development team is all spread out
if we get good
animations in one pack we probably won't
get a world
if this one has decent gameplay they
took time to code the next one
will fall flat because they're always
working on like three to four projects
or more
at one time so get to work wasn't awful
but it
set a bad precedent it came with no
traits or aspirations and the game
sorely needed them
imagine playing with only base game
traits and this was one of the major
gameplay issues
sims feeling all exactly the same giving
you little reason to play a different
one
they skipped the basic step and it would
quickly become a noticeable pattern that
you aren't even guaranteed these side
attractions in new expansions
expansions you know the ones that cost
almost as much as a triple a game
this pack brought hot tubs to the game
if you gave
ea 10 instead of give us
what had traditionally been a base game
object they decided to
sell it to us in perfect patio why do i
view hot tubs
as a base game object primarily because
it's something you can throw in the base
game that wealthy sims can purchase
giving you something to do with all that
money they would eventually give
everyone
a bad hot tub on last year's sims 20th
anniversary
that was the only gift to the community
for that anniversary and many of us
already owned one september 2015 was the
one year anniversary for the sims 4 and
max's shared some cool stats from that
first year players had woo-hooed
235 million times
and created 92 million sims
imagine how many players it must take to
do that
this is one of those things that
frustrates you knowing
this is a very big game yet it's created
like it has a shoestring budget
the sims 4 get together actually got
delayed
because it wasn't done and you know what
i commend that
and i cannot believe they made over 40
packs and haven't had to do this
more than once you see it's likely that
not delaying hasn't cost them much
for reasons we'll discuss a bit later
but it's amazing this is the only time
it's happened
at least that i can remember the big
things get together
added were clubs and the town of
windenburg
putting the game at a total five
locations right at this time
if you count magnolia promenade which
you shouldn't
just to give you a frame of reference
since i'm
only talking about major things from the
beginning to
end of 2015 in that one year the sims 4
had released two expansions packs
two game packs and four stuff packs
buying them plus the still full price
base game would have set you back 220
dollars the game didn't even have
freaking
nannies yet for 220 dollars
however to their credit they did help
the base game a bit
new crest was added in the middle of
this year and would provide builders
some
nice empty lots to build on something
that was sorely missing for the first
eight or nine months
repairman dishwashers and half walls
were other additions in this year
the sims for dine out released on june
7 2016. the idea and
contents of this pack are not horrible
but it was
buggy like everything else and doesn't
synergize with the base game
at all you see you're reliant on the
base game
to not be a steaming pile in order for
the pack to be fun
it's frustrating to be running a
restaurant and have sims doing stupid
things that make no sense when you just
want them to act like
people not tweakers i'd be okay with the
occasional crazy in my restaurant and
game but in
sims world everyone's a psychopath you
do not
hug over a dining table and you don't
clean up tables as a customer
a big gripe about dine now is it's
really just them selling us the retail
system a
second time and they failed to let the
player play the chef or any of the other
positions
so you're just stuck managing the
restaurant
something that certainly could have made
its way into the get to work pack
that would have made it a must have
another thing added in this month of
2016 was the gender customization
options you can use for sims
where you're able to make a male who can
get pregnant or choose whether a sim
prefers male or female clothing
this allows players to make just about
any type of sim they want
or represent themselves if they are
trans
it's fair to say they had made a good
bit of improvements
up to this point at least in terms of
entirely missing
functions city living helped and added a
new location
and a very desirable feature in living
in apartments however
customization was really limited they
also gave the base game a selection of
lot traits that could be used to boost
lots my biggest gripe with these was
that they required
no gameplay to access you just toss them
on a lot
many many of the additions made to sims
4 up to this point
have simply been things that players
felt should have been
base game objects and when i list all
the common things that were typically in
the base games of previous titles
you may understand i mean be rationals
do you really think
basements ghosts and pools would be an
expansion feature
so we weren't really being given things
up to this point
they're still fixing the base game and
adding things into it that probably
should have existed at launch
i don't view them as gifts i view them
as an attempt to make things right on
that one purchase
january 2017 was probably the sims 4's
best month
ever it brought back a lot of angry
players to try again
if you were an already established
content creator this month probably
helped set some records
they released toddlers which generated a
lot of press and got people to give the
game another try
vampires was released later in the same
month at this point in time
my cheese was still on my cracker and i
wasn't
as upset as i could have been i was
drifting away from the game a bit
because of its simplicity
but i didn't really get angry yet the
first major blow to my morale would come
that november
cats and dogs was a disappointment
and represents the ultimate example of
my theory about how they could never
have
all the pieces in place if you get a
nice world
you won't get as many assets gameplay or
otherwise
brindleton bay was okay sick animals all
over the place's side
but cats and dogs felt so hollow
compared to the sims 3 pets i found
basically nothing to do in that pack
and it seriously got me to almost
disengage with the sims
not only had they trimmed several
animals down to just cats and dogs
you basically got the world the cats and
dogs and nothing else so it didn't
advance gameplay in any way
and my theory is that this is because of
create a pet
and the many many assets that went into
it
basically that took up the pack's entire
budget and they couldn't even be
bothered to put in some unique careers
they retooled doctor career into
veterinarian
and called it a day while i didn't get
excited for
at the time laundry day was a community
voted stuff pack and people
definitely enjoyed it it goes to show
how players want a simulation of
actual life and some of the struggles
like keeping your house clean while
juggling a career and feeding the kids
because of cats and dogs i was
disengaged
in march 2018 and not really paying
attention to the sims
i did catch wind of the my first pet
fiasco
it was such an uproar a stuffed pack
that required an expansion pack
it really annoyed everyone and i would
say i'd hoped they wouldn't do it again
but they just did kits and that's pretty
much worse
by mid-2018 i'd noticed a big shift in
quality of the content coming out
things were kind of shallow all along
but my first pet was so greedy and cats
and dogs was so shallow
that it took the game to new lows more
and more
obvious bugs were slipping by there was
also a slowdown here
in the first couple years there were
like eight and seven packs but now more
like six and five in 2019
it seemed they had less people working
on sims 4
in general and put people on another
project
it most certainly was not some
consolidation of developers that would
lead to some quality increase
one of the sims producers left to work
on another project
and it's clear it was a big one as it's
all hush hush
the launch of seasons satisfied one more
of the big wants the community asked for
i personally think weather should not be
an expansion thing but sort of get why
it is
however along with seasons they improved
gardening and messed with one of the
best skills in the game
they did some things that were
improvements like letting you sell
things quickly
but made it so that you do not really
have to work on your garden
they also put in seed packets that
removed the need to
explore to get even the rarest plants
like death flowers
at this point in time i'm convinced they
do not want people to actually play the
game
i can't do a timeline like this without
at least mentioning my channel because
july 2nd of 2018
is its birthday i did a video on careers
and i was
really nervous i started it because i
hated how my focus was going so
far from sims while the game wasn't
enthusing me as much anymore
i had always enjoyed the community i was
pretty shy back then about sharing my
opinions but i enjoyed covering sims 4
in a new format
something else worth noting is that by
now a lot of the bare minimum stuff
was put back in the game it took nearly
three years
get famous launched at the end of 2018
and i think the tone was very
different at that time i mean 26
packs had been launched at this point so
people had some of the things they asked
for
even if it was imperfect some castaways
were angry still but the community at
large seemed much more positive than now
it's not saying a lot it just
wasn't so bitter from the beginning and
throughout
2018 the sims team have rarely released
new traits with pax
it's been very obvious they were no
longer interested
in expanding sims to have more
interesting qualities and quirks
when they do add aspirations they're
very weak and take
next to no effort to complete it's a
pattern i had definitely noticed by now
and it was getting to me players
complain frequently that sims do not
feel unique and
this with the emotion system is a big
reason why
if my first pet and cats and dogs got to
me
island living was my actual last straw
i've grown a bit more bitter now but
this one
was so lackluster as far as things to do
that i actually came out of my shell
and released a review of the pack that
was pretty negative
i got very sick of getting excited by a
feature like the island
cleanup and mermaids to find they were
woefully inadequate
they gave you a fruit to eat to be a
mermaid and bam
you're a mermaid they only have like six
powers and there's no progression
whatsoever it's all handed to you again
no real desire to let players overcome
challenges
realm of magic was another bitter blow
it was possible
to max out caster in only about one hour
of gameplay
we're buying a pack and being done with
it within 24 hours at this point which
is absolutely infuriating
in addition to that spellcaster's actual
spells were very bland
a lot of them just feel like cheats to
be honest
discover university gave us student
loans but the tuition cost to attend
university
was so laughably low that you'd never
see the repo man they also
put in to come take your stuff if you
didn't pay up
in january 2020 a survey came out that
made
me and a lot of other people kind of
excited they
asked us about which packs we'd like to
see receive
extra polish the answer is all of them
but of course we were asked to
prioritize
this survey also hinted at a winter
destination and we got to pick the
activities we'd like to see there
i have to admit that in retrospect any
hope i had was
false eco lifestyle came out in june
2020 and was the pack that seemed to
trigger the community at large the most
up to this point mostly because it just
seemed
boring and weird it was also extremely
buggy with a new system that lets you
influence the ecological standing of a
neighborhood
my friends would drift right back to
neutral every time she managed to turn
it green
but yet again they did things that are
nonsensical you can generate power by
purchasing windmills and solar panels
but they made them super cheap so you
place these on your lot for a few
thousand and you've increased the
neighborhood's rating to green
without really doing anything at all
this also featured the neighborhood
action plan system and it was so
untested
that players found nearly every action
plan was active at any given time
so sims would be stealing from you and
woohooing in dumpsters
what was good about this month was they
actually reintroduced firefighters to
the game and finally fixed their awful
mess of an inventory system
it took nearly six full years to get a
proper inventory system that is easy to
browse and allows you to sell more than
one object at a time
september 2020 was bad while i know some
people
enjoy this pack people were very upset
and i even protested it the sims 4
journey 2 came
out in september 2020 and didn't tie in
with the game at
oh this was the main problem packs are
always optional
but if you did buy it and did the very
linear batu stuff
you wouldn't learn any forced powers or
get anything truly useful
to take home with you so there is very
little reason to revisit the content
this is a recurring problem in nearly
every single area of sims 4.
a lack of interesting rewards that might
make you do
different things the release of snowy
escape was one of the worst
i've covered up there with cats and dogs
it has a nice location
yes but it gave you so very little to do
as a player
it's mostly watching your sim do a few
animations with no
end goal in mind where it did offer game
play
such as its new mountain hiking event
it handed victory to you yet again
it was a simple walk up a mountain and
done and that was
frustrating given all the stuff you
could buy or skills you could raise to
prepare for the journey
they rounded out 2020 with the big skin
tones
update people had been asking about for
years
i'm not sure it's even really working
correctly yet though
it's to their credit to have worked on
the problem but it's sad
it would seem that you'd have to make a
lot of noise to get
noticed that's kind of why i made this
video i want people to start talking
about
gameplay and all this dlc we've bought
that needs improving
about that survey we were all excited
about
we got it all snowy escape and the
lifestyle and sentiment system
were that survey this is part of the
reason the next announcement annoys me
we're waiting on good things but they
aren't happening
we're all just growing more cynical
in march 2021 kits were announced
let me tell you what kits are it's like
ea
is having a garage sale that's right
a garage sale they have a bunch of stuff
laying around they don't use
and if they clean it up a bit and put a
five dollar price tag on it
it'll sell because of course it will
the bust the dust kit set me off because
it was not play tested at all
i'd be humiliated if i released a
product
that was that buggy and i'd apologize
profusely
and promised to make it right at this
stage
things truly feel slapped together
players like me have a lot of complaints
about the quality of work the depth of
features and how devoid of
any challenge the sims 4 has become
there are no reasons to pursue
collectibles except for a select few and
when you do have a reason
they gave you direct access such as with
seed packets and vendor stalls
even after spending 700 you only have 48
traits and many that need
work sims are still devoid of
personality
remember this quote they filled in the
missing features but never fixed the
gameplay that was the biggest cause of
frustration for veterans
the updates rarely fix annoying gameplay
features the game has the least
options ever and many of them like
weather
are very easy to add to stop weather
i have to disable the entire seasons
pack
but there are items in it that i like
nearly every pack needs some work on its
gameplay but because they don't have
enough working on patches they can't
even begin to tackle that and make these
packs more entertaining
so why is it that ea has never listened
to the people who want to play their
game
love their franchise and why do they not
revisit those expansions in the base
game
the reason is so many people buy every
pack anyway
it's like a golden goose ea does not
need
castaways in order to have a successful
business
their stock price is soaring and the
sims is doing every bit as good as it
ever
was even if we know that hundreds of
thousands of fans are fed up
look at the upvote ratio on any of my
critical videos and you'll see how i
know it's a lot of people
we also did a survey and found that
there's this massive
chunk that isn't playing lately at all
to the people who criticized my
first poll thank you you are all right
and i made a mistake
the first poll didn't properly include
builders so he made it better
let me give you an example of why it's
so hard to get them to pay attention to
our concerns
star wars battlefront 2 the game
generates massive controversy
causing a lot of gamers to get upset it
still sells well and is a financial
success in ea's eyes this happens on
tons of franchises like
madden or fifa thing is there are a lot
of people that are not nearly as
dedicated to the sims as we are
they don't follow every bit of news and
don't pay attention to what other people
think
they follow no sim gurus on twitter and
don't ever really speak up
they might watch a few videos here and
there but they're satisfied with the
dollhouse and only really screw around
in the game
their style of play is pretty much
different than ours as is the case with
people who use the game to build and
make pretty sims
you can see this majority in amazon
reviews every sims 4 pack listed on
amazon has
four and a half stars so there's either
something shady up there
there's a lot of please people or a
little of both
but yeah don't trust amazon reviews the
idea that every single pack is four and
a half stars is hilarious
i fully believe a lot of the people who
comment on my news videos and others
are players exactly like me who played
sims as a
time management game rpg hybrid and
enjoyed seeking rewards
gradually building wealth and playing
new unique sims in different ways
when depth went out we couldn't make it
more than a few hours into a game
without growing bored of it
i asked early in this video if it's an
upper
leadership problem with ea yeah
i do believe so i do think the
developers and maxis are good people and
work with the time they're given but we
are still customers purchasing a product
so must keep our perspective
if max's had more time or more resources
they would probably
love to do a better job we have no idea
who to blame
however in the eyes of a corporation
leadership is doing
fantastically unless this destroys the
sims reputation
ea's stock price is at an all-time high
and their ceo andrew wilson has done an
amazing job from
a purely business standpoint but outside
the world of corporations and stocks
us players who are devoted fans of
something are the ones that take
the hit things don't look good for the
future to me anymore
kits were a big blow to my faith that
things will improve
i'll stick around though i still plan to
make videos about the franchise
and advocate ea to do a better job for
their fans
for now i'm a castaway like many of you
and i don't feel like we've been heard
i actually believe them investing the
time and effort to improve sims 4 would
be worthwhile
and generate more sales but whatever
they do
they absolutely should reconsider their
game design and business practices
before making a sequel