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The Sims 4 and The Decline of the Franchise
I know, I know. I'm like the billionth person to talk about this. It's a topic that gets shoved underneath the rug too often, and I'm getting kind of sick of it.
The Sims 4 is a disappointment. If we lined up the whole franchise up, TS1 would be the kid that went to college for computer science and now lives in a modern loft in Seattle. TS2 would be that kind of odd sibling who has their faults but went on to paint the most beautiful painting ever. TS3 would be the popular guy wearing shades. TS4, though, we'll get to this later....
The decline of this franchise has made me really, really depressed. And I hate to write this blog post, because everyone knows how much I love this franchise. I've spent hours and hours creating families, buildings, and downloading mods and scouring the Internet for custom content. I made one of my best friends over The Sims, and I'm grateful for that. In fact, I'm grateful for everything this franchise has given me.
But now, there's very little that makes me want to go to TS4.
Yes, I do think that the Create-a-Sim now is the best we've ever had. The customization is amazing! However, before the game came out, that seemed like the main focus. And that scared me.
I found most of the criticism before the game released as just that- criticism. It wasn't fact to me. It wasn't going to stop me from buying the game. Most of the criticism was just, "Wahhh, the graphics aren't good enough for me, The Pro Gamer" at first. But when more information came out, I kind of got a little wary of the game in general.
The graphics were fine. Removing the color wheel customization? Fine. Removing the open world? Fine. Taking away features that were beloved by the community? Uh, what?
Toddlers- Okay, as an avid Sims 2 player, I will admit that I hate toddlers with a passion. However, it's odd for a baby to just sprout legs and long arms in seconds. So logically, toddlers were a good transition stage. So how the hell did we decide that toddlers should just be removed?
Oh, right. There's this explanation, which just translates to, " Fuck y'all, our company will add it in later for a Generations EP" Source
"So the bottom line is that when we sat down and looked at everything we wanted to do for this game, all the new tech we wanted to build into it, the fact was that there would be trade-offs, and these would disappoint some of our fans. Hard pill to swallow, believe me, but delivering on the vision set out for The Sims 4 required focus. Focus on revolutionizing the Sims themselves. So, rather than include toddlers, we chose to go deeper on the features that make Sims come alive: meaningful and often amusing emotions; more believable motion and interactions; more tools in Create A Sim, and more realistic (and sometimes weird!) Sim behavior. Instead of pools, we chose to develop key new features in Build Mode: direct manipulation, building a house room-by-room and being able to exchange your custom rooms easily, to make the immediate environment even more relatable and interactive for your Sim."So apparently toddlers aren't Sims themselves? Taking a logical stage of life away from the game makes the game more realistic?
Memories- Yeah, taking this away was fine. Anyone who plays TS2 knows why that's okay. Or TS3. Memories are best to showcase on your Simblr, but become pointless when clogging up anything else.
Repairmen- Okay, I'm mad about this one specifically because I don't get to have my Sims seduce the plumber anymore. Everyone knows the plumber does amazing things in bed. Next.
Using the excuse, "It'll get better when there's more expansions" is just... dumb to me. Nobody buys any other game and brings up the faults and gets met with this excuse. In fact, it's actually seen as an awful game when it lacks many features that previous games in the franchise had.
So why are we, as fans, so conditioned to say that when someone rolls up on the forums with their, "Am I the only one who doesn't like..."
I mean, I don't see people complaining about the lack of dinosaurs on ARK: Survival Evolved and them being told, "Wait for expansions guise!!!!1111"
It's shitty for a company to take out all of these features and then add them back in after a massive bitchfit happens. It's also shitty for a company to charge $60 for an unfinished game. It's even more shitty for a company to expect their customers to eat up all the garbage they put out and never develop opinions about what they're spending their money on.
This is the thing, though. I don't think that The Sims 4 is necessarily a 'bad' game. I just think that it showed off what a shitty company could do to a potentially good game. Really, I think that if they kept a lot of the features that were in the other games, it wouldn't have received all of the criticism it did.
EA, you need to try to seduce the customers harder. You think just because we've been having an on-and-off metaphorical woohoo experience for more than a decade you can just announce one thing and get into your customer's pockets and pants? No. We've been in this for more than a decade, bro. Treat us nicer, and instead of putting your metaphorical cock in our vagina and then announcing, "Hey, btw, I got the herp, but wasn't that fun?!" I think you should try foreplay. Foreplay that makes your customers know everything is okay, like rub our feet with the positive news that new features will not replace old features.
Now I know there's no pleasing everyone. However, I swear to God that's what I think EA said to the staff when making this game. I also think they wanted to gear the game towards newbies (read: children) when making this game.
See, part of the appeal for me when I was a young one who went over to the neighbor's house to watch my older, more experienced and mature neighbor play The Sims was the 'naughty' aspects. Such as the ability to have your Sims make out, or have them die in a horrid fire. Also, purposefully drowning them and bonding with friends over that.
"Becky's daughter doesn't even care that her mom just died in a puddle of her own piss in a fire!"
"Karen, this is amazing! What should we do with Tyler?"
"Karen, this is amazing! What should we do with Tyler?"
Toning down elements of the game that made it unique has also been disappointing. Seriously, don't these creators know that a majority of their fanbase plays like they're Satan instead of God? I mean, the second you say that you miss the maid outfit from The Sims 2, you get called a pervert that jacks off to a kids game. All because I want to roleplay a totally unrealistic romance story involving a seductive maid! I can't even do that without some asshat on the forums calling me a creepy fat man with a small penis!
I am not a creepy fat man, nor do I have a penis!
I don't want to support a franchise that lets the diehard dick-suckers tell me how big my penis is, nor do I want to support a franchise that clearly gives no shit about the quality of the game.
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