Desperately Fishing for EA's Attention: Any realism expansions?

Sim Ble med: 28.06.2009 04.14 Meldinger: 53 Offline

I'm bored with Sims 3 already, but that's because I'm a "logic" kinda person. I like solving puzzles, challenges. Also, Sims 3 is almost without flaw (a breakthrough, no less). It's me getting bored, not Sims 3 getting bad.

First, I wanna put my small wish list at/near the top of this post.

In summary, they are: realism expansion, challenges, ability to design challenges. Details below. Here is where you can stop reading, because the following simply justifies my wish list. Elaboration, justification, illustration, appreciation, etc.

Apology due first

I meant this post for EA'a attention. In expressing wish list, as with technical support requests, it is best to be as detailed as possible. Then EA can work on something concrete.

The length of this post is not intended to damage your eyesight (sorry CashingTheFame!). The summary of my wish list was already stated in the 2-3rd paragraph of this post above.

Also, I must apologize if I seem to fail to respond to arguments against my arguments. Some of the arguments posted are similar to what others already posted. And I already answered those arguments.

One eg. is the "just don't use the life fruit" argument. There are probably 2 ways to play Sims 3: open dollhouse and intense puzzle. In open dollhouse mode, I can ignore whatever I deem inappropriate (like how PinkiePie618 and I ignore ambrosia and life fruit). However, if I try to play a challenge/puzzle, who is to say I didn't accidentally or secretly use life fruit? The game obviously doesn't prevent that exploit.

So, I will only be posting new information to this thread. I won't restate previous arguments. My sincere apologies. This thread was intended to desperately catch EA's attention.

Elaboration, Justification, Illustration, Appreciation
(Warning, eye damage probable from this point on.

)

I hear the first expansion is coming soon (Aug/Oct?). I really don't mind getting more features in Sims 3 through expansions. I mean, how much good can you pack into a $50 software anyway? And I currently have a lot of confidence in EA; 1 month after ship, they've created a patch that removed all crashes for me. I bought Sims 3 only after that first patch, so I never got to see any crashes.

Wish list here. 3 items, it seems.

I want a realism expansion. Give me the ability to turn off life fruit and ambrosia effects, without removing the ability to do everything in gardening and cooking (for lifetime happiness points). Remove some weird lifetime rewards, such as teleportation pad. Change mid-life crisis to cost less, but swap only 1 trait; and also maybe somehow require the sim to "live by the new trait" for a day, so the trait sticks, or it goes away and the old one comes back. Just some suggestions, because I haven't thought it all through. You're the game designers, EA. You do your thing.

Oh, but don't sacrifice gameplay and balance for overly complicated realism.. But I think you know that already.

I want challenges. Not the kind that I have to manually keep score or painstakingly avoid from violating the rules. I don't want my sims to accidentally eat a life fruit when they feel hungry on the way to sell that life fruit. If I have to manually keep track of rules and scores, I'll sooner go back to board games. Of course, turn off the cheats in challenges. And when cheats are off, please fix any bugs that require us to resetsim. Eg. the restless sim syndrome after giving birth (http://simblips.dailyradar.com/video/the_sims_3_restless_sim_sy
ndrome/).

I want simmers to have the ability to design challenges. That is, "mod" the game, so to speak. But this is more difficult to make. I don't mind paying $10-20 for expansions that contain challenges. Still, you'll have made this "plug in" mechanism anyway, if you want to create challenges cost-effectively yourself. I don't mind paying more for this "plug in" (modding) mechanism.

Even Casual Gamers Need The Realism

As a further justification of my wish list, I argue that even gamers who say "Too.Much.Maths" will need realism in the game. These gamers are just oblivious to the realism working behind the scenes. But if the lack of realism gets compounded into a noticeable realism flaw, even the non-maths folks will balk. Eg, "I was gonna marry that sim when we grew up together, but he ate an eternal-teenagerizer!").

As you can see, I'm not the kind who will buy pretty cosmetics in your store. But I'll more than pay for challenges and gameplay balances. I still keep Sins of the Solar Empire because the developers continually tweak gameplay elements to balance the game, even though I don't have much time to play it anymore.

I hear the next expansion is like "Open For Business". Sounds terribly fun.

But if cheap and ridiculous exploits exist, any new features and challenges added will be quite pointless.

If I want to tell stories, I'd rather write. So I don't really care about the movie making feature in Sims 3. But it can still come in very handy if I wanna show off what I'm doing in challenges.

I'll be watching the new feature list for the expansions. If some obvious holes aren't patched, I think this is where I'll stop for Sims 3, won't buy any expansions.

I still love this game. Once in a while, I do devise a challenge for myself, one that doesn't involve planting special seeds (life plant). But it does get pointless after a while, hoarding more and more simoleans after the 3rd generation.

I believe there is a market for true-to-life simulations. If EA thinks "good riddance" if I stop buying Sims 3 expansions, then so be it. EA has the right to decide which market segment to target.

Just exercising free speech here, and giving free market feedback to EA.

It seems EA values the puzzle-solver market segment. Which is why we see things like lifetime happiness points and rewards. And it seems EA values realism gamers, so we see the buffs mechanism instead of a straightforward average of all motives. And the list of realism features in Sims 3 goes on, such as how work performance is based on metrics and not on "strictly above skill level X" rules. But I could be wrong about what EA values, I'm not at EA, nor have I done any form of market research here.

Obviously, if my thread is ignored here by EA, I will naturally take it as a sign to stop consuming Sims 3 products. In the meantime, I'm going out to buy top-end Saitek controllers for Microsoft Flight Simulator!

Woohoo! Oh, which reminds me. I don't care for woohoo realism in the realism expansion. Just give me the puzzles.

Sim Ble med: 03.06.2009 00.27 Meldinger: 296 Offline

If you don't want ambrosia or life fruit why not just not use it?

Sim Ble med: 29.05.2009 20.46 Meldinger: 2233 Offline

Thats.. a lot of wordies.

Sim Ble med: 06.06.2009 08.49 Meldinger: 1074 Sted:Thailand Offline

OhEmGeeYayEggs skrev:Thats.. a lot of wordies.

Agree, summary please?

Sim Ble med: 07.06.2009 11.55 Meldinger: 63 Sted:Australia Offline

Mmmmmm.. i only read the first paragraph and when i started scrollin' down the page i saw there was a bagillion more paragraphs. You got a big wish list boy. Summary please.

Sim Ble med: 12.07.2009 22.37 Meldinger: 31 Sted:Dallas, Tx Offline

my head hurts...so now I really do feel your pain.

but I was thinking that the kind of challenges you getting too would make for some kool online playing. Just something to think about EA.

I disagree about the realism part, I love having fake fantasy stuff in my sim world. If I wanted real life, I'd go outside

Sim Ble med: 07.06.2009 01.53 Meldinger: 644 Offline

Panther00567 skrev:I disagree about the realism part, I love having fake fantasy stuff in my sim world.

I can't stand the fake fantasy part and refuse to use ambrosia, or life fruit, blue/green sims, etc.

I DO however, adore the grim reaper and saving lives (just because I can't stand my sims dying before they're elders). And I find ghosts pretty cool.

As for an EP, I really hope it's a very realistic EP. The only ones I ever bought for TS1 and TS2 were the ones that were overall mostly realistic. Couldn't stand the werewolves in Pets though, that crossed my boundary.

Oh well, just voicing my opinion.

Sim Ble med: 24.06.2009 00.57 Meldinger: 872 Offline

I read all of that and got pretty much nothing out of it. Just don't use life fruit and such. I don't understand what you mean by player made challenges in game. Expansions usually are $30 not 10-20. The expansion is thought to come out in november not august or october.

Sim Ble med: 28.06.2009 04.14 Meldinger: 53 Offline

Panther00567 skrev:I disagree about the realism part, I love having fake fantasy stuff in my sim world. If I wanted real life, I'd go outside

That'll just be a setting we can turn on/off, I hope.

It's not so much a realism theme or any theme I want. Any theme will do, even dungeons and dragons, or gnomes and leprechauns. The key is gameplay and balance, which will make or break a puzzle or game.

Take the legacy challenge for example. It's great in concept, but nigh impossible in practice. I want to keep a garden through a few generations, and not have my sims accidentally eat life fruits on the way to sell them at the store! And we're not even talking about the book-keeping of keeping score yet.

Still, there are ways to devise challenges for myself. Such as experimenting with how many (neighborhood) generations it'll take my perpetual vampiric sims to max all skills, though that quickly becomes an exercise in tedium.

Exploits abound in the game, some of which can be autonomously performed by sims. Not fun to have to manually keep sims from cheating!

Also, amanda is right about kool online playing.

amandapoo227 skrev:I was thinking that the kind of challenges you getting too would make for some kool online playing. Just something to think about EA.

Yes, having some published set of rules for standardized challenges will be fun. Then everyone can have a go at it, and compare scores and strategies, have fun.

I can imagine some folks sacrificing family time for career, and thus bringing up odd-ball kids. Other folks may "farm" kids for cheap labor.

Currently, it's hard to take the challenges seriously. Obstacles include error-prone manual book-keeping, too much effort to avoid cheating (manually enforced rules).

True multiplayer would be tough, because we often want to pause our games.

One idea for cooperative online play might be in setting up a business together. Say you and me separately bring up 3 sims from birth. We then submit our 3 sims online to be combined into an organization (a la "family") unit. Then our sims can work together to make the business great. Some of them can even marry. So we'd be like bringing up the best kids to marry them off.

JaiSim skrev:If you don't want ambrosia or life fruit why not just not use it?

Wilderwolf skrev:I read all of that and got pretty much nothing out of it. Just don't use life fruit and such.

If one of my sims grows up wanting to be a gardener, I would want to max out the gardening experience. That would include bringing the most profitable fruit to sell at the market --- life fruit. On several occasions, my sims have secretly ingested those fruits in their inventory.

Same goes for maxing out the cooking experience, with regards to "not using ambrosia".

Wilderwolf skrev:I don't understand what you mean by player made challenges in game.

Google the legacy challenge. There are also other challenges I love, such as the homeless challenge by Scarlet on this forum.

Sim Ble med: 03.06.2009 07.45 Meldinger: 2183 Offline

viewpoint skrev:
Give me the ability to turn off life fruit and ambrosia effects, without removing the ability to do everything in gardening and cooking (for lifetime happiness points). Remove some weird lifetime rewards, such as teleportation pad. Change mid-life crisis to cost less, but swap only 1 trait; and also maybe somehow require the sim to "live by the new trait" for a day, so the trait sticks, or it goes away and the old one comes back.

Im gonna adress these point by point

1)if you dont want to use it then dont just grow it and sell it or Clean Up the ambrosia . You dont have to make every recipe for the ingame challenge anyway just know it.

2) this wonbt happen nor should it . removing/tweaking reward items will only serve to tick people off .

Sim Ble med: 28.06.2009 04.14 Meldinger: 53 Offline

Coffefreak4Life skrev:

viewpoint skrev:
Give me the ability to turn off life fruit and ambrosia effects, without removing the ability to do everything in gardening and cooking (for lifetime happiness points). Remove some weird lifetime rewards, such as teleportation pad. Change mid-life crisis to cost less, but swap only 1 trait; and also maybe somehow require the sim to "live by the new trait" for a day, so the trait sticks, or it goes away and the old one comes back.

Im gonna adress these point by point

Ok, thanks. I'm listening.

Coffefreak4Life skrev:
1)if you dont want to use it then dont just grow it and sell it or Clean Up the ambrosia . You dont have to make every recipe for the ingame challenge anyway just know it.

Point taken. Yes, I just have to learn the ambrosia, that's all. But, I was kinda wondering if I could get the divine meal buff without the life extension oddity.

But then, we could argue that divine meal buffs are too overpowered. I could just go for amazing meal buffs (from perfect meals).

Oh, and I just discovered that preparing a meal (8 servings) will shave off 25% of the quality of your meal, as compared to the full quality gotten from just having a meal (single serving). Just an interesting gameplay FYI. Very realistic! I have friends in the cooking business. It's tougher to cook for 30 than for 3!

Coffefreak4Life skrev:
2) this wonbt happen nor should it . removing/tweaking reward items will only serve to tick people off .

Sorry, I meant "ability to turn on/off" when I said remove.

It's always a bad policy to remove functionality. Why subtract from the game when we could always add? Just add a turn on/off switch to let us choose which reward items are playable.

For in-game challenges, if EA ever decides to give us ambitious simmers those intense goal-oriented puzzles in-game, the Sims 3 game itself can turn off certain reward items. Thus, effectively automatically enforcing the rules of the challenge.

Do you play challenges (self-created or by others)? Or just play out your fantasies? I play out my fantasies only for a short time. Then I fall back to experimenting (yes, am a "logic" person). I prefer to spend time fixing my real life than creating a fantasy in Sims 3. But I would greatly appreciate a puzzle or challenge in Sims 3.

Still no response from the gurus (Sims 3 developers)?

Sim Ble med: 30.05.2009 01.28 Meldinger: 983 Sted:Florida Offline

The Sims is not a real life simulator. There's always been ghosts in the series.

Sim Ble med: 08.06.2009 08.47 Meldinger: 967 Sted:Midsomer County Offline

You have to remember most people go on a message board not to read novels. And like someone said, just ignore the ambrosia.

Sim Ble med: 28.06.2009 04.14 Meldinger: 53 Offline

morsmordre skrev:The Sims is not a real life simulator. There's always been ghosts in the series.

As I mentioned in a previous post, and also in the original post, gameplay balance (for puzzle-solving freaks like me) and the absence of ridiculous exploits are key to an enjoyable game for some.

viewpoint skrev:
It's not so much a realism theme or any theme I want. Any theme will do, even dungeons and dragons, or gnomes and leprechauns. The key is gameplay and balance, which will make or break a puzzle or game.

Take the legacy challenge for example. It's great in concept, but nigh impossible in practice. ...