They left out a life stage, when they said that all stages from sims 3 would be in sims 4. This deeply disappoints me, more than no CAST did.
http://www.thesims.com/news/neighbo...oments-and-more

Edited: Just wanted to add that Graham has tweeted that the babies and toddlers are not a combined life stage.
https://twitter.com/SimGuruGraham/s...874460455088128

EA is shit.

Now I'm sure, I will NOT buy this game. No Pools, no Toddlers, No CASt.... WTF?! My The Sims Passion will end on The Sims 3.

Wow, this base game is as bare-bones as TS1 base-game, even less.

Looks like they'll have to quickly churn out an EP to bring these back...

That, or a rather large content patch.

Either way I'm still buying it, I rarely play toddlers and pools are just kinda there. They're nice to have but not a necessity at all.

String this shit along for months then include it willy-nilly at the end of some blog.

EA, you are a coward. I feel for the Gurus that have to endure their chaos.

I can understand pools (even though they could've worked around that easily if they'd just done customizable foundation heights per building on the lot), but toddlers. WE TRADED TODDLERS FOR YOUNG ADULTS. NOT A GOOD TRADE OFF.

Kind of agree with this. I would've been fine with the removal of the current adults, renaming young adults to adults (like in TS2) and keeping toddlers. The only difference in Adults and Young Adults is wrinkles.

also i love that movie and also that .gif

Those seem like two incredibly random things to leave out. Especially toddlers though, why remove that but keep young adult? YA is a pretty useless life stage IMO.
Honestly I'm not too broken up on it because I rarely play families or with other ages beyond young/adult but still, what's even the reasoning behind this?

I just can't help the feeling I have right now, that all this is just a huge bad joke. I mean, they confirmed all of these features and than they took all of them out. I do not remember any of the sims games information went this way. This feels just like a bad dream. They are practically selling just CAS, and a build mode of 25 lot (if even less). This game is going to be worse than SimCity. I thought they learned their mistakes, but no, they did even worse!

Reasoning, this is just a thought, is that they're running increasingly low on time but their bosses are breathing down their necks to turn out a product. They just cut out things that require a lot of attention/detail/time. Somebody said earlier on some forum that toddlers have about 650 animation clips and each animation costs about a day of dev time, overall. (I don't know if this is true or not, just regurgitating info.)

Tbh if they would've cut out any other life stage people would be just as upset. I mean, can you imagine the outrage if children were cut out and it went baby > toddler > teenager? Or toddler > child > teenager?
People would be upset no matter what.


EA wants their money, they don't care what they have to do to get it.

It not just about the pool or toddler stage explicitly. It's more about EA constantly shitting on our faces and slowly rubbing it in... And don't expect any cucumbers for your eyes. (at least not for free)

So... This is going to be a considerably poorer game than TS2 then? Like, what is the draw supposed to be with this game if more seems to be removed than added? I'm pretty disgusted.

I understand what you're saying and I'm not fond of EA, or most other corporations, for that matter. It's stupid that they keep making promises and then breaking them, choking the life out of every decent game franchise with Day-1 DLC, and monopolizing the industry in such a way that prevents good game studio growth.

I am still choosing, rather begrudgingly, to buy the game though seeing as the changes don't directly effect my play style is all.

I knew it! Again EA has blown me off. Cool. Take the game and shove it. I am not buying that game.

Why does the game have to be geared toward YA/Adults game play anyway? Forget it, I am not listening. I am angry now.

EDIT:


Don't count on an EP. Once out, they will not bring it in later. They will move on.

So what, does this mean no more teaching your kid to walk and talk and poop on the toilet instead of in their pants anymore? Because I actually really liked that aspect of raising kids in ts3.

And no pools? I've hardly used pools on my lots, but not including them just seems like another step backwards. That's the problem with this game. Emotions might end up being really good and the new build mode and CAS will probably be fun to play with, but what else is it offering in terms of innovation? Nothing from what I can tell. I can't help but hope at this point that ts4 does poorly at release so that EA might be inspired to do better with the next installment. Not holding my breath though.

Omg... can't... breathe... WTF!?

I truly wanted to believe they kept toddlers and pools a secret because they had made something absolutely super-awesome with it and wanted to positively surprise us, after all the other negative news... How could I possibly be that stupid?

The end of that blog post really, really hinted that toddlers and pools are going to come in an expansion, didn't it?
Ugh, I have a huge feeling that these things actually were originally planned for the base game and they got cut because EA likes to force deadlines so much. There's no other excuse for them to keep quiet about this for so long if they were always meant to be unincluded.

I think you're probably right. The Gurus probably wanted to put them in, and EA kept enforcing a deadline so that they had to continuously drop things off from the 'want' list. It already happened with a few things, right? That's what one of them said about the shopping for clothes thing- it was slowly lowered and lowered and eventually removed off the list of priorities. The same probably happened to pools, toddlers, and most other things that are not getting included and don't have a real reason to not be included, like CASt or the woohoo skill.
EA is a shit company, and while they learned that it's a moronic idea to enforce an offline-only game, they still haven't learned their lesson about releasing games prematurely...

I'm almost sure I saw somewhere that they were keeping all the TS3 ages in. Is this brand new info, or just a random blog post someone blew out of porpotions?

Cutting toddlers is stupid. Are they going back to sims 1 style? Are we really getting sims 1.5 all over again? If this is true, then I'm more disappointed than I could ever be in EA. If anything, I'd like an extra age between infant and child, in addition to toddlers. I wouldn't mind if they cut out YA, because that's an age that I don't need anyway (they're basically adults - lengthen the age of adults instead). But toddlers are half the fun!

I wouldn't mind if they took an extra year to finish the game. They can even take two years, if they need it. The current TS4 deadlines can go die alone in a corner on a deserted, hidden island, for all I care about them. I want a proper game that has all the best of the previous games, not some shitty half-done product, like we got the last time.

I can sort of manage without pools. They would probably include them in an EP later, anyway. But no toddlers? No way!

SimGuruGrant confirmed it by saying they were including "all" life stages that were in the Sims 3. Later, he said he may have "misspoke" or may have been misunderstood. Same shit, different SimGuru. They've been doing that a lot lately. Confirming a feature and later taking it back.

It's their dumbest move yet. It's near the end of the page here http://www.thesims.com/news/neighbo...oments-and-more


No toddlers in the base game. Maybe if they include them in an EP they will redeem themselves a little, but a game without toddlers in not one I want to play.

Sometimes I wonder if EA has a department whose job it is to tick off customers.

They've already said they will be adding toddlers AND pools at a later time. They're not sure if they're gonna do it for free, in a patch, or if it's gonna have to be included in an EP.

Either way, inexcusable but at least they've realized they can't just skate on by and remove a crucial part of many people's gameplay.

It is good to have a confirmation, though.

I hope the time they decided not to spend on pools and toddlers was well spend on building a VERY strong base game that can handle the EPs required to experience the game at it's fullest.

Pools will most definitely be added in an EP. He said, "in September". Also, it is not the first time they add build tools to the game in EPs.
I really feel sad for toddlers, though.
The Sims is focused around life, generational gameplay, life stages, those things...
It is a giant loss, the toddlers...

I'd prefer them to go a similar way to TS2, ditching young adults.
Those could be added in a University EP, like in TS2. The stage had different dynamics, but it was pretty cool then.
At least, I hope they release a Uni EP. That was my favorite...

I really hoped there would be no need for a ridiculous "Generations"-like EP. A game like The Sims shouldn't have the need for that.
Everything that was in the Generations EP in TS3 should have been in the base game. That's the spirit of the Sims. Generational gameplay IS the base gameplay, and the main focus. Not weirder stores. Those come along the way.

I've registered in this forum so I could share my totally heartbreak for the lost toddlers... I just can't understand...