I'd give it a delay because I'm a terrible person.

In this delay I would:

Change the art style to be more semi-realistic

Add many decade themed clothes and items of various quality (as in some would be tattered and some would be in perfect condition)

Add many hair styles for all genders, make them all unisex and able to be flipped on X axis

Make all clothes unisex

CASt, pools, toddlers, and even a pre-teen life state because more even aging. And another one in between adult and elder.

Bubble blower, bubble pipes, and bubble paraphernalia all over the place

Thin braids of differing lengths as accesory to add to literally any hairstyle

Friendship bracelets as accesories

Pony beads and all their crafts as skill. Braiding as skill.

"Kiss nose" interaction for romance

Sims can have a trait that will make them not want to woohoo ever even when they are romantic or are nudists

Skateboarding is a skill and skateboarding is counted as transport

Children and teen sims can go to summer camp during the summer

Sim Parents get to explain woohoo to pre-teens which horrifies them (except the scientific pre-teens who will find it interesting)

Apparently sim parents -can- give teen sims "the talk" in TS4.

I like the idea of "kiss nose" - that sounds really sweet. It's adorable little interactions like that which seemed so common in TS2, and so rare in TS3 - just six different renamed "flirt" interactions with similar animations. I also love the idea of summer camp - even if they just disappear off the lot for a while and you can't see them visit it, they could come home with an inventory full of bugs and rocks, sunburnt, and with a long-lasting happy moodlet.

I would've made gender a slider, and made secondary sex characteristics adjustable for both genders - and all clothing/hair unisex. I'd also have made it so you could open up a little panel and adjust the settings for hair/clothes in your own game, so you if you didn't like everything being unisex, you could select all the hairs you thought were "just for girls" and set them to female only so you'd not see them in the male category. Would also allow adjustment for "valid for random" and "hidden" so you could effectively get rid of an item you never wanted to see in your game again, or never wanted to see wandering around the neighborhood.

Assuming I had creative control from the beginning - and blackmail on all the executives to get the resources I would need - I would aim to make the game worthy of being a sequel. Sorry people with old computers, you'll just have to spend your money on crack or whatever the people bitching about new console games only being on PS4 than PS3 do with their food stamps.

- Building mode. We're back to five stories, preferably six. Walls can connect to foundations, so we'll be having split-levels and houses on foundations WITH garages. Hallel-e-freakin'-ujah, it took its time. Greater control in building, too. Extend height and width of walls to suit building habits. Curved walls, all the stuff players have been wanting.

- Worlds. Game ships with a tool to help players sculpt their own worlds. Like CAW, but, y'know, not a beta broken piece of crap because EA didn't want to lose Store sales on Worlds. I'd also want Game also ships with three new worlds: The nice upper-middle class New Orleans-inspired world, a desert world fileld with endless tract homes and that nice foreign world. Like the concept art.

- CASt. It's back. Fixed up to decrease load times on it. I was thinking of also making it simpler to use, but you click on a piece of furniture, then a pattern. If that's too difficult for you, you're beyond help and pity.

- Gradual aging. Oh yup, I went there. I said it, I put it on the table. We have to acknowledge it. We've had three games with life stages, I think it's time to go further.

- Complete overhaul of the art style.

Start over. From scratch, not from online rancidity.

If I were the head of the Sims studio, I would:

1. Scrap the entire thing, start over and invite all the community creators from TS2 and TS3 to help develop a game that will be playable and enjoyable.

2. Go to all the relevant and active fansites (including TSR, the evil from beyond) and actually ask all of the players what they would like to see in the game, and have active discussions with them-not with the accountants or MBA's in the company.

3. Hire some of the most popular creators and modders enlisted into developing the game as part of the team. Pay them for their input.

4.ACTUALLY LISTEN TO THE FANS-they're the only ones who really matter in this, and if we don't like the game, we're not buying it.

The way it stands right now, EA has a really big problem: they've got a game that is going to be a disaster on all fronts, and everyone in the community knows it. They've completely lost all touch with our reality, and that's going to bite them on the posterior when it comes to the release. Word of mouth spreads faster than any advertising blitz.

As witness the threads about 'are you going to buy this game?" and the answer is generally, "Um, no thank you very much."

First what I do if I can - add scraped options and bring back CASt, open world, story progression, cars, pools, toddlers and other things that are in previous series base games. And of course, I will change that fugly cartoonish graphic style.

If I were a responsible person at EA I would at this point be really busy with damage control. That means:

1. Release a statement in which I would clearly say that I noticed the uproar in the community and that I see that mistakes from EA where made. I would then delay the game to work in fan-feedback or promise to release toddlers and pools as a free patch before the release of the first add on.

2. Hire the best modders and creators of objects from MTS and elsewhere.

3. Give fans more inside into the development.

4. STOP the phrase "you will like the game", because things like that adds fuel to the fire. PR is all about psychology EA. SHOW, don't tell. React to feedback.

5. Never ever let Gurus react negative to fans. Graham is a nice guy. His colleagues often are sitting on a high horse and forget that we are not just fans, we are customers. If we do not like the game, we will not buy it. Furthermore, if we do not like the game, we won't mod it. And the Sims series would not be as half as successful if there was not an option to change the game to your desires via mods, objects etc.

Thinking on it more. Imagining going from scratch. Agree with a lot of what piratewolf said, yes yes, all good.

Build mode. More powerful build tools. Adjustable wall height sorta like what they've done for TS4, but as a slider with each equivalent to 1 step of modular stairs (so like TS2 style, a wall is 16 clicks high), up to a height of 32 (2x regular wall height). Walls are adjusted individually or per room, and walls of different heights can connect to each other in a couple different ways (as a slope, or straight on). A hotkey would allow you to build on a smaller grid than normally, so you could build at quarter, half, and 3/4 tile depth. Stairs can be done as low as 1 step, and work on diagonals. Spiral stairs and split level/l-shaped stairs. Roofs can be adjusted not just in slope but in size by clicking on the roof segments. Windows height and size adjustable, and all windows, doors, etc., can be placed on half tile (so you don't have to worry about having two copies of the same 2 tile wide door - one on 2 tiles and one centered on 3, so you can use the door you want whether your porch has an even or odd number of tiles). Normal height limit of 6 levels, but you can enter cheats to get many more. Give the community a separate tool just for building lots, so you don't have to load the entire game, and release it before the game itself. Let people build lots to share before the game is even out: and then do a competition to build lots that will actually be included in the game. EA's lot builders, let's face it, kinda suck most of the time, and I bet there would be some incredibly creative, beautiful designs that use the tools in ways the developers could never have imagined.

Bring CAST back, perhaps with limits to help with the performance issues that it had. Perhaps swatches should be pre-coloured, rather than having the colour wheel? So you might end up with more patterns in CAST just so you can have dark denim and light denim and brown denim etc. but you wouldn't have -quite- so much control... and maybe players wouldn't get bogged down making things so matchy-matchy like people tend to do in TS3.

Sims... I like the TS4 sim faces and animations for them. They look really natural and nice, so I'd keep that. I'd add more detail to their clothing and hair, and bring back alpha edges for the hair. Gradual aging, or more life stages, with a nice amount of stuff for babies, toddlers, and children - so they become interesting life stages to play and not just something tacked on to slog through till they're semi-useful as teens. I want to see natural details in the way they interact with each other - that "kiss nose" interaction suggestion above, YES that sort of thing. I want more interactions that are specific to certain types of sims, or tend to come up more for them - not "take evil shower" type stuff where the only difference is the name of the interaction (guhhhhhh TS3, why?) but maybe mean sims would poke fun at someone to flirt with them instead of the standard flirts, or a snobbish sim would be more likely to compliment their appearance.

I like gardening, fishing, and collecting, so that'd be part of the base game. I'd have a decent range of careers in the base game - basic stuff like business, culinary, etc., maybe 10 of 'em. Painting skill, and at least one or two musical instruments as well. I'd also like specific buffs and perks for being in certain careers or being good at certain things, not just career reward objects. I like TS3 opportunities, but I wish they weren't quite so pestery. I want actual activities related to each skill, and I want my sims to have plenty to do.

Art style... like TS4, actually, but with a lot more detail, higher poly count on the sims and objects, and much more detailed textures. More of a painterly sort of style than flat, and textures would be more texturey (wood looks like wood, stone looks like stone, just gently softened so it fits with the sim style, not ultra-realistic). Adjustable bloom, with the default being incredibly low or -off-.

Worlds, you could add/remove lots, decorations, and terrain painting, and sculpt as you liked. Normal lot size is limited to 64x64, but you can enter a cheat in neighborhood view to be able to place up to 100x100 or so. I think it might actually be really cool to have the base game world be a medium or large sized map, but with a relatively small amount built up on it. 30-40 base lots rather than 92 like TS3 had with base game... but with room to expand. So you could drag a road off the Main Street of your little town into the forest, clear some of the trees, and make a new subdivision there. Someone else might bulldoze the entire thing and start sculpting from scratch, and their version of it would look completely different from yours. I'd like to be able to share the saves of the entire world really easily, too.

I’ve put way too much effort into this.

• I think I’d keep the whole ‘parallel universe’ idea, and remake Pleasantview and Strangetown with heavy influence from the console games. Strangetown wouldn’t be as desolate, with a small grungy district that consists of a hotel, a restaurant, general store and a bar. Pleasantview would look a lot like Sunset Valley or Riverview and would be known for its peaceful atmosphere but widespread (and often irrational) drama. I’d also create another neighbourhood, name it SimCity, and include a bunch of apartments, theatres, high-end clothing stores, restaurants, bars and electronic entertainment stores, as well as a sports stadium, recording studio, barber/salon, pharmacy and a bookstore and HEAPS of other places for sims to work.

• I’d change the entire mood of the sims series, too. I’m a big fan of the Sims 1 soundtrack, so I’d bring back creative scores and would make entirely new music, rather than so many simlish versions of pre-existing songs (I’m looking at you, Sims 3.) I’d aim for creating a completely new universe for players to get lost in, and not be constantly reminded of the world they’re actually living in through cringe-worthy pop culture references (I’m looking at you, Sims 3).

• I think I’d keep the body sliders from Sims 3, but not if they’re going to make everyone have arms the width of a toothpick. I’d go back to the facial sliders from Sims 2, though. Also, although I’m not much of a fan of the colour wheel recolours from Sims 3, I do like how the clothing catalogue works. My ideal would be that you can click on a piece of clothing, and a box with all the recolours you have will be shown, and that will be how you decide if your sweater is purple or blue. Basically like the Sims 2 buy catalogue (the clothing catalogue annoys me sometimes because you have to skip past pages upon pages to get to the piece of clothing you want).

• Life stages would consist of baby, toddler, child, teenager, adult, and elder, with young adult added in a university or education-based EP. Sounding much like the Sims 2 yet? I’ll continue with my ideas for expansion packs later. Anyway, babies would be able to be breastfed, and your sims would be able to sit down with them.

• Before I start talking about EPs (which will probably happen in a later post, because I’ve spent too much time on this one already) I’ll list what I think should be in the base game. Cars, pools, seasons, restaurant & bar community lots, apartments, movies, video games, musical instruments, cameras and a range of different size canvases for paintings. I could go on, but that’s all that has come to mind so far. Also, I know many of these have already been in the base game in previous games, but I thought I’d list them still.


I’m glad this thread was made. It’ll give us the opportunity to realise that not every player of the Sims wants to play the exact same thing, and why it is so difficult for EA to get everything ‘right’.

Agreein' with a lot of what you're saying as well, HP.

Oh. OH. OHOHOHOHOHOH!

Complete overhaul of the relationship tree in CAS. We're goin' further, people. We're having step-parents, adults with young adult children, half-siblings. And I would want it so you can make way more than eight sims in it and have them all related, so your main family you play as has a bunch of distant relatives.

Some EP ideas: Jobs-orientated one, ala Open For Business, a hybrid of Pets and the farm stuff on the store, seasons/weather, and a traveling/vacation-themed game.

*Life Context
Life Context is "what this sim is about." This category can hold up to 4 items. The items dictate what the sim lives by. For example: If a sim has Loyalty as one of the items then that sim gets happy when someone comes to their aid, buys things from them or for them, commits to them, etc. Loyalty is that important to this sim. So if their parter is unfaithful to them then it's not just going to result in slapping the sim, that relationship is OVER. Let's look at another Life Context item paired with their personality. Another sim might have Justice as an item. This sim cares about fairness and equality, hates being treated unfairly and hates to see others treated unfairly ( like a man being beat up for an unsatisfactory poem ). But also, their personality affects Justice. If this sim scored higher in Nice then they will want people who have been seen to commit an unjust act to learn a lesson about justice ( can lecture them, can wait for that sim to suffer the same injustice to show them how it felt ). If this sim scored higher in Mean then the more they will want unjust people to get what's coming to them ( revenge by the same injustice, fines or jail ). Life Context does not replace Traits, but works with them. Life Context items can be chosen for children up to Elderly Adults. Players can choose sims to have no Life Context items and be set for the game to add them when appropriate events happen. Some events can and may happen that can remove or reverse a Life Context to it's opposite value. So you can choose to have a Loyalty sim turn into a Disloyalty sim, a Lazy Worker sim morph into a Hard Worker sim, a Pessimist sim become an Optimist sim, a Prideful sim bomes a Humble sim, etc, if an important event happens and conditions are met.

Scrap the entire thing, fix ALL Glitches that can still occur in Sims 3 and focus on continued support of that game and Sims 2.

C-A

If I were in charge, I would:

That would be Brilliant! 100% agree.

I don't know if it has already been said, but I would:

1. Add Toddlers (I mean, seriously, who cannot just love a little ball of sim?)
2. Add Pools, they are fun for your sims to swim in, and fun for you to watch your sims down in

abort

/7char

Let's see... what would I like in a sims game if I was on the design/production team?
hmmm...

From Sims 1 and all expansions...
Interest
As corny as it sounds, the love bed (they vibrated)
Hot Tubs
The budget when you pushed on the simolean count in the UI.
The lodge bed/chairs and other lodge matching stuff (and add more matches)
The baby basket (not the baby, just the basket)
Studio Town
That ugly, ugly appreciating outside bench.
Curved Staircases
Walls, Floors
Some of the outfits were kinda' nice (SOME).
Some of the hair styles
The ceiling light/fans
Magic Bookshelf
Pepsi/Coke machines
Some other random objects.

From Sims 2 and all expansions...
All age groups.
Pets (interactions)
The family autonomous interactions
The sprinkler(s)
Customizable photo/paintings
Woohoo on any double bed (and them sleeping in 'their' bed)
Other Woohoo items
Hot Tubs/Spas
Cars
Memories (w/o the cluster f***), Turn-Ons/Offs
Aspirations, Reputation
Multiple LTW
Interests
Toddler Interactions
Career and Aspiration Rewards
The Supernaturals
Gardening
Some of the Objects (after the community has recolored and matched it)
Some of the Outfits (and a lot of the communities outfits)
Some of the Walls/Floors
Some of the Hair Styles
CAW TS2 style
Neighborhoods
(I know I am forgeting some cool features but next...)

From Sims 3 (only have Sims 3 so can't speak for the rest)
All age groups
Open World (JM Pescado's way)
Customize lifespans
CASt
Traits, Choose LTW
The Smarter take care of babies (as compared to TS2, even though IMO still not good enough.)
Some of the outfits
Some of the objects
Parking (w/o the ugly yellow stripe thing)
Some of the hair styles
Gardening and sprinkler
Fences, Ctrl-F floors
Basements
Pools
Lockable doors
Doing Homework w/o having to hunt it down first, but at a DESK!
Rabbits Holes (kinda, sorta, maybe, I did like the woohoo options on some).
hmm... not much

From Sims 4 (based on what we HAVE seen so far)
Emotions
The 2 relationship bars
Cas with the aforementioned CASt (but w/o the EAxis clog)
not too sure of the foundations, but defenitely the walls
Moving rooms
Roofing Tool
The 'Smarter' windows
hmm... think that's all... we really haven't been given much good info have we?

Other things I'd like...
New Objects/textures (Good, matching objects)
New Clothes/textures (Good, not 'nobody would EVER wear that!')
Chris ForgotLastName hospitals, schools
An 'XXX' EP for the not kids anymore crowd.
More better hairstyles/textures
Smarter baby handling (stopbogartingbaby)
Assign a crib (stop carrying the baby to the other room to get to the crib when you were standing right in front of an empty crib)
More toddler interactions
More child interactions (especially toward babies/toddlers)(I know my kids didn't ignore the brand new baby and were quite capable of interacting. "Bring mommy a diaper." "Thank you, baby, yes, you can feed the baby the bottle.")
More different objects for baby/toddlers/child
More lifestages (Pre-teen, middle-age)
Stairs that don't have to be CFEd.
Attachable garage that doesn't have to be CFEd.
More ways to get rid of excess money
All EPs from all games combined and expanded/improved on (in an EP or 10 of course)(meaning combine and expand/improve univeristy for example.)
All SPs from all games combined and expanded/improved on (in 'A' SP of course)

A good game engine, offline only, online OPTIONAL (not forced), NO Origin!
NO DLC! (except from the fans in the free variety)
AND GET IT RIGHT THE FIRST TIME NOT THROUGH UMPTEEN PATCHES (if ever)!

Probably forget some stuff, but you get the idea.

I'd rather start over than work with what we have now.

- Gradual aging, where certain interactions are (un)locked based on days until death of old age (when that is, is customizable, of course)
- If that's not possible: Baby, TODDLERS (!!!), pre-schooler, child, pre-teen, teen, YA, adult, middle age, elder
- Pets and weather in the base game. Seriously. Just do it.
- Height slider. Hands and lips and all that can just be magnet points
- Bug testing. Lots of it.
- Create a World included and easy to use
- Ownable cars that are actually necessary
- Cast with less patterns and stuff so it doesn't crash your pc
- Open world
- (Better) Story Progression
- Teen woohoo and pregnancy and teen/YA relationships possible
- Pools and hot tubs
- Fun community lots with people and stuff to do
- Art style that doesn't look like it's from 2006
- No Origin, online shizzle, day one DLC and that kind of bullcrap
- Respect for the canon. No putting in Goths 'just because they're cool, yolo' without any regard for their storyline
- More stuff for younger sims to do
- Mix of personality points, traits and the new aspiration stuff
- I like the idea of emotions, but I'd do the emotions like the needs - in gradual bars with certain tresholds unlocking certain interactions. Not one at once
- No moodlets, but wishes and fears back
- Sims 1-like music
- Support for TS2 and TS3 style playing

Let's just stop for now.

Fire everybody. Take over EA. Delay the Sims 4 an extra year or two or three.

I'd add in toddlers and more life stages with plenty of interactions.

In my Sims 4 the life stages would be: Infant -> Toddler -> Preschooler -> Tween -> Teen -> Young Adult -> Adult -> Middle Aged -> Elderly

Infants: Could be bottle or breastfed, talked to, sang to, played with (sims could waggle fingers, or a shake a rattle/keys/toy for the baby), cuddled, they could learn to roll over, sit up and babble, they could play with toys; have "tummy time" on play mat/blanket objects; sit in swings or bouncers, go on walks in strollers; have special interactions with family members--cry when left with the nanny. Adult sims could sit and hold them in their laps to preform any of the interactions. And, of course, they'd have a full wardrobe with plenty of clothes to choose from.

Toddlers: Could be bottle or breastfed but also fed baby food in high chairs, They could learn to crawl and then learn to walk. They could learn to talk. They could play with toys (base game with ship with several different toys, skill building or just-for-fun toys), play with objects around the house (open drawers, splash in the toilet). Adult sims could read to them, sing to them talk to them. They could bounce them on their knee, take them for walks. Toddlers could pester older siblings with a new "bother" interaction. Like the infants, they'd have a full wardrobe.

Preschoolers: They can eat baby or sim food. They learn to run, hop, count, sing, and say nursery rhymes. They can play with toys, color, build with blocks, play on playground equipment, participate in games, attend a preschool class for a few hours in the morning, play with children, play "pretend".

Children: Imagine all of the child interactions from Sims 2 and 3 combined.

Tween: They would have all of the child interactions and some of the teen interactions--but not the romantic ones. They might be able to start staying after school for clubs or sports and walking home on their own. They can also stay home alone--but they can't babysit younger siblings yet.

Teens: Would not be as tall as adults. They can stay at home and baby sit. Teens can make money babysitting for neighbors.

Young Adults: When a university expansion is introduced, this is the life stage that would go to college. Until that time, it's similar to adults. Young adults have slightly slower need decay than adults.

Adults: Same

Middle Age: Same as the adults, but female sims can no longer have children. They also have a few wrinkles and some gray hair.

Elders: Same.

1. Spend much more time on the game, making it as perfect as possible from the box
2. Listen to what the players want, and try to implement as much as possible within reasonable limits (EPs might be needed for bigger things)
3. make sure the the requirements for the game doesn't explode any computers, while at the same time making sure that those with good enough computers can get even more out of the game. Better tools for game performance would be needed.
4. Keep the best features from the previous games, while coming up with new ones that are not annoying - and put as much as possible into the basegame.
5. Add lifestages (preschooler and tween)
6. No stupid DRMs
7. No Origin
8. Alpha-test, Beta-test, and then do even more testing, to make sure patches will only be needed to fix those completely obscure things that almost never happens. The basegame should be a stable and strong base for the game, ready to be loaded with even more amazing stuff
9. Make sure the game isn't crash-prone for no reasons what so ever
10. Give the community proper tools to make CC (something like a mix between SimPE, S3pe, TSRW, and Bodyshop - only much better, with more intuitive tools so that more people can create).
11. Add cool, brand-new features to any EPs, so that the creators can play around even more with new animations and effects and whatnots. No SPs with obscure stuffeths that players don't really need.
12. Better-looking sims, with faces shaped so that they will work both as cartoony sims and as more realistic sims
13. Better-looking animations for body and face that looks less overdone and cartoony.
14. More stuff for the younger ages - toys, clothes, hairs, food options, and a lot more
15. An actual wardrobe for infants, with at least everyday, undies, PJs and outerwear options, and perhaps some very short hairs or stubble for their too bare heads, in addition to some cute accessories like binkies and bows.
16. Infants that look different from each other, with slight features from their parents (just like babies in real-life, you know)
17. Functional community buildings like grocery store, hospital, fire station, and you name it, where sims can actually work
18. Fully functional cars (including big cars like minibuses), bikes, buses, strollers, helicopters, motor bikes, boats, waterskis and similar, skis, snow scooters, sleighs for kids, maybe even planes for traveling.
19. A mix between TS2 and TS3 style for choosing styles ingame, and a better form of CASt
20. and pretty much everything else from the above posts.

Get help from Bethesda

I'm not going from scratch, just from this point right now. I would delay the game to christmas to put toddlers and pools into it, I would also make a story progression option available. I would show a trailer with gameplay and user interface, of course I would pick a gameplay that shows the best of the world, I wouldn't leave it to chance. Not scripted per se, but choosing the best gameplay portions possible. I would release an expansion next year spring with young teens and more stuff for toddlers and other age groups. A generations expansion would be my first. That's it.

You keep Bethesda away from the Sims. I don't want Skyrim shit in my Sims game.

C-A

Hmm... if I were in charge of The Sims 4 and I were Bethesda, I would "leak" screenshots that were professionally rendered and in no way truthful of the actual graphics that will be in the game. Then I would have my top representative go to the public with rhetoric about a new "approach on visual importance" and how it has become completely okay to want better graphics. It's true! Everyone agrees that it's totally fine in these advanced times. The game will have better meshes and textures, just won't look as good as the screenshots. Instead of having non-bourgeois reps do the presentations there will be no presentations, keeping fans in the dark for months and months.

Playing the actual game, with the plethora of traits, personality points, emotions, career, and goals, each sim CAN play differently if differently means this job instead of that job, and that challenge instead of this challenge. Very formulaic, like Micheal Bay and his four Transformer movies, for quantity of little decisions instead of fewer, effective decisions. However, my top employee would be on top of making all the choices yield little free random rewards so that the player would want to do a little of this, then go do a little of that, and so forth so that it's an endless chain of rewards. The more he can make this reward style similar to taking a hit of whatever good stuff he brings with him to his hotel room, the more he gets paid.

And finally on release day, pay off as many critics as possible to delay their reviews.