Open world is blech.

If you mean the neighbourhood pet adoption system that rotates from household to household and shows in Map View as an orange icon, then it is actually Overwatch that can disable that. Register, on the other hand, allows you to controll the strays.
And your TS2 aging settings in Awesome dont't work because you are using Overwatch, I assume. Overwatch overrides AwesomeMod with regard to aging settings, unfortunately.

---

And yes, I do care about all the families in my towns, too. It's just that I don't babysit them. Sometimes I can spend hours thinking about what to do with them. When a new Sim is born I begin to make plans for their pension scheme, so to speak. It's just that I still leave them on their own an on their free will and modify the life around them instead, so that they have no other choice but to opt for those things that I have decided are best for them.

A few days ago I read this interview about an upcoming city building game (http://www.pcgamer.com/2013/09/04/i...r-sandbox-game/) and this statement pretty much sums up how I think of my role in TS3:
The TS4 team should read this interview very carefully IMO, I think they can learn a lot from it.

Thanks for letting us know what works for you.

I know some of you do, you are who I think of when sims 3 and rotation style play comes up. But I was directing that to someone who said they didn't understand and that he/she had other families as supporting acts. Many sims 3 players seem glad that the game can deal with other families.

I would like to see open blocks that can be set to be small, medium or large by player choice. I don't want the whole town open, I believe this is why my graphics look so bad if I add any more than 3 EP's and why there are so many routing problems. I had to install the templates off here just so WA would play without freezing every 15 seconds. But I would love to be able to visit the blocks next to my house. Any backdrop should also be able to be kept or removed. The more choices people have the better.

Reading the last few pages I am getting an understanding of the game play hardcore Sims 2 players want for Sims 4 and what didn't satisfy them in Sims 3. After 4 years playing Sims 3 I finally came to find a way to play that I enjoy. Took lots of mods, some from Twallan and others from talented players that understand manipulation of script codes and it allows some really cool stuff. Ani is one of those modders, I am such a fangurl! I have one of my saves for Sunset Valley dedicated to her Apartment Mod because it let's me progress my Sims in a way I envision seeing people living in an Apt. setting.

Even though I play mostly one family per save of a world, I do have families in my household bin that I have played in past saves but may have deleted. Those families are placed in my current worlds and since each one have quirks and personalities I cultivated when I played them before, this will carry over in the new game set up. These families are mostly CAS created, one generation and a couple of them are in generation two, saved them carefully with their garden produce, elixirs with storage, cut gems, personal paintings, postcard pictures, nectar, etc. When I am finished editing I place them in the world, mostly with their houses I created for them. Before I saved the 2nd generation, I will go to the graveyard and get the family tombstones so they will be in the inventory and place them in the new world's cemetery. Yes, it's time consuming, it does take me about 2 real life days to actually redesign a newly acquired world, create dive lots, delete EA's premades and place my families I want in there. Sometimes I will create new CAS families and give them hidden traits, skills, whatever MC or DebugEnabler will allow to mix it all up. I love my Sims 3 worlds now, the gameplay have been fun and surprising. Yep, may not play them all in one save, I don't want to control every single thing, but my world I do care about and all their inhabitants. I don't know why but the thinking of my Sims as wild things is hilarious!

Again, I still don't want to have to go back to controlling every household but understand why others may want it. Hopefully, and I mean it, the Sims 4 will be what the Sims 2 players want. It is not my type of game, so I will not be participating.

Story mode and the Open world are the reason I haven't even considered getting Sims 3. I did get Sims Medieval when it was on sale and discovered I hated having to make a looooooong booooooooring walk over and over and over again to do get anywhere or do anything. And I never got to see a baby grow into a kid because I was always on another hero when it happened. I knew then that that I'd been right, Story mode means that Sims 3 players don't actually play the game, they just watch it play itself. Add the stupid rabbit holes to that and you've got something that's just unplayable.

I love playing multiple families and watching them interact and watching their children intermarry. I loved designing little shops for them to visit. These are my favorite things in the game, but I guess it's silly to like that, and all I'm supposed to want is to dress up a plastic faced wind-up toy and stare at it.

If this is aimed at me I don't think I said I don't understand; I meant I hadn't understood before how Sims 2 play works [Edit: and I welcomed learning about it.] But I don't play that way and I don't want to play that way because in Sims 3 you aren't confined to that and I never played Sims 2 so never became habituated to that play style. I think it's more like I'm thinking of this as a sandbox where I can do what I want. And you are thinking of it as a neighborhood building tool. So that makes me the Bad Simmer because I don't care enough about these graphic representations of computer code. I don't care enough about all the sims' feelings. [Edit: Because they don't have feelings.] Well, that's undoubtedly true - I don't care all that much about the sims themselves, except as they represent the story I'm playing.
The ideal Sims game would have hundreds of options to customize the game, so that neighborhoods and worlds could be as close as possible to how we want them and the play style could be tailored to our preference. That was what I was hoping for Sims 4. But I now realize that EA wouldn't want to make that kind of game.
And if there isn't an open world where you can send two sims to do 2 different things simultaneously then I consider that a huge step backwards.

Sigh. And just when I was detecting a hint of understanding between some Sims 2 and Sims 3 players.

Again. Different types of gameplay. From my admittedly imperfect experiences with Sims 3, it wasn't that bad. And reading some of the Sims 3 players' thoughts about their game, I find some appealing aspects to Sims 3. But I don't think I'll be going over to the "dark side" soon, even with cookies. Not quite my gameplay preference. Ya never know, though .... if Sims 4 is THAT bad, I might join the Sims 3 crew one day. I'd probably try AL in Sims 2 first, though. Still on the fence about that.

But CAN EA satisfy all sides somehow? The idea of a "semi-open" neighborhood is interesting. (A nod to Sims 3. A couple of people described their versions of a "semi-open" hood throughout the Sims 4 forum. It has an appeal, I admit.) EA could give us more freedom to build lots throughout a neighborhood (Sims 2). Bring back CASt. (Sims 3.) Allow much more freedom in meshing from the get-go (Sims 2 ... I remember modders had problems with it earlier in the Sims 3 series.) The ability to play without story progression, and the ability to turn it off WITHOUT resorting to an indie modder like Twallan. Maybe even toss in a couple more Sims 1 aspects for good measure, besides the voodoo doll.

Good luck, EA. I guess that can be a result of being TOO successful with each series.

Yes, I find that a bit insulting, too. I play only one family per town in TS3 but I care about all the families. I love getting the SP notices about what they're doing, and when one of my teens starts dating a girl whose parents have a history of fighting and infidelity, her background informs how I feel about her and how I play her relationship with my Sim. My Sims are very involved with the lives of their neighbors and extended family. I don't have to be in control of everything to care. I don't want to be in control of everything.

They really aren't wind up toys. I have free will on high and the active sims won't leave the house (according to my one experiment) except to go to school or work unless they're directed to do so. Although when they get out of work or school they might not return home directly. The nonactive sims are operating under different rules and will do things 'on their own' or in relation to what the active sim is doing.
I don't know what the governing principles will be for the active and nonactive sims in Sims 4. [Edit: From what I read in this thread, it seems like Sims 2 has better free will.]

Hmm, this is actually an interesting question. I was thinking of course Sims 4 should be open world when Sims 3 was, but then I started to wonder. What exactly did Sims 3 gain from having a huge connected world like that? And at what cost? And you know... I'm not entirely sure the cost was worth it in the end.

I mean, the open world in Sims 3 is pretty nice. going everywhere seamlessly, running off-lot and exploring things, having every house and community lot have a presence and such. It's all good and neat. But... the performance cost is huge. And that more or less all comes down to pathfinding. The ability to go off-lot especially. It only takes a small missed spot in the world creation and you end up with Sims desperately trying to route out of areas that they cannot, each attempt costing more and more CPU power. Now have 100 Sims trying to navigate around the world, not to mention tens of thousands of objects that has to be kept up to date and things get big really, really fast.

If you have tried playing a small, as in really small, world in Sims 3, you'll notice one thing very quickly: How extremely smooth it runs compared to a big world, and that's something you'll see on a PC of any power, because no CPU can handle a near infinite loop before bogging down. And it does make me think... is the big world really worth it?

Imagine Sims 4 without the ability to go off-lot. You can still visit community lots, and other Sims' homes, but you'll have to travel by road or path there, no going cross-country unless the world is actually designed for you to go there. You'd still be free to go anywhere on a lot, but it would not be possible to go outside the lot area. It's a step down from the openness of Sims 3, yes, but it would save so much CPU power to do it like that, making the game quite possibly run better than Sims 3 on the same computer. If EA does it like that... I don't think I'll miss the open word, much. I know I'd like the performance gain from it, for sure.

Thank you for correcting me
I had no idea overwatch was the cause for the problem with the TS2 setting.
I'm sure I've used overwatch + awesome in the past with no problems but maybe I'm mistaken or maybe something changed in overwatch or awesome code when SN came out, don't know.

I wish EA would tell us already what the world is like.



Hopefully on the 11 they will talk about the world because the build/buy embargo is lifted. The quote is from Simsvip.

That's pretty much the way it works now. Sending a sim to another lot does entail following a predefined path, namely, the roads, whether by bicycle, taxi, car, or even walking or jogging, they follow the road layout.

Now, if you direct your sim to a specific location, one that might not be on any lot at all, such as when you're collecting, they will route by, hopefully, the shortest path available. That doesn't always work so well.

While small worlds do run better, they do so at the cost of complexity. Only a small number of sims are "evolving" in the game, that is, going through the motions of living and aging as a sim. This limits the number of contemporary sims your sim can interact with. Now, if you were able to swap in and out several different mini-worlds, each advancing by a combination of random assigned events (when in the "inactive" state) and sim life events (when in the "active" laded mini-world), you would have a system not dissimilar to the present progression system, namely, inactive sims advance through the game by random fired events when "off screen", and some in game experiences when "on screen".

So perhaps instead of going to a pseudo-closed world, or multiple subhood that would swap in and out, better performance could simply be achieved in an open neighborhood with a more sophisticated story progression that intelligently advances the "inactive" population without running them all through the hood. Instead, just improve on what they currently do. Swarm whatever community lot you go to with resident (and sometimes service) sims to create the appearance of "activity", and try to assign life events to the inactives in a more intelligent manner.

I'm not proposing that as the correct, or only solution. Just as a way of opening up this whole open/closed hood issue to address how game play might be improved in 4. How that could also satisfy TS2 family jumping play style remains to be seen. Perhaps some more selective and sophisticated opt out method of progression and aging could be one solution. But even changing back to a 1 lot closed world won't restore TS2 style play if aging and progression are still allowed "off lot". And it's hard for me to see the development team abandoning progression altogether.

Ok, an example of what I don't like. I just finished a family in my rotation. There are two sons. One is in college and has gotten engaged to one of my favorite Sims from another family and his younger brother is dating a really cute Sim, I've decided to keep him with when they grow up. But, by Sims 3's playing logic, one of these couples, both of which I really like, is doomed to be nothing but walking neighborhood decor. if I don't play them, even for a day, they'll have babies, move, get divorced, die, leave town, and I can't stop it. No thanks. I like knowing I can work on their stories in the future without some sort of random events making it impossible.

I understand why you prefer rotational play and want to control every aspect of life of every Sim n your town. But for those of us who prefer TS3 style of play, playing only one of the two couples as per your example doesn't doom the other to 'just decor'. They live their lives and are still part of the lives of the Sims I am playing. Their children will grow up with my Sim's children. And I can still really care about them and what happens to them, even if I'm not playing them.
It's fine to prefer TS2 style, but it's insulting to tell Sims 3 players that they aren't really playing or that their Sims are wind up dolls.

Yeah, it all boils down to handling the inactives.

Open neighborhood, accurate simulation of each Sim, more than 100 Sims per town. Pick two.

You know, with the rumor that Sims 4 is running on GlassBox, it might work differently. Since that runs with specialized agents, maybe Sims will just piggyback on one when they need to go somewhere? Don't calculate routes realtime, have it don't in advance when a Lot is placed.

But I suppose my point here is that open worlds full of complex AIs, like those of a Sim, are extremely expensive in CPU power. Sims 4 really, really needs a way to reduce that load if it has any intentions of going bigger than Sims 3, because that game is already straining if it gets big. Closing down the world a bit could be one way. But certainly not the only way.

I agree with you. Complex simulations are going to need fast multi-processors to run properly in virtually real time. If they do go with the agent model used for SC with GlassBox, though, and I believe there have been statements to support that assumption, I really hope they did some work on the engine itself, because those agents sure weren't routing all that well in SC once a town grew.

However, I do believe it can be accomplished. Look at alternative solutions to EA's own SP. Pescado has a model that requires actual events to occur in game for progression to occur. He even requires players to go around and put cribs in all the homes, as babies need cribs, and shouldn't just be lying around on the floor of an inactive's home. Not that's necessarily the best approach, but it is an example of the degree of intervention you can make in the game. Twallan's model might be a bit different, in that events will occur in the programming, and not necessarily in the actual game, so two people might become engaged even if they're at the time of the event in separate locations. Not as realistic, but less of a load on the engine. Even that has been evolving, and his latest iterations seems to have more of these events occurring in the actual sim world, and not just the background. Still, even the improved simulated SP of Twallan's adds a processing burden to the game, and can precipitate lag under some circumstances.

The point is, I don't think anyone can realistically expect a full bore model with 150 sims running around a map to generate all the interactions that could possibly occur if each sim were being individually intelligently guided. Some modeling in the background has to occur. However, it has to occur in an intelligent manner, and not simply making a random sim pregnant because the growth scenario is calling for a baby sim right NOW. Or switching out careers. Or breaking up marriages. There needs to be some continuity to the progression. Pairing should occur based on trait compatibility. As should career choices.

The question is, has EA given sufficient time and attention to this aspect of game play? If they have, great. If they haven't, we'll have SP's arbitrary actions being compounded by all these new emotions, and be spending most of our playing time providing therapy to our sims. Maybe that's why we'll be chatting with our sims in real time with our own cellphones. They'll need phone therapy sessions with a live voice before they do something rash to themselves to get the hell out of this game.

One side note. After SV and Bridgeport, it seems like all the EA worlds have been much smaller. Even EA caught onto the fact that huge might be too much to handle.

Random thought #1: I think it's a stretch to call what EA does AI.. Wouldn't it be great if the sims, the active sims at least, could learn? Then I might be more interested in what they want. Because right now they're sort of like robots and that's okay, I can fill in with my imagination. But it would be kind of interesting.
Random thought #2: It's true I don't think the sims are real with real feelings, but I've never killed a bunch of them with a tommy gun. Just sayin'.

This gets confusing with so many people posting.

I was replying to ani, but I may have been making a reference to you or someone else on how the other families were sub players. I forget who it was now. I was trying to explain why I didn't want controllable sims to be sub players who do things like marrying, having babies or large life events without me being there for it. I'm kind of lost what the rest of your reply is about. I have a really bad headache and probably shouldn't be reading. I'm trying to say I hope sims 4 gives everyone options so we can all enjoy the play style that we want. I am not trying to insult anyone as that is never my intention. I am trying to understand how most (I know not all) sims 3 players play and I am hoping you can learn how we (most not all) sims 2 players play.

Somehow I don't think sims 4 will shape up as being the perfect game for everyone, which is a shame as I believe EA could make a game that suited most players if they really listened to what people were saying.

From reading this thread, I understand much better about rotational play, and I now can even imagine starting a game where I play multiple households..
And I'm not a Sims 3 superfan really. God knows it's full of idiocy and I can well understand why Sims 2 players don't like it.
I was just hoping for too much from Sims 4 in the way of gameplay and tools and realism that would add to the ability to make stories.
Also I really like an open world and will be sad if there isn't one.

I can't take it anymore, I am going off topic for a minute...American Horror Story: Coven! *fangurl screams*

Thank you for the lovely avi, RoseCity.

Come to the American Horror Story thread in General Discussion/Media Center, lewis. We can discuss all things AHS!

Really?! I didn't know about that discussion area, really don't leave this or the Sims 3 forums. Thanks for the invite, see you there.

Sorry, all done here. Go back to your regular discussion.