According to VideoGamer.com, an online auction house platform is being built to enable the sharing of custom Sims 4 content without the need to log on to the official site. It looks like they're trying to do away with the Exchange.

Ryan Vaughan

Earlier this year we were told that the Sims 4 would not require a persistent online connection. Doesn't the idea of an in-game CC sharing platform sound like it would require one?

Feel free to share your thoughts, hopes or outrage.

I'm relocating to a stand your ground state, and if anyone tries to grab my house to try out in their little, pathetic world, their ass is grass.

This is either going to be one of two things. Maybe both. In game player creations, such as lots and sims can be sold. If that's the case, what's going to stop people from just recreating it, leading to the project being a flop. Or, custom content creators may sell their content. This would give EA a chance at those lost profits with player created content like stuff featured at this website.

They spent all their time doing that, yet CAST is nowhere to be found...

My thoughts exactly.

I almost like the idea of making it easier to share CC, but not if it means I have to be online all the time. I share when I want to, on my schedule. Also, I have always been deeply opposed to the sale of CC. If this auction house involve real money, EA can shove it.

I agree 100%.

And I can just see this going the way of Simport...people's CC traveling over and causing issues. This is going to be one big ugly mess.

But what if this would unlock new woohoo locations?


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They added a filter to Simport later, so this is more likely, namely that no non-EA content will go through these channels.
So far this sounds like a glorified Exchange or Simport with an added Simpoints based money transfer. The contents of your Exports folder are offered via your player wall and file transfer will only happen when a deal has been made.

I vote "nay" but I don't understand why people think that would require you to be online all the time. Maybe when you are looking for stuff, but not while you are playing.

Could you ignore it like you can ignore The Exchange now? I guess I wouldn't care if that was the case.

It may or may not require you to be online whenever you load the game, but that is not my only problem with it. I feel that the time and effort spent on this platform should be spent on working out the kinks in the gameplay.

It sounds to me like they want to replicate Steam's workshop, but they will make it the shitty way.
So... nay.

Nay. I just read somewhere that the concept pretty much tanked in Diablo (3? was it?). Why does EA think that bad concepts need to be adopted as quickly as possible?

I don't understand how I don't have to be online when I can "grab" someone's house while I'm playing. Does.Not.Compute.

I kinda see how that would be neat while I'm building or dressing a sim, though. Still, unnecessary, intrusive, and probably desastrous.

From the sound of it, it was unsuccessful in the past for other games.

Also, wouldn't this beg for people uploading content that isn't their own or based on copyrighted materials so they're making money on someone else? Oh look, someone took the time to mesh, texturize, and color this hair. I'm going to add stripes to the headband and sell it. Or, heck, not even change anything and upload it.

It seems like it would be a very large mess and, judging from their inability to really control the forums well let alone merge threads, it seems like it could get out of control really fast.

I read somewhere that they haven't decided whether or not there would be costs associated with the Exchange. But knowing EA....

That very first German article that was leaked before Gamescon had a side blurb that said this:



So, another thing to make "easier" for all the 8 year-olds that they're targeting with this game.



Have you simported much? Because I'm pretty sure that people who have used it from time to time say that a copy of the other player's sim shows up in your downloads folder or something like that. And this was AFTER the "filter" was added, unless they have furthered refined it.

Not any more than integrating the store in-game requires one now. You would obviously have to be connected to USE it, just like you have to be connected to the Internet to use the Exchange, or MTS for that matter But, if you don't want to use it, you don't have to be online. It's just integrating what they already have. If I used the exchange, as plenty of people do, I would think this was a great idea. Since I don't use it, I am indifferent.

Sorry, I completely fail to experience any outrage over this, lol.

I'm outraged about CaST, but that is a completely unrelated issue Don't even see the argument that this would require any "extra" work, since they'd have to rebuild the exchange regardless.

By the way, for those unfamiliar with the larger gaming world: this is not an "Auction House", in the usually understood term. In an auction house, as designed and implemented in MMOs, players are bidding with in-game currency (accumulated by playing) for virtual items found or made in-game. The price of the items is set by players bidding AGAINST each other; and an item once found can only be sold to one person, like a physical object on E-bay. Items that are rare (because game mechanics dictate that they will only be found rarely) have a higher value than common items, by the law of supply and demand. That is NOT content sharing or even a "cash shop", where the same virtual goods are sold to whoever wants them.

Diablo 3 expanded that idea by letting players use real money OR in-game currency to bid for items. This was highly controversial, since it meant that players with more real money could get a gameplay advantage by spending that money on items they didn't "work" in-game to earn. Controversial, but I wouldn't say "unpopular", or a "failure"; plenty of people USE that auction house, and I have a friend who made a couple of thousand dollars selling stuff he had fun "farming", and was delighted with it As for me, I simply ignored it, heh. BTW, the Diablo 3 Auction house (unlike the WoW one) is NOT really integrated into the game; you access it from the login area, not from the actual gameworld. Like downloading something from the TS3 launcher.

This move in D3 happened as a response to the fact that in WoW and every other successful MMO, there's an underground "gold farming" economy where you can use real money to (illegally) buy in-game currency from shady operations usually run like third world sweatshops. Blizzard basically decided that if this was going to go on anyway, it wanted a piece of the action. Where there's an in-game economy, gold selling exists. But the Sims doesn't work that way; there isn't and CAN'T be an in-game economy like an MMO has as long as the game doesn't run on a central server, since there's nothing to stop players from cheating to get as much (sim) money as they want. For there to be gold selling you need scarcity, and for there to be scarcity you need a controlled, central server.

If they let players sell CC for real money, but if you can sell your item to as many people as you want, then it is a cash shop, but it is not an auction house. No different from the in-game store we have now, except that players are reaping some of the profit instead of EA getting all of it. I wouldn't use it either way so frankly I don't care.

Maybe the filter works like a condom. It works 98% of the time and occasionally causes unwanted insimenation.

To each their own. Personally, I'd rather they spent this time working on the game itself. Besides, I would have found a Sims 4 Exchange to be less...invasive. The only thing I want to be able to do while playing the game is play the game.

Thank you for that correction. However, tomayto-tomahto aside, this still doesn't bode well.

It makes me wonder if this will encourage unlocking of items and goal-oriented play in order to earn points to spend on items.

I doubt that EA will allow people to sell their CC or other items in this integrated exchange. I don't think it's entirely implausible, but I doubt it. And if they don't allow content to be sold, then it's the exchange, but in-game, which would probably come with easier content management resources (hello, deleting CC straight from CAS!). Both being in-game and easier management are pluses in my mind, so I'm not overly concerned.

It's not tomayto-tomahto These are not even remotely comparable cases. In the Diablo 3 "Real Money Auction House", those players who were outraged had good reason to be; rich folks gained a gameplay advantage over poor folks in a competitive gaming environment. Personally I understand that outrage; the only reason I wasn't more outraged personally is that I am not a competitive player, even when playing games like D3. The Sims CAN'T be played competitively, so attempting to channel the outrage the community experienced in the D3 case is comparing apples to refrigerators, not tomaytos to tomahtos.

In the Sims case, they're basically just rearranging components that already exist.

Mind you, I'm assuming there will be an "off" button for it, like the one they (very sensibly) included for the TS3 in-game store. If they DON'T include that, I will personally be annoyed. Not outraged, but annoyed

Just to point this out, on SimCity there are Leaderboards and there is DLC that could arguably give someone a competitive advantage. I wouldn't dream of putting that past Maxis in TS4.

Nay.


So sweet, they are always thinking about us socializing. *sarcasm* Have they still not got that most gamers don't want to socialize in game, or invite people in or share memories or anything. We play alone and then share as we want to on message boards or let's plays. We really don't want or need your help EA.

How about working on the graphics and game play and thinking about making some classic pieces of furniture, build items, hair and clothes instead.

Nice way of putting we really want to market this to 8 year old's.


"Yah look at this crappy hair I made, it's full of gaps and weird spikes, Isn't it gr8, I know you want it!"

They are really out of touch with reality.

The outrage has nothing to do with competition or Diablo 3. The platform is supposedly similar to the Diablo 3 Auction House, which is why it was brought up.

My beef with the platform comes from the fact that the Sims 4 was presented as not requiring a persistent online connection. It doesn't help that there have been rumors going around that it was meant to be an MMO at some point. As a firm supporter of the offline simming experience, I feel like they should be trying harder to convince us that the game will not be attached to an IV drip with the Internet coursing through its veins. It may not be online all the time, but they seem to be coming up with many ways to make it happen as often as possible (e.g. Origin, in-game tools that require an Internet connection, the Store, Facebook add-ons).

Sharing via the Exchange seemed to have worked well enough for those who have been using it since 2000. The platform just feels like an excuse to encourage players to go online and connect with their friends, connect with complete strangers and connect with EA.

And like I said earlier, their resources could be spent on improving gameplay. Have we seen other life stages yet?

But if you don't have to be a part of that, meaning there's an off-button (which is likely since they've stated several times TS4 would be an offline experience) - why would you care if OTHER people went online? Everyone has to go online to get stuff from exchange so why not just make it easier for those who DO wanna use it.

Like another poster wrote, this doesn't really bug me (I don't use exchange) until it's forced on me - which I believe it won't be.

Although there's still plenty of stuff I need to see before I'm positive about Sims 4.

Due to lack of decent filters, quality control, off buttons and security measures I'll definitely say "Nay!" to integrated exchange. Personally I never use it. Why should I when there are sites like this? And don't get me started on monetizing cc and socializing bullshit.

Well, I have to say I would not be happy with the steady creep of online activity if I were buying the game. ( I'm not, so there's that.) However, I can't help but feel it will be a disaster. Why? Because the current Exchange is a disaster. Firstly, most CC creators, and even people who make custom worlds, lots, and sims, upload their creations to anywhere BUT the Exchange. They use their owns blogs, simblrs, or sites like this one. I am all for an easier way to share your stuff, however, it depends on what KIND of stuff we are talking about. If all it is intrusive way to exploit the Exchange, meh. If it is a tool, like say, Bodyshop, or a way to recolor items and hairs, (assuming that CASt is truly gone, as it appears to be) we are going to have a mess similar to what the Exchange is today: a huge mass of badly corrupted and broken files, filled with bad CC that grabs onto your game for dear life, digs in it's claws, and never lets go. All this and it's completely unmoderated. Download a Sim today, and get a Horsebody for free!

Either way, most people seem to know to stay away from the exchange. Those who don't run screaming for help fairly soon. Of course, since EA doesn't support third party content, they get no help from them. It's up to us, as players. to get the word out. (Gee, I'm seeing a trend there...)