The custom content is a huge contributor to why I enjoy the game so much, both by downloading what I feel is missing and by creating new things and see them come alive in the game. I guess many of you here share that. But when TS3 came out it was hard to create new content. Still, I find it unnecessarily complicated what with all the patches you need to keep track of and be compatible with.

So what do you think? Will they try to make it even harder to create custom content and get people to buy their Store stuff? Or will they realise the huge potential they have in the creator communities of making the games even better?

It is nearly impossible for them them to stop people from making Custom items or mods. Most PC games out there can be modified, it's just a matter of figuring out how to do it.

That said, I can't see them trying to stop it, as CC has been a major part of the series since the beginning, and it far and away one of the reasons why the series is still so popular today.

The creators and modding community is why I have played this long. I hope they (the suits) are not that messed up in their pursuit of greed.

I agree, and I have faith in the brilliant minds on this site and elsewhere to figure it out. Though they can make it harder or easier to do, thus support it or try to prevent it. What I'm thinking of more specifically is how for TS3 the patches may corrupt CC, where a system supporting it may not.

As both of you say, it's a major contributor to the series' popularity, though whether EA values it higher than trying to sell stuff, I don't know.

Games like like Sims Social and The Ville lacked custom content I do believe.

That said, even social media games aren't completely immune to the modding community; creators have made things like the Spockholm Mafia Tools for Mafia Wars, for example. But those kind of mods aren't really the same as what we're used to in The Sims; they're useful tools, but they don't compare to custom clothing or custom objects, for example.

So it's not quite impossible to stop CC production.

Actually they would make more money in future if they supported modding from the beginning.

I know of a few people and have read on forums people who have quit due to not being able to use mods in the game. I myself have quit partly because of this (mostly because of the gameplay but I may have stuck by it if I could fix all the glaring issues and get the game to work!).

Sometimes when people come across a screenshot of something that someone created they are intrigued and may decide to pick up a copy. I know of two of my friends who decided to get this game because of this. My guess is EA doesn't know the potential of this if they made it easier.

I completely agree! Although it is not an evident or maybe not even measurable profit. Because of that I'm unsure whether EA will realise how much they stand to gain from making it easier. I do hope that seeing how quickly people got around it with TS3 and how big it is, they will use it!

It appears the plan with TS3 was to make the Store the primary source of content, with the Exchange being the method of getting, essentially recolors (redundant with the inclusion of CAST), base game/EP houses, and sims, using only EA content. Fortunately, the door was left open such that the community found a workaround, and eventually EA buckled under and "allowed" a "supported" mods folder in the Documents folder.

Should there have been a move to online only with TS4, it would have been quite easy to slap a restriction on custom content, especially without a single player "campaign" that might be modded, just like in other multiplayer games, ostensibly to prevent "cheating" (important in some games played online, where you really are in a competition and don't want some snot nosed kid taking unfair advantage of you, but clearly not applicable to a sandbox game like the Sims). As we still don't know how much online activity will STILL be in the game, we have no idea how mod unfriendly TS4 will turn out.

If EA makes it impossible, or prohibitively difficult to mod in TS4, with the hope of expanding microtransactions, I'm out.

Oh my its a must, the CC & Modding community of TS2-TS3 extended the life of the both series. Id never play ts3 vanilla, ts2 possible but lets not get crazy. EA knows how important CC and Modding is within the community; if they eliminated that aspect, it'd be worse than Microsoft's XBOX ONE marketing, restrictions, and product development.

Only because nobody cared enough to make them. Sims Social was barely a "game", it was more a one way ATM machine for EA. But there were 'hacks' for them around.

Also, they do mine the best CC for ideas. The last few EP's released contained items that looked suspiciously like things from popular CC sites that I have had for a long time.

The existence of CC is actually to EA's benefit, even if they don't make money from it directly. Custom content helps to maintain player enthusiasm and keep the game popular and "alive" for long periods of time.

Way back when dinosaurs roamed the earth, I was playing Sims 1 and was getting pretty bored with it. I did an internet search and found MTS and Around the Sims, discovered I could download custom content and got hooked. To this day, a lot of the fun of playing Sims, for me anyway, is my Saturday "shopping trips". I spend Sat mornings checking out what's been created during the week and downloading anything that catches my eye. It's like furniture shopping without the Discover bill. Decorating is one of the best parts of the game, as far as I'm concerned and if I had to play without CC, I wouldn't play. While I've downloaded some things from the store, the quality doesn't match what I find at Simcredible, or AweSims, or SimControl.

Sims without CC doesn't really interest me. It's like vanilla ice cream without the hot fudge, or peanut butter without jelly, or Lily without Lester.

Me too!

Well, the fact that they "bucked under" as you put it is very promising. That means they realised the use of allowing mods and maybe that's followed by them making it easier in TS4

If Sims 4 can't be modded, whether through hacks or custom objects, I'm out too.

The vanilla game always eventually becomes a bit boring to me and I'm sitting there thinking, "Oh wouldn't it be cool if they did this??" Sometimes, it turns out that there's a mod for what I want to do. Not all the time, but some of the time.

They could try to make it harder to create mods and stuff but people will find a way, they always do. As the saying goes, if there's a will, there's a way.

Honestly, if it wasn't for CC I wouldn't play The Sims as much.

Please correct me if I'm wrong cause I don't wanna "accuse" EA of something conspiracy.
But I feel the difficulties of "modding" or "CC creating" in TS3 has something to do with EA Store stuff.
May be they want to sell more of their own stuff.

From what I read the TS4 interviews and watched TS4 guides, TS4 producers promised that TS4 would be "fans friendly".
They even said they listened to fans' comments and grateful for wonderful creations that fans did for TS3 so far.
So TS4 would be back to what fans love: focus on SIMS.
That was what they said.


Judging from their approach this time around I feel that EA is getting softer and more understanding to CC/Mods community.

That sounds amazing! I really hope that'll be the case! :-D Where do you find information about things like that?

I remember when the Sims 2 coders would post at MATY, having major code discussions with Pescado and others that modded Sims 2. Graham came here to have nice game discussions, don't know if he has been to MATY, I do doubt that. Maybe that will be a part of "going back to the roots". If this is true, Sims 4 may have a good chance. We will have to see though.

I do like that Graham comes here and chimes in occasionally, sometimes answering questions. His activity on twitter is also great. It's really nice. I'm glad that he's going to be on the Sims 4 team.

This might be a stupid question, but I'm new to using these forums - Who's Graham that I keep hearing (well, reading) about?

Graham = SimGuruGraham, who works on the game itself, and is active on the EA site.

No it wasn't. Sims 3 came out in june, awesome existed already in fall, the first skin replacement was out in july first.


Then you need to stop playing a game that is still in development. This is not an unnecessary complicated EA created to make our lives harder, it's just how it is when the game is developed and code changes. It was the same thing in TS2, when a new EP came out, you had to update the mods or be part of the complaining masses who cried their game was broken until they found the unupdated mod that broke their game.

If you would start playing TS2 right now, have all EP's and SP's then you would only need to download the most resent mods and be done with it because nothing is getting updated any more. Unless you don't have all EP's for TS2 then you will still need to comb through the mods to see what is compatible with your game.

If you want to skip this "unnecessary complication" in TS4, buy it when it's out of production in 5 years. Then you can just download the lates CC and never have to update again.

Now what comes to the sims and CC. I agree with the people who said it's whats keeping the game alive and expanding it's life-cycle beyond what EA expects/wants and even though EA does praise the community, I don't think they want to see CC. What they want is all CC to be store items. That would be their dream.

Would EA make user made CC hard to add to the game? It would be in their best interest not to, but at the same time I'm sure part of them want to have CC be only the stuff they make so I doubt the mod or CC community will be getting a helping hand from EA to how to add mods and CC to the game.

Hmm, that's the impression I got, but because of it, I didn't try making stuff myself, so I can't say from own experience. But that some people managed to create stuff is definitely no indication whatsoever on whether it's hard to do - there are so may amazingly talented people around, I'm constantly impressed. If it's only the very best who can do it, then I would say it's hard. What I failed to specify is that it was complicated to add CC to your game and that more than creating is what gave me the impression they made it unneccesarily hard to use CC.

Although these talented people are probably going to make it happen for TS4 too no matter what, it will make a lot of difference whether EA decides to facilitate or oppose it and that's what I'm speculating in.

I started playing TS2 very early and you're right - sometimes a new expansion pack would break a mod. But nowhere near to the extent it seems to be in TS3. I had no problems with most of my stuff, even if I did install new expansion packs. This seems to not be the case with TS3 - it's now much more important to keep track of the versions of your CC. I do feel that's unneccesary, but we can agree to disagree on that point

I don't know if they will support CC or not with TS4, all I know for sure is they will be friggin' idiots if they don't. I never expanded past the base of TS3, but I've been tempted to buy a couple of expansions on occasion. Why? Not because of the expansion pack itself, but because of the awesome custom content which only works with a particular expansion. If I had given in and bought an expansion, EA would have pocketed some more cash just because of the modding community.

I can't see EA being that ignorant of the fact they have a symbiotic relationship with modders whether they like it or not. Purely from a fiscal standpoint, they would be idiots not to support CC.

And I think we all kind of know the modding community has served as free labor for EA in terms of debugging and play testing the half-finished crap they release. There were a couple of TS2 expansions I only bought BECAUSE I had been keeping an eye on the boards and knew the modders had created fixes that could stabilize the game after installation and EA patch. I think it's an unspoken agreement that the modding community will happily go ahead and correct EA's mistakes in order to provide a playable game for everyone, as long as they also receive the ability to customize their game any way they like and share those creations with the simming community.

EA would be remiss to default on that unspoken agreement, because I don't think they're magically going to stop pushing their own creators with release deadlines and other such chaos-inducing business tactics (For the record, I don't tend to think the shoddy games are so much the fault of the programmers who work on these things as much as I think it's the fault of the upper business management pushing them so much they cannot do their jobs properly). They need to maintain an active modding community to sell these damn games, they would be so incredibly stupid to cut them off.

I mean, I personally have no plans to buy TS4 anyway, but I'm not 100% against the prospect if they perform a miracle and come out with a great game. Moreover, even if they release another piss-poor game but the modders make something excellent out of it, I might buy it.

But the bottom line for me is that even if they release a friggin' awesome Sims 4 that's everything I could ever want, I wouldn't give EA a f****ing dime if they cut off the modding community. That is just how I personally feel about it and no one could talk me out of it. I do not think I am alone it that either.

Except it was EXACTLY the same way, with the SAME Errors Even.

Just Look at The Sims 2 Pets, and The Sims 3 Pet's both had new Rig Expansions that broke Beds and Other Furniture For QUITE a while.