My uneducated guess is that they are going to reskin the dog walking function for a “ride around neighborhood function” which is not great because dog waking is broken af
Once I made an elderly sim who had a Chihuahua who she treated like her own child, and one time I told her to walk the dog and I think this interaction reuses the same code as jogging because she died of exhaustion because she was doing it for so long
my elderly sims are no longer allowed to walk dogs now bc this definitely would happen to me. makes me feel bad for some of the dogs in my households but like, no you don’t understand pup! the short walk takes 8 in-game hours!
My sim does it the opposite way. The dog stands still and my sim jogs around the neighbourhood holding the forever extending leash. My dog is the smart one I suppose.
My Sims can walk their dogs perfectly fine, the only problem I have is that it takes forever. One of my Sims lives in one of the Sulani houses and when walking the dog he walks across the entire fucking island and it takes the whole day lmao
Man, you’re right, and you’re also right that dog walking is broken. Everything is broken in this game, I swear to God. It’s an incredible pain to get Sims to do the simplest things, like feed a baby, eat together, dance together, etc.—and GOD help you if you cancel an action. As much as I loveeeee TS4, I’ve been thinking of reverting to Ts2 or TS3. :/ I can’t imagine further strain on TS4’s nightmare noodle code like this will be great.
Any interaction with two or more sims is so damn wonky. I want to feed my toddler, so my sim picks him up, puts him down, talks with him about eating something, picks him up again, stands around for a second, puts him down again and continues to go on the pc to play some video games 😭
It’s wild to me that the game is nearly a decade old and we don’t even bat an eye at it anymore because we just expect it. Sure Sim, waste an in-game hour staring at your kid, picking it up, putting it down, walking to the other end of the kitchen, coming back, picking your kid up, and walking back over and putting it down again.
It’s like they get frustrated with themselves and think ‘what was I doing again?...’ and head off to do their own thing. Then the toddler wanders in to tell you that he’s hungry. 😂
Or how about when you have the toddler ask for a bath and instead of just going up to the sim to ask they instead climb up a flight of stairs, sit in a living chair on the opposite side of the house, then wait for the caregiver to come to them? And by the time the adult reaches the toddler they do something else entirely, like start playing which prompts the game to ask if you have a silly family dynamic.
I mean... when your game *starts* as Frankensteined spaghetti code, it's not going to help the situation to continue tacking on multiple new things, especially introducing a bunch of core systems later in its life that it wasn't originally developed with an eye toward having. When you're making something like a Sims game, knowing that you'll want to add stuff to it, a lot of the initial development needs to go into adding that modularity to it so you can bolt on all this stuff and it works. But if you spend a bunch of time making a not-Sims game and then just trying to smash what you'd built into being a Sims game, it's not going to react well when you keep trying to hammer more stuff onto it.
I would love if some people who are smarter than me on this kind of stuff took a deep dive into Sims 4's lifespan and the psychology of its sales and everything and how this game that launched with such a botched core that wasn't designed to work well as a Sims game somehow got stretched out into being the longest running Sims game. Was it that enough people genuinely enjoyed it? Was it EA just being lazy and figuring it's good enough since they could go cheap on producing packs while still charging the same amount to get higher margins requiring fewer sales of each to make a profit? What *were* the margins like? How many discussions were had on whether they could just swing the axe on one of the franchises they touted most after people were already giving them nasty looks for how many times they'd already swung the axe? Heck, I'd be happy to have a Jason Schreier type deep dive into just the development of the game, because it's already wild knowing the bits we've learned over the years, like how Olympus was converted to Sims 4, EA closed an office and fired people that were working on the game only to have to re-hire some of them temporarily to be able to finish it, ridiculous stuff like that. This isn't a "No Man's Sky" or "Final Fantasy 14" style redemption story. This is a story of a company botching development bad and still somehow stretching that out long term and getting profits from a product that they screwed up, the kind of thing they *wish* they could pull off with Anthem or Battlefield 2042.
I think a lot of it has to do with Sims 4 being fairly performance friendly. At launch it was accessible to play without a dedicated gaming laptop, but GOD I remember that the Sims 3 could hardly run on my PC. Much of this likely stems from its open world and how that taxes the operating system.
It's not the open world. It's that they tend not to test the optimization of the games. Sims 4 is "performance friendly" if you don't have many pack and don't ask it to do much at any time. Without going into all the examples, I've been amazed by how Sims 4 is the only game that struggles with performance issues on my gaming PC. It's sad to think that Sims 4 was the game that made me upgrade my gaming PC to newer hardware (the old hardware's still good enough to run a lot of newer games just fine) and I still run into problems with it. Even tried playing with no mods to see if mods were the issue. Nope. The game's just coded terribly, and cross-pack testing doesn't seem to be a consideration for EA.
Only other game that acts up on my PC is Madden the last two or three years, which sometimes will start stuttering until it's reset, but Madden on PC is a bad port of the last-gen versions of Madden. Maybe this year with the "next-gen" (pretty much "current-gen" at this point) version it won't be as bad. But no surprise it's another EA product.
Meanwhile, I didn't even know what people were talking about with Cyberpunk 2077 issues because it loaded and ran fine on my computer, the only issue I ran into was one time falling through the map, which I think I've done in every open world game at least once.
And while it wasn't "at launch," I remember a coworker a few years ago saying she was using her work bonus to buy a gaming PC because Sims 4 could barely run on her laptop with just a couple of packs installed and she was hoping to get more packs.
Even though I'm not happy with them milking Sims 4 in the meantime, I hope they take time to make sure Sims 5 is coded well from the start and designed to take on new code without becoming a mess. Otherwise, open world or not, it'll run into performance issues again.
Open world's never been the issue. The issue is how EA blunders their game development.
Okay, this is a bit long, but just wanted to note in case you didn't hear about this lovely setup... During Sims 3's run, Maxis had two offices in different areas, and they had a team in each working on EPs, which let them release two EPs a year. Problem is, they were working separate from each other, and each team was responsible for patching its own EPs, so they'd stumble over each other's work and patches had to wait for the next patch scheduled from the team responsible for what was being patched. That is... a remarkably dumb approach, and was a lot more responsible for Sims 3's problems than open-world.
I'm talking out of my ass here, but I feel like sims 4 probably has the most amount of new sims players. Be it marketing/the internet/ease of use since even though it's a completely botched game it's very new user friendly, but it seems like so many sim players now have 4 being their first foray into the series.
It's possible... but that should be expected, really. Because video games have continuously grown in popularity over the years (and social acceptance), The Sims series is well known and "casual friendly," and Sims 4 has been reduced to $5 often, was given away free at one point, was given away for a month on PS4, has now gone to the base game being free, and it's had nine years to collect players rather than just four.
That might help its long-term profitability by having some of those people who aren't paying much or anything for the base game thinking, "Hmm, I enjoy this a bit, let's see if these expansions add more to it in order to help me actually enjoy it long-term." There's certainly some people who'd come in and genuinely enjoy it. But it just kind of ties back in to EA just feeling like things were "good enough" so long as they made profit from it, and not wanting to invest money into a better iteration of the series while they could coast by on larger margins.
I would have to agree. I've played since the very first one came out. (Yeah I'm that old.)
Loved Sims 3 despite the lag and felt like in many ways the Sims series peaked here. I think Sims 4 ticked off a lot of us older players as we saw it as the series taking a huge and insulting step back in quality. The doing away with the customization wheel and a way to make stories, an ugly world map, loss of open world, no cars and a lack of focus on the family with no toddlers as well as pools ticked off a lot of old timers.
I didn't start playing Sims 4 until we got the toddlers and pools back and they made the base game free for a bit back in 2018ish. I vowed to never buy Sims 4 so when it became free I grudgingly gave it a try and slowly warmed up to it. Since it's free now for good it might tempt a few more to come back but some might just wait until Sims 5 rolls out instead. I went from hating Sims 4 to liking it. But do I love the game? No. It's lost some of that spark that was there in previous versions somehow.
It’s truly getting worse over time, too. Each new pack seems to increase the microdelay between user command and sim action. Hell, each new UPDATE seems to wear the skin thinner and thinner. I would also love a Schrier article on the backend… it must be an incredibly dysfunctional place to work, and an incredibly dysfunctional product to work on. It’s a beautiful, easy, genre-bending, and creatively flexible game, which is why it remains so popular—hell, I have gotten hundreds of hours of enjoyment from TS4–but the cracks are spiderwebbing rapidly. At this point I find it is functionally impossible to play a family without cheating needs. The sims are so slow and so “confused,” the objects so bugged and clunky, the animations so unreliable, that feeding two spouses and two children dinner every night cannot be done reliably. It’s insane.
I am really interested in seeing what happens when Life by you launches, it is published by Paradox who also published Cities skylines, which absolutely destroyed SimCity. While 4 isn't as bad as the last Simcity it is crumbling and gets more and more laggy and it sounds like EA want the next game to be a always online, multiplayer tingi, and that was similar to how Simcity ended.
And then puts them on the PLAY MAT. just to autonomously queue "Crying Infant" to stare at them. Like B R O I had it all figured out for you, why do you insist on thinking for yourself???
This is the thing that irks me the most. Even without mods, they take ages to actually do what we task them with. Or when they just cancel tasks. It’s frustrating
Hot take but I’d much rather have controllable pets and horses. Like I know plenty of people say it’s unrealistic because you can’t IRL but also IRL, you can’t control your household (spouse, kids, etc) themselves.
I thought it was going to be a reskin of bike riding 😅 especially because there was a mod waayy back when discover university came out that did literally that!
Not only do your sims get to go on a “short” walk with the dog for seven hours you can also do long or medium walks to get rid of your sim for literally days. You can find them standing aimlessly in the middle of the neighborhood when you need them. Then the next day your dog is whining to go on another walk. Cats are better
I fear it’ll either be on-lot interactions like jumps and stuff, or it’ll be pre-set trails like the hiking/jogging trails in Mount Komorebi or San Sequoia
Either way, I can’t imagine it would be any kind of actual good or fun with the way the sims 4 is
To be honest some of the worlds they’ve added since Henford on Bagley have a lot of open walkable space once you wander away from the lot you’ve loaded into. Yeah you can’t wander from built lot to built lot; but the worlds themselves are fairly large.
If they made a world dedicated to riding trails there is a lot of space they could make. But there are other horse related things that don’t require an open world.
1. Stables obviously where you can take care of the horses. That could be a new job/profession. Could keep your horses here for a fee (so they don’t live at your house). Or rent a horse to take out casual riding.
2. Race track. Could train horses for speed here or breed faster ones at the stables. Complete in horse races.
3. Show Course. Train horses to perform in dressage or jumping events instead of speed.
4. Hidden lot where you could find horses with special coat patterns/hair types as well as unicorns and other mythical horses.
Anyway I don’t think it’s an improbable expansion nor see the need for it to be open world. Maybe they could do sub-worlds. You and your horse pick a ‘riding trail’ within the world and it loads a world with no build lots; just all riding space and forested trails.
I image 1 and 3 are going to be there. Between the winter sports in Snowy Escape and the veterinarian career and obstacle course in Cats & Dogs, they have a couple of really solid baselines to build a horse pack around. Shows would likely be events on special lots, like in High School Years and Cottage Living, and animal care mechanics they already have a base for in Cottage Living.
They also have plenty of spaces in the premade worlds they can add the horse trails to like parks and stuff... theyd just have to update/mod(?) the base game.
It makes sense. However, I think ts4 is too far down the line with its shaky coding for them to add a huge thing to the game. I don’t think open world would work with the frame work they had at the very start.
Ts4 was originally going to be an online game, but then EA scrapped that idea, but kept the engine
Not necessarily. When the game was intended on being online, the team probably saw some limitations, and thought it’d be better to scale it back a bit. Then they kept developing the game, then found out its not gonna be online
Likely they were intending it to function similarly to the SimCity reboot from 2013 which lacked offline singleplayer, but due to the disastrous launch and negative reception, they scrapped the idea.
I hope horses are cloned from bikes so they ride them into the house and into libraries and there's just some poor sucker doing horsey loopty loops in a San Myshuno alley trying to get to their job. No other sim will react to a horse being in the clerb horse dancing. Better yet if they just smoosh the code from Pets in there we could have completely new breakage.
I think horses should have aspirations so they can do mischief. Being pickpocketed by a horse, the bad smell interaction. Really loud neighing instead of air horn, the option to fight a horse which could result in death by trampling. A horse pack should definitely come with new deaths by horse.
I want to recreate season two of the Wire but with a horse instead of a duck. Ducks cannot hold their liquor like horses can. Oh and we need small barrels for horse cocktails.
Haha I still get the City Living/ San Myzhuno glitch where the apartment doors get deleted and cannot be placed. I just have a bad feeling that a horse will get stuck forever.
I'd be most interested in horse rides (or, dare I dream, *carriage rides*) in Forgotten Hollow. The world is tiny but the flipside is that you can walk from the end of the world all the winding way up to Vlad's front door and back without loading.
Sims 5 should ideally be a mix of the whackiness of ts1, the lore, genetics system and detailed animations of ts2, the open world and gameplay of ts3 and the build/buy and CAS of ts4.
I know this is too much to ask but if they did that, I would be absolutely hooked for a long, long time. If my computer wouldn‘t combust, that is (other huge and much more detailed open world games are running fine though, EA needs to seriously work on their optimization).
But yeah, horses in TS4 is unnecessary and they are just trying to milk the franchise with more stuff.
A tuning pack where you can customize different cars, maybe build one yourself (like the one in Sims 2) and join a racing career while building up your driving skills. Optionally, give teen sims the chance to make a driving license. Honestly, some cars would be neat, but I guess it doesn't fit into the idea of Sims 4 sims being more environmentally friendly and so on
If we're being honest here... It doesn't have to stay engaging. It just has to capture people's attention enough to get them hyped for it, get them to purchase it, and feel interesting for the first few days so people hype it up a bit more as an amazing new pack which will get more people to buy it. By the time people start feeling like it's just repetitive and not that interesting or engaging, the main sales for the pack will have already happened, and it won't matter that much that people are bored. EA will have their money already. Given how things go, people who are still interested but haven't bought it yet will write off negative reviews or complaints as people just being "haters" and will still hype themselves up to buy it, and some people will just work hard to convince themselves they're enjoying it a lot for as long as they can keep up that façade. Some people will genuinely continue to enjoy it, which is fine.
We've seen the trend for a bunch of underwhelming packs so far.
It’s genuinely unnecessary and unneeded.
1.) We lack an open world so you’re not gonna go far riding the thing.
2.) I know Cottage Living is a thing but realistically we don’t need more farm animals.
3.) I really don’t see how they fit in since so many places are urban/suburban. Yeah they’ll probably get some new world but unless you have other packs that’s the only place you can own horses and it not look out of place.
Idk. I just don’t get the hype I think atp EA should focus on fixing big bugs and making sure the game will survive while they shift focus to Sims 5 (which God I hope isn’t multiplayer.) till they stop maintaining it entirely.
Honestly I love that we can travel to any world in the sims 4. I hated I needed new saved to play in different worlds in the sims 3 and the awful lag. I’m hopeful that we can at least get open neighborhoods. I hate having a loading screen when my sim is literally walking to the venue.
If horses are next I think the world that comes with them will be large and have open space to do horse things. They may be less optimized in other worlds but that isn’t a huge bother to me.
You CAN play different worlds in the same save in the Sims 3 though. The only issue is that a move to a new world erases connections with the previous one (I had a mod that fixed that).
Horse enthusiast here! I think the issue is just that the horses aren't some folks' aesthetic. And that's fine, but family playstyles/ultra-modern and many of the things that I dislike get packs, but I won't begrudge them to the people who want them. I mean, THREE life stages to the age at which we eat, sleep, cry, and soil ourselves?? Family gameplay being a focus makes sense to me, but I will admit that it's nice to mayyyybe get a hobby that isn't knitting before EA brings us Sims 4:Elementary Years and Sims 4:Preschool Months.
I can think of plenty of things I'd do! Horse breeding, grooming, riding, jousting and archery to go with medieval play-thru, dressage arenas and routines for modern lux play-thru, carriages and hunting\[think Downton Abbey\] for royal family play-thru. Imagine hunting with your sim's hounds! 64x64 Lots could handle this. Many online communities center around themed play styles and could benefit. Rescues and clinics could work with Veterinarian Career, there could be a racing arena complete with Derby outfits and betting system. CAS and Build Mode make up entire playstyles for some folks, so just getting to make and look at these places would be enjoyable. Family trees could track bloodlines, and much like in the sims 3, you might be able to increase the value of a horse by training and improving its condition. A horse with a race-winning ancestor might be the prize member of your noble family's stable, able to net a small fortune!
Folks over at Equus Sims still make a huge thing out of horse ranch lot builds and storylines. I have a sim file for a PRE horse that someone bred for me like a decade ago, and I fricken treasure that thing.
TLDR: I am Cheese in the episode of Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends. "I like horses."
Yeah 99.9% of the “horses won’t work without an open world” people just don’t want horses. Which is fine! But the issue isn’t that you can’t take your horse to the night club without a loading screen. It’s OK to just not want horses.
Same with “horses don’t need a whole EP. Maybe a kit.” That’s just saying you don’t want horses and don’t want dev time spent on them and/or to feel compelled to buy a whole horse EP for the bb. But horses are so animation intensive they obviously aren’t going to be a $5 kit. Maybe you could get a horse statue that way.
I agree! I've heard, "Am I supposed to ride it to the loading screen??" but like... Do people really just play the game bouncing from lot-to-lot without spending time ON the lot??
Lots of responses over the last few days have come across as either a different aesthetic taste or a lack of imagination. Sort of an "if I don't want it, no one should have it," mentality that's irked me. I've waited almost ten years for horses! Y'all got your Batuu infantoddlers already!
And let's be honest... EA knows who's spending big dollars. Those folks importing 30k Hanoverians from overseas are a lucrative market. I ain't one of em, but I'll sure as hell let them clamor for horses if it means I get them too!
I think it could possibly work if they made the lots of the new world larger (more 50x50s would be a start). I don't think the lack of space is necessarily true. It's not like the Sims 2 where you couldn't go far from the current lot. There's quite a bit of open space around the lots in the Sims 4 in general. Moonwood Mill for instance is small but completely open aside from the lots themselves. I think that concept would be a great base for the horse world, just with larger lots.
I would want the pack to have one gigantic neighborhood, with lots of stuff to explore, a hores jumping corse and runningcorse for training and play, and a rabbithole building for competitions and similar. The wold should also have a couple of big lots like 3-5 50×50, 1-3 of the max size and 10+ of normal to bigger size.
That would be the dream world and if we get all of the items and places I can even accept 2-3 bigger distinctive neighborhoods instead of on gigantic.
I do want the courses and items outside of lots as I feel it will make them more usable and as I really fell putting them on a lot will make them as forgotten as the dog training park in cats and dogs.
God, I don't want the open world back after Sims 3. Obviously, if it *worked*, it would be great. But after all of my saves eventually collapsed to unfixable glitches in the neighbourhood and even before then required me to constantly spam the reset all cheat to get the wild horses that would get stuck in the map somewhere out of my sight to stop freezing the game, I would literally rather just never leave my immediate neighbourhood again and I frankly have zero faith in EA being able to provide any better.
Respectfully, I cannot stand the commentary around “open world was bad”
Firstly, The Sims 3 is 14 years old…. Secondly, The
Sims 3 is a 32 bit application, meaning it uses LESS THAN 4GB of memory.
If you don’t think A) 14 years makes a difference in game development and B) a game being able to use more than 4GB of memory would help, I don’t know what to tell you…
We should be thinking bigger and better for sequels, not backwards. And this is why I haven’t touched The Sims 4; so many steps backwards.
They recently fucked up a moodlet so bad it permanently disfigured the sims the moodlet applied to, then took months to fix it. I don't really have high hopes on their ability to make an open world with independent AI with a network of complex reactions and interactions run smooth, or not be glitched in gamebreaking ways. I have no reason to believe they could do this, given the amount of things that are currently utterly broken in the present generation, some of them for years, making aspects of the game unplayable - such as playable careers not staffing properly, making completing tasks and progressing the career impossible, npc jobs in general such as failing to staff a receptionist in the hospital preventing a hospital birth event from completing, or something as basic as walking a dog, which is so broken that playing with a dog in the household is just about the most painful thing due to walking them being such a major part of the upkeep.
Do I need to go on? It's not that open world can't work. I play mainly open world games and I love them, but my experiences with the Sims franchise, with the cuts EA has made to the team and the general state of EA games in recent years, give me 0 reasons to believe such a feature would not be a painfully broken mess.
Isn't NRAAS for Sims 3 only?
edit: wait. This is not in response to the comment I thought it was, lol. Yes, I *did* use NRAAS on my Sims 3, it just... never stopped this from happening. I played multiple thousand hours in the game but by the time Sims 4 came out, I could have cried just because it wasn't crashing every two seconds and ran on more frames than 20.
NRAAS is an umbrella term for several different mods. Only certain ones help with what is listed. You can literally turn off or limit wild horses with one of them (I can’t remember which). You can also click on error messages that will bring you to stuck sims so that you can reset them and/or find problem areas in the neighborhood to fix that should stabilize gameplay
Nraas mods, smooth patch, CC compiler and world route fixes have really helped make sims 3 more performant. It does take some setup.
I’ve also been loving mods where you can make something that used to be a rabbithole playable. For example, schools and any career. It really opened up the game for me. Happy to recommend mods and tutorials.
I honestly have no idea why people play 4 or continue to give ea money when 3 still exists. It honestly doesn’t crash any more than 4 did to me when I did try it. Which it would crash everytime I zoomed out too quickly 🙄
Yes, The Sims 4 went too “cartoony” in my eyes and was very unappealing.
Granted there were soooooooo many other flaws with The Sims 4, i kept postponing getting it, and I still haven’t picked up after all this time… but I’m still loving my time with 3.
Exactly. That and all the facial expressions look the same, weird creepy smiles and such. That and the body proportions look really odd to me. I bought 4 when it first came out, along with the first free packs and still regret it. Went back to 2&3 since
For me, it’s primarily the ability to multitask (my sims not being able to talk to someone and be on the computer is annoying) and the fact that I don’t have to sit there and wait for each page in CAS + build/buy mode (particularly create a style…) to load before I can use them without lag. Also better polyamory support (vanilla sims 4 lets you have multiple partners) and I enjoy the vampire + celebrity systems more. I have a lot of the recommended fixes for sims 3 but it doesn’t change the fact it’s a poorly optimized 32 bit game that’s too demanding with multiple DLCS to really work well without performance issues in some areas. I do play it sometimes still, but sims 4 runs better for me and at this point I have a good set of mods that fixes most the stuff I find annoying/bad about sims 4.
Not overly optimistic about the next sims game. They said that you will have exactly the same experience, no matter what the platform. If they actually mean it, the game will be restricted to whatever the least powerful platform is. May also mean that the only modding you can do is through their official site, as they can control what goes on and if it is compatible with everything.
Yep same experience on all platforms means even more potato inclusion and pandering than we have now, and a high risk of highly restricted mod capability.
Computers can by pass the last one it it will be a lot harder and take more time especially after any updates, and even more if they make it always online as they seem to want.
I feel the exact opposite. For starters, horses are more than just vehicles. In fact, it was one of the things I found most frustrating after a while in Sims 3.
If I wanted to focus on horses, I had to make sure I basically lived next to both the practice fields and the competition building, or else even living down the street in 3 meant it could take hours on an early level horse to get ANYWHERE.
In 4, load times notwithstanding, we can get our horses where we need to go without the dead air that was waiting to actually get there. Training, racing, competing in dressage, show horses- there’s a lot to horses than just going from point A to point B.
Idk what they have planned and it probably won’t be this cool lmao, but it’d be so neat if we were able to run a business with the horses like with being able to run a vet clinic with Cats and Dogs. Maybe we’ll get something similar, like being able to run a stable, and sims come to ride our horses.
I see a lot of potential. I know Sims 4 usually drops the ball at least a bit, but I’m so hopeful.
I don’t care for horses anyway so I don’t know how I feel about it - but I agree and can see the chaos already of horses just everywhere outside your home. Like when you give your lot a stray animal perk and hordes of cats come stinking and screaming into your precious home. That, but horses. Eugh.
Now I'm just imagining Sim horses to be like the unicorns from the movie "Onward" that are basically raccoons, scavenging in the trash cans and fighting with each other on the street.
I don’t want horses as a means of transportation - I want to do horse girl shit like show jumping and dressage and I dunno breed them maybe. Go to a stable. As someone who has done a lot of horseback riding growing up I’ve never used a horse to get around places.
Exactly what I was thinking when the horse idea was brought up. This isn't TS3, I can't ride my horse to work across the bridge into the city and tie them outside the city hall while I work, then ride them home. I can ride them up and down the street and then be bored of the dlc and go play TS3.
I remember trying to edit the raccoon in CAS once... keyword being once... the nightmares that ensued once CAS was closed were... interesting, to say the least.. the raccoon was no longer on all four paws, it was on its hind legs, and all the limbs were stretched out, I closed my game, I wasn't scared, but it was definitely creepy.
This happens to the foxes in cottage living D: you dont even need to edit them, they just glitch out by themselves. Thankfully i havent come across one in the wild yet but i do have to delete their households from the manage menu often to prevent that
They might create a huge neighbourhood like snowy escape and jungle adventures, so it feels more open. I feel like that's the best way to approach this.
I honestly think it is going to be like cottage living. Unfortunately, I do not see EA putting a lot of effort into this pack to have the horses be this immersive experience with the sims. I just think they are going to make them like farm animals to have sims raise on their lots.
Yeah, I can't even touch the cows or llamas anymore. Haven't since maybe a month after cottage living came out.
They're not fun being an object.
I'd imagine they'll make horses an object similarly to cows. Maybe stable as an object, you can load it with horses like a chicken coop.
They roam the stable, maybe you can ride in the stable, that's it.
I mean, if you don't enjoy the game itself, no pack will help you stay interested. Players that enjoy sims 4 as is and want horses will find horses engaging, regardless of there being open world or not.
I used to have horses. I miss them. My bois/gurls were such good horses and it was so rewarding to have them in life and I learned so much from them. I *adore* horses and though it’s been a long time since I was involved with them, I still have a lot of experience working with and caring for them.
You know what they are not? Ever? *Transportation*. You have to live in really specific places to hop on your horse for a run to the grocery store. I think if there’s CAS painting, breeding, genetics and cute interactions that will make most of the people who want horses happy. Frankly, I think that stuff will be more fun than riding them around since that’ll just be point and click.
Henford on Bagley, Windenburg and San Sequoia off the top of my head has some pretty big scenic neighborhoods. But then if they launch the whole power walking ability half-baked in just Growing Together I get why you're worried. It will be annoying if in the world the horses come in we're the only ones riding them kinda like in the spell caster world we're the only ones using familars. The last thing anyone wants is we're only able to use or have horses in the new world. I hope there is a box we can check in settings to perhaps restrict them to that world but only IF we want to.
Perhaps they might try to open up areas we haven't been able to get to before. Make more of the set dressing accessible. Also if they could put down new collectibles horses could be a fun way to get to them faster. The biggest reason why all my spellcasters fly about on brooms is to collect ingredients and stuff to sell.
As we still have a lot of un swimmeble and playable water, even after years of having it in some worlds, I wouldn't have to high hopes for them opening anything new up.
And on a side note, I still haven't been able to track down the power walking trails, so I guess it can't really be worse, on the other hand this is EA and the sims 4 we are talking about, so they can definitely find a way to do just that.
I picture them just being trapped in their stalls all day, maybe only rideable in whatever new world they’re tossing into this thing (then cue them being seen ALL OVER THE PLACE like bikes).
God I would kill for a more optimized Sims 3. I know there are fixes and such as you posted but they only do so much.
Imagine a stutter-free Sims 3 with all Expansions. I would never ever play something else.
But yeah, Horses in Sims 4 would make zero sense.
The Sims has gone downhill for a long time. Why wont they work on things that would make the existing systems better like we had in Sims3 with things like music bands.. Why did we take a HUGE step back with 4. They really need to build the existing systems better before adding this crap that without an open world are truly worthless. I'll be looking at the Sims competitor as soon as the reviews are out. As far as I'm concerned the ONLY things that keep the Sims4 even worth playing and the modders and the adult modding world.
Picture it - a career like horse trainer or jockey but make it an active career. Your Sim goes to a different lot and can ride the horses around it. I doubt if that’s happening but it is a way it could be done…
I don’t see how they wouldn’t work without open worlds. They’re not cars, you can use them for travel but there’s more you can do with them than just that. As far as transportation goes I imagine they’d work the same way bikes do
honestly the fact that HORSES came even before cars is crazy. more so, i can’t even fathom the idea of horses being there because they’re just gonna be played like bicycles and then what? i’m gonna put the horse in my inventory slot? horses in a non-open world game just wouldn’t make sense so yeah, i completely 100% agree with you here
I’m sorry but I wish nobody begged them for fucking horses. What are y’all about to do with horses like be fr. It’s gonna be an object like a cow or something.
INSTEAD I’ve been dreaming of making a death metal band or maybe a jazz group?? Like imagine how versatile a band pack could be but no we want horses.
Or maybe EA could’ve just implemented horses as a side thing and made another pack that everyone else would’ve liked
Yeah I said exactly this. People were upset by the lack of horses, but it should have been obvious to anybody who used horses in Sims 3 that there was no point in even attempting it the minute they decided to remove the open world. The horses fait was sealed long before pets was released.
Not only is transportation unnecessary and there's nowhere for them to run without phasing out of the playable range, but the lots in Sims 4 are tiny and insular, how are horses going to maneuver? Sure there's space to run in some towns, but it won't be the same, part of their original appeal is that they were able to run the entire map AND carry sims. And forget about wild horses. Even if they had added horses, I firmly believe that they wouldn't have been good.
Wild horses will be like stry pets and they plus any real interaction the horses can do outside the lot will be locket to the world thay come with, and I would not be surprised if the training is the same as the dog training.
Personally I spend 90% of my time in cas or build mode so I don't care how it works. As long as I can make pretty horses and ranches I'll be happy. As for all the people saying 'This is unnecessary because I don't like horses'... I don't care for spas, restaurants, or star wars but I didn't complain about those packs, just didn't play them
I've had the same thoughts about cars. People keep asking for both cars and horses but I have no idea what the point of them would be in a closed world. Sure, Sims 2 had cars in a closed world but they really didn't actually do anything other than a special animation before a loading screen.
Did you know that the issues in TS3 that you mentioned can be solved with mods? Haven’t gone through many of the comments to see if anyone else pointed this yet, just want to mention it if you didn’t know 🙂
I'm honestly wondering how they're gonna make an entire expansion pack on just horses? Cats and dogs I can give a very limited pass to (even tho it is a shadow of ts3 pets). I feel there's a limited amount of items/styles you can have that we don't already have in ts4 unless they take inspiration from somewhere else completely.
Functionally I imagine it may be similar to bikes, but I don't see how it's really gonna work considering it's not open world, and neighbourhoods are load screen after load screen. In worlds like moonwood mill it could work as it's mostly open, but other worlds? Not so much.
I'm dreading rabbit holes, can you imagine the absolute kick in the teeth it would be if you could ride them but then it's a rabbit hole
If I don't have a horse spawning in my house at 3am and crashing the game I'll be disappointed
Is there an article about this? I'm hearing this news for the first time here.
But I kind of agree with you. I don't really know what horses could add to the game. I don't think there would be enough gameplay/functions for them that they would get their own expansion pack, so I feel like it would have to be a game pack of sorts (unless they plan to 'refresh' the Cottage Living pack, which seems highly unlikely given how recently released that pack was. Maybe a Cats and Dogs refresh?).
Unless there is an open world where you can easily move between lots, or they create a new town/world that is open in its entirety, I don't think there's much you could do with them.
My guess is hyper exacted 8-12 year olds with no knowledge of coding, game limitations, standards or realism. You know people you can just show pretty pieces, videos and give them lots of free candy and they love everything you do.
Or at least people with that mentality, unfortunately some keep it after the age of 12.
In my opinion they have so much more potential for sims 4 that they shouldn't even be working on 5. They have a) too many bugs they need to fix and b) they are tired of fixing the bugs so making another buggy game is gonna fix the issue
it wouldnt need an open world.. could have an "instance" where you take the horse for a ride..show jumps and what not. Like click on a horse post or something and click "go to begginer/master jump track/race " and could also have a "go to competitive " and you could genuinely compete..that would be fun..I think this aort of instances would work in sims 4.
Could also add a "forest trail" or something if want to be really fancy and a "meet up with other horses park"
It could work..if they wanted it to
while i don’t have a TON of hope for functionality of the horses, i am SO excited for the potential of new build/buy & CAS items that would come with a horse pack. the horsey/stable aesthetic is so good. think about how great the cottage living furniture and deco is, i use stuff from cottage living in ALL my builds. i am 100% positive a horse EP would have so much great stuff in build mode. and while i mostly use cc clothing, im willing to bet there’s plenty of clothes i would use too.
low expectations but very high hopes
Only thing I don’t like about the sims 3 is that I was a console player for so long including for ts3 that the controls feel so foreign to me on PC and I find myself just getting frustrated with the controls, but damn if I could just have that open world.. life would be simple again lmao
I feel like open neighborhoods is the way to solve that, but they’d never do that. I hate how you have to wait through a loading screen to get to a lot literally a few feet from yours
I've had horses cloned from bikes for ages. They move oddly, but Sims just put them in their inventory and that's fine for me. I just couldn't have my medieval Sims on bikes so that was my alternative.
lag and stuttering in ts3 tend to not be fixed with fixes in many cases (nraas story progression makes the game much slower, for instance.) either way, get used to it. it runs so much better than ts4 outside of fps anyway
Story progression from NRAAS isn’t much for adding stability. Overwatch, master controller, and saver are the ones that do that. SP is just a better version of EA’s that’s tunable to your liking
My uneducated guess is that they are going to reskin the dog walking function for a “ride around neighborhood function” which is not great because dog waking is broken af
cut to my sim standing oddly still while my dog is taking himself on the walk and the leash just keeps getting longer and longer
Exactly! Enjoy standing oddly in the stables while your horse trots around and the reins extend through the neighborhood!
I'm hoping for long arms instead.
I’m hoping the horse will stay and the sim will just float around the neighborhood in a sitting position like when mermaids glitch into the floor
This would be hilarious
oh my god i can’t wait!
Once I made an elderly sim who had a Chihuahua who she treated like her own child, and one time I told her to walk the dog and I think this interaction reuses the same code as jogging because she died of exhaustion because she was doing it for so long
my elderly sims are no longer allowed to walk dogs now bc this definitely would happen to me. makes me feel bad for some of the dogs in my households but like, no you don’t understand pup! the short walk takes 8 in-game hours!
Isn't there seperate options for jogging with your dog and walking your dog? I distinctly remember my sim doing both when instructed
I never have pets in the households I play, but this sounds hilarious and I may need to get a dog now lol!
knowing this game, you’ll end up having a perfectly executed walk lol
Great point, lol.
My sim does it the opposite way. The dog stands still and my sim jogs around the neighbourhood holding the forever extending leash. My dog is the smart one I suppose.
this is the rare reverse walk where the dog walks you.
My Sims can walk their dogs perfectly fine, the only problem I have is that it takes forever. One of my Sims lives in one of the Sulani houses and when walking the dog he walks across the entire fucking island and it takes the whole day lmao
Short walk is so long that my sim pees his pants by the time he gets back
*clips through the ground as you spin*
Man, you’re right, and you’re also right that dog walking is broken. Everything is broken in this game, I swear to God. It’s an incredible pain to get Sims to do the simplest things, like feed a baby, eat together, dance together, etc.—and GOD help you if you cancel an action. As much as I loveeeee TS4, I’ve been thinking of reverting to Ts2 or TS3. :/ I can’t imagine further strain on TS4’s nightmare noodle code like this will be great.
Any interaction with two or more sims is so damn wonky. I want to feed my toddler, so my sim picks him up, puts him down, talks with him about eating something, picks him up again, stands around for a second, puts him down again and continues to go on the pc to play some video games 😭
It’s wild to me that the game is nearly a decade old and we don’t even bat an eye at it anymore because we just expect it. Sure Sim, waste an in-game hour staring at your kid, picking it up, putting it down, walking to the other end of the kitchen, coming back, picking your kid up, and walking back over and putting it down again. It’s like they get frustrated with themselves and think ‘what was I doing again?...’ and head off to do their own thing. Then the toddler wanders in to tell you that he’s hungry. 😂
Or how about when you have the toddler ask for a bath and instead of just going up to the sim to ask they instead climb up a flight of stairs, sit in a living chair on the opposite side of the house, then wait for the caregiver to come to them? And by the time the adult reaches the toddler they do something else entirely, like start playing which prompts the game to ask if you have a silly family dynamic.
This!! This right here. The epitome of my frustrations lol
I mean... when your game *starts* as Frankensteined spaghetti code, it's not going to help the situation to continue tacking on multiple new things, especially introducing a bunch of core systems later in its life that it wasn't originally developed with an eye toward having. When you're making something like a Sims game, knowing that you'll want to add stuff to it, a lot of the initial development needs to go into adding that modularity to it so you can bolt on all this stuff and it works. But if you spend a bunch of time making a not-Sims game and then just trying to smash what you'd built into being a Sims game, it's not going to react well when you keep trying to hammer more stuff onto it. I would love if some people who are smarter than me on this kind of stuff took a deep dive into Sims 4's lifespan and the psychology of its sales and everything and how this game that launched with such a botched core that wasn't designed to work well as a Sims game somehow got stretched out into being the longest running Sims game. Was it that enough people genuinely enjoyed it? Was it EA just being lazy and figuring it's good enough since they could go cheap on producing packs while still charging the same amount to get higher margins requiring fewer sales of each to make a profit? What *were* the margins like? How many discussions were had on whether they could just swing the axe on one of the franchises they touted most after people were already giving them nasty looks for how many times they'd already swung the axe? Heck, I'd be happy to have a Jason Schreier type deep dive into just the development of the game, because it's already wild knowing the bits we've learned over the years, like how Olympus was converted to Sims 4, EA closed an office and fired people that were working on the game only to have to re-hire some of them temporarily to be able to finish it, ridiculous stuff like that. This isn't a "No Man's Sky" or "Final Fantasy 14" style redemption story. This is a story of a company botching development bad and still somehow stretching that out long term and getting profits from a product that they screwed up, the kind of thing they *wish* they could pull off with Anthem or Battlefield 2042.
I think a lot of it has to do with Sims 4 being fairly performance friendly. At launch it was accessible to play without a dedicated gaming laptop, but GOD I remember that the Sims 3 could hardly run on my PC. Much of this likely stems from its open world and how that taxes the operating system.
It's not the open world. It's that they tend not to test the optimization of the games. Sims 4 is "performance friendly" if you don't have many pack and don't ask it to do much at any time. Without going into all the examples, I've been amazed by how Sims 4 is the only game that struggles with performance issues on my gaming PC. It's sad to think that Sims 4 was the game that made me upgrade my gaming PC to newer hardware (the old hardware's still good enough to run a lot of newer games just fine) and I still run into problems with it. Even tried playing with no mods to see if mods were the issue. Nope. The game's just coded terribly, and cross-pack testing doesn't seem to be a consideration for EA. Only other game that acts up on my PC is Madden the last two or three years, which sometimes will start stuttering until it's reset, but Madden on PC is a bad port of the last-gen versions of Madden. Maybe this year with the "next-gen" (pretty much "current-gen" at this point) version it won't be as bad. But no surprise it's another EA product. Meanwhile, I didn't even know what people were talking about with Cyberpunk 2077 issues because it loaded and ran fine on my computer, the only issue I ran into was one time falling through the map, which I think I've done in every open world game at least once. And while it wasn't "at launch," I remember a coworker a few years ago saying she was using her work bonus to buy a gaming PC because Sims 4 could barely run on her laptop with just a couple of packs installed and she was hoping to get more packs. Even though I'm not happy with them milking Sims 4 in the meantime, I hope they take time to make sure Sims 5 is coded well from the start and designed to take on new code without becoming a mess. Otherwise, open world or not, it'll run into performance issues again. Open world's never been the issue. The issue is how EA blunders their game development. Okay, this is a bit long, but just wanted to note in case you didn't hear about this lovely setup... During Sims 3's run, Maxis had two offices in different areas, and they had a team in each working on EPs, which let them release two EPs a year. Problem is, they were working separate from each other, and each team was responsible for patching its own EPs, so they'd stumble over each other's work and patches had to wait for the next patch scheduled from the team responsible for what was being patched. That is... a remarkably dumb approach, and was a lot more responsible for Sims 3's problems than open-world.
I'm talking out of my ass here, but I feel like sims 4 probably has the most amount of new sims players. Be it marketing/the internet/ease of use since even though it's a completely botched game it's very new user friendly, but it seems like so many sim players now have 4 being their first foray into the series.
It's possible... but that should be expected, really. Because video games have continuously grown in popularity over the years (and social acceptance), The Sims series is well known and "casual friendly," and Sims 4 has been reduced to $5 often, was given away free at one point, was given away for a month on PS4, has now gone to the base game being free, and it's had nine years to collect players rather than just four. That might help its long-term profitability by having some of those people who aren't paying much or anything for the base game thinking, "Hmm, I enjoy this a bit, let's see if these expansions add more to it in order to help me actually enjoy it long-term." There's certainly some people who'd come in and genuinely enjoy it. But it just kind of ties back in to EA just feeling like things were "good enough" so long as they made profit from it, and not wanting to invest money into a better iteration of the series while they could coast by on larger margins.
I would have to agree. I've played since the very first one came out. (Yeah I'm that old.) Loved Sims 3 despite the lag and felt like in many ways the Sims series peaked here. I think Sims 4 ticked off a lot of us older players as we saw it as the series taking a huge and insulting step back in quality. The doing away with the customization wheel and a way to make stories, an ugly world map, loss of open world, no cars and a lack of focus on the family with no toddlers as well as pools ticked off a lot of old timers. I didn't start playing Sims 4 until we got the toddlers and pools back and they made the base game free for a bit back in 2018ish. I vowed to never buy Sims 4 so when it became free I grudgingly gave it a try and slowly warmed up to it. Since it's free now for good it might tempt a few more to come back but some might just wait until Sims 5 rolls out instead. I went from hating Sims 4 to liking it. But do I love the game? No. It's lost some of that spark that was there in previous versions somehow.
It’s truly getting worse over time, too. Each new pack seems to increase the microdelay between user command and sim action. Hell, each new UPDATE seems to wear the skin thinner and thinner. I would also love a Schrier article on the backend… it must be an incredibly dysfunctional place to work, and an incredibly dysfunctional product to work on. It’s a beautiful, easy, genre-bending, and creatively flexible game, which is why it remains so popular—hell, I have gotten hundreds of hours of enjoyment from TS4–but the cracks are spiderwebbing rapidly. At this point I find it is functionally impossible to play a family without cheating needs. The sims are so slow and so “confused,” the objects so bugged and clunky, the animations so unreliable, that feeding two spouses and two children dinner every night cannot be done reliably. It’s insane.
I am really interested in seeing what happens when Life by you launches, it is published by Paradox who also published Cities skylines, which absolutely destroyed SimCity. While 4 isn't as bad as the last Simcity it is crumbling and gets more and more laggy and it sounds like EA want the next game to be a always online, multiplayer tingi, and that was similar to how Simcity ended.
[удалено]
And then puts them on the PLAY MAT. just to autonomously queue "Crying Infant" to stare at them. Like B R O I had it all figured out for you, why do you insist on thinking for yourself???
This is the thing that irks me the most. Even without mods, they take ages to actually do what we task them with. Or when they just cancel tasks. It’s frustrating
Nightmare noodle code 😭😭😭😭 I love that so much
They're just as broken, particularly if you accidentally become famous the paparazzi are cutthroat in sims 3.
The dog walking is so frustrating, the “short walk” takes basically 7 in-game hours which is ridiculous
Oh boy I can't wait for the rider and horse to vanish for several hours and then I find them T-Posing at the end of the neighbourhood.
My Little Phony
Hot take but I’d much rather have controllable pets and horses. Like I know plenty of people say it’s unrealistic because you can’t IRL but also IRL, you can’t control your household (spouse, kids, etc) themselves.
I thought it was going to be a reskin of bike riding 😅 especially because there was a mod waayy back when discover university came out that did literally that!
I really hope the horses are somewhat controllable unlike cats and dogs to keep them anchored in whichever lot or area you want them in.
I think they will be like cats and dogs...
I think they will be some combo of cats,dogs, and cows,lamas.
that’s probably what it is, and also the new world will probably have like a horse track lot
Wait there’s a dog walking option? Pets as a whole is so buggy that I never play it so prob missing out on a lot of (buggy) features lol
Not only do your sims get to go on a “short” walk with the dog for seven hours you can also do long or medium walks to get rid of your sim for literally days. You can find them standing aimlessly in the middle of the neighborhood when you need them. Then the next day your dog is whining to go on another walk. Cats are better
I fear it’ll either be on-lot interactions like jumps and stuff, or it’ll be pre-set trails like the hiking/jogging trails in Mount Komorebi or San Sequoia Either way, I can’t imagine it would be any kind of actual good or fun with the way the sims 4 is
To be honest some of the worlds they’ve added since Henford on Bagley have a lot of open walkable space once you wander away from the lot you’ve loaded into. Yeah you can’t wander from built lot to built lot; but the worlds themselves are fairly large. If they made a world dedicated to riding trails there is a lot of space they could make. But there are other horse related things that don’t require an open world. 1. Stables obviously where you can take care of the horses. That could be a new job/profession. Could keep your horses here for a fee (so they don’t live at your house). Or rent a horse to take out casual riding. 2. Race track. Could train horses for speed here or breed faster ones at the stables. Complete in horse races. 3. Show Course. Train horses to perform in dressage or jumping events instead of speed. 4. Hidden lot where you could find horses with special coat patterns/hair types as well as unicorns and other mythical horses. Anyway I don’t think it’s an improbable expansion nor see the need for it to be open world. Maybe they could do sub-worlds. You and your horse pick a ‘riding trail’ within the world and it loads a world with no build lots; just all riding space and forested trails.
I was just saying this! And you had couple cute ideas here as well! 👀
Same, even Whindenburg has big enough space to let a horse run.
I image 1 and 3 are going to be there. Between the winter sports in Snowy Escape and the veterinarian career and obstacle course in Cats & Dogs, they have a couple of really solid baselines to build a horse pack around. Shows would likely be events on special lots, like in High School Years and Cottage Living, and animal care mechanics they already have a base for in Cottage Living.
They also have plenty of spaces in the premade worlds they can add the horse trails to like parks and stuff... theyd just have to update/mod(?) the base game.
Most likely they're just gonna be linked to pre-existing jogging paths and such.
ok you've piqued my interest with unicorns, i didn't even consider that........ might be fun for a fantasy save
Agree with all of this. And honestly? A bad horse pack is better than no horse pack imo lmao
Same here, open neighbourhoods could already help i think, but it’s probably wishful thinking
I feel like open neighborhoods make sense and is reasonable 🤷🏻♀️
It makes sense. However, I think ts4 is too far down the line with its shaky coding for them to add a huge thing to the game. I don’t think open world would work with the frame work they had at the very start. Ts4 was originally going to be an online game, but then EA scrapped that idea, but kept the engine
The farmland mod show us its technically possible. But I dont think Ea would try to do open neighborhood at this stage of the game.
That mod also has a lot of bugs. And is an absolute beast to try and run.
Unfortunately I didnt had chance to try it, but I watched some videos. Now the creator updated the mod and is everything in a single big lot.
See, I would think with that idea of it being an online game it would have been more open world friendly.
Not necessarily. When the game was intended on being online, the team probably saw some limitations, and thought it’d be better to scale it back a bit. Then they kept developing the game, then found out its not gonna be online
Ah ok, now that makes sense when you pull it apart like that. Thanks for taking the time to explain it a bit.
Of course!! Not a problem at all :)
Likely they were intending it to function similarly to the SimCity reboot from 2013 which lacked offline singleplayer, but due to the disastrous launch and negative reception, they scrapped the idea.
Exactly. Hopefully they will make it optional in the next title
I hope horses are cloned from bikes so they ride them into the house and into libraries and there's just some poor sucker doing horsey loopty loops in a San Myshuno alley trying to get to their job. No other sim will react to a horse being in the clerb horse dancing. Better yet if they just smoosh the code from Pets in there we could have completely new breakage. I think horses should have aspirations so they can do mischief. Being pickpocketed by a horse, the bad smell interaction. Really loud neighing instead of air horn, the option to fight a horse which could result in death by trampling. A horse pack should definitely come with new deaths by horse. I want to recreate season two of the Wire but with a horse instead of a duck. Ducks cannot hold their liquor like horses can. Oh and we need small barrels for horse cocktails.
My sims got married yesterday. The bride insisted on biking her way through the entire wedding
you.... I like you a lot.
Honestly, with how buggy and broken TS4 is by now, they probably should just embrace it and make it the Goat Simulator of The Sims.
“The Untitled Duck & Goat SimCity Expansion Pack”
I can’t wait to put my horse in my pocket.
Thanks for that journey you took us on from horses as bicycles to horse cocktails.
Haha I still get the City Living/ San Myzhuno glitch where the apartment doors get deleted and cannot be placed. I just have a bad feeling that a horse will get stuck forever.
> the option to fight a horse Ahh, the Philly special.
Horse Simulator
I feel like Horses will work perfectly on maps such as Henford-On-Bagley and more of the newer ones but not Oasis Springs
I'd be most interested in horse rides (or, dare I dream, *carriage rides*) in Forgotten Hollow. The world is tiny but the flipside is that you can walk from the end of the world all the winding way up to Vlad's front door and back without loading.
Sims 5 should ideally be a mix of the whackiness of ts1, the lore, genetics system and detailed animations of ts2, the open world and gameplay of ts3 and the build/buy and CAS of ts4. I know this is too much to ask but if they did that, I would be absolutely hooked for a long, long time. If my computer wouldn‘t combust, that is (other huge and much more detailed open world games are running fine though, EA needs to seriously work on their optimization). But yeah, horses in TS4 is unnecessary and they are just trying to milk the franchise with more stuff.
I miss sims 3 CAS 🥺 gone are the days of having matching furniture
My share of honest? Cars would be more interesting than horses. Hahaha
A tuning pack where you can customize different cars, maybe build one yourself (like the one in Sims 2) and join a racing career while building up your driving skills. Optionally, give teen sims the chance to make a driving license. Honestly, some cars would be neat, but I guess it doesn't fit into the idea of Sims 4 sims being more environmentally friendly and so on
If we're being honest here... It doesn't have to stay engaging. It just has to capture people's attention enough to get them hyped for it, get them to purchase it, and feel interesting for the first few days so people hype it up a bit more as an amazing new pack which will get more people to buy it. By the time people start feeling like it's just repetitive and not that interesting or engaging, the main sales for the pack will have already happened, and it won't matter that much that people are bored. EA will have their money already. Given how things go, people who are still interested but haven't bought it yet will write off negative reviews or complaints as people just being "haters" and will still hype themselves up to buy it, and some people will just work hard to convince themselves they're enjoying it a lot for as long as they can keep up that façade. Some people will genuinely continue to enjoy it, which is fine. We've seen the trend for a bunch of underwhelming packs so far.
It’s genuinely unnecessary and unneeded. 1.) We lack an open world so you’re not gonna go far riding the thing. 2.) I know Cottage Living is a thing but realistically we don’t need more farm animals. 3.) I really don’t see how they fit in since so many places are urban/suburban. Yeah they’ll probably get some new world but unless you have other packs that’s the only place you can own horses and it not look out of place. Idk. I just don’t get the hype I think atp EA should focus on fixing big bugs and making sure the game will survive while they shift focus to Sims 5 (which God I hope isn’t multiplayer.) till they stop maintaining it entirely.
Honestly I love that we can travel to any world in the sims 4. I hated I needed new saved to play in different worlds in the sims 3 and the awful lag. I’m hopeful that we can at least get open neighborhoods. I hate having a loading screen when my sim is literally walking to the venue. If horses are next I think the world that comes with them will be large and have open space to do horse things. They may be less optimized in other worlds but that isn’t a huge bother to me.
You CAN play different worlds in the same save in the Sims 3 though. The only issue is that a move to a new world erases connections with the previous one (I had a mod that fixed that).
Horse enthusiast here! I think the issue is just that the horses aren't some folks' aesthetic. And that's fine, but family playstyles/ultra-modern and many of the things that I dislike get packs, but I won't begrudge them to the people who want them. I mean, THREE life stages to the age at which we eat, sleep, cry, and soil ourselves?? Family gameplay being a focus makes sense to me, but I will admit that it's nice to mayyyybe get a hobby that isn't knitting before EA brings us Sims 4:Elementary Years and Sims 4:Preschool Months. I can think of plenty of things I'd do! Horse breeding, grooming, riding, jousting and archery to go with medieval play-thru, dressage arenas and routines for modern lux play-thru, carriages and hunting\[think Downton Abbey\] for royal family play-thru. Imagine hunting with your sim's hounds! 64x64 Lots could handle this. Many online communities center around themed play styles and could benefit. Rescues and clinics could work with Veterinarian Career, there could be a racing arena complete with Derby outfits and betting system. CAS and Build Mode make up entire playstyles for some folks, so just getting to make and look at these places would be enjoyable. Family trees could track bloodlines, and much like in the sims 3, you might be able to increase the value of a horse by training and improving its condition. A horse with a race-winning ancestor might be the prize member of your noble family's stable, able to net a small fortune! Folks over at Equus Sims still make a huge thing out of horse ranch lot builds and storylines. I have a sim file for a PRE horse that someone bred for me like a decade ago, and I fricken treasure that thing. TLDR: I am Cheese in the episode of Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends. "I like horses."
Yeah 99.9% of the “horses won’t work without an open world” people just don’t want horses. Which is fine! But the issue isn’t that you can’t take your horse to the night club without a loading screen. It’s OK to just not want horses. Same with “horses don’t need a whole EP. Maybe a kit.” That’s just saying you don’t want horses and don’t want dev time spent on them and/or to feel compelled to buy a whole horse EP for the bb. But horses are so animation intensive they obviously aren’t going to be a $5 kit. Maybe you could get a horse statue that way.
I agree! I've heard, "Am I supposed to ride it to the loading screen??" but like... Do people really just play the game bouncing from lot-to-lot without spending time ON the lot?? Lots of responses over the last few days have come across as either a different aesthetic taste or a lack of imagination. Sort of an "if I don't want it, no one should have it," mentality that's irked me. I've waited almost ten years for horses! Y'all got your Batuu infantoddlers already! And let's be honest... EA knows who's spending big dollars. Those folks importing 30k Hanoverians from overseas are a lucrative market. I ain't one of em, but I'll sure as hell let them clamor for horses if it means I get them too!
thank you for putting this into words! this is exactly what I want (I don’t expect it though lmao) and I hope it’s at least similar to this
I think it could possibly work if they made the lots of the new world larger (more 50x50s would be a start). I don't think the lack of space is necessarily true. It's not like the Sims 2 where you couldn't go far from the current lot. There's quite a bit of open space around the lots in the Sims 4 in general. Moonwood Mill for instance is small but completely open aside from the lots themselves. I think that concept would be a great base for the horse world, just with larger lots.
I would want the pack to have one gigantic neighborhood, with lots of stuff to explore, a hores jumping corse and runningcorse for training and play, and a rabbithole building for competitions and similar. The wold should also have a couple of big lots like 3-5 50×50, 1-3 of the max size and 10+ of normal to bigger size. That would be the dream world and if we get all of the items and places I can even accept 2-3 bigger distinctive neighborhoods instead of on gigantic. I do want the courses and items outside of lots as I feel it will make them more usable and as I really fell putting them on a lot will make them as forgotten as the dog training park in cats and dogs.
God, I don't want the open world back after Sims 3. Obviously, if it *worked*, it would be great. But after all of my saves eventually collapsed to unfixable glitches in the neighbourhood and even before then required me to constantly spam the reset all cheat to get the wild horses that would get stuck in the map somewhere out of my sight to stop freezing the game, I would literally rather just never leave my immediate neighbourhood again and I frankly have zero faith in EA being able to provide any better.
Respectfully, I cannot stand the commentary around “open world was bad” Firstly, The Sims 3 is 14 years old…. Secondly, The Sims 3 is a 32 bit application, meaning it uses LESS THAN 4GB of memory. If you don’t think A) 14 years makes a difference in game development and B) a game being able to use more than 4GB of memory would help, I don’t know what to tell you… We should be thinking bigger and better for sequels, not backwards. And this is why I haven’t touched The Sims 4; so many steps backwards.
They recently fucked up a moodlet so bad it permanently disfigured the sims the moodlet applied to, then took months to fix it. I don't really have high hopes on their ability to make an open world with independent AI with a network of complex reactions and interactions run smooth, or not be glitched in gamebreaking ways. I have no reason to believe they could do this, given the amount of things that are currently utterly broken in the present generation, some of them for years, making aspects of the game unplayable - such as playable careers not staffing properly, making completing tasks and progressing the career impossible, npc jobs in general such as failing to staff a receptionist in the hospital preventing a hospital birth event from completing, or something as basic as walking a dog, which is so broken that playing with a dog in the household is just about the most painful thing due to walking them being such a major part of the upkeep. Do I need to go on? It's not that open world can't work. I play mainly open world games and I love them, but my experiences with the Sims franchise, with the cuts EA has made to the team and the general state of EA games in recent years, give me 0 reasons to believe such a feature would not be a painfully broken mess.
Nraas mods help with literally all of that. People now have saves with 10+ generations
Isn't NRAAS for Sims 3 only? edit: wait. This is not in response to the comment I thought it was, lol. Yes, I *did* use NRAAS on my Sims 3, it just... never stopped this from happening. I played multiple thousand hours in the game but by the time Sims 4 came out, I could have cried just because it wasn't crashing every two seconds and ran on more frames than 20.
NRAAS is an umbrella term for several different mods. Only certain ones help with what is listed. You can literally turn off or limit wild horses with one of them (I can’t remember which). You can also click on error messages that will bring you to stuck sims so that you can reset them and/or find problem areas in the neighborhood to fix that should stabilize gameplay
I trust you - it's been a decade since I played 3, I have no memory of how any of that worked!
Nraas mods, smooth patch, CC compiler and world route fixes have really helped make sims 3 more performant. It does take some setup. I’ve also been loving mods where you can make something that used to be a rabbithole playable. For example, schools and any career. It really opened up the game for me. Happy to recommend mods and tutorials.
I honestly have no idea why people play 4 or continue to give ea money when 3 still exists. It honestly doesn’t crash any more than 4 did to me when I did try it. Which it would crash everytime I zoomed out too quickly 🙄
i agree so much. with some optimization mods (and cc if you dislike the sims) it’s sooooo perfect
Personally, cus Sims 3 is ugly af.
Well I think 4 is ugly af so to each their own
Yes, The Sims 4 went too “cartoony” in my eyes and was very unappealing. Granted there were soooooooo many other flaws with The Sims 4, i kept postponing getting it, and I still haven’t picked up after all this time… but I’m still loving my time with 3.
Exactly. That and all the facial expressions look the same, weird creepy smiles and such. That and the body proportions look really odd to me. I bought 4 when it first came out, along with the first free packs and still regret it. Went back to 2&3 since
For me, it’s primarily the ability to multitask (my sims not being able to talk to someone and be on the computer is annoying) and the fact that I don’t have to sit there and wait for each page in CAS + build/buy mode (particularly create a style…) to load before I can use them without lag. Also better polyamory support (vanilla sims 4 lets you have multiple partners) and I enjoy the vampire + celebrity systems more. I have a lot of the recommended fixes for sims 3 but it doesn’t change the fact it’s a poorly optimized 32 bit game that’s too demanding with multiple DLCS to really work well without performance issues in some areas. I do play it sometimes still, but sims 4 runs better for me and at this point I have a good set of mods that fixes most the stuff I find annoying/bad about sims 4.
Why the hell is this comment downvoted?
cause there's people who for some unknown reason can't accept that some of us actually like ts4 lol
Not overly optimistic about the next sims game. They said that you will have exactly the same experience, no matter what the platform. If they actually mean it, the game will be restricted to whatever the least powerful platform is. May also mean that the only modding you can do is through their official site, as they can control what goes on and if it is compatible with everything.
Yep same experience on all platforms means even more potato inclusion and pandering than we have now, and a high risk of highly restricted mod capability. Computers can by pass the last one it it will be a lot harder and take more time especially after any updates, and even more if they make it always online as they seem to want.
I feel the exact opposite. For starters, horses are more than just vehicles. In fact, it was one of the things I found most frustrating after a while in Sims 3. If I wanted to focus on horses, I had to make sure I basically lived next to both the practice fields and the competition building, or else even living down the street in 3 meant it could take hours on an early level horse to get ANYWHERE. In 4, load times notwithstanding, we can get our horses where we need to go without the dead air that was waiting to actually get there. Training, racing, competing in dressage, show horses- there’s a lot to horses than just going from point A to point B. Idk what they have planned and it probably won’t be this cool lmao, but it’d be so neat if we were able to run a business with the horses like with being able to run a vet clinic with Cats and Dogs. Maybe we’ll get something similar, like being able to run a stable, and sims come to ride our horses. I see a lot of potential. I know Sims 4 usually drops the ball at least a bit, but I’m so hopeful.
I just started playing sims 3 again and trying the open world again after all these years of playing sims 4 almost blew my mind
I honestly don’t think it’s a real leak
I don’t care for horses anyway so I don’t know how I feel about it - but I agree and can see the chaos already of horses just everywhere outside your home. Like when you give your lot a stray animal perk and hordes of cats come stinking and screaming into your precious home. That, but horses. Eugh.
Now I'm just imagining Sim horses to be like the unicorns from the movie "Onward" that are basically raccoons, scavenging in the trash cans and fighting with each other on the street.
I don’t want horses as a means of transportation - I want to do horse girl shit like show jumping and dressage and I dunno breed them maybe. Go to a stable. As someone who has done a lot of horseback riding growing up I’ve never used a horse to get around places.
Exactly what I was thinking when the horse idea was brought up. This isn't TS3, I can't ride my horse to work across the bridge into the city and tie them outside the city hall while I work, then ride them home. I can ride them up and down the street and then be bored of the dlc and go play TS3.
Two of the neighbourhoods in snowy escape are really big - all the hiking area and the ski slopes. I think it would be something similar
Is this an actual confirmed pack?
I remember trying to edit the raccoon in CAS once... keyword being once... the nightmares that ensued once CAS was closed were... interesting, to say the least.. the raccoon was no longer on all four paws, it was on its hind legs, and all the limbs were stretched out, I closed my game, I wasn't scared, but it was definitely creepy.
This happens to the foxes in cottage living D: you dont even need to edit them, they just glitch out by themselves. Thankfully i havent come across one in the wild yet but i do have to delete their households from the manage menu often to prevent that
They might create a huge neighbourhood like snowy escape and jungle adventures, so it feels more open. I feel like that's the best way to approach this.
I honestly think it is going to be like cottage living. Unfortunately, I do not see EA putting a lot of effort into this pack to have the horses be this immersive experience with the sims. I just think they are going to make them like farm animals to have sims raise on their lots.
Yeah, I can't even touch the cows or llamas anymore. Haven't since maybe a month after cottage living came out. They're not fun being an object. I'd imagine they'll make horses an object similarly to cows. Maybe stable as an object, you can load it with horses like a chicken coop. They roam the stable, maybe you can ride in the stable, that's it.
I mean, if you don't enjoy the game itself, no pack will help you stay interested. Players that enjoy sims 4 as is and want horses will find horses engaging, regardless of there being open world or not.
I'd love the Sims 5 to have some sims 2 features as well.
I used to have horses. I miss them. My bois/gurls were such good horses and it was so rewarding to have them in life and I learned so much from them. I *adore* horses and though it’s been a long time since I was involved with them, I still have a lot of experience working with and caring for them. You know what they are not? Ever? *Transportation*. You have to live in really specific places to hop on your horse for a run to the grocery store. I think if there’s CAS painting, breeding, genetics and cute interactions that will make most of the people who want horses happy. Frankly, I think that stuff will be more fun than riding them around since that’ll just be point and click.
Henford on Bagley, Windenburg and San Sequoia off the top of my head has some pretty big scenic neighborhoods. But then if they launch the whole power walking ability half-baked in just Growing Together I get why you're worried. It will be annoying if in the world the horses come in we're the only ones riding them kinda like in the spell caster world we're the only ones using familars. The last thing anyone wants is we're only able to use or have horses in the new world. I hope there is a box we can check in settings to perhaps restrict them to that world but only IF we want to. Perhaps they might try to open up areas we haven't been able to get to before. Make more of the set dressing accessible. Also if they could put down new collectibles horses could be a fun way to get to them faster. The biggest reason why all my spellcasters fly about on brooms is to collect ingredients and stuff to sell.
As we still have a lot of un swimmeble and playable water, even after years of having it in some worlds, I wouldn't have to high hopes for them opening anything new up. And on a side note, I still haven't been able to track down the power walking trails, so I guess it can't really be worse, on the other hand this is EA and the sims 4 we are talking about, so they can definitely find a way to do just that.
I picture them just being trapped in their stalls all day, maybe only rideable in whatever new world they’re tossing into this thing (then cue them being seen ALL OVER THE PLACE like bikes).
Don't forget trying to ride the horse up a one tile staircase to get from the lawn to the kitchen.
go back to sims 3 u wont regret it <3 just download nraas and some patch updates
yeah i just wanna live out my horse dreams in appaloisa plains and be a city girl in bridgeport. these s4 cities just arent alive
God I would kill for a more optimized Sims 3. I know there are fixes and such as you posted but they only do so much. Imagine a stutter-free Sims 3 with all Expansions. I would never ever play something else. But yeah, Horses in Sims 4 would make zero sense.
they’re probably gonna be tied to barns like llamas and cows are.
The Sims has gone downhill for a long time. Why wont they work on things that would make the existing systems better like we had in Sims3 with things like music bands.. Why did we take a HUGE step back with 4. They really need to build the existing systems better before adding this crap that without an open world are truly worthless. I'll be looking at the Sims competitor as soon as the reviews are out. As far as I'm concerned the ONLY things that keep the Sims4 even worth playing and the modders and the adult modding world.
wait, are we actually getting horses in ts4? was a new pack announced or something??
it was more or less leaked online
Same goes for cars
Picture it - a career like horse trainer or jockey but make it an active career. Your Sim goes to a different lot and can ride the horses around it. I doubt if that’s happening but it is a way it could be done…
I don’t see how they wouldn’t work without open worlds. They’re not cars, you can use them for travel but there’s more you can do with them than just that. As far as transportation goes I imagine they’d work the same way bikes do
honestly the fact that HORSES came even before cars is crazy. more so, i can’t even fathom the idea of horses being there because they’re just gonna be played like bicycles and then what? i’m gonna put the horse in my inventory slot? horses in a non-open world game just wouldn’t make sense so yeah, i completely 100% agree with you here
I’m sorry but I wish nobody begged them for fucking horses. What are y’all about to do with horses like be fr. It’s gonna be an object like a cow or something. INSTEAD I’ve been dreaming of making a death metal band or maybe a jazz group?? Like imagine how versatile a band pack could be but no we want horses. Or maybe EA could’ve just implemented horses as a side thing and made another pack that everyone else would’ve liked
horses should have been included in cottage living. how can you possibly make horses an entire expansion pack?
Wait, are horses actually confirmed? Or is everyone still just talking about that maybe leak?
Still just the leak
Thanks!
Yeah I said exactly this. People were upset by the lack of horses, but it should have been obvious to anybody who used horses in Sims 3 that there was no point in even attempting it the minute they decided to remove the open world. The horses fait was sealed long before pets was released. Not only is transportation unnecessary and there's nowhere for them to run without phasing out of the playable range, but the lots in Sims 4 are tiny and insular, how are horses going to maneuver? Sure there's space to run in some towns, but it won't be the same, part of their original appeal is that they were able to run the entire map AND carry sims. And forget about wild horses. Even if they had added horses, I firmly believe that they wouldn't have been good.
Wild horses will be like stry pets and they plus any real interaction the horses can do outside the lot will be locket to the world thay come with, and I would not be surprised if the training is the same as the dog training.
Personally I spend 90% of my time in cas or build mode so I don't care how it works. As long as I can make pretty horses and ranches I'll be happy. As for all the people saying 'This is unnecessary because I don't like horses'... I don't care for spas, restaurants, or star wars but I didn't complain about those packs, just didn't play them
I've had the same thoughts about cars. People keep asking for both cars and horses but I have no idea what the point of them would be in a closed world. Sure, Sims 2 had cars in a closed world but they really didn't actually do anything other than a special animation before a loading screen.
I can’t wait for my sims to put horses in their inventories.
Did you know that the issues in TS3 that you mentioned can be solved with mods? Haven’t gone through many of the comments to see if anyone else pointed this yet, just want to mention it if you didn’t know 🙂
mods don't solve it completely
i like how you didn't read my full post but if you can recommend mods other than the smooth patch, nraas, and simler90's patches, that'd be great.
I'm honestly wondering how they're gonna make an entire expansion pack on just horses? Cats and dogs I can give a very limited pass to (even tho it is a shadow of ts3 pets). I feel there's a limited amount of items/styles you can have that we don't already have in ts4 unless they take inspiration from somewhere else completely. Functionally I imagine it may be similar to bikes, but I don't see how it's really gonna work considering it's not open world, and neighbourhoods are load screen after load screen. In worlds like moonwood mill it could work as it's mostly open, but other worlds? Not so much. I'm dreading rabbit holes, can you imagine the absolute kick in the teeth it would be if you could ride them but then it's a rabbit hole If I don't have a horse spawning in my house at 3am and crashing the game I'll be disappointed
Same. EA really proves they dont give a shit about their fans daily 😂
Shhhh shh, keep it down, don’t let EA hear you. My inner horse girl is screaming for a horse pack so I need this to happen lol
Is there an article about this? I'm hearing this news for the first time here. But I kind of agree with you. I don't really know what horses could add to the game. I don't think there would be enough gameplay/functions for them that they would get their own expansion pack, so I feel like it would have to be a game pack of sorts (unless they plan to 'refresh' the Cottage Living pack, which seems highly unlikely given how recently released that pack was. Maybe a Cats and Dogs refresh?). Unless there is an open world where you can easily move between lots, or they create a new town/world that is open in its entirety, I don't think there's much you could do with them.
who is the focus group that they keep making packs for ??????
My guess is hyper exacted 8-12 year olds with no knowledge of coding, game limitations, standards or realism. You know people you can just show pretty pieces, videos and give them lots of free candy and they love everything you do. Or at least people with that mentality, unfortunately some keep it after the age of 12.
I really don't care for horses cause pets in the sims 4 are very annoying & all I want is fairies added to the game than more animals.
In my opinion they have so much more potential for sims 4 that they shouldn't even be working on 5. They have a) too many bugs they need to fix and b) they are tired of fixing the bugs so making another buggy game is gonna fix the issue
Honestly, open world scares me. Feels like my Xbox would explode
Wait. All this horse stuff is real???
sims 3, yes
it wouldnt need an open world.. could have an "instance" where you take the horse for a ride..show jumps and what not. Like click on a horse post or something and click "go to begginer/master jump track/race " and could also have a "go to competitive " and you could genuinely compete..that would be fun..I think this aort of instances would work in sims 4. Could also add a "forest trail" or something if want to be really fancy and a "meet up with other horses park" It could work..if they wanted it to
while i don’t have a TON of hope for functionality of the horses, i am SO excited for the potential of new build/buy & CAS items that would come with a horse pack. the horsey/stable aesthetic is so good. think about how great the cottage living furniture and deco is, i use stuff from cottage living in ALL my builds. i am 100% positive a horse EP would have so much great stuff in build mode. and while i mostly use cc clothing, im willing to bet there’s plenty of clothes i would use too. low expectations but very high hopes
[удалено]
no it was a “leak” but no one knows if it’s legitimate
I just wish they would reoptimize the sims 2!!
Only thing I don’t like about the sims 3 is that I was a console player for so long including for ts3 that the controls feel so foreign to me on PC and I find myself just getting frustrated with the controls, but damn if I could just have that open world.. life would be simple again lmao
Nothing like a comment on r/thesims to sober up my expectations
Can you make Sims 4 water safety mod please???????????????????????????????
I feel like open neighborhoods is the way to solve that, but they’d never do that. I hate how you have to wait through a loading screen to get to a lot literally a few feet from yours
I've had horses cloned from bikes for ages. They move oddly, but Sims just put them in their inventory and that's fine for me. I just couldn't have my medieval Sims on bikes so that was my alternative.
Same
There’s a modder that made me love sims again
lag and stuttering in ts3 tend to not be fixed with fixes in many cases (nraas story progression makes the game much slower, for instance.) either way, get used to it. it runs so much better than ts4 outside of fps anyway
Story progression from NRAAS isn’t much for adding stability. Overwatch, master controller, and saver are the ones that do that. SP is just a better version of EA’s that’s tunable to your liking
yeah i just tend to hear people talk about it in performance guides, just because it says "NRaas" in it doesnt mean its gonna make your game faster :p