

“A pity that loading times are necessary, e. g. when you enter bigger areas/lots like a museum. This could be especially tiresome for players who like wandering aimlessly through town. If loading takes too long for your taste, you’d better consider whether you really want to visit the museum - or if you’d rather continue your stroll around town.” —ComputerBild, Translated by Heldin90, Mod The Sims

Loading TIMES are back according to the newest ComputerBild.de. preview. With each new article we’re getting a small glimpse of how The Sims 4 neighborhoods will work. Yesterday we read about them being divided up into five districts and now today we learn about the loading times.

Heldin90 at Mod The Sims was generous enough to translate the full article for us. If anything contained in the article is wrong and needs to be corrected I’ll be sure to update and keep you informed.

The Sims 4: Trust your guts

Go ahead and rent a moving van: In a few months, you will move into a new home. Welcome to The Sims 4!





[Pancake Bob caption: ‘Get me out of here, mate!’ – Even during the best meal of the day, breakfast, your partner can still make your life hell.]



Nobody likes everyday life. Everyday life is the rat race; it’s Groundhog Day, always on repeat; it’s eternal boredom that eats you up inside. It’s just no good. Two kids, a town house, flowerbeds and a dachshund, and next door, your nice neighbours are having a barbecue – yes, that’s the glamour of normal life. On the screen, however, everyday life is a five-star menu. Taking out the trash is a delight, doing the dishes your favourite pastime and there’s always time for a proper meal. Playing the Sims, everyday life is a wonderful game – maybe because there’s no need for explanation.



Is there anyone who has never heard of the life simulation that is The Sims? The franchise is one of the most successful, and now, after several expansions of part 3, it is time for the next sequel. “Now”, more precisely, is 4 September 2014 – the day that The Sims 4 is released in Germany.



Eat, clean, vomit



We visited game producer Maxis in the windy town of San Francisco and were able to see behind the curtain of the popular digital dolls’ universe. In response to the question where exactly we should pinpoint the upcoming star’s location in the series, producer Rachel Franklin provided us with an overview: Sims 1 was seen as a sandbox daily soap. The factor of time, meaning the Sims’ life span, was introduced with Sims 2 and its motto “lifetime”. Sims 3 focused on the world around the Sims. And Sims 4? Emotional is the keyword. This new game focuses on everyday needs. The Sims become real characters – with needs that tell stories of their own.



An example: Susi lives in a house with her uncle Jeff. Susi is an amiable woman, she loves animals and she is frugal. Tidying up is not one of her strong suits. Jeff, on the other hand, is kind of a snob – he is cleanly, cultivated, overall: an aesthete. Now, both are hungry, so you click on Susi and have her make a few sandwiches. She loves them! Only Jeff, our spoilsport, criticizes the bread’s green patches and the cheap, fatty cheese. Until now, he had been in a rather neutral mood, but now he runs to the toilet, vomits, and starts hating the day and life in general. Susi, in contrast, pats her belly contentedly and is as relaxed as can be. Fortunately, hygiene freak Jeff starts beaming again after cleaning the toilet. Back in the kitchen, he asks Susi to do the dishes…



A typical example of how banal activities become plot points in The Sims 4. Conflict arises from the confrontation of two very different characters, leading to a story. Your Sims’ emotions rule your actions within your household and the entire neighbourhood.



Nine of ten people recommend this



What’s new in TS4 is not only character traits and talents, but how you can influence them. Back to our example: Jeff asks Susi to do the dishes, but she doesn’t feel like it and mocks him instead. During their conversation, the game notices that Susi is feeling touchy. You can imagine this just like Amazon’s product recommendations: If you like 'mock,’ maybe you like 'laugh at’ as well. You do? Then how about 'swear’ – or even better: 'insult’! Nine of ten people recommend this.



This is how much emotions influence your Sims’ interactions. You can manipulate them too, of course. If you have Jeff look at old suits of armour or oil paintings, he can later be more confident when talking with artists. If you adorn the walls with antique watercolours, your Sim’s creativity increases. Yes, the world of the Sims stays as pleasingly linear as we are used to.



[get-together caption: Do you wonder how the Sims like this get-together? Their faces can tell you a lot …]



Here’s to becoming good neighbours!



Their world is divided into five big areas. The area that gamers will get to know by 5 September 2014 is heavily influenced by Southern United States architecture. Cities like New Orleans or Houston, with their Spanish-French colonial style, are the obvious inspiration. The neighbourhoods that have been shown until now are unmistakeably and typically Sims, in their exaggeration, colourfulness and lack of textures – but with a certain credibility that earlier games were lacking. The lighting gives a stoic atmosphere to the landscape, especially at night, and seems so laden with kitsch that the developers even compare their game to the works of surrealist David Lynch.



A pity that loading times are necessary, for example when you enter bigger lots like a museum. This could be especially tiresome for players who like wandering aimlessly through town. If loading takes too long for your taste, you’d better consider whether you really want to visit the museum - or if you’d rather continue your stroll around town.



Home sweet home



Fortunately, there is another type of gamers, gamers who never leave their home. Their home is their castle – a very important aspect of every Sims game so far has been the build mode. The developers know of the importance of their franchise’s trademark and they think that “the builder is always right.” This makes them popular in Germany especially, seeing how the build mode is the most popular over here. Never before has it been so easy to build a stately mansion.



Effortlessly, you build four walls with your mouse. Move them, make them longer, plop down a new room – the new build mode of The Sims 4 makes this easier than drawing rectangles in Microsoft Paint. A lot of new options have been added, such as round fences, walls and roofs. You can place windows and pictures wherever you please – the game now allows you to change their height, something that Sims players were wishing for a long time. Another new feature is wall height – you are free to vary between a compact bungalow and high-ceilinged art nouveau.



[house caption: Home and hearth: In The Sims 4, there are barely any limits to your architectural dreams.]



The architecture system behind the scenes has improved as well. The game recognises when four walls form a room and adds floor and ceiling on its own. It also recognises neighbouring rooms and modifies the outer walls accordingly. The gamer is spared machine-like drudgery such as placing windows. With The Sims 4’s new buy mode, a few clicks are enough to equip an entire storey with windows, all with equal spacing. You can still manually edit these windows, of course.



The search function is another great (and modern) feature. In The Sims 3, objects are sorted by rooms. You can find computers in the office, for example. In The Sims 4, you enter a word into the search box and just like Google, the game gives you results.



If you don’t have anything special in mind but prefer instead to browse for some inspiration, there are completely furnished rooms in build mode that you can simply take and plop down on your lot. The pre-build sets vary from classical to modern, from marble to glass. An ideal catalogue to get inspired. Of course, you can further edit, change or decorate the room you bought. If, on the other hand, you created your own beautiful room, you can upload it to the new “Sharing Gallery.” This in-game market place hosts the creations of lots of gamers – with the possible drawback of being the first step towards micro transactions. The gallery could certainly be the basis.



What would really be useful instead is entering your real-life flat measurements so you can move virtual furniture around, in order to try different looks. Imagine the time you’d save in the furniture store!



Prognosis: The Sims 4



There you go – again we’re talking about everyday life. And, let’s admit it, it’s not that bad at all. Anything out of the ordinary is too confusing for us, anyway. The Maxis developers seem to agree, considering that they did not fundamentally change the franchise’s concept – instead they adjusted and improved bits and pieces, gave the player a better overview and made the Sims little cry-babies. We’re looking forward to the surprises Maxis still has in store for us – until now, the game seems to be well thought-out. –ComputerBild.de, Translated by Heldin90