TS3 was to include weather.

[J. M. Pescado]

Cutting a map or stage is a totally different animal from cutting an already known to be complete feature. This would be more equivalent to KOTOR2 deciding to cut partymember pathfinding, only to then sell it in the expansion pack: We know it exists, and we know it's complete, yet they cut it anyway to sell it seperately! Remember: WEATHER IS A SOLVED PROBLEM. They already solved that, and it already exists.

[Drakron]

You mean like RE5 co-op was sold as a DLC?

[J. M. Pescado]

You mean like RE5 co-op was sold as a DLC?

Exactly.

[Krib]

What makes me ill is not that EA drip-feeds the features out to players -- I expect them to. It's that the model is so successful for them. Because as long as they continue to make buckets of money, they're going to continue. And so will other developers.

[Buzzler]

Yes, but cut content is usually content that was cut because it was handmade content that wasn't finished. Things like "rain" are procedural content, meaning no person actually makes "rain". {...} The same applies to rain. Rain is a solved problem. We know that they possess the "rain" code and that therefore, they can implement rain.

Are you positive that they can simply take rain and snow from TS2, put it into TS3, and it works? As I remember it, the implementation of snow in TS2 was total crap - with the game freezing for a couple of seconds whenever there was a switch between no snow, light snow or heavy snow. To implement this the same way in TS3 would be totally braindead, even for EAxis standards.

Unfortunately this "lost planet" (provided you're talking about the droid planet) is not cut content from KOTOR, but from KOTOR2, which I do call incomplete.

I was talking about KOTOR1. Considering the other posts I may be remembering it wrong, but AFAIR they took it out pretty late in development. That's why you have to be careful when leaving the enclave on Dantooine, to not knock your head on the door to the Space Map...

KOTOR2 is an entirely different story, Lucas Arts just "stole" Obsidian 3 months of development and later explicitly forbid them to make a feature/content patch to smooth the creases, or even a second bug patch. And that was while Obsidian simply wanted to minimize the impact on their reputation and didn't even want to charge Lucas Arts for it...

What is new for this console (yuck) generation however, is that content is being deliberately cut before release, so it can then be sold as expansion or DLC. Games are never delayed anymore if unfinished, they're just rushed out with bugs and missing content. Bugs are (sometimes) fixed with patches (often on release day!), missing content can be purchased later.

Yeah, well, this is the next grand idea. Disc-based copy protection doesn't work, DRM doesn't work and people like it as much as getting a probe thrusted into their backsides, so now they're trying to convert classical single player games into "Services". Sadly this also makes it possible to establish a "We're gonna suck you lowlifes!" business practice, and there are probably few people on the publishers' executive floors, who are even mentally able to ask themselves if they should do that.

[ProfPlumbob]

I disliked the weather in Sims 2, it felt very fake.  Didn't like that it was just a filter over your screen so you couldn't actually see it rain or snow when you were inside homes.  I'd be completely disheartened if they do this effect again.    I've seen rain/snow effects in Team Fortress 2 that had no problem with ground patters and knowing when there is a roof.  And how old is the source engine?  EA...I swear...if you take the cheap route again...*shakes fist*

[Bafu]

Someone else need to make a Sims game so EA have something to battle against!

Now they can do whatever they feel like... =(

[That Eighties Guy]

Someone else need to make a Sims game so EA have something to battle against!

Now they can do whatever they feel like... =(

You have the brains.

Someone does need to do a serious neighbourhood simulation, The Sims with added awesome. That could listen to the fucking players for once to get some interest, instead of constantly hugging their heaps of money. (Which is inevitable in the end)

[ShmapnShmazz]

I believe the sims 2 (vinilla) was supposed to come with weather too. I think they said that they didn't get the time to finish it. BS if you ask me.

[uknortherner]

I believe the sims 2 (vinilla) was supposed to come with weather too. I think they said that they didn't get the time to finish it. BS if you ask me.

No, not BS at all. The original implementation of weather was borked - It would rain inside houses, and at the time they couldn't come up with a solution so they simply disabled it. The filter cheat that they went with in Seasons was actually quite effective as it was the same technique most 3D games used for weather effects and it got around the weather indoors problem. The downside to this of course was the inability to see the rain or snow from inside houses.

[J. M. Pescado]

What are you talking about? It STILL rained inside houses!

As you can clearly see, it is raining INSIDE the house.

[ShmapnShmazz]

Oh, I had no idea... I never noticed it.

[uknortherner]

What are you talking about? It STILL rained inside houses!
<snip>
As you can clearly see, it is raining INSIDE the house.

No puddles though!

[ShmapnShmazz]

I don't know if any of you play the sims 2 on consoles also, but my friend used to have it on gamecube and it also rained inside on it.

[uknortherner]

I had it on PS2 but I didn't play it long enough to see any weather. In fact, after trying to navigate my way through menu after menu just to hold a sodding conversation I just gave up and shoved the game in a drawer out of the way, never to be touched again.

[Georgette]

It doesn't rain inside my houses unless I have no roof or I'm not zoomed in fair enough.

[ProfPlumbob]

I remember watching the video of Sims 2 before it came out, showcasing rain.  They had a couple in a hot tub, it started raining and while the sims were getting out from the rain, lighting struct the dude.  It was pretty exciting to see, and then forgotten.  I assume the filter they used for Seasons was their quick cheap way of stopping it from entering the house.  Amazingly pathetic that this many years later, with the second sequel, we still don't have at least rain and thunder storms. 

I'm just hoping for nice effects...fog/steam, rain running off the roofs, shiny roads after it rains(I think it's so pretty in a city after it rains at night and everything is softly reflected on the roads), high winds blowing palm trees nearly 90 degrees.  I want to see the weather when I'm inside the house. 

[Georgette]

Yeah but think how much that will make the game lag, having too much detail will make it buffer so incredibly slowly. I mean, look at how freakish the sims themselves look when they're not fully loaded. Weird, block like creatures!

And in the sims 2 the weather wasn't, in my opinion as bad as everyone makes it out to be. The hue changes, the sounds are realistic, you can see rain down the rooftops and lightning is very well created in my opinion.

[ElectricSimmer]

I'm really not surprised. EA are really making mistakes. Like with Mansion and Garden Stuff, a lot of people wanted the one last patch to fix the remaining issues in The Sims 2 (Most fixed from mods here anyway) but they didn't do that. With their latest Need for Speed game (Undercover), They rushed out the downloadable content onto Xbox Live and kept us waiting for a patch with stuffed up, laggy, freezing games. Also, since they had weather almost ready for the base game of The Sims 2 i was half expecting EA to do it again. Since someone found some Piano code in the game files, anyone find anything about hot-tubs? Or is EA about to overcharge us for something that was in the base game for all the other Sims games?

[Mire Krisma]

Piano files? Links NAO pl0x.

[ElectricSimmer]

EA will milk again and again and again! Thats why people will piracy, more and more and more! 

There is even a piano code in The Sims 3, but no Piano!!!...(?)

I hate how they remove and later add stuff! Screw them!

And screw them for make the Sims look so damn fat and ugly!

Will they ever read when the players write on the internet?

The piano bit is what I'm interested in. Like i said before, anything about hottubs at all?

[gtachampion]

Not to play devil's advocate or anything (although that is my job title where I work in RL  ), I don't think EA "cut" anything from the base game. They know damn well what EPs they plan to make and they merely "set up" as much stuff in the base game as possible to prepare for it. They're in it for the money and they'll get every cent they can. If anyone ever thought they were in it for the game or the players, they need their heads checked. Get real. If they cared about the game or the players, they would be listening to all the forums on all the sites and none of the mods would even be necessary.

[tizerist]

All eyes are towards simslice then surely  
How did they manage weather before the Seasons EP exactly?
Could they replicate it for TS3?

[Buzzler]

They're in it for the money and they'll get every cent they can. If anyone ever thought they were in it for the game or the players, they need their heads checked. Get real. If they cared about the game or the players, they would be listening to all the forums on all the sites and none of the mods would even be necessary.

I've read arguments like this like a bazillion times in the last couple of months, and to me this still doesn't make any sense at all. It's just twisted. Before I can even think about leeching my customers tomorrow, I have to satisfy them today, and that means I have to care about their wants, a lot. A product has to be convincing on its own, future accessories aren't a factor for the original product's quality.

EAxis care about their customers, I really believe they do. There's only one setback: Most of the customers are sheeples, and they don't mind getting fucked by EAxis over and over again, they might not even notice. Even if they consider a feature uncomplete/unconvincing/borked/whatever they still cling to their hope EAxis would fix/improve it in the future, i.e. with the next EP, despite years of contrary experience.

[rum nate]

EA doesn't care about the customers because The Sims as a series is well established and has players who have been playing it for a near decade. As jordi said, they only care about customer's money now, because they feel The Sims is so big, they can't do anything that will kill it(like charging high prices for the store, or increasing the price of EPs).