Story Progression, Lies and Propaganda from EA

[Drakron]

"SimGuruLyndsay answers community questions about story progression and describes it's inner workings."

(Translation, we attempt to shut you sheep up by having someone explaining what is about without going over its OBVIOUS FAILINGS and end up with the usual "take into account player feedback" line so they looks as they care)

http://www.thesims3.com/myBlog.html?persona=SimGuruLyndsay

Its good for a laugh.

[lmind]

The remarks about overpopulation are interesting.  I wonder what the population limit is...?  If I know EA, then my guess is that it's a stupidly low value to enable the game to run on lower-spec computers... without, of course, any possible adjustment for higher-spec computers.

[Cedia]

*sighs*  I really hope they aren't that clueless.  I'm no coder or computer guru, but even I can see that what happens in the vanilla game is totally fuxxored.  Hm... pretty telling that they didn't even mention the presto babies, now that I think about it.

I guess it really is just blatant lies in the form of marketing spin.  Terrible.  If Dragon Age, ME2, and SW:TOR weren't being made by BioWare/EA, I'd boycott the EA fuckers.

[minidoxigirli]

If overpopulation is the reason for the random moving outs, then why couldn't they get rid of the pathenogenesis and the random moving outs?

[Roflganger]

Overpopulation is a bullshit answer. If that were the case, why were so many random move-outs immediately followed by random move-ins? 

[Faizah]

I like the way they try to dress annoyances and bugs up as features.

It gives Sims interesting jobs, moves them around based on relationships (or randomly sometimes to stir things up), make them gain weight or become thinner.

Translation: We couldn't be arsed making it make sense, so now it's 'to stir things up'. We totally meant to do that!

I do believe overpopulation is the key, I only had random evacuations after I started my large breeding experiment, but I don't think there's an off switch. So it kicks sims out, but then the game decides that the population is getting a little low, so it brings more in, but it keeps kicking sims out as well. On and on and on.

[jolrei]

Overpopulation is a bullshit answer. If that were the case, why were so many random move-outs immediately followed by random move-ins? 

Even with Awesomemod, I get random move outs.  I think I'm losing MATY households that I moved in.  If I put them there, I want them to stay there.  I lost Jordi, Fairlight and Ellatrue yesterday.  I really didn't want to have to make everyone sacred.  Perhaps it's the only way to keep them safe.

[jolrei]

Did you leave NoRandomEvictions enabled in config? That should not happen then...
If using ISM, make sure to disable move outs on the phone menu.

No, I didn't touch that, but I will re-check my aweconf settings.  That's what I mean - it shouldn't happen.  Nevertheless, I got a bunch of "household moveout" notices in the last 1am shuffle.

[Sigmund]

I like the way they try to dress annoyances and bugs up as features.

It gives Sims interesting jobs, moves them around based on relationships (or randomly sometimes to stir things up), make them gain weight or become thinner.

Personally, I like the fact that they use the word "sometimes" to mean "almost all the time". When I was just using a vanilla game, there usually did not appear to be any rhyme or reason to the way my sims moved around, or who they moved in with.

[Zazazu]

Did you leave NoRandomEvictions enabled in config? That should not happen then...
If using ISM, make sure to disable move outs on the phone menu.

No, I didn't touch that, but I will re-check my aweconf settings.  That's what I mean - it shouldn't happen.  Nevertheless, I got a bunch of "household moveout" notices in the last 1am shuffle.

Did you then look for them in the 'hood? The notices report on attempted story action. Ones that are prevented by your config won't actually carry out.

[jolrei]

Not just musical houses, but actually leaving the 'hood?

I'm going to check "edit neighbourhood" to see if they still exist.  I'm hoping they just relocated.  

Did you then look for them in the 'hood? The notices report on attempted story action. Ones that are prevented by your config won't actually carry out.

Ah, well that's good to know.  Chances are they are still kicking around then.  Problem is that lately I don't get enough game time to really test things properly over several sim days, and I often find I don't know what's going on between sporadic game sessions.

[Bouncing Pink Ball]

Obviously story progression isn't working out so well after players get a few generations in. Silly EA, feedback should come before release, not after.


Overpopulation questions:
Who knows the population limits, where I can find the setting and is it hardware specific or the same for everyone? If necessary, and I expect it is, I'd like to make my own changes to the EA presets that always over or underestimate the abilities of my hardware, just like in Sims 2.

Is there a set range of children, adults, elders and is this number variable in relation to how many of each age group a player has created, or am I overestimating EA by even thinking that?

(I know, I know...search function. Sorry in advance for asking what's probably already answered. I searched but couldn't find.)

[maxon]

I guess it really is just blatant lies in the form of marketing spin.  Terrible.  If Dragon Age, ME2, and SW:TOR weren't being made by BioWare/EA, I'd boycott the EA fuckers.

I cursed the day EA bought Bioware.  Bastards.

[Doc Doofus]

That article actually sounded very reasonable, and it does generally describe story progression quite well.  But the article is very superficial, just like story progression.  It's as if that article had been given as a design spec to some poor schmuck coder without any further thought put into it all the little gotchas that somebody with a little sense might have foreseen.

You know, when people design things by committee, you often get results like this, so I wouldn't be surprised if that's what happened here.  Everybody assumes somebody else thought through the details and so nobody does. 

Is there a set range of children, adults, elders and is this number variable in relation to how many of each age group a player has created, or am I overestimating EA by even thinking that?

You're overestimating.  The geriatric community syndrome that some people ascribe to awesomemod is actually an EA problem.  EA story progression never tried to keep a smooth demographic balance.  Since you start a brand new game with most Sims as young adults, you have a bulge in the demographics that drags the game towards geriatrics, and then a mass die-off, to be replaced by a new surge of replacement game-made young adult townies, to continue the cycle.  A better way to do things would be to have story progression create new townies of different ages with the goal of having a flatter demographic curve. 

[tizerist]

So thats the official answer...

The fact that they have left it two months to comment on a gamebreaking bug/feature makes it smell like damage limitation.
If they couldn't even find out that a crucial game setting was non-existant before launch, let alone patch the problem on launch day, then what faith are we supposed to have in these answers?

Population balance? Simply put in a neighbourhood population cap then. You're game designers.

People spend hours making sims in CAS, and then they disappear?
And thats supposed to be part of the game??

I actually had hopes of creating a thriving town. Doesn't sound safe to even go above 50 sims at the moment, and that is a sorry reflection on the way the game was designed, and for whats supposed to be a groundbreaking simulation.  

[Mirelly]

I'm no fan of EA propaganda, but the "overpopulation" in the blog linked to above, is clearly defined as a variable dependent on the machine. Pescado has already declared that the game engine's register for character head counts is a 32 bit number ... or was it a 64 bit number?

I was bemused by the EAxoid's declaration that story progression doesn't evict from the town sims who are in a "relationship" with the player's sims. All the same, I am glad I am a satisfied customer of Awesomeware.

[Bouncing Pink Ball]

You're overestimating.  The geriatric community syndrome that some people ascribe to awesomemod is actually an EA problem.  EA story progression never tried to keep a smooth demographic balance.  Since you start a brand new game with most Sims as young adults, you have a bulge in the demographics that drags the game towards geriatrics, and then a mass die-off, to be replaced by a new surge of replacement game-made young adult townies, to continue the cycle.  A better way to do things would be to have story progression create new townies of different ages with the goal of having a flatter demographic curve. 

That's what I figured was going on. It seems obvious to me that the game should generate new sims from a variety of age groups, removing some townies and moving in new families of different ages as necessary to keep the town demographics in a normal range and allow for plenty of social interactions, like a good number of townie kids for the tots to chum with or various ages of singles for relationships. I could even see logic in allowing players to plan games with neighbourhoods of mostly young couples or geriatric retirement towns if they so desired. The way it's working now, including booting out player-created sims, feels like a major oversight that should have been accounted for early on in story progression development. At worst, pre-release testing should have caught it.

[Roflganger]

I have no doubt that there are population limits, my doubt is only that the reason Sims get deleted (emigrated) is in an effort to balance that population.  As I said, in the base game, I'd get move out AND move in reports in the same newspaper - if population was the reason for the move OUT, then there should certainly not be a simultaneous move IN.  And I was getting move outs within a few days of starting a new game, long before any population concerns could be kicking in.  

[Bouncing Pink Ball]

 ^ Interesting. Is there a difference in the age or gender of the sims moved out and in or is the game replacing same with same which, of course, is totally pointless and means design flaw. I haven't payed attention enough in game to notice.

[Roflganger]

^ Interesting. Is there a difference in the age or gender of the sims moved out and in or is the game replacing same with same which, of course, is totally pointless and means design flaw. I haven't payed attention enough in game to notice.

I honestly couldn't say at this point - I haven't played an unmodded game since a few days after AwesomeMod was released.

[Doc Doofus]

It seemed to me like it was Last in - First Out.  The last created townie gets bussed out.  But maybe that's just an artifact based on newly created townies (including new CAS townies) having few or no relationships.

I know it pissed me off.  Mortimer Goth's family line was dying out, and I didn't want to play him (I had my own fambly to play), so I created a new wife for him in CAS and moved her into his house.  She disappeared from the neighborhood before morning.  Same thing with another family.  It wasn't good enough to just make new roommates and move them in and wait for nature to take its course. -- you had to play with them long enough to get them married.

This was all before awesomemod.

[Cedia]

My biggest problem came when I decided to populate the town with sims of my own making to try to get them together.  I popped in John Shepard the Astronaut (yeah, I know, but he's cute) and then one of my single gals across the street.

So I play her for awhile, then switch to him.  He's got two babies with no mothers just lying on the floor.  Then I switch back to her, and she's got three strangers living with her in her 1 BR 1 Bath house.  Yay.

Needless to say the game got no more playtime from me until I discovered this site.

[Drakron]

Story progression is a good idea on paper but what was implemented was just chaos.

In TS2 the townies population was keep roughly the same, if a townie dies another replaced him as TS3 simply tries too hard in doing things it should not.

Story Progression should just check to maintain demographics and not give a damn about window dressing like jobs and relationships, those things are usual invisible to the player so the game can do some ass pulls and get away with it.

I understand some things are more complicated, as what happens when a residential lot becomes empty? does a Sim family moves in or it just stays that way but that is a issue they created, in TS2 there was a stable townie population that lived outside the neighborhood and so it was impossible for it to accidentally die but TS3 puts too much emphasis on the neighborhood Sim population and so it creates the "isolated community" syndrome and all the problems it carries.

[J. M. Pescado]

I'm no fan of EA propaganda, but the "overpopulation" in the blog linked to above, is clearly defined as a variable dependent on the machine. Pescado has already declared that the game engine's register for character head counts is a 32 bit number ... or was it a 64 bit number?

64-bit. Meaning the theoretical upper limit for sim-population is 18 quadrillion, and therefore, the sun will explode before you ever reach it.

I was bemused by the EAxoid's declaration that story progression doesn't evict from the town sims who are in a "relationship" with the player's sims. All the same, I am glad I am a satisfied customer of Awesomeware.

I'm not sure what's confusing about it. It's not TRUE, though. The game WILL do so.

[Kyna]

I was bemused by the EAxoid's declaration that story progression doesn't evict from the town sims who are in a "relationship" with the player's sims.

The problem is that their definition of "the player's sims" doesn't match ours.  Their definition is "the currently selected family".  We mean "every sim we've added to the neighbourhood plus every premade family we've decided we want to play".

If the currently played family doesn't have a relationship with every other household that we're interested in, then we're liable to lose sims we want to keep.  This becomes an issue whenever we add a new family to the neighbourhood (because they haven't had the opportunity to meet someone from every wanted household yet), and also when we want to simulate a normal town, where family A knows families B & C, but family B doesn't know family C - whenever we play family B we're at risk of losing family C and vice versa.

Also, I wonder what their definition of relationship is?  "Have met" doesn't seem to be enough as pre-AM I had sims disappear from the relationship panel when the family was moved out of town.  Does this mean they have to be friends or that the relationship level must reach some magic number?  What about enemies we want to keep in the game, will they be lost because they have a negative relationship (and therefore the relationship level is below that magic number)?