NOPE Wind Waker. Wind Waker got all sorts of shit pre-release for being "too cartoony" and now it's one of the most beloved art styles out there. Team Fortress 2 is also 11 years old and it's graphics still feel up to snuff just cause they utilized a cartoonish look that's very stylized and done well. If you wanna give the crown for finding a way to make great graphics without relying on hyper-realism and instead using a stylized look, those two did it before anyone else.

My biggest beef with Sims 4's art style is how they don't bother to tone down the expressions. I mean it's not an exaggeration: Sims can smile so hard the corners of their mouths clip through their eyeballs. I've honestly never made an asian sim either just because it severely heightens the chances of their lower eyelids clipping through their upper eyelids when they're happy. It's definitely a glitch, too. Some days you load the game and it's fine, others you get results like that. They're not gonna do anything about it though, despite being the self-proclaimed "hardest-working team in the industry."

Why does the chihuahua (?) with the pink bow have human teeth? It was weird when Pedigree made their doggy denture commercial. It is no less weird in TS4.

I wonder if Pedigree gets royalties when EA rips their ideas.

That's a minor thing to me. I could get over some poorly done animations. What I hate about TS4's art style is that its graphics are so bad they do it a disservice.

Heck, The Sims Freeplay does grass better than TS4. I'm not joking:



Now, The Sims 4 can look acceptable at times, but when you zoom in the poor quality of its graphics becomes distracting. It feels like I'm playing a PS2-era game.

That's mostly why sims 4 goes for modern style items. It's easy to draw a straight line of one pixel on a low resolution texture and have it look like a line that has'nt lost quality because of the low res. Imagine all the sims 3 style furniture with sims 4 texture quality... not nice.

I don't have problems with how outfits and most of the items in the game look, they have specific artstyle which allows devs to go for optimisation of the graphics while still having the game in the confines of the defined artstyle that does not make the game look neccessarily bad. Problem comes from the grass and sims skin textures... they are, most simply said, blobs... almost solids with no real shading/detail on them. It annoys the hell out of me and makes the game look washed out.

And normal and bump maps are compressed, just like in sims 3 but they have way more artefacts and jagged edges for some reason (probably because of the low resolution).

Bottom line... problem is not with the graphics, problem is with 'maxis' not wanting to let go of their low resolution textures because their engine is probably not designed to have multiple textures of resolutions over and including 1k pixels loaded in the scene. Few? Possibly... more than thalf of the lot?... deffinitelly not. Especially when they gotta texture all those props in the world. SOOO MANY PROOOOOPS.

My sims smashed a guitar when preforming a scene and now it is not done

They were low fidelity then and low fidelity now.

To be honest, the texture quality is decent, but the detail in those texture is very low. Even without bump maps, or even specular maps, a lot of detail can be packed into textures - yet, none really does.

Personally what is clear to me is that Maxis is given a very low yearly budget for the game. It explains why they have so much depth and detail in some parts, but oversights in other parts. It also explains why years like this year with the most in depth EPs have had less stuffpacks and gamepacks to bolster the year. The team is forced to choose what to prioritize, and frankly textures aren't as important as gameplay... Especially with how obvious it was that the game was forced out before it was ready. So they have to keep making DLC and fixing the base game on a small budget. I'm not gonna say the game is perfect but I admire how much they have actually done with it since it's disastrous launch, and for me at least, at this point it's a lot of fun, and the artistic creativity overshadows the low graphical fidelity, so it could look like Minecraft without resource packs for all I care.

If their budget is so small, they should focus on quality, not quantity. Doing more with less is always best.

However, charging more for less is not.

Well EA expects their due. And back when they were doing smaller less gamechanging expansions like Get Together and City Living people were complaining about that... And this game has quality. The quality is just focused on the game over the graphics... WHich is a lot better than 3's design philosophy imho, where we got some beautifully detailed objects but pretty shallow samey gameplay all things accounted for.

Not for me. I remember the very *first* screenshots we got from TS4 and my mouth dropped open and I thought "dear God no..." And lots of other people were saying "what's with the huge letterbox, why is everything too big looking for the people?" and others were saying "maybe it's just an early build and they haven't finished the graphics". While a couple of knowledgeable sounding voices proclaimed "oh, that's Painterly Style" as if somehow that made it look better.

Not until they devote their time invested for a My First Pedigree Stick Sweat Treats (stuff pack) to honor their collaboration.

If EA is going to steal ideas from dog food companies, the least the could do is man up and follow Pedigrees' foot steps. Do something right for a change.

All profits for the Dogs: Get Dentures Stuff Pack should be donated to animal shelters. Andrew Wilson doesn't earn his 28 million dollar bonuses that he gives himself and there is no reason for him to skim off the top of this pack.

https://mobile.twitter.com/TheSimCo...038430469099521
https://mobile.twitter.com/TheSimCo...034967127453697
Be good time to necro "Things I've seen/heard/know about..."-thread, once the pack type is revealed.

And those lounge chairs might not be patched in.

Apparently its name is leaked as "Island Living". So I guess the last name reminisce the third EP, so don't think it's gonna be anything like Paradise for your isolated Simmies.

https://forums.thesims.com/en_US/di...f-island-living here is first images of new expansion the twitter you linked is gone

Holy fucking shit a life state

That sounds surprisingly good... Mermaids, dolphins, water ski, sand castles, swimming in the ocean, diving career, snorkeling, sunburn etc. So where is the catch? I mostly wonder whether mermaids are fleshed out with abilities and being able to customize their color schemes or whether they're just there.

Inb4 "As a Mermaid, you can equip your mermaid disguise to blend in with the humans" and it has no special abilities whatsoever.

I guess the suntan mod on here will be obsolete once the pack is out

I just thought the same The description doesn't mention you can become one. It just says "meet a mermaid" which could be a NPC with a costume.

Considering what a talent Sims 4 has for disappointment, this is what we should expect.

YIPPY, I FURISH SCALE COSTUME!

Hopefully a max swimming skill comes with the life state, that t does nothing but tracks progression for lifeguard job. Well, that's the bear minimum If I had to ask for

I do wish to be wrong and that the switch from 32-bit pays off.

Doesn't seem like you can sunbath, since the only screenshot of a beach is with a sim lounging around. Once again, unfortunately, recliners don't seem to be returing once again (not that it would make sense in this pack). Dolphins afraid aren't gonna be cute enough. At least from the looks Sims can interact with water in a way.

I mean to their credit:

For once the actual world assets look extensive instead of looking like they copy-pasted existing assets to recreate this. I mean Magnolia Promenade and Newcrest are actual copy-paste jobs, Strangerville looks like it recycles Oasis Springs assets, San Myshuno and the Ge Famous one are largely just backdrop and pure concrete walkway, Brindleton also didn't look too different, and Windenburg is the only one that truly felt new and detailed. This one does look on par with Windenburg in terms of care put into it.

The dolphin is also officially the first NPC animal that has more than 6 polygons to it's name, so that's an improvement too. And likewise, ocean swimming looks to be a thing.

So yeah, while it's not my favorite theme and while I'd still caution cynicism since we all know Sims 4 loves to disappoint, this one DOES at least look like they genuinely tried. Might be good, might be bad, but at least they showed effort.

I will wait too see if is good enough too pay full price for it or get on cd keys once is out

Worst case scenario is mermaids being npcs that grant temporary mermaid-ness to played sims and diving/dolphin feeding/sailboats/jet ski being confined to pre-defined hotspots in the worldwith no way to place them elsewhere. Sadly I could live with that. (But even more sadly, where's my beach volleyball net? * sniff *)

Seeing as this sounds like Island Paradise 2.0, I'm gonna be disappointed if there's no Resort Management system present (and there probably isn't one since there's no mention of one anywhere). I appreciate The Sims 3's system because I'm studying Hospitality Management in school and like playing with the same kind of stuff I'm learning at the moment.