Let's look at the facts, with both the first and second games' last expansions, a major feature was related to a selling point of the next game.

In The Sims 1 Makin Magic, you had the age up spell, which gave a taste of what aging Sims would be like in The Sims 2.

In The Sims Apartment Life, you had apartments, which gave you a slight taste of what it would be like to visit neighbors, and have other families doing stuff while not active.

Now, with The Sims 3, the last EP will be Into The Future. I know what you're thinking, linear time progression would be very hard to implement, but I don't think it really would. Basically, you would have to program in two things, the current fashion, architecture, and cultural trends, and technological progression.
The first one should be fairly easy to implement. All you would need to do is implement a current trend, and the next trend, and slowly have the next trend take the place of the current one, at which point it chooses a new future trend for that catagory, and starts the process again.
Now, if you have a lot of these running at the same time, it would tax an older CPU a bit, and could be a disaster, if they make the mistake they did with 3, where the Base Game is fairly well optimized, but the EP's are not. But it is certainly possible, and if they actually optimized the game better, it wouldn't be a problem. There is no excuse for a machine to take about 7 minutes to load a Sims 3 world, when the same machine takes 3 seconds to load the Skyrim Overworld. It's sloppy coding, but if they worked hard, they'd be able to implement the first part with ease.
The second part, however, is slightly more tough, because at some point you would reach the last technological advancement.

Eitherway though, it does seem like this may be a Sims 4 selling point, so what do you think?

Hmm, that definitely makes sense that it could possibly be a new selling point and it would be very cool. But EA would have to do it right, and EA is not a company I have a lot of faith in.

I do want to point out that it's not just the last EPs of the series that does this. I haven't played TS1 in forever so I can't say anything about it having TS2 features, but TS2 Seasons introduced gardening and different hairstyles for different outfits from TS3. TS2 Bon Voyage introduced beach lots, and the water is definitely similar to the way beaches are in TS3. (Although you couldn't swim in them until about four years later ) And I know there's a TS2 EP that introduced jogging...I think it was Freetime. Either way, jogging was in TS3.

There may be more, but I haven't played TS3 all that much. I wonder what features that may already be included in the recent EPs might be in TS4. I think blueprints might be one, since I think the survey talked about the idea of preset rooms. I do think the time progression like you mentioned could also possibly be one. I personally think Showtime was a test of any online features they want/ed to include (whether these were dropped is a different subject).

I do have to say though, I never understood why EA did this. Why add new features into the current game when these new features are most likely what makes the new game "new"?

If you look at the examples I gave, as well as the idea behind Into The Future, you will notice that they aren't a full impementation of the idea. Just enough of a taste to tease us, and give us an idea of what it could be like.



As for Gardening, Beach Lots, Categorified Hairstyles, Jogging, etc. in The Sims 2, I think it's more likely that those ideas were made for The Sims 2, and they carried them over later in The Sims 3's development.

Edit: Also, I just realized Gardening and Beach Lots (Although not swimmable) were in the Sims 1 as well.

I still don't get why they do this though - it just seems that a lot of people might go "Wait! Don't we already have this?"



I know I read an article or something that talked about how they made TS2 gardening because of the development in TS3, but for the life of me I can't find it now.

I think you are making too much of the 'features of the next iteration get an airing in the previous one' - it seems more likely to me that someone had a good idea at EAxis HQ and they decided to use the idea again but expanding on it. What I mean is, I suspect it's not a deliberate policy (and therefore your prediction lacks validity).

However, I think I could get on with that idea - it'd be nice to see the place and the people changing over time, yes. The problem with it though is that it would be likely to be badly implemented and we, the players, would get no control over how things change. One of the things I disliked intensely about TS3 was the time passing uncontrollably if you weren't playing the lot.

We will see. I never said whether it was deliberate or not, but if it's not, it certainly an interesting coincidence.

As for not being able to control the progression, they could have a world-dependant options panel, which would allow you to choose what trends will be available for the queue (Or by extension, disable progression all together by making only one theme available for each category). Which would actually help with themed worlds, because it would allow you to control what kind of things appear naturally in the world. The worst thing in the sims 2 and 3 is that if a new character is spawned in a themed world, they usually don't fit in with the environment you have.

I think it would be a very smart move, because by now EA knows how much people want themed sims neighborhoods, and adding the ability for the theme to change over time as well, would be a rather nifty selling point.

Actually, couldn't they do this via updates?

As far as I remember, the game "Movies" had age progression in it, starting at around 1900 and slowly progressing up to today, with fashion and technology also evolving. Whether the game ends or just stops progressing, I can't remember.
It's definitely possible although I personally wouldn't like it.

As much as I would absolutely love time progression (with EPs or SPs or even store-sold eras), I do not think it will happen. It's just too many objects, what with clothing, accessories, transportation, building styles, plumbing and electronics and so on. I'd love it, but I just don't see it happening. But if they did have it, progression should be able to be turned on/off, players should be able to pick the era they start in and maybe (not sure) be able to pick and choose the eras they use and their orders (I think that'd be more complicated than a straight timeline). And if they could pick-and-choose, then definitely it should be made so it's possible for modders to create their own eras.

Absolutely! I think the smartest way to go about this, would be to have the categories for each era be like collections. This would allow you to create new ones. Want an era where everything's plaid? Done. I also think you should be able to set it to always be a particular era, as well as having two options for how the progression works. Shuffle, and Linear. Shuffle would randomly roll future trends, while Linear would allow you to preset the eras, or use the Maxis default. Also, you wouldn't need to have 20 off the bat, just 5 or so, to keep things interesting, and have each EP introduce an era or two.

I don't think they incorpore time progression. Yes, it's a possible thing to do, and it would be so awesome, but come on, it's EA if they do they gonna kept it simple and lame like the story progession in Sims 3(?). To speak more, first I think I need to play Into The Feature haha. But if they implement time progession in sims 3, it will need that all change (buildings, houses, furniture, fashon, technollogy] with a thematic, that's gonna be a lot of work for EA that i don't think they gonna do and if they do it hello million of bugs. I think the concept "era collections" is a option that is posibble, but it gonna be very lame, simple :P

If they do such a time progression it would have to be a core feature and they will need to work on it a bit more than they did on story progression which is nothing but randomness. Time progression that affects fashion and culture and what not will be very visual and they can't go for randomness again. Anyway, that being said, I'd like a bigger scope to the game and it would be nice, especially for people that like to play legacies or the same neighbourhood for a long time to have new items unlocked over time. Maybe they can do this with inventor sims for new technologies like TVs and smart phones and cars, or through any other sims skilled enough for things like fashion, food, gameplay etc. Every time a new modern appliance got invented you could have the option to make it default and replace older versions or just keep it as an extra option. If initially we have carriages for a taxi, then someone invents a engine and later on a car, when the first car becomes available you coudl have the option to set the car as the default taxi. And then maybe you could choose the model of the car when more improved cars become available.

Hmm, I don't think that time progression, with trends and such, will be implemented into TS4. I think it's more likely that we may see some small features in ITF that will show up in TS4. Maybe some story progression control features will be introduced in Into the Future. i.e. influencing/setting what a certain family will turn out like in the "future world", and I could see something like that being featured in TS4.

Like some others have said, though, I think that the whole "features from last EP being in next game" is more of a coincidence as many features from EPs are included in the next game. That's why it always confused me when people said TS3 had a lot less content than TS2 basegame, despite the fact that it had fishing and gardening from Seasons, beaches from Bon Voyage, spas, graveyards, and movie theaters as new lot types. While TS4 will certainly feature some TS3 EP content in the base game, I'm not sure that ITF content will be included more than content from any other Sims 3 EP.

I could see this being a major selling point, like the open neighborhood for TS3

Maybe you can pick which era your neighborhood is in? Like maybe you could have early 20th century, 1950s, 60s-70s, 80s, 90s, etc.
The things would be the music popular among sims, the style of dress, overall furniture and architecture (of course, you can change all that if you please)

I just thought of something, though - ITF is being made Salt Lake; Sims 4 I believe is being made by Redwood. Wouldn't that mean that Salt Lake wouldn't know too much about the features of TS4 and thus wouldn't be able to implement them in ITF?

I do think EA tests features in EPs from the last game, even though I don't think that is limited to the last EP alone. Features from TS3 first started popping up in Seasons, like I previously mentioned - Seasons was the first EP to be developed by Redwood, who developed TS3. I know EA throws the Maxis name around somewhat and that doesn't prove anything alone, but I really don't think it's a coincidence. They probably want to test customer feedback. (I still think it would be bad for sales, at least, in EA's mind, but I'm not complaining)

Hmmm... there are a lot of things from TS3 that will end up in TS4. I believe, personally, that owning multiple residental lots, building over water and moving to different neighborhoods from IP was just a preview for The Sims 4. Also, the way you upgrade resorts towers is a preview to modular building. Remember the building demo gif PK shared? That's what I have in mind.

If they actually did something like this it would be amazing. If you could also set a certain time period you just wanted to play in and have certain things disabled it would be perfect.

Somehow I don't see them doing it but it is a great idea and hopefully they can implement something of the sort in a future series.