We've already established that EA and Maxis are listening to your demands when it comes to both toddlers and pools in The Sims 4, or lackthereof. The problem is, it's not as easy as you may think to implement such features; that is, according to producer Graham Nardone.
"It's easy to look at something and think, 'That looks pretty simple.' When you think about a feature like pools upfront, it looks like a square box on the ground and you put a shader on the top surface and have Sims jump in," he told Kotaku when asked for explanation as to why The Sims 4 won't include pools.
"But ultimately, it's more complexity in terms of what tech's there and what isn't there, what we have to build to support this. How do we cut down into the terrain, how do we get Sims going through portals across different levels of pools? There's so much that's going on in the background that you don't end up seeing just to have a Sim go swimming."
I'm not a developer, so I won't debate what he is saying. I will, however, point out that we heard similar statements when it came to SimCity offline mode. At the time of release, Maxis defended that implementing an offline mode for the game wasn't as simple as "flipping a switch." Sure, it took over a year of development, but the game finally now supports offline single-player gameplay. Let's hope it doesn't take that long to incorporate toddlers and pools into the game. I'm actually expecting at least one of the two to arrive in the first expansion.
"It's not a matter of it not being important to us or our focus not being in the right place. As we chat with fans and they continue to inform us of what they want, they're obviously interested in pools and toddlers. They want those in the game. So we'll continue to listen to feedback, something we've always done with The Sims," Nardone continued.
"I'd really just say look at what we've done in the past. We've had a variety of different ways we've delivered content to players, and I think we'll continue to support what they're looking for," he concluded. It's worth noting that Nardone wouldn't elaborate if the Sims 4 Premium membership would have some sort of role in how content such as pools could eventually be offered to the players.
