Last month, in a blog designed to share some of the smaller details about The Sims 4, producer Ryan Vaughn subtly revealed that pool building and toddlers won't be in the game. As expected, the news was met with fan frustration as there was very little explanation as to why EA is actually removing features despite releasing a new Sims game. Yesterday, EA took to the blog once more to attempt to explain the reasoning behind the lack of toddlers and pools.
"The fact is, we owe you a clearer explanation for why pools and toddlers will not be in The Sims 4 at launch, so here goes," Sims 4 VP and Executive producer Rachel Franklin began.
"It begins with new technology and systems that we built for this new base game for The Sims – a new AI system, new animation system, new audio positioning tools, new locomotion logic, new routing intelligence and much more are all entirely new in this game. The vision for The Sims 4 is a new experience that brings your Sims to life in deeper and uniquely personal ways – through emotions, personality traits, behaviors and interactions. To do that, our technology base needed a major upgrade.
"So the bottom line is that when we sat down and looked at everything we wanted to do for this game, all the new tech we wanted to build into it, the fact was that there would be trade-offs, and these would disappoint some of our fans. Hard pill to swallow, believe me, but delivering on the vision set out for The Sims 4 required focus," she continued. "Focus on revolutionizing the Sims themselves.
"So, rather than include toddlers, we chose to go deeper on the features that make Sims come alive: meaningful and often amusing emotions; more believable motion and interactions; more tools in Create A Sim, and more realistic (and sometimes weird!) Sim behavior. Instead of pools, we chose to develop key new features in Build Mode: direct manipulation, building a house room-by-room and being able to exchange your custom rooms easily, to make the immediate environment even more relatable and interactive for your Sim," Franklin said.
The "upshot," she added, was that The Sims 4 is now a "completely new game." To that end, she claims that it "feels" different to play and you'll notice the new technology immediately. So is it a tech thing or is it more of a timing thing? I, well, still don't really get why a new system and new tech would mean having to remove something seemingly as simple as a pool. Or a toddler considering that it seems to be just another age. If it's a tech thing, then can we ever expect pools or toddlers? If it's a timing thing, well, I guess we can expect it in a future expansion — because we know that's coming.
