Just A Couple of Fun Facts

So these are minor little things but a few I'm really excited about! I tweeted Graham and was told:
We will still have the option to turn free will on, except for selected sim, which we have in 3. This made me so excited! I love having a house full of sims that will do their own thing and just selecting a sim to micro-manage haha!

Per Twitter, your sim will have freedom of movement so you can place stuff close to your bed for instance and your sim will still be able to get in!
Here's the post:

Did you know you dont have to have a full tile on each side of the bed for sims to use it in The Sims 4? Freedom of placement FTW!

— ruthless (@ruthless_kk) August 5, 2014

Also, Graham just replied to one of my questions on Twitter. I asked if you could change some of the lot types in your hood to venues. So if you move into your house, and there seem to be a ton of sims everywhere for you interact with, maybe you'll want to demolish 2 of the houses and make a small park and turn the other into a coffee shop or something! We had the ability to change lot types in 3 and I was hoping we'd still be able to do that in 4 and according to Graham we will!
@SimGuruGraham Will we be able to edit the houses in our hoods and turn them into venues? Like change lot type?

@HappyPhantomSim Yes, absolutely.

— x - 🐀😼🏆🐀 SimGuruGraham 🐀😻🏆🐀 (@SimGuruGraham) August 6, 2014

I just can't imagine ever being bored in this game, even if it's just the base!!

You're so cute! A celebrity, LOL. He must've really gotten a kick out of that.

I'm glad he confirmed those things. I def remember them saying free will could be turned on and off. I thought I remembered that any lot could be made into any type of lot (i.e., venue or house)--as long as you place certain objects on the lot, the game will recognize it as a particular venue--but I couldn't remember where I saw that information so it's nice to have it somewhat confirmed.

Yeah I was happy to read that your sim won't throw a fit if you put a dresser 2 tiles away from the bed, they'll actually move through the space and get where they need to be. I remember we had to wait for that feature where we could turn off free will for selected sim and when we got it I was sooo excited!! lol!

I've just been reading so much negativity about how the game is going to be empty with nothing to do because of all the stuff that's left out of it but it seems to me that there are plenty of ways to stay busy and have fun in the game. Knowing I'll still have the ability to bulldoze lots and change them into what I want makes me very happy. I'm pretty sure most of my neighborhoods will consist of 3 residents and 2 community lots. I can see making a park or a club, even my own version of a gym within my neighborhood if I didn't feel like going to map view and porting somewhere else.

Just hearing all this from Graham and getting confirmation on a few other things lets me know I'm going to have a TON of fun with 4! I guess it's all based on how you play and what you "need" to have fun with Sims but 4 is going to have plenty for a base game for me.

I love that they seem to have figured out a lot of the routing issues. I'm still expecting to see a few but it sure sounds like they've cleaned it up a lot.

I really think one of the biggest problems for people is there are no quantifiable replacements for the items they think of as missing. It's very hard to explain that emotions is more than just a few extra animations so they can't see how that can replace toddlers, pools or CASt. I tend to look at it as having a higher quality, more stable foundation to build on but people who refuse to look beyond "MISSING" think I'm being foolish for thinking that.

I was really irritated initially with how little marketing EA has done but, the more I see what we're getting, the more I think that they really had no good way of marketing except to have people show gameplay demos and give reviews of their hands on experience. Anything else is just words and won't make up for missing content.

The fun keeps on coming!! I love all this awesome news. It makes me even more excited to play.

Me to Ikam! I just joined these boards today and am worried I'm probably wearing out my welcome pretty quick lol! I'm just very enthusiastic about Sims 4 and just love all the new information and videos that have come out since yesterday!

This game looks really well-structured. I think it will be less chaotic than The Sims 3. It looks like it wasn't rushed and was throughly planned. The Sims 3 had a lot of bugs. As a computer engineer myself, I understand and approve the fact that the've cut out so many features. People talk about open-world games not consuming that many resources, but a sandbox open world with thousands of small objects uses a lot of processing power.

THANK YOU!! I got into multiple arguments on the other forums with people over this topic. Of course, I really know very little on the subject so I shouldn't have been getting into discussions over it to begin with but, for some reason, it seemed like a no-brainer to me that to have a game with as many possible playable characters and interactions like the Sims coupled with the open world sandbox and then add GTA style graphics and you really would need the $2500 gaming rig someone was boasting about just to play it.

Ebuchala, that's the point. For example, in GTA you can only enter a few of the houses, most of the buildings are empty, and even when you see the interiors, you can only interact with very few of the objects. That kind of game is focused a lot on graphics processing and a lot less on managing the "model" of the game, i.e. object states and interactions.

That's what I thought. Same thing in Watch Dogs and all the NPCs play on scripted loops (some of them elaborate, but still easy to spot after you've played the game for several hours). Thank you for verifying it for me. I was starting to think that game development really was magic of some sort based on the way they were explaining things to me.

I can't remember where I read it but I remember someone saying that (and this is just their opinion) it seems like with Sims 4, they really focused on the Sims themselves, bringing them more to life then ever. We've heard multiple discussions about animations and emotions and how much time that probably took. I agreed with that poster about how I'm glad they spent most of their time on that for the base game. This should leave plenty of open opportunities for future SP's and EP's of the game. Naturally I'm sure they'll add more walkstyles and such but you can tell the core of the base game really has to do with making the Sims more real than ever and I appreciate that.

I agree!

This makes me sooooooooooooo happy! I was kind of sad that there were only 4 venues in the worlds, but now I can make my own! This is going to be awesome.

Yes it is Dawn!! I can't wait! Also I couldn't agree more with everything you said GiGi! One thing I'm looking forward to with the park, is editing it to make it more of what I want. It's beautiful but the fact that we can add and take away what we want from the park, means I'll have access to everything in build/buy mode to make it "my" perfect park! Lord I just can't wait to get in and get playing!

I have an Alienware X51 and I understand what you mean. It would be nice if there were some settings you could configure to really get the graphics at a better level but I have to remind myself, they didn't design this game around me! How dare they hahahaha!! So I understand, like you said.

I don't get the feeling that the graphics will be all that lacking for higher end computers. However, the art style of the new game seems to be more geared towards a little less detail (hence, the grass looks like moss), probably because it IS easier for an older computer to handle. Based on how pretty CAS looks, I expect the game is going to look pretty gorgeous on higher end machines.