What a surprise, EA has pissed off gamers once again. This time it's not because the game doesn't work offline, or is such a buggy mess that you can't play it, no, it's because in the upcoming new Sims 4 title, you can't build swimming pools and that characters wouldn't ever enter the toddler phase, merely skipping from baby to "youngster." To combat the outcry, EA has been trying to mollify the situation, but it's not doing the best of jobs, as usual.
"The fact is, we owe you a clearer explanation for why pools and toddlers will not be in The Sims 4 at launch," reads the blog post addressing the issue.
"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.
"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."
Many fans have pointed out that this sounds very similar to the excuses given for why the last Sim City game required online play, or Battlefield 4 released with bugs: EA has rushed along the production schedule. This is hardly new for big name publishers, but EA has made a habit of rushing games to completion rather than making sure they're feature complete.
On top of that, many expect pools to now come as a downloadable extra, no doubt costing a few dollars a piece. The Sims has always been over the top with its DLC and expansions, releasing new items and content on a regular basis for each iteration of the game, but pools were always buildable as standard.
Not so in the next one.
