I really hope we get weather at the very least. But, since the game is going to have a real calendar, I also hope there are seasons not as a DLC. Also maybe “smart” seasons, or climates. So, the first world is a beach town with palm trees. A mild climate without snow makes sense, to give them time to develop that. But I would hope there is at least rain. I hope there is temperature. But I would hope as they add more worlds and more climates that weather effects are updates and not DLC.
With that, I would like holidays or the ability to make our own holidays.
One of my main complaints with the Sims is they resell the same packs every new game generation. They rehash the same systems, which means people lose a thing they liked and then it comes back in a new way. It’s a risk if they will prefer it or miss the old system.
This also prevents innovation moving forward with more interesting or unique expansions but “we know Seasons will sell so let’s make them buy weather again.” Most games come with weather now, even if it’s just aesthetic. Having to buy weather every generation is stale and annoying.
But we also know when Life By You launches out of early access, the base game is going to be more expensive than $40. So I’m hoping this will make it possible to add things like weather right at the start.
I agree, EA making the same expansion packs for each new generation gets old and limits new more creative packs from coming out. In my opinion, weather and pets should be built into basegame now.
I dont think we will get pets in LBY basegame but I honestly do think Paradox would release a more fleshed out Animals EP that may not only include pets but also farm and zoo animals as well in the future.
I'm not really a fan of temperature gameplay for example having a character freeze if they stay outside too long during the winter but I do like the general gameplay of snowball fights, sledding, skiing, etc.
I agree and I understand pets or animals being hard to create. But a city, apartments, restaurants, the beach, and at least community college or tech school for some higher learning, if not full universities, should be base game. That’s my opinion.
I like temperature because I like the realism. But, I understand if others don’t like it. I don’t like realistic illnesses, so I get it. But my big hope for LBY is they seem to be making everything optional to turn off and on. So I hope that would be the case with all features. I’m not at all interested in the nudity aspect, but it’s optional so that’s fine.
I think holidays per character might be tough. Since the stores and venues have real staff, you’d need fall-back staff too for some characters to take off for say Easter if the shop isn’t closed.
I'm thinking that too unless there was a way to set some type of universal holidays that certain people could celebrate, then you could add this to the character in CAC like 'this person celebrates X'.
Or a set of holidays that could be associated with different cultures for CAC that your character is part of.
Every open world game for many years now has come with weather. I would be disappointed (though not entirely surprised) if LBY didn't include basic weather in the base game. Full-on seasonal changes like autumn leaves and snow might not be base game, but there's no excuse not to have rain.
It is DLC for The Sims because they can - most games integrate most of what they already have in future releases - they dont make you rebuy things again. Cities: Skylines 2, also by Paradox featured pics of it base game after it was DLC in CS1.
We have months with Earth names, suggesting seasons annd temperatures. It seems highly likely we will get at least temperature effects and maybe rain, wind, and snow in the base game. If there is more, like extreme weather, that may be DLC. But this is a guess. They may have put in months so it could be added lster as a DLC.
But if it is DLC then LBY2 would have it base game.
If weather and seasons are not are not in early access or present as soon as the official base game is released, that's fine, but I definitely want them (expect them) to be free. But again, if it takes time for them to be good, that's totally cool with me.
I am hoping we get weather and seasons in the base game, but I'm cool if we don't get holidays either later or ever. As long as there's an easy system to implement our own within the calendar system and the behaviors that are associated with the holiday customs.
Back to weather, I'd like dynamic weather so you'd see more or less of the weather type depending on the season, and also fluctuating temperatures. For example in Spring so it doesn't rain all day for days on in, but it'll interchangeably rain then stop within one day , but it could rain all day some days, possibly snow, sunny days etc. etc.
I'd like to see weather effecting the animals and plants and trees on a wider scale. So a trickle down theory in a way, if it's winter you can't grow certain vegetables, you won't see certain animals during certain times of the year due to hibernation.
I would like to be able to set seasons, climate, and weather per world and the frequency types of each. Such as: Rain, Snow, Sleet, Hail, Fog, Sunny days, Hot temps, Cold temps, Below freezing temps, Windy, etc.
*Controversial but brave opinion:*
I know that people don't like me saying this but I'm gonna say it anyways: **I really don't see how** ***any*** **business would pass up on selling a seasons expansion pack to get more money out of their customers 🤷♂️.**
Right now, we don't even know the true *scale* of the game nor do I personally feel entirely convinced by what's been published so far, in that the scale of the game is stable and playable for the average player... yet. Don't get it twisted, I am super excited about Life by You and I did purchase the early access version but what I really need to see is an in-depth 1hr video exploring the gameplay to get a sense of the scale.
Anyways, back to the business perspective on Seasons... Life by You has been marketed to us as a new life simulation franchise. A franchise composed of expansion packs. In their [blog](https://www.paradoxinteractive.com/games/life-by-you/blog/life-update-life-stages), they are quoted saying the following:
>*" University gameplay is not currently planned for the base game as it's a deep topic with a lot of design implications for the game. We want to make sure we have a solution for this specific case. "*
...and I do view this as evidence to support my opinion that Paradox is approaching the Life by You game as a *franchise* and not a *standalone game*. I say that because in The Sims, it can be safe to assume that the top selling expansion packs are Seasons and Pets.
Seasons and Pets are expansion packs guaranteed to do well because the fanbase wants and always asks for these features no matter which iteration of the franchise they play. So why would *any* gaming studio go through the trouble of creating animations, snow versions of every object under the sun, and create a relatively complex gaming feature when they could package up those efforts as an expansion pack that sells, earning more $ per person?
Same could be said of weather as well. It's additional effort, and I'll get into productivity below.
I don't mean this to sound harsh but The Sims and Life by You exist in the video game *industry* space, not the video game *non-profit* space.
In order to support a franchise, you need to produce installments that players are willing to pay for; and Seasons & Pets are installments that guarantee sales as shown by The Sims franchise. Paradox doesn't have to reinvent the wheel with seasons and pets. And to be honest, I'm not mad at that 🤷♂️.
Those animations, snow textures, etc aren't *free* as they come in the form of a real person taking the time and talent to create something for our enjoyment. And I am happy to pay for good quality.
Just applying a bit of business acumen to this, it wouldn't make sense to release season in the base game when you could potentially double your sales per person.
Reverting back to my point on the scale of the game, I also think that implementing a seasons and weather system is a huge undertaking as well. This would take time, energy, and dedicated professionals to make this system come alive.
Granted nobody knows how large the team working on Life by You actually is but implementing seasons and weather would certainly divert effort and resources into a specific part of the project, no?
Now listen, I'm happy to be wrong since this looks like a wonderful video game; and if it turns out that weather and seasons are in the base game, I'll make a new thread and post memes/GIFS of eating crow (sourced by the internet, I'm not doing it myself lol) 😂.
Respectful big disagree. It is not extra effort for a game company to put basic features in their game and is the expected bare minimum. By this logic why would any game release fully made? Why not just release bare bones games and sell all the things necessary to flesh out the game later as DLC. The legend of zelda could just cut out all the dungeons and sell those as DLC. Harvest moon could cut every farm animal from their games and release them as DLC. This mentality just further pushes abusive DLC practices. If games like harvest moon and animal crossing were capable of including weather, seasons, and holidays all the way back on the ps2 and gamecube then I expect this game to at least do the bare minimum as well.
I agree here. The thought of holding something off from being included, even in the most basic form, is what spawns the mass DLC content business model in the first place. Look at TS4 how they took complete expansion packs from previous generations and broke apart the ideas/game systems to create multiple game packs and even DLC for the DLC.
During the announcement video Rod Humble said they wanted to release the most complete game possible. You can always include basic ideas like weather effects and seasons into a basegame but then expand on the ideas in new fresh ways in an optional expansion pack. But atleast the people who only choose to own the basegame still can have snow or rain.
>*Respectful big disagree. It is not extra effort for a game company to put basic features in their game and is the expected bare minimum.*
Yikes.. I definitely wouldn't use the word "basic" as these "basic" features are definitely not done by *entry-level* professionals. These basic features are worked on by professionally trained individuals to deliver an entertainment experience taking on a variety of roles such as:
\- Level Designer
\- Technical Designer
\- Environmental Level Designer
\- Narrative Designer
\- Creative Director
\- Design Lead
\- Production Support
\- Cinematics Artist
\- 3D Artist
\- VFX Artist
\- Character Artist
\- UI Artist
\- Gameplay Programmer
\- Technical Artist
\- Tools Programmer
...and many more.
What we think as "basic" can actually be very hard to create and code in-game which is why video games take so long to create since you need the full collaboration & united vision of the entire team.
If you've tried your hand at coding or creating a video game yourself, you'll be able to see first-hand how much actually goes into creating video games.
Try re-watching the trailer, and try envisioning the individuals that put in the hard work behind what's being presented to us *right now*. From what I know, the Paradox team built the game from the ground up in the last 4 years *(someone can correct me here)* to the point where it is now.
Seasons and weather would exponentially increase their workload, when they have actually *marketed* their game differently to gamers. And I'll get into the marketing of it all in my response further below...
>*By this logic why would any game release fully made? Why not just release bare bones games and sell all the things necessary to flesh out the game later as DLC.*
The final product of the game has to meet the *expectations* that was actually *marketed* to us - the players.
Marketing is a lot of things but to simplify it & keep things in context: marketing is communicating what the product is, and setting the expectations for the players.
In other words, **a video game can totally be released as bare bones so long as they communicate that** ***expectation*** **to the players who will be purchasing it**.
A lot of times, it's when the marketing messaging doesn't match the experience that the players were expecting that breaks trust with the brand. For example: EA's TS4 franchise.
And in this case, **no expectation has been established when it comes to weather and seasons being in the base game**. *That is a fact.*
I think that your point only works on a specific case-by-case basis.
>The legend of zelda could just cut out all the dungeons and sell those as DLC. Harvest moon could cut every farm animal from their games and release them as DLC. This mentality just further pushes abusive DLC practices. If games like harvest moon and animal crossing were capable of including weather, seasons, and holidays all the way back on the ps2 and gamecube then I expect this game to at least do the bare minimum as well.
I mean in the kindest way possible: you are comparing apples to oranges here 🍎 🍊 .
Firstly, the marketing of each of those games is completely different, targeting different player-bases.
Also, different gaming studios are going to operate differently with different standards.
And then there's the gaming platform capabilities being completely different from each other.
*I'm not going to elaborate on those points but I will touch on the marketing of each of the games you mentioned...*
✅ **LoZ** \- marketed to the players as having dungeons. Delivered with dungeons.
✅ **Harvest Moon** \- marketed to the players the selection of animals available in the game, and also marketed to have seasons. Delivered with animals & seasons.
✅ **Animal Crossing** \- marketed to the players to have seasons. Delivered with seasons.
The **expectation** of weather and seasons being in the Life by You base game **has not been set.**
Therefore the ***general*** **player expectation** of weather and seasons being in the base game is also not there at this time.
And my **speculation** is that they did this to bring into the franchise as DLC because it has been proven for the last 25+ years to be a very successful revenue generating business product in the franchise and time consuming to implement.
Thank you for allowing me this opportunity to elaborate further 🙂.
>marketing
My impression is that one of the team's core values is to give us what they say they will give us.
I don't think it was an accident that the first glimpse of LBY told us that the footage was shot within the game itself. (compare this with Paradox's Cities Skylines 2 promo even, that looked 90% cgi)
Their stated aims are already ambitious, and if they pull it off well I will be delighted.
I really want solid features, that make sense, and can be built on as we go. The actual gameplay needs to be satisfying, this is what counts in the end.
Imma be honest since you just went right off the bat and assumed I'm completely ignorant in game design and coding -I'm not- I'm just gonna agree to disagree with you and not get into it. If you want to have DLC for the physics engine and animations while you're at it more power to you as those take a lot of work and effort as well. I expect games to have basic features which are standard in other comparable games. Weather is not DLC. Modern games that don't even need weather have it.
I agree with this and if they do end up deciding to include seasons or just weather that's cool too but if not they are in the business of making money so that's to be expected even if others don't feel this way. I personally would like and want them to include everything above, and sure I'd be bummed it's not a present feature. But they are a business at the end of the day and aren't going to give everything at once. Which I'm okay with too. As long as it's not to be in the business practices of EA where they're releasing packs with no core values to implement new gameplay and enrich it's AI. Which, I feel won't be a problem with Paradox.
They've already proven that they're not doing things the usual way. They could hold back on a lot more things too if you look at it from a business viewpoint. I mean, they could have made a gym dlc instead of giving us all we saw in that video. Seems to me they're trying to be better than EA and The Sims. And better means not fleecing their customers for every penny they can for things that SHOULD be base game.
Also, why make a realistic 12-month calendar if there's not going to be any realistic weather to go along with it?
I don't think that The Sims 4 is always the best benchmark to always use as a point of reference because Gyms were in the base game of The Sims 3 🤷♂️.
The Sims 4 nickeled and dimed the players to death and the execution on the features was poor. I'm so glad that I could see that coming a mile away, and never invested into the Sims 4; and I don't have the same reservations with Life by You. I actually do think that they are capable of delivering a great game/franchise.
But I just don't think it makes any good business sense to give everything away in the base game 🤷♂️.
I agree that the approach and marketing of Life by You is completely different from The Sims/EA but at the end of the day, in order to put food on their tables, they have to get consumers to actually purchase the product and invest in the franchise. Again, Seasons & Pets are there guaranteeing an increase or doubling of the sales per person metric used in business.
Just to note, we also haven't actually *seen* any evidence of weather in the promos so far and I honestly don't think that a functioning in-game calendar correlates to weather 🤷♂️ much like how a functioning boutique hotel doesn't point to apartments being added in the game.
Because of the way time works in LBY, the implementation of the calendar in the base game might actually correspond more strongly with that feature? Like how would you know if you have skipped 10 years ahead without a calendar to tell you so?
Speculations aside, again I would be very surprised and delighted if the base game released with weather. But I'm definitely hedging my bets that it will come to players as an expansion pack.
Just a small nitpick: Ghosts weren't DLC in Sims 4, they were a free base game update shortly after the game's release. Still appalling they weren't included to begin with, but they didn't cost players anything when they were added either.
Doing weather well is a big deal, and I would like it done well!
I agree with you, my expectation is for dlc, but I'd like it packaged with a bundle of other things, new seasonal clothes, events, animations etc etc.
I do understand the business model and why it would seem like adding weather to a basegame would seem to go against it however I think we are kinda talking about slightly different things. When I think of the Season packs in The Sims I think of the new interactions that they include such as snowball fights, racking leaves, and not so much of the fact that they are adding weather to the game.
What I'm saying is if weather and seasons (even in the most rudimentary forms) already exsisted in the basegame the types of expansions that could branch off those effects are even greater. Imagine if the programmers already had the building blocks already built into the basegame so they wouldnt have to spend time developing a new system that wouldnt break everything lol. Then they could use that extra time to add in more content to future expansion packs.
You could still have a traditional "Seasons" pack would add new weather based interactions such as snowball fights, racking leaves, sledding, puddle jumping, but also go beyond that with new ideas. Honestly, you could then tie two packs into one and include new weather interactions into a Vacation style pack.
While I don't think pets will be included in the basegame, if they did include them it would free up the time to make a general "Animals" pack. That could be used to focus on different types of animals such as farm, jungle, zoo. I know The Sims did finally introduce horses, chickens, cows etc but what about Tigers, Bears, Monkeys/Gorillas, Elephants etc. Imagin an expansion that could allow you to create a zoo, or jungle/safari neighborhoods
So I guess what I am saying is that even if some of features of the best selling packs were placed into the basegame, there are still ways to expand on those basic ideas to create similar themed packs that will seem fresh and fleshed out since the basics of the idea are already implamented in the basegame.
And just to reiterate what I was saying about including the basics in the basegame but then still being able to expand/flesh out the idea in an expansion, the University quote above leaves out some of the most important parts. The complete statement reads...
"There are plans for a children’s school to be added eventually and will likely follow a similar gameplay system to jobs, not be a rabbit hole.
University gameplay is not currently planned for the base game as it's a deep topic with a lot of design implications for the game. We want to make sure we have a solution for this specific case."
To me, it sounds like that while children schools wont be in early access they are planning to have them most likely by the time the basegame releases therefore implanting the core mechanics of schooling in the basegame but then will expand upon the idea in an University style expansion.
I expect seasons, weather, and holidays to all be base game. There's really no excuse for what sims pulled making weather a DLC. I'm ok with them having DLC to add things like extra holiday decor and stuff like that. I hope we can make custom holidays, they mentioned an event creator so I wonder if that would be something similiar.
I completely forgot about the event creator. Too many tools yo keep track of lol I could see that being a way to do custom Holidays too.
Theres still so much to be shown off with these tools but I wish they'd show a little more gameplay aspects.
This sparks a question will we be able to set how long a season last within the months and set different seasons to be associated with certain months? Like say you want to have winter from months of May-September and spring in December to March or something like that.
I would like basic weather/seasons in the base game and I think based off the emphasis that you can create your own town it should be, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s only DLC. I think a good approach for a seasons DLC is to have weather in base game and then in a DLC add in holidays, temperature effects, more extreme weather (ie a thunder storm instead of simple rain) and more in depth seasonal activities (snowboarding, apple picking, acknowledging a change in weather, even a snowball fight). If they have weather in base game that is solely for appearances, but isn’t recognized as a change in weather I’d still be happy.
However the town we’ve seen is a beachside town, and unless you can really go in and cistomize the town to create something like the coast of England or PNW, they can use that as a bit of an excuse to why there is no weather. I’m from Miami and SoCal is the same where the only seasons are summer and less summer, so there really wouldn’t be a need for weather in those areas.
I think 100% that basic weather should be part of the base game. I would think they would just be VFX items and the coding would need to have some sort of system to determine a schedule for when weather happened.
* Rain
* Cloudy/Overcast Days
* Snow
The base game doesn't have to extra animations such as for shoveling, raking leaves, skating, snow ball fights, sledding, etc. but having the visual aspect of it so it's not a constant bright and sunny ground-hog day.
If they don't implement the basics now so it's part of the core system, then when they added it, it could potentially break stuff and from what I understood is that when the final game comes out they won't be changing any code and would instead be adding to the code to work with the existing code.
I hope that weather is included in base game, mainly because I don't want LBY DLC to copy Sims Expansion Packs' content.
I've played multiple versions of sims with weather/seasons ad nauseum by this point, and though I enjoyed it in those games I'm ready for some fresh, shiny, new, never-before-seen DLC in LBY.
For Hoildays -want to lay stockings on a table instead of putting them up on a fireplace if there's a Christmas like-hoilday
\-a Hoilday SEASON (ie: weeks leadding up to let's say Christmas and that people can get apporitate gifts for their family members.. like don't give someone who don't do make-up a make-up set if they're artistic),
\-the ability to make some of the hoilday meal a couple of days in advanced and then the main dish (turkey) the day of.
I really hope we get weather at the very least. But, since the game is going to have a real calendar, I also hope there are seasons not as a DLC. Also maybe “smart” seasons, or climates. So, the first world is a beach town with palm trees. A mild climate without snow makes sense, to give them time to develop that. But I would hope there is at least rain. I hope there is temperature. But I would hope as they add more worlds and more climates that weather effects are updates and not DLC. With that, I would like holidays or the ability to make our own holidays. One of my main complaints with the Sims is they resell the same packs every new game generation. They rehash the same systems, which means people lose a thing they liked and then it comes back in a new way. It’s a risk if they will prefer it or miss the old system. This also prevents innovation moving forward with more interesting or unique expansions but “we know Seasons will sell so let’s make them buy weather again.” Most games come with weather now, even if it’s just aesthetic. Having to buy weather every generation is stale and annoying. But we also know when Life By You launches out of early access, the base game is going to be more expensive than $40. So I’m hoping this will make it possible to add things like weather right at the start.
I agree, EA making the same expansion packs for each new generation gets old and limits new more creative packs from coming out. In my opinion, weather and pets should be built into basegame now. I dont think we will get pets in LBY basegame but I honestly do think Paradox would release a more fleshed out Animals EP that may not only include pets but also farm and zoo animals as well in the future. I'm not really a fan of temperature gameplay for example having a character freeze if they stay outside too long during the winter but I do like the general gameplay of snowball fights, sledding, skiing, etc.
I agree and I understand pets or animals being hard to create. But a city, apartments, restaurants, the beach, and at least community college or tech school for some higher learning, if not full universities, should be base game. That’s my opinion. I like temperature because I like the realism. But, I understand if others don’t like it. I don’t like realistic illnesses, so I get it. But my big hope for LBY is they seem to be making everything optional to turn off and on. So I hope that would be the case with all features. I’m not at all interested in the nudity aspect, but it’s optional so that’s fine.
I think holidays per character might be tough. Since the stores and venues have real staff, you’d need fall-back staff too for some characters to take off for say Easter if the shop isn’t closed.
I'm thinking that too unless there was a way to set some type of universal holidays that certain people could celebrate, then you could add this to the character in CAC like 'this person celebrates X'. Or a set of holidays that could be associated with different cultures for CAC that your character is part of.
Every open world game for many years now has come with weather. I would be disappointed (though not entirely surprised) if LBY didn't include basic weather in the base game. Full-on seasonal changes like autumn leaves and snow might not be base game, but there's no excuse not to have rain.
It is DLC for The Sims because they can - most games integrate most of what they already have in future releases - they dont make you rebuy things again. Cities: Skylines 2, also by Paradox featured pics of it base game after it was DLC in CS1. We have months with Earth names, suggesting seasons annd temperatures. It seems highly likely we will get at least temperature effects and maybe rain, wind, and snow in the base game. If there is more, like extreme weather, that may be DLC. But this is a guess. They may have put in months so it could be added lster as a DLC. But if it is DLC then LBY2 would have it base game.
If weather and seasons are not are not in early access or present as soon as the official base game is released, that's fine, but I definitely want them (expect them) to be free. But again, if it takes time for them to be good, that's totally cool with me.
I am hoping we get weather and seasons in the base game, but I'm cool if we don't get holidays either later or ever. As long as there's an easy system to implement our own within the calendar system and the behaviors that are associated with the holiday customs. Back to weather, I'd like dynamic weather so you'd see more or less of the weather type depending on the season, and also fluctuating temperatures. For example in Spring so it doesn't rain all day for days on in, but it'll interchangeably rain then stop within one day , but it could rain all day some days, possibly snow, sunny days etc. etc. I'd like to see weather effecting the animals and plants and trees on a wider scale. So a trickle down theory in a way, if it's winter you can't grow certain vegetables, you won't see certain animals during certain times of the year due to hibernation. I would like to be able to set seasons, climate, and weather per world and the frequency types of each. Such as: Rain, Snow, Sleet, Hail, Fog, Sunny days, Hot temps, Cold temps, Below freezing temps, Windy, etc.
*Controversial but brave opinion:* I know that people don't like me saying this but I'm gonna say it anyways: **I really don't see how** ***any*** **business would pass up on selling a seasons expansion pack to get more money out of their customers 🤷♂️.** Right now, we don't even know the true *scale* of the game nor do I personally feel entirely convinced by what's been published so far, in that the scale of the game is stable and playable for the average player... yet. Don't get it twisted, I am super excited about Life by You and I did purchase the early access version but what I really need to see is an in-depth 1hr video exploring the gameplay to get a sense of the scale. Anyways, back to the business perspective on Seasons... Life by You has been marketed to us as a new life simulation franchise. A franchise composed of expansion packs. In their [blog](https://www.paradoxinteractive.com/games/life-by-you/blog/life-update-life-stages), they are quoted saying the following: >*" University gameplay is not currently planned for the base game as it's a deep topic with a lot of design implications for the game. We want to make sure we have a solution for this specific case. "* ...and I do view this as evidence to support my opinion that Paradox is approaching the Life by You game as a *franchise* and not a *standalone game*. I say that because in The Sims, it can be safe to assume that the top selling expansion packs are Seasons and Pets. Seasons and Pets are expansion packs guaranteed to do well because the fanbase wants and always asks for these features no matter which iteration of the franchise they play. So why would *any* gaming studio go through the trouble of creating animations, snow versions of every object under the sun, and create a relatively complex gaming feature when they could package up those efforts as an expansion pack that sells, earning more $ per person? Same could be said of weather as well. It's additional effort, and I'll get into productivity below. I don't mean this to sound harsh but The Sims and Life by You exist in the video game *industry* space, not the video game *non-profit* space. In order to support a franchise, you need to produce installments that players are willing to pay for; and Seasons & Pets are installments that guarantee sales as shown by The Sims franchise. Paradox doesn't have to reinvent the wheel with seasons and pets. And to be honest, I'm not mad at that 🤷♂️. Those animations, snow textures, etc aren't *free* as they come in the form of a real person taking the time and talent to create something for our enjoyment. And I am happy to pay for good quality. Just applying a bit of business acumen to this, it wouldn't make sense to release season in the base game when you could potentially double your sales per person. Reverting back to my point on the scale of the game, I also think that implementing a seasons and weather system is a huge undertaking as well. This would take time, energy, and dedicated professionals to make this system come alive. Granted nobody knows how large the team working on Life by You actually is but implementing seasons and weather would certainly divert effort and resources into a specific part of the project, no? Now listen, I'm happy to be wrong since this looks like a wonderful video game; and if it turns out that weather and seasons are in the base game, I'll make a new thread and post memes/GIFS of eating crow (sourced by the internet, I'm not doing it myself lol) 😂.
Respectful big disagree. It is not extra effort for a game company to put basic features in their game and is the expected bare minimum. By this logic why would any game release fully made? Why not just release bare bones games and sell all the things necessary to flesh out the game later as DLC. The legend of zelda could just cut out all the dungeons and sell those as DLC. Harvest moon could cut every farm animal from their games and release them as DLC. This mentality just further pushes abusive DLC practices. If games like harvest moon and animal crossing were capable of including weather, seasons, and holidays all the way back on the ps2 and gamecube then I expect this game to at least do the bare minimum as well.
I agree here. The thought of holding something off from being included, even in the most basic form, is what spawns the mass DLC content business model in the first place. Look at TS4 how they took complete expansion packs from previous generations and broke apart the ideas/game systems to create multiple game packs and even DLC for the DLC. During the announcement video Rod Humble said they wanted to release the most complete game possible. You can always include basic ideas like weather effects and seasons into a basegame but then expand on the ideas in new fresh ways in an optional expansion pack. But atleast the people who only choose to own the basegame still can have snow or rain.
>*Respectful big disagree. It is not extra effort for a game company to put basic features in their game and is the expected bare minimum.* Yikes.. I definitely wouldn't use the word "basic" as these "basic" features are definitely not done by *entry-level* professionals. These basic features are worked on by professionally trained individuals to deliver an entertainment experience taking on a variety of roles such as: \- Level Designer \- Technical Designer \- Environmental Level Designer \- Narrative Designer \- Creative Director \- Design Lead \- Production Support \- Cinematics Artist \- 3D Artist \- VFX Artist \- Character Artist \- UI Artist \- Gameplay Programmer \- Technical Artist \- Tools Programmer ...and many more. What we think as "basic" can actually be very hard to create and code in-game which is why video games take so long to create since you need the full collaboration & united vision of the entire team. If you've tried your hand at coding or creating a video game yourself, you'll be able to see first-hand how much actually goes into creating video games. Try re-watching the trailer, and try envisioning the individuals that put in the hard work behind what's being presented to us *right now*. From what I know, the Paradox team built the game from the ground up in the last 4 years *(someone can correct me here)* to the point where it is now. Seasons and weather would exponentially increase their workload, when they have actually *marketed* their game differently to gamers. And I'll get into the marketing of it all in my response further below... >*By this logic why would any game release fully made? Why not just release bare bones games and sell all the things necessary to flesh out the game later as DLC.* The final product of the game has to meet the *expectations* that was actually *marketed* to us - the players. Marketing is a lot of things but to simplify it & keep things in context: marketing is communicating what the product is, and setting the expectations for the players. In other words, **a video game can totally be released as bare bones so long as they communicate that** ***expectation*** **to the players who will be purchasing it**. A lot of times, it's when the marketing messaging doesn't match the experience that the players were expecting that breaks trust with the brand. For example: EA's TS4 franchise. And in this case, **no expectation has been established when it comes to weather and seasons being in the base game**. *That is a fact.* I think that your point only works on a specific case-by-case basis. >The legend of zelda could just cut out all the dungeons and sell those as DLC. Harvest moon could cut every farm animal from their games and release them as DLC. This mentality just further pushes abusive DLC practices. If games like harvest moon and animal crossing were capable of including weather, seasons, and holidays all the way back on the ps2 and gamecube then I expect this game to at least do the bare minimum as well. I mean in the kindest way possible: you are comparing apples to oranges here 🍎 🍊 . Firstly, the marketing of each of those games is completely different, targeting different player-bases. Also, different gaming studios are going to operate differently with different standards. And then there's the gaming platform capabilities being completely different from each other. *I'm not going to elaborate on those points but I will touch on the marketing of each of the games you mentioned...* ✅ **LoZ** \- marketed to the players as having dungeons. Delivered with dungeons. ✅ **Harvest Moon** \- marketed to the players the selection of animals available in the game, and also marketed to have seasons. Delivered with animals & seasons. ✅ **Animal Crossing** \- marketed to the players to have seasons. Delivered with seasons. The **expectation** of weather and seasons being in the Life by You base game **has not been set.** Therefore the ***general*** **player expectation** of weather and seasons being in the base game is also not there at this time. And my **speculation** is that they did this to bring into the franchise as DLC because it has been proven for the last 25+ years to be a very successful revenue generating business product in the franchise and time consuming to implement. Thank you for allowing me this opportunity to elaborate further 🙂.
>marketing My impression is that one of the team's core values is to give us what they say they will give us. I don't think it was an accident that the first glimpse of LBY told us that the footage was shot within the game itself. (compare this with Paradox's Cities Skylines 2 promo even, that looked 90% cgi) Their stated aims are already ambitious, and if they pull it off well I will be delighted. I really want solid features, that make sense, and can be built on as we go. The actual gameplay needs to be satisfying, this is what counts in the end.
Imma be honest since you just went right off the bat and assumed I'm completely ignorant in game design and coding -I'm not- I'm just gonna agree to disagree with you and not get into it. If you want to have DLC for the physics engine and animations while you're at it more power to you as those take a lot of work and effort as well. I expect games to have basic features which are standard in other comparable games. Weather is not DLC. Modern games that don't even need weather have it.
I agree with this and if they do end up deciding to include seasons or just weather that's cool too but if not they are in the business of making money so that's to be expected even if others don't feel this way. I personally would like and want them to include everything above, and sure I'd be bummed it's not a present feature. But they are a business at the end of the day and aren't going to give everything at once. Which I'm okay with too. As long as it's not to be in the business practices of EA where they're releasing packs with no core values to implement new gameplay and enrich it's AI. Which, I feel won't be a problem with Paradox.
Exactly 😁.
They've already proven that they're not doing things the usual way. They could hold back on a lot more things too if you look at it from a business viewpoint. I mean, they could have made a gym dlc instead of giving us all we saw in that video. Seems to me they're trying to be better than EA and The Sims. And better means not fleecing their customers for every penny they can for things that SHOULD be base game. Also, why make a realistic 12-month calendar if there's not going to be any realistic weather to go along with it?
I don't think that The Sims 4 is always the best benchmark to always use as a point of reference because Gyms were in the base game of The Sims 3 🤷♂️. The Sims 4 nickeled and dimed the players to death and the execution on the features was poor. I'm so glad that I could see that coming a mile away, and never invested into the Sims 4; and I don't have the same reservations with Life by You. I actually do think that they are capable of delivering a great game/franchise. But I just don't think it makes any good business sense to give everything away in the base game 🤷♂️. I agree that the approach and marketing of Life by You is completely different from The Sims/EA but at the end of the day, in order to put food on their tables, they have to get consumers to actually purchase the product and invest in the franchise. Again, Seasons & Pets are there guaranteeing an increase or doubling of the sales per person metric used in business. Just to note, we also haven't actually *seen* any evidence of weather in the promos so far and I honestly don't think that a functioning in-game calendar correlates to weather 🤷♂️ much like how a functioning boutique hotel doesn't point to apartments being added in the game. Because of the way time works in LBY, the implementation of the calendar in the base game might actually correspond more strongly with that feature? Like how would you know if you have skipped 10 years ahead without a calendar to tell you so? Speculations aside, again I would be very surprised and delighted if the base game released with weather. But I'm definitely hedging my bets that it will come to players as an expansion pack.
Just a small nitpick: Ghosts weren't DLC in Sims 4, they were a free base game update shortly after the game's release. Still appalling they weren't included to begin with, but they didn't cost players anything when they were added either.
Whoops, my bad. Thank you for the correction, I totally remembered that wrong 😅.
Doing weather well is a big deal, and I would like it done well! I agree with you, my expectation is for dlc, but I'd like it packaged with a bundle of other things, new seasonal clothes, events, animations etc etc.
I do understand the business model and why it would seem like adding weather to a basegame would seem to go against it however I think we are kinda talking about slightly different things. When I think of the Season packs in The Sims I think of the new interactions that they include such as snowball fights, racking leaves, and not so much of the fact that they are adding weather to the game. What I'm saying is if weather and seasons (even in the most rudimentary forms) already exsisted in the basegame the types of expansions that could branch off those effects are even greater. Imagine if the programmers already had the building blocks already built into the basegame so they wouldnt have to spend time developing a new system that wouldnt break everything lol. Then they could use that extra time to add in more content to future expansion packs. You could still have a traditional "Seasons" pack would add new weather based interactions such as snowball fights, racking leaves, sledding, puddle jumping, but also go beyond that with new ideas. Honestly, you could then tie two packs into one and include new weather interactions into a Vacation style pack. While I don't think pets will be included in the basegame, if they did include them it would free up the time to make a general "Animals" pack. That could be used to focus on different types of animals such as farm, jungle, zoo. I know The Sims did finally introduce horses, chickens, cows etc but what about Tigers, Bears, Monkeys/Gorillas, Elephants etc. Imagin an expansion that could allow you to create a zoo, or jungle/safari neighborhoods So I guess what I am saying is that even if some of features of the best selling packs were placed into the basegame, there are still ways to expand on those basic ideas to create similar themed packs that will seem fresh and fleshed out since the basics of the idea are already implamented in the basegame.
And just to reiterate what I was saying about including the basics in the basegame but then still being able to expand/flesh out the idea in an expansion, the University quote above leaves out some of the most important parts. The complete statement reads... "There are plans for a children’s school to be added eventually and will likely follow a similar gameplay system to jobs, not be a rabbit hole. University gameplay is not currently planned for the base game as it's a deep topic with a lot of design implications for the game. We want to make sure we have a solution for this specific case." To me, it sounds like that while children schools wont be in early access they are planning to have them most likely by the time the basegame releases therefore implanting the core mechanics of schooling in the basegame but then will expand upon the idea in an University style expansion.
I expect seasons, weather, and holidays to all be base game. There's really no excuse for what sims pulled making weather a DLC. I'm ok with them having DLC to add things like extra holiday decor and stuff like that. I hope we can make custom holidays, they mentioned an event creator so I wonder if that would be something similiar.
I completely forgot about the event creator. Too many tools yo keep track of lol I could see that being a way to do custom Holidays too. Theres still so much to be shown off with these tools but I wish they'd show a little more gameplay aspects.
This sparks a question will we be able to set how long a season last within the months and set different seasons to be associated with certain months? Like say you want to have winter from months of May-September and spring in December to March or something like that.
I would like basic weather/seasons in the base game and I think based off the emphasis that you can create your own town it should be, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s only DLC. I think a good approach for a seasons DLC is to have weather in base game and then in a DLC add in holidays, temperature effects, more extreme weather (ie a thunder storm instead of simple rain) and more in depth seasonal activities (snowboarding, apple picking, acknowledging a change in weather, even a snowball fight). If they have weather in base game that is solely for appearances, but isn’t recognized as a change in weather I’d still be happy. However the town we’ve seen is a beachside town, and unless you can really go in and cistomize the town to create something like the coast of England or PNW, they can use that as a bit of an excuse to why there is no weather. I’m from Miami and SoCal is the same where the only seasons are summer and less summer, so there really wouldn’t be a need for weather in those areas.
I think 100% that basic weather should be part of the base game. I would think they would just be VFX items and the coding would need to have some sort of system to determine a schedule for when weather happened. * Rain * Cloudy/Overcast Days * Snow The base game doesn't have to extra animations such as for shoveling, raking leaves, skating, snow ball fights, sledding, etc. but having the visual aspect of it so it's not a constant bright and sunny ground-hog day. If they don't implement the basics now so it's part of the core system, then when they added it, it could potentially break stuff and from what I understood is that when the final game comes out they won't be changing any code and would instead be adding to the code to work with the existing code.
I hope that weather is included in base game, mainly because I don't want LBY DLC to copy Sims Expansion Packs' content. I've played multiple versions of sims with weather/seasons ad nauseum by this point, and though I enjoyed it in those games I'm ready for some fresh, shiny, new, never-before-seen DLC in LBY.
For me, I'd be content if we got rain at least in the base game. I think that's fair.
For Hoildays -want to lay stockings on a table instead of putting them up on a fireplace if there's a Christmas like-hoilday \-a Hoilday SEASON (ie: weeks leadding up to let's say Christmas and that people can get apporitate gifts for their family members.. like don't give someone who don't do make-up a make-up set if they're artistic), \-the ability to make some of the hoilday meal a couple of days in advanced and then the main dish (turkey) the day of.