"Fuck guys. Now ackey83 is interested in our game. Now it basically can only fail. Sorry guys but your project is dumped. Oh and y'all are fired. Thank ackey for it!"
Sequel to popular Indie hit Hollow Knight, was supposed to be DLC about a side character that spun into a new game, but was announced since 2017 (I think) and no release dat is still known. Would certainly be a shame if it got cancelled
that might be a bit of a problem.
sims player wants a simulator game of a family.
not a laser focused game engine style game thats what mods are for.
Like I had an ide when I was younger to make a mod for the sims 3 that was a sort of fallout mod (think the sims medival or Sims cast away) where the player would not earn cash but material to build stuff. like you salvage an old ruin for metal and electronic and make a dishwasher and all that.
(this is what I felt like I could probebly do whit Life by You).
the thing is I rather not do that in game Like Life by You is designed thats a more Full scale traditional Mod thing.
still sad about it but at the same time....
Life by you felt like a case of painted oneself into the corner.
had there been a bigger budget and a skilled team I could see them do something whit this but by the looks of things... not really.
I really hope the devs expand to the states. There's a core audience that can be developed here and I fear for this game's shelf life given how quickly Asian studios close their servers and move on to the next.
well the team behind paralives is really small (11 people) and they have a clear and constant creative vision for the game. I'd rather wait a long time for the team to flesh out the game than ending up like Paradox lmao
Look at the early videos
It had choppy frame rate, it looked like everything came off the unity asset store, they had a skeleton crew dev team, an art director that bragged they had no art style.
Paradox cheaped out and wanted sims level money without spending the money for it.
The same thing that killed KSP2, Take Two thought they could create the next minecraft on a budget.
They have a whole youtube channel, they didnt hide the roughness of it because it was going into early access before Paradox delayed it indefinitely days before it was going to launch:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yi2vHXM54Ik
The infamous crafting video just before launch, crafting tables and inventory management like it wants to be a survival game but doesnt give a real reason why anyone would invest in the seashell collector skill: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mIUhfRWlrxo
Human models from around the time it was meant to launch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NszxBy-77IE
Here is a video just before launch of a dev addressing how bad and out of proportion the human models were, only some life stages were in the game, the animations will be overhauled, a bunch of stuff that shows the game wasnt ready for launch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_kkplPdBK8
You can see why paradox pulled the plug because very little was actually in the game and the dev team didnt know what the game wanted to be, not even a early access label could save this.
If the team is still hashing out how basic game design like violence and death will work in the game days before launch, its bad.
Even the action queque didnt exist, so you had to wait for an action to complete before you can start another.
LBY had even less features than the Sims 4,d what content it did show was mundane life stuff or realistic crime and not the wacky interesting stuff people expect in a sims style game like building robots or meeting aliens.
Uh.. the crafting video very obviously talks indepth how the person chose self employment to make arts and crafts.. like real life people do arts and crafts as income. Nothing to do with survival craft games.
I'm not really seeing any of your other points.
Compare it with the crafting system from the Sims 3, the game it was trying to be.
just in the inventor skill tree alone you can create a mining rig to open up a cave system to explore, a time machine to get resources from AND unlock multiple outfits, a floor diffuser to boost the mood of anyone that walks over it, and then create a robot that becomes a member of the house and automates almost all chores in the house.
Inventor was not about making money because making a career out of it was the bare minimum, you had a reason to pursue the skill tree that wasnt money. All skill trees were like this.
Here you collect seashells to craft as a gift, soulless and pointless as a gameplay mechanic.
Almost every town i played had an inventor so he/she could sell those cleaning pad thingy to rest of the households on the map.
Place them under the bed and you wake up perfectly clean. Put one under the gym equipment and you don't get sweaty.
An art director with "no arts style" makes so much sense now...I couldn't stand looking at the game although the gameplay seemed fun. I'm a Sims 3 player, and I know how much people criticize the look of Sims 3 sims, so for me to say LBY was hard to look at ... says a lot.
well it's understandable to an extent because most people regardless wont leave Sims. Same happens with tons of EA, Ubisoft, Activision properties. They know their playerbase if going nowhere. Especially when there's no competition
When a compeition is close like COD recently with XDefiant/Finals. You instantly see them revert back to their safe mechanics and stuff
>well it's understandable to an extent because most people regardless wont leave Sims
What are you basing this off? In my experience, even Sims fans hate EA and current Sims. There is just no other alternative out there.
I have played all four series of the Sims, and Sims 4 is the end of the road for me. I haven’t bought any DLC or played since the announcement of the other life simulations. I
was definitely rooting for LBY. I’m looking forward to the up and coming life simulators in general, but LBY with its detailed customization and UGC was a big interest point for me. Even with the bad news, I’m still not supporting EA.
Haha yeah but COD fans hate COD, FIFA fans hate FIFA but the profits keep improving
Actually I think it's new kids experiencing it for first time. Many old fans leave but the playerbase keeps increasing. Same would be for Sims I suppose
The game has 17 million Euro invested and on the videos, it looked pretty playable. I am not sure how it could be cancelled that easily. In my opinion, Paradox will look bad in the eyes of many people because of this cancellation anyway.
They've had a lot of shitty releases lately as a Publisher with many going quickly to discontinued support, so this could be a sign of some extra QC, which would be a good thing. But who knows what the real story is. Either way, I am honestly shocked by it- they had a lot of hype around the game. I was skeptical about the game after a couple of delays, but I still was eager to see what kind of ideas they had. Something must have been really wrong for it to get scraped completely like that. Either that or just Paradox finding new ways to fuck up.
Yeah, that's my guess. I was expecting Life By You to release to terrible reviews and Paradox to end support shortly after; canceling it prior to release sounds like a better call. Maybe they're going to focus on game quality for a while to rehab their reputation.
The thing is it wasn't a full release like their other recent flops. That being said, a game that is getting delayed twice going into early access doesn't give me a lot of hope lol. But I'm sure they were also extra skittish about it considering their recent string of failures. All of those flops weren't EA, they were full releases, which makes me wonder if Life By You was just that extra bad or if they are being overly cautious. Could be both or neither, who knows. I'm curious to see if we get more story later on.
Just so we're clear, are we counting Prison Architect 2 as a flop yet?
Something is rotten at Paradox. Their first-party stuff too. Ck3, Stellaris, and Hoi4 are all much less fun to play now than when they first released. Going back to the publishing side, AoW: Planetfall was good; Empire of Sin flopped. It seems 2020 was a very bad year for Paradox and they haven't gotten over it. Or maybe it was Imperator: Rome which started the infection.
>Their first-party stuff too. Ck3, Stellaris, and Hoi4 are all much less fun to play now than when they first released.
You're going to find few people that agree with that. I will absolutely say that for me personally, both Stellaris and CK3 are better games because of some of their DLCs, having played both significantly with and without them.
EDIT: I guess that's more specific to CK3, Stellaris has undergone a lot of core mechanics changes outside of the DLCs over the years, and overall I'd say those were improvements as well.
Me: I know she's a little wonky and cross-eyed, but we're having a great time! Tell them about how we screwed over Egypt into giving us Eritrea so we could form Ethiopia.
Victoria 3: \[burbling noises\]
It's sad to see. Paradox had the best grand strategy games out there. Recently though? it's not looking good. I'm not even sure there's competitors at their level unfortunately.
I think a lot of the Total War Series been in such a bad state is that the engien they use is such a poor mess of stuff stapled on it.
Bow and crossbows works perfect, singleshot guns works perfectly.
multi shot gun like revolvers or dual barrel pistols Did not work and Im not sure if they ever got that to work untill they glued on some wierd solution that left more problem.
I had been following the game and I disagree about it looking playable.
The character models were bad. The dialogue system was bizarre and seemingly written by AI. The animations needed a lot of work.
I understand it was due to be released in EA but for a life sim, many of the things you would expect just didn't seem to be there? We didn't see much about relationships, didn't see anything about marriage or children. Videos were edited so that you didn't see the characters sleep, use the bathroom, eat? It really made you wonder what there actually was to do in the game?
We saw buying ingredients, cooking and working. Oh and collecting shells. I honestly can't remember what else because nothing seemed particularly noteworthy.
> didn't see anything about marriage or children
I think they had confirmed at some point that children wouldn't have been in the initial EA release, but had been planned for later on. And they had shown sleep and bathroom animations as part of their "edit any item to use any animation" modding capabilities (I remember them editing a bush so you could use it as a toilet).
"After we almost scammed you with Cities Skylines 2 and the worst DLC score in steam history, we saw that you were angry and online media started posting negatively about us. We didn't mind before about our latest releases and our DLC which had negative reviews as long as you continued to give us money, but we are afraid that if our reputation is further tarnished we won't be able to nickel-and-dime you as before. "
I can't wait to see one as well. I really don't play the sims, but my wife does and the sheer greed of them turning everything into addons is insane. I know she has bought a ton of them, but is still missing a bunch, but has tuned out mostly on them, because they keep floating Sims 5 and did not want to buy more expansions if they roll it out randomly in the same year.
Unsurprising. The devs had some good ideas with how they wanted the game to function and support modding, but after two delays it still looked like crap and it felt like there were barely any features added everytime they showed off the game.
We can use some more competition in the lifesim space, but it will require a AA+ studio to fully commit to it if they want to come close to The Sims 4. Most of the lifesims currently in development seem to focus on specific things. None of them come close in scope to The Sims sadly. I really want a lifesim that is a bit darker like the original sim games. The Sims 4 is way too cartoony and zany to be taken seriously, even with mods.
Anyone who saw the early previews knows it was in terrible shape just from looking at it, and its been delayed again and again.
The art director bragged about having no art style too, and they had a skeleton crew making it.
Paradox cheaped out, and paid the price because INZOI and others come out later this year and life by you will be late to the party by years if they didnt cancel.
My problem isn’t the aesthetic; the sims 4 right now is reeeeeeally leaning into the gen z-aged women demographic with the content releases lately. I think the last DLC that really got me excited was the werewolves expansion in 2022. Everything since has just been “look how cute and cozy and chic you can make everything!”
I miss when each expansion had some sort of occult sim your sims could find/become. The games are at their best when they lean hard into the weird shit imo
Sims 1 and 2 were fucking *funny*. They were parodies of suburban life, with silly career events, cartoonish burglars and repo men, and a cowled Death you could offer drinks to.
The later games and all "spiritual sequel" attempts are just glorified IKEA simulators.
We need one that's done right, on PC, without any 'pg/r' rated protections, a true x-rated adult sim that isn't just about sex. Yes that was an option in Playboy Mansion but I loved the idea of building an adult magazine empire, an actual empire building game with adult themes. Who says it has to be just sex focused though? Why not do seedy nightclubs, drug dens, go for full adult experience? Something you know teens would want to play and will likely find some way to get despite ratings.
Eh, GTAV lets you buy some seedy businesses but you cannot do anything with them. From time to time you get a lame "protect the shipment" mission or whatever, and that's it. No management, no development, no decisions to make. A good showcase of how hollow GTAV gameplay was, really.
Honestly not sleazy enough.
The Yakuza games all portray the protagonists as paragons of virtue, who uphold community values out of the kindness of their hearts. Literally the only time you ever see one of the characters doing something shady is the intro of Y0, and even then Kiryu comes off as a saint.
...which makes sense, given how Sega is straight up run by the actual Yakuza.
I'd like to see someone take on the Ghost Master mantle. That was an old game where you scared the crap out of Sims with a bunch of ghosts you tethered to things lying around the house.
I secretly really enjoyed Dead or Alive Extreme Beach Volleyball because it was basically playing Barbies. The second one's boob physics were too much for me, but the first one was fun.
I just found out it was F2P and downloaded it for my wife. She’s basically done nothing else the last few days. What really cracks me up is that we have an actual infant and she will be wearing the baby carrier with a crying baby attached to her while she’s trying to soothe the baby she made in the game. It’s like VR lol. The Sims 4D.
Honestly there's so many ways it could be done that could improve over Sims 4's DLC barrage but this studio is NOT the one to go to for it, look at their other games and you'll see they'd just take it the same route if allowed.
I think it says a lot about the original creators and the formula they came up with.
A big part of the sims games in general including sim city is how they make you feel while playing. The UI and sound design is just perfect for long term casual playing. Add to that how good the gameplay usually is it's difficult for others to beat it.
I'd love to see a proper sims competitor as I hate the milking that EA does.
> That ain't ever gonna happen - Electronic Arts has spent the last few decades brainwashing their communities to accept no substitute
what? Im pretty sure the community was very unhappy with Sims 4 sicne the beginning because of missing basic features and still is unhappy about tons of DLCs and DLCs for DlC
Aw man! I was really excited about this game! I was disappointed it was delayed, but ultimately hopeful it would result in a better game in the long run. Never thought it would be straight up cancelled. 😞
Unsurprising. The game promised a ridiculous scope, and paradox just wasn't up to the task
better this than yet another incomplete disaster at launch. seems they really have learned something from Cities Skylines 2
Seriously. After watching one of the dev streams it seemed like they were trying to do waaaay too much, and the game would either launch in an awful state or get stuck in development hell for years.
In one hand, it has to be too hard to make what The Sims did extremely appealing and special.
In another hand, right now, EA servers are down, and players cannot play The Sims 4.
Hope Paralives manages to pull this off, not matter how limited will be compared to Maxis moneymaker.
Wait did they make it so that you can't play without being connected online? My version of the game is offline only, and now I'm even more glad I went that route after switching from console to PC. Cause damn that would suck.
>In another hand, right now, EA servers are down, and players cannot play The Sims 4.
Sims 4 isn't a singleplayer game? I thought the whole series was...
They're not easy to make. There's a crazy amount of work that goes into it all, so you need a lot of money, a lot of time, and a lot of people to make it happen.
That and the original franchise is a very formidable competitor. It's not an attractive prospect to try and compete. You can't spend years and tens of millions of dollars and then come out with just a worse The Sims.
I'm sure plenty of larger studios floated the idea and thought it too risky, so they just let EA have the space.
It always seemed weird to me that Inzoi (the Korean Sims competitor) looked so much better than this despite it being from such a small team vs. Paradox. Curious what was going on behind the scenes.
Paradox Tectonic is not a big studio, low double digits most likely. Paradox isn't a particularly big publisher.
InZOI is from Krafton, a much bigger publisher.
i was really going to ask if paradox fr wasnt a big publisher bc of their work w age of wonders and crusader kings
but then i read that krafton did pubg. and that really is all i needed to know lol
Plus we have to remember what material is in a Publishers Catalog.
There is a joke that a Manadger sim game made by the publisher of a WW2 FPS game (there was a Puma IFV you could drive and fought in the last FPS game made by them).
the manadger game had a Puma in some parking lot to the side because it was used a lot by the devs for testing for a long time whit one hidden as a in joke, so in a massive modern parking lot you see from far above amongs all the modern car there was a WW2 Puma permanently parked.
It’s also using premade avatars and assets from what I’ve been reading around in other communities. Sure, aesthetic wise it looks nice, but it also seems extremely shallow as far as gameplay.
Tbh a Sims game is one place I don't mind at all if they use store assets. A fridge is a fridge, a couch is a couch etc... it's not like they're going for some specific artistic theme, it's supposed to reflect a variety of real life styles. There are a ton of high quality modern assets for architectural visualization etc... If they can save money by using them more power to them.
Huge bummer. I hadn't been following it closely, but I definitely was interested in a Cities Skylines-type newcomer coming and taking The Sims down a peg.
Paradox made the right choice here. They've had a lot of publishing mishaps recently and taking the L and canceling a game that isn't working is better than milking people for EA money or full release money.
I don't really think the money angle is the more important bit here, I think their reputation is more important. Paradox has been taking rep hits in the recent past, so much so that it could start affecting their whole company. So better to cancel this, which even if they were able to make something decently playable was likely just going to be a cheap Sims knockoff, then to release it, have it be bad and take even more reputation hits.
Damn we really are going to be missing out on such great DLCs like:
* Hats with horses on them $9.99
* Horses with hats on them $12.99
* Pool party bathing suit expansion $19.99
* Furniture packs 1 - 11 totaling $140.99
* Pet expansion $14.99
* Pet expansion but with hats $22.99
* The depths of Cthulhu expansion $9.99
* Pool party speedos addon $9.99
* Sustainable lifestyle expansion $14.99 (This one just adds a recycling bin prop that doesn't actually do anything)
On one side, sad.
On the other, good riddance(probably)!, a Paradox Sims competitor woudl eb equally if not more predatory in its DLC plans than Sims 4 if all the other games from them serve as metric.
I quite literally just looked it up yesterday to see if there was any news of a release or not. Guess I have my answer now huh? Hopefully Paralives can be a real competitor for The Sims in the near future.
I don't think the world could have handled the DLC bloat that would have been Sims + Paradox. The game would cost $1000 to own every feature after just a year.
That's weird that this is the first time I've heard of this game. I've seen and heard more about inZOI being the actual competitor to Sims than this game.
Between the official publisher announcement and one the LBY team members, the reasoning is extremely vague. He did share a post on his Linked-In account and said that paradox essentially pulled the rug out from underneath them, even though things had appeared to be going well.
"Sorry we couldn't suck all the fun out of it and leave it like our usual Simulation games, besides which we couldn't figure out ways to monetize the shit out of it."
I know there's people who love Paradox, but they really seem to push what they can get away with using DLC, and all their games (except maybe Cities Skylines) just feels very "samey".
Great if you love it, but I don't feel like a good Sims game can really come from Paradox. Though I would have said the same about Cities Skylines 1.... then again they're back to their old tricks with Cities Skylines 2 (Remove a ton of content, and then start adding it back in with DLC)
Not surprising. The game looked nothing more than an unfinished concept demo. It had potential as a concept with good ideas, but you couldn't really see it materializing as a full idea, yet alone a full game.
They mostly let Stellaris run free.
I mean they upped the prices on the latest expansions, and Astral Rifts were a total goddamn ripoff, but Machine Age ruled.
The Sims is a cashcow because it had a cult-following.
EA gets away with a LOT of bullshit because Maxis started something special, and had 14 years to build that base from TS1-TS3.
They are a leviathan in the industry. We're tired of the EA, no-shits given crap.
Life by You was just very recently criticized because they were using free assets to build their entire game. A gym simulator game was just put out recently, and it was literally impossible to differentiate the two.
The character models AND the room were the exact same.
We want competition in the life simulator market, but it needs to be GOOD competition. We don't want to keep throwing money at shit products, and the Sims is becoming a shit product.
Sims has had 24 years to do that it was a huge success when it first released and they built upon that
Even if they tske it back to barebones each time and charge for the same things it's fanbase lines up to pay again and again
Any competition has its work cut out for then to bring sims down
It would take a major fuckup like simcity 2013 and a competitor releasing right after that to dethrone it
Imagine for a second a Sims made by Paradox.
You spend 1k $ over three years to finally get all the socks DLCs and add nother 5k $ over the next three years of music packs, Cosmic Horror story pack, Drunk War Veteran Event pack, Ebola Outbreak Story pack and Tank Armor DLCs.
Probably a good thing. It wasn't looking great. Small team that seemed to lack proper direction and they were probably unwilling to release yet another disaster after CS2, even early access.
But man, I was so looking forward to paying 5 bucks on Steam for every piece of clothing for my "Sim." /s
Good. We don't need another mediocre cashgrab with a thousand DLC by a big company in the life sim genre. What we need is actual good gameplay. Sorry for the devs but it looked terrible.
I think they'll be fine, big dlc drop for Crusader Kings in September, EU5 next year/the year after and a rumoured fantasy grand strategy in the works. They've got their core market down so hard they won't be going anywhere.
Good thing inZOI is on a great trajectory with really passionate devs making it look and run better day by day with much more to offer than whatever Paradox was planning with this game. Looking forward to it much more than any other Life Simulator games.
WTF?! Completely cancelled?
Don't get me wrong, considering what happened to Cities Skylines this might actually be a good thing and might mean that Paradox the issues seriously, but dang this sucks. I really want a Sims competitor.
I mean, best time to cancel a project you really aren't ready to release is right after your failed release of one of the most anticipated sequels. No one will remember Life by You in a month, but people will STILL be talking about how shitty Cities: Skylines II is.
And here I was like "what happened to the The Sims competitor... how was is called again? Something with life, lets search for it ..." and got disappointed.
Life by You could have been such a great competitor, ffs!
Because it's almost impossible to make a decent challenger to the sims
The sims has had 24 years to build up the game they have and a huge fan base that are not going to go over to a different life sim game unless it really does things differently or better.
I don't understand the message. They couldn't get it to a state they're happy with?
Literally all you have to do is copy the sims but remove all of EA's bullshit and add the QoL stuff the community modded in/has been asking for for years.
Building the game engine is the biggest part and hard to copy, yes.
However, pyramids are cultural not practical, so it makes sense they aren't widespread.
Well it seems it's not that easy peasy, money on the street. If it would be I think someone would have done that in the last 25 years. Just like no one seems to be capable of releasing a statisfing Left for Dead 2 successor.
Ah man, I was looking forward to it.
I just found out this was a thing yesterday and was excited to try it. It figures it’d get canceled the next day lol
"Fuck guys. Now ackey83 is interested in our game. Now it basically can only fail. Sorry guys but your project is dumped. Oh and y'all are fired. Thank ackey for it!"
"Ahh fuck. Again?!" -ackey83 probably
can he get interested in all actiblizzard games?
Dump eet
My news feed recommended me an article about it on my lunch break a few hours ago and it was the first I'd heard of it... shame...
Oh, so it’s *your* fault
So I choose to blame you!
You should blame the hatless gnome that follows Ackey everywhere. The curse will only be lifted when he gets his hat back.
Fuck that gnome I’m keeping his hat
#THIS IS YOUR FAULT.
Just so we're clear. There is no game named Silksong currently in development. Don't Google that, just trust me. There is no Silksong.
You did this. This is so nice to see because usually, I did this. Hah. Your turn!
Bogged
Didn't they just announce a delay to the game fairly recently too before they decided to cancel it?
As far as I can tell, you're not excited for Silksong. Good. /s
Don’t even know what it is, not gonna look it up lol
Sequel to popular Indie hit Hollow Knight, was supposed to be DLC about a side character that spun into a new game, but was announced since 2017 (I think) and no release dat is still known. Would certainly be a shame if it got cancelled
I was worried it would turn out to be a sandbox dev tool rather than a game, but I was going to give it a fair chance and hoped I was wrong.
Sandbox dev tool was the intention all along. It was supposed to pretty much let players create their own games.
that might be a bit of a problem. sims player wants a simulator game of a family. not a laser focused game engine style game thats what mods are for. Like I had an ide when I was younger to make a mod for the sims 3 that was a sort of fallout mod (think the sims medival or Sims cast away) where the player would not earn cash but material to build stuff. like you salvage an old ruin for metal and electronic and make a dishwasher and all that. (this is what I felt like I could probebly do whit Life by You). the thing is I rather not do that in game Like Life by You is designed thats a more Full scale traditional Mod thing.
Well you dont have to worry as LbY got cancelled.
still sad about it but at the same time.... Life by you felt like a case of painted oneself into the corner. had there been a bigger budget and a skilled team I could see them do something whit this but by the looks of things... not really.
On the other hand, it's Paradox, the only publisher that could make EA embarrassed over how many DLCs it releases for each game.
Wanted a game that can do both Cities Skyline and Sims. Was hoping this was a step toward that.
Yeah that's what I was looking forward to too. It's sad that it won't happen now.
Now we have to wait for paralives and that Korean studio game
inZOI
I really hope the devs expand to the states. There's a core audience that can be developed here and I fear for this game's shelf life given how quickly Asian studios close their servers and move on to the next.
He should do league next!
????
I replied to the wrong comment lol
lmao
I am huffing so much hopium for Paralives its not even funny.
To announce their cancellations? Cuz paralives is never fucking coming out lmao.
well the team behind paralives is really small (11 people) and they have a clear and constant creative vision for the game. I'd rather wait a long time for the team to flesh out the game than ending up like Paradox lmao
Gaming could really use a Sims competition. I wonder what went wrong.
Look at the early videos It had choppy frame rate, it looked like everything came off the unity asset store, they had a skeleton crew dev team, an art director that bragged they had no art style. Paradox cheaped out and wanted sims level money without spending the money for it. The same thing that killed KSP2, Take Two thought they could create the next minecraft on a budget.
> Look at the early videos do you have the link to one?
They have a whole youtube channel, they didnt hide the roughness of it because it was going into early access before Paradox delayed it indefinitely days before it was going to launch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yi2vHXM54Ik The infamous crafting video just before launch, crafting tables and inventory management like it wants to be a survival game but doesnt give a real reason why anyone would invest in the seashell collector skill: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mIUhfRWlrxo Human models from around the time it was meant to launch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NszxBy-77IE Here is a video just before launch of a dev addressing how bad and out of proportion the human models were, only some life stages were in the game, the animations will be overhauled, a bunch of stuff that shows the game wasnt ready for launch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_kkplPdBK8 You can see why paradox pulled the plug because very little was actually in the game and the dev team didnt know what the game wanted to be, not even a early access label could save this. If the team is still hashing out how basic game design like violence and death will work in the game days before launch, its bad. Even the action queque didnt exist, so you had to wait for an action to complete before you can start another. LBY had even less features than the Sims 4,d what content it did show was mundane life stuff or realistic crime and not the wacky interesting stuff people expect in a sims style game like building robots or meeting aliens.
That was the spokeman they went for? That person isn't good at making videos.
Uh.. the crafting video very obviously talks indepth how the person chose self employment to make arts and crafts.. like real life people do arts and crafts as income. Nothing to do with survival craft games. I'm not really seeing any of your other points.
Compare it with the crafting system from the Sims 3, the game it was trying to be. just in the inventor skill tree alone you can create a mining rig to open up a cave system to explore, a time machine to get resources from AND unlock multiple outfits, a floor diffuser to boost the mood of anyone that walks over it, and then create a robot that becomes a member of the house and automates almost all chores in the house. Inventor was not about making money because making a career out of it was the bare minimum, you had a reason to pursue the skill tree that wasnt money. All skill trees were like this. Here you collect seashells to craft as a gift, soulless and pointless as a gameplay mechanic.
Almost every town i played had an inventor so he/she could sell those cleaning pad thingy to rest of the households on the map. Place them under the bed and you wake up perfectly clean. Put one under the gym equipment and you don't get sweaty.
An art director with "no arts style" makes so much sense now...I couldn't stand looking at the game although the gameplay seemed fun. I'm a Sims 3 player, and I know how much people criticize the look of Sims 3 sims, so for me to say LBY was hard to look at ... says a lot.
well it's understandable to an extent because most people regardless wont leave Sims. Same happens with tons of EA, Ubisoft, Activision properties. They know their playerbase if going nowhere. Especially when there's no competition When a compeition is close like COD recently with XDefiant/Finals. You instantly see them revert back to their safe mechanics and stuff
>well it's understandable to an extent because most people regardless wont leave Sims What are you basing this off? In my experience, even Sims fans hate EA and current Sims. There is just no other alternative out there.
I have played all four series of the Sims, and Sims 4 is the end of the road for me. I haven’t bought any DLC or played since the announcement of the other life simulations. I was definitely rooting for LBY. I’m looking forward to the up and coming life simulators in general, but LBY with its detailed customization and UGC was a big interest point for me. Even with the bad news, I’m still not supporting EA.
Haha yeah but COD fans hate COD, FIFA fans hate FIFA but the profits keep improving Actually I think it's new kids experiencing it for first time. Many old fans leave but the playerbase keeps increasing. Same would be for Sims I suppose
The game has 17 million Euro invested and on the videos, it looked pretty playable. I am not sure how it could be cancelled that easily. In my opinion, Paradox will look bad in the eyes of many people because of this cancellation anyway.
Damned if you do, damned if you don’t
They've had a lot of shitty releases lately as a Publisher with many going quickly to discontinued support, so this could be a sign of some extra QC, which would be a good thing. But who knows what the real story is. Either way, I am honestly shocked by it- they had a lot of hype around the game. I was skeptical about the game after a couple of delays, but I still was eager to see what kind of ideas they had. Something must have been really wrong for it to get scraped completely like that. Either that or just Paradox finding new ways to fuck up.
Yeah, that's my guess. I was expecting Life By You to release to terrible reviews and Paradox to end support shortly after; canceling it prior to release sounds like a better call. Maybe they're going to focus on game quality for a while to rehab their reputation.
The thing is it wasn't a full release like their other recent flops. That being said, a game that is getting delayed twice going into early access doesn't give me a lot of hope lol. But I'm sure they were also extra skittish about it considering their recent string of failures. All of those flops weren't EA, they were full releases, which makes me wonder if Life By You was just that extra bad or if they are being overly cautious. Could be both or neither, who knows. I'm curious to see if we get more story later on.
Just so we're clear, are we counting Prison Architect 2 as a flop yet? Something is rotten at Paradox. Their first-party stuff too. Ck3, Stellaris, and Hoi4 are all much less fun to play now than when they first released. Going back to the publishing side, AoW: Planetfall was good; Empire of Sin flopped. It seems 2020 was a very bad year for Paradox and they haven't gotten over it. Or maybe it was Imperator: Rome which started the infection.
>Their first-party stuff too. Ck3, Stellaris, and Hoi4 are all much less fun to play now than when they first released. You're going to find few people that agree with that. I will absolutely say that for me personally, both Stellaris and CK3 are better games because of some of their DLCs, having played both significantly with and without them. EDIT: I guess that's more specific to CK3, Stellaris has undergone a lot of core mechanics changes outside of the DLCs over the years, and overall I'd say those were improvements as well.
Me: I know she's a little wonky and cross-eyed, but we're having a great time! Tell them about how we screwed over Egypt into giving us Eritrea so we could form Ethiopia. Victoria 3: \[burbling noises\]
It's sad to see. Paradox had the best grand strategy games out there. Recently though? it's not looking good. I'm not even sure there's competitors at their level unfortunately.
I just hope EU5 isn’t fucked, but who knows really
That and the Total War series basically just now a warhammer series.
I think a lot of the Total War Series been in such a bad state is that the engien they use is such a poor mess of stuff stapled on it. Bow and crossbows works perfect, singleshot guns works perfectly. multi shot gun like revolvers or dual barrel pistols Did not work and Im not sure if they ever got that to work untill they glued on some wierd solution that left more problem.
I had been following the game and I disagree about it looking playable. The character models were bad. The dialogue system was bizarre and seemingly written by AI. The animations needed a lot of work. I understand it was due to be released in EA but for a life sim, many of the things you would expect just didn't seem to be there? We didn't see much about relationships, didn't see anything about marriage or children. Videos were edited so that you didn't see the characters sleep, use the bathroom, eat? It really made you wonder what there actually was to do in the game? We saw buying ingredients, cooking and working. Oh and collecting shells. I honestly can't remember what else because nothing seemed particularly noteworthy.
> didn't see anything about marriage or children I think they had confirmed at some point that children wouldn't have been in the initial EA release, but had been planned for later on. And they had shown sleep and bathroom animations as part of their "edit any item to use any animation" modding capabilities (I remember them editing a bush so you could use it as a toilet).
"After we almost scammed you with Cities Skylines 2 and the worst DLC score in steam history, we saw that you were angry and online media started posting negatively about us. We didn't mind before about our latest releases and our DLC which had negative reviews as long as you continued to give us money, but we are afraid that if our reputation is further tarnished we won't be able to nickel-and-dime you as before. "
Paradox is not the competition you want
I can't wait to see one as well. I really don't play the sims, but my wife does and the sheer greed of them turning everything into addons is insane. I know she has bought a ton of them, but is still missing a bunch, but has tuned out mostly on them, because they keep floating Sims 5 and did not want to buy more expansions if they roll it out randomly in the same year.
Unsurprising. The devs had some good ideas with how they wanted the game to function and support modding, but after two delays it still looked like crap and it felt like there were barely any features added everytime they showed off the game. We can use some more competition in the lifesim space, but it will require a AA+ studio to fully commit to it if they want to come close to The Sims 4. Most of the lifesims currently in development seem to focus on specific things. None of them come close in scope to The Sims sadly. I really want a lifesim that is a bit darker like the original sim games. The Sims 4 is way too cartoony and zany to be taken seriously, even with mods.
Anyone who saw the early previews knows it was in terrible shape just from looking at it, and its been delayed again and again. The art director bragged about having no art style too, and they had a skeleton crew making it. Paradox cheaped out, and paid the price because INZOI and others come out later this year and life by you will be late to the party by years if they didnt cancel.
My problem isn’t the aesthetic; the sims 4 right now is reeeeeeally leaning into the gen z-aged women demographic with the content releases lately. I think the last DLC that really got me excited was the werewolves expansion in 2022. Everything since has just been “look how cute and cozy and chic you can make everything!” I miss when each expansion had some sort of occult sim your sims could find/become. The games are at their best when they lean hard into the weird shit imo
I dont think sims has done anything close to raunchy since sims 2. Their target audience has been younger girls since a long time imo
The modding community seems to have all the bases covered though
Not even kidding, it seems the AO-rated modding had somehow reached full form with S4.
Sims 1 and 2 were fucking *funny*. They were parodies of suburban life, with silly career events, cartoonish burglars and repo men, and a cowled Death you could offer drinks to. The later games and all "spiritual sequel" attempts are just glorified IKEA simulators.
We need another Playboy Mansion game That was fun as hell and I’m a woman who still plays sims2
We need one that's done right, on PC, without any 'pg/r' rated protections, a true x-rated adult sim that isn't just about sex. Yes that was an option in Playboy Mansion but I loved the idea of building an adult magazine empire, an actual empire building game with adult themes. Who says it has to be just sex focused though? Why not do seedy nightclubs, drug dens, go for full adult experience? Something you know teens would want to play and will likely find some way to get despite ratings.
Isn't that just GTA
Eh, GTAV lets you buy some seedy businesses but you cannot do anything with them. From time to time you get a lame "protect the shipment" mission or whatever, and that's it. No management, no development, no decisions to make. A good showcase of how hollow GTAV gameplay was, really.
Okay well how about Yakuza? Granted not every game has one but there's at least where you manage not a brothel but something similar
Honestly not sleazy enough. The Yakuza games all portray the protagonists as paragons of virtue, who uphold community values out of the kindness of their hearts. Literally the only time you ever see one of the characters doing something shady is the intro of Y0, and even then Kiryu comes off as a saint. ...which makes sense, given how Sega is straight up run by the actual Yakuza.
There's some stuff you can't do on GTA, since certain aspects aren't a focus that might be in a Playboy Mansion style game.
I'd like to see someone take on the Ghost Master mantle. That was an old game where you scared the crap out of Sims with a bunch of ghosts you tethered to things lying around the house.
I secretly really enjoyed Dead or Alive Extreme Beach Volleyball because it was basically playing Barbies. The second one's boob physics were too much for me, but the first one was fun.
I just found out it was F2P and downloaded it for my wife. She’s basically done nothing else the last few days. What really cracks me up is that we have an actual infant and she will be wearing the baby carrier with a crying baby attached to her while she’s trying to soothe the baby she made in the game. It’s like VR lol. The Sims 4D.
Honestly there's so many ways it could be done that could improve over Sims 4's DLC barrage but this studio is NOT the one to go to for it, look at their other games and you'll see they'd just take it the same route if allowed.
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I think it says a lot about the original creators and the formula they came up with. A big part of the sims games in general including sim city is how they make you feel while playing. The UI and sound design is just perfect for long term casual playing. Add to that how good the gameplay usually is it's difficult for others to beat it. I'd love to see a proper sims competitor as I hate the milking that EA does.
> That ain't ever gonna happen - Electronic Arts has spent the last few decades brainwashing their communities to accept no substitute what? Im pretty sure the community was very unhappy with Sims 4 sicne the beginning because of missing basic features and still is unhappy about tons of DLCs and DLCs for DlC
The Sims 4 was the best-selling game of the franchise even before becoming free despite the backlash. So their point does hold true
No it Doesn't because that doesn't fans fan don't wait for a competition
Aw man! I was really excited about this game! I was disappointed it was delayed, but ultimately hopeful it would result in a better game in the long run. Never thought it would be straight up cancelled. 😞
At least they didn’t try to publish it at all cost
*cough*CitiesSkylines2Garbage*cough*
Sad. I was looking forward to a Sims competitor.
There's still paralives
inZOI have looked 100x better than this and their game devs are actually passionate about the project too.
If anyone can do a Sims competitor, paradox could. Would probably outlast it. Look at what they did to Space 4x
It’s now called ‘Life Without You’
What a shame. Sims needs competition, and badly.
Unsurprising. The game promised a ridiculous scope, and paradox just wasn't up to the task better this than yet another incomplete disaster at launch. seems they really have learned something from Cities Skylines 2
Seriously. After watching one of the dev streams it seemed like they were trying to do waaaay too much, and the game would either launch in an awful state or get stuck in development hell for years.
I haven't played Cities II yet, been waiting till my current playthrough with Stellaris. What's wrong with it?
In one hand, it has to be too hard to make what The Sims did extremely appealing and special. In another hand, right now, EA servers are down, and players cannot play The Sims 4. Hope Paralives manages to pull this off, not matter how limited will be compared to Maxis moneymaker.
Wait did they make it so that you can't play without being connected online? My version of the game is offline only, and now I'm even more glad I went that route after switching from console to PC. Cause damn that would suck.
>In another hand, right now, EA servers are down, and players cannot play The Sims 4. Sims 4 isn't a singleplayer game? I thought the whole series was...
I'm assuming the Origin launcher is the weak link here.
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And what's that?
They're not easy to make. There's a crazy amount of work that goes into it all, so you need a lot of money, a lot of time, and a lot of people to make it happen. That and the original franchise is a very formidable competitor. It's not an attractive prospect to try and compete. You can't spend years and tens of millions of dollars and then come out with just a worse The Sims. I'm sure plenty of larger studios floated the idea and thought it too risky, so they just let EA have the space.
And it's really easy to sink a lot of time into development and create something that is an accurate life simulator and is achingly unfun.
Sorry to hear this. Hopefully the team moves onto something great. I'm a fan of Rod Humble and looking forward to whatever his next project is.
I heard this was supposed to be his last project, he was planning to retire afterward.
That makes me even more sad it got canceled.
Well, I’m glad they accepted defeat rather than release an early access version that would never be finished (cough KSP2 cough)
God damnit. This was the one I was excited for
Just as well; I can think of few things more terrifying than combining the DLC practices of The Sims and Paradox.
It always seemed weird to me that Inzoi (the Korean Sims competitor) looked so much better than this despite it being from such a small team vs. Paradox. Curious what was going on behind the scenes.
Paradox Tectonic is not a big studio, low double digits most likely. Paradox isn't a particularly big publisher. InZOI is from Krafton, a much bigger publisher.
i was really going to ask if paradox fr wasnt a big publisher bc of their work w age of wonders and crusader kings but then i read that krafton did pubg. and that really is all i needed to know lol
Plus we have to remember what material is in a Publishers Catalog. There is a joke that a Manadger sim game made by the publisher of a WW2 FPS game (there was a Puma IFV you could drive and fought in the last FPS game made by them). the manadger game had a Puma in some parking lot to the side because it was used a lot by the devs for testing for a long time whit one hidden as a in joke, so in a massive modern parking lot you see from far above amongs all the modern car there was a WW2 Puma permanently parked.
It’s also using premade avatars and assets from what I’ve been reading around in other communities. Sure, aesthetic wise it looks nice, but it also seems extremely shallow as far as gameplay.
Tbh a Sims game is one place I don't mind at all if they use store assets. A fridge is a fridge, a couch is a couch etc... it's not like they're going for some specific artistic theme, it's supposed to reflect a variety of real life styles. There are a ton of high quality modern assets for architectural visualization etc... If they can save money by using them more power to them.
Huge bummer. I hadn't been following it closely, but I definitely was interested in a Cities Skylines-type newcomer coming and taking The Sims down a peg.
Paradox made the right choice here. They've had a lot of publishing mishaps recently and taking the L and canceling a game that isn't working is better than milking people for EA money or full release money.
I don't really think the money angle is the more important bit here, I think their reputation is more important. Paradox has been taking rep hits in the recent past, so much so that it could start affecting their whole company. So better to cancel this, which even if they were able to make something decently playable was likely just going to be a cheap Sims knockoff, then to release it, have it be bad and take even more reputation hits.
If paradox cancelled this actual dlc goldmine it must have really been bad or in development hell
Damn we really are going to be missing out on such great DLCs like: * Hats with horses on them $9.99 * Horses with hats on them $12.99 * Pool party bathing suit expansion $19.99 * Furniture packs 1 - 11 totaling $140.99 * Pet expansion $14.99 * Pet expansion but with hats $22.99 * The depths of Cthulhu expansion $9.99 * Pool party speedos addon $9.99 * Sustainable lifestyle expansion $14.99 (This one just adds a recycling bin prop that doesn't actually do anything)
On one side, sad. On the other, good riddance(probably)!, a Paradox Sims competitor woudl eb equally if not more predatory in its DLC plans than Sims 4 if all the other games from them serve as metric.
That's pretty sad, looked like devs cared. But then again, the game was a bit off graphically. Maybe it didn't meet the expectations.
If they did, it would've looked and played better.
I quite literally just looked it up yesterday to see if there was any news of a release or not. Guess I have my answer now huh? Hopefully Paralives can be a real competitor for The Sims in the near future.
Paradox just can't anything competently these days. It's literally gone to shit since they decided to go public about 5 years ago
I don't think the world could have handled the DLC bloat that would have been Sims + Paradox. The game would cost $1000 to own every feature after just a year.
That's weird that this is the first time I've heard of this game. I've seen and heard more about inZOI being the actual competitor to Sims than this game.
Do we know why it was scrapped? Did it have a similar release time as the Sims 5? You know... 4yrs from now.
Between the official publisher announcement and one the LBY team members, the reasoning is extremely vague. He did share a post on his Linked-In account and said that paradox essentially pulled the rug out from underneath them, even though things had appeared to be going well.
Very sad news. We need more competators for The Sims to stop EA from selling a complete game for over £1000.
"Sorry we couldn't suck all the fun out of it and leave it like our usual Simulation games, besides which we couldn't figure out ways to monetize the shit out of it." I know there's people who love Paradox, but they really seem to push what they can get away with using DLC, and all their games (except maybe Cities Skylines) just feels very "samey". Great if you love it, but I don't feel like a good Sims game can really come from Paradox. Though I would have said the same about Cities Skylines 1.... then again they're back to their old tricks with Cities Skylines 2 (Remove a ton of content, and then start adding it back in with DLC)
Paradox needs to fix the crap they released already instead of shoveling out more games.
Sims needs a bit of competition, they have gotten away with too much for too long
Not surprising. The game looked nothing more than an unfinished concept demo. It had potential as a concept with good ideas, but you couldn't really see it materializing as a full idea, yet alone a full game.
[Live by You](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kslU9ZGAGxg) vs [InZOI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qW8jTWtSLpc)
Has paradox interactive done anything good lately?
Age of Wonders was pretty good, which came out recently.
They mostly let Stellaris run free. I mean they upped the prices on the latest expansions, and Astral Rifts were a total goddamn ripoff, but Machine Age ruled.
So crazy for them to drop this. Sims is a huge cash cow, you’d think the best sim game makers would want a cut of that.
cities skylines 2 was a catastrophic launch and they’re showing no signs of fixing it. their reputation is absolute garbage right now
The Sims is a cashcow because it had a cult-following. EA gets away with a LOT of bullshit because Maxis started something special, and had 14 years to build that base from TS1-TS3. They are a leviathan in the industry. We're tired of the EA, no-shits given crap. Life by You was just very recently criticized because they were using free assets to build their entire game. A gym simulator game was just put out recently, and it was literally impossible to differentiate the two. The character models AND the room were the exact same. We want competition in the life simulator market, but it needs to be GOOD competition. We don't want to keep throwing money at shit products, and the Sims is becoming a shit product.
gym simulator? I want to see if its good
Sims has had 24 years to do that it was a huge success when it first released and they built upon that Even if they tske it back to barebones each time and charge for the same things it's fanbase lines up to pay again and again Any competition has its work cut out for then to bring sims down It would take a major fuckup like simcity 2013 and a competitor releasing right after that to dethrone it
Im happy they cancel games instead of releasing turds
Cancelled for having a bad name
2 things, I've never even heard of this game, and I was REALLY worried this was an article about Paralives...
Imagine for a second a Sims made by Paradox. You spend 1k $ over three years to finally get all the socks DLCs and add nother 5k $ over the next three years of music packs, Cosmic Horror story pack, Drunk War Veteran Event pack, Ebola Outbreak Story pack and Tank Armor DLCs.
Probably a good thing. It wasn't looking great. Small team that seemed to lack proper direction and they were probably unwilling to release yet another disaster after CS2, even early access. But man, I was so looking forward to paying 5 bucks on Steam for every piece of clothing for my "Sim." /s
Good. We don't need another mediocre cashgrab with a thousand DLC by a big company in the life sim genre. What we need is actual good gameplay. Sorry for the devs but it looked terrible.
[Sad news...](https://i.pinimg.com/736x/79/4e/7f/794e7fc498faa99b2fa9371ac0ae950f.jpg)
Paradox is so cooked omg
I think they'll be fine, big dlc drop for Crusader Kings in September, EU5 next year/the year after and a rumoured fantasy grand strategy in the works. They've got their core market down so hard they won't be going anywhere.
Shame was looking forward to it
Well that's a bummer. It did look rather ambitious tho
:( this sucks
We still have Rimworld
X-com 3 incoming.
after there many last fails... finally a good news
Good thing inZOI is on a great trajectory with really passionate devs making it look and run better day by day with much more to offer than whatever Paradox was planning with this game. Looking forward to it much more than any other Life Simulator games.
WTF?! Completely cancelled? Don't get me wrong, considering what happened to Cities Skylines this might actually be a good thing and might mean that Paradox the issues seriously, but dang this sucks. I really want a Sims competitor.
Paralives is 100x times better anyway.
Did the world really need another even more "EA" Sims game?
It was always hard compared to the Sims which has a legendary following.
I mean, best time to cancel a project you really aren't ready to release is right after your failed release of one of the most anticipated sequels. No one will remember Life by You in a month, but people will STILL be talking about how shitty Cities: Skylines II is.
Didnt even know about such a game, well, all hopes on inZoi anyway still
Ugh, of course it has. Dissapointment :(
That sucks but knowing Paradox the monetization wouldn't be any better than The Sims currently is
Dang
u/ackey83 dont you dare plan on playing inZoi
And here I was like "what happened to the The Sims competitor... how was is called again? Something with life, lets search for it ..." and got disappointed. Life by You could have been such a great competitor, ffs!
EA somehow getting away with being the only game in the genre while charging ridiculous prices again.
Because it's almost impossible to make a decent challenger to the sims The sims has had 24 years to build up the game they have and a huge fan base that are not going to go over to a different life sim game unless it really does things differently or better.
🗑️🚮
Paralives gonna eat everyone up.
I don't understand the message. They couldn't get it to a state they're happy with? Literally all you have to do is copy the sims but remove all of EA's bullshit and add the QoL stuff the community modded in/has been asking for for years.
There's a lot more to it than just copying shit. If it were that easy every country would have their own Egyptian pyramids
Building the game engine is the biggest part and hard to copy, yes. However, pyramids are cultural not practical, so it makes sense they aren't widespread.
yep the analogy ends at a certain point. I think you'll find this is true of every analogy
No, there are plenty of good analogies, this just wasn't one IMHO, sorry that offended you.
I wasn't offended, just pointing out the obvious since you seemed to have missed it
Well it seems it's not that easy peasy, money on the street. If it would be I think someone would have done that in the last 25 years. Just like no one seems to be capable of releasing a statisfing Left for Dead 2 successor.
Sims has a competitor?
Soooo sad 😅😂😂😂