Sims Mobile Gameplay

[Alfie Overacre]

ProductThe Sims Mobile

Platform:Apple iPhone

List the specific devices you play with (e.g. iPhone 6s Plus, Samsung Galaxy S7) iphone 7 (11.0.3) ipad pro (10.3.2)

OS Version iphone 7 (11.0.3) ipad pro (10.3.2)

Player ID: (Find your Player ID in Sims Mobile: -sims/the-sims-mobile/find-your-player-id-in-the-sims-mobile ) 100295247579

How often does the bug occur? Occasionally (10% - 49%)

Steps: How can we find the bug ourselves? 1. Play on Ipad 2. close Ipad game 3.after 8 hours, Play on iphone 4. progress not sync (i completed some events, was leveled up and set 8 hours events at where I left off)

What do you expect to see? Game is sync across platform

Connection Type Wifi

Please select your region Asia

Country Hong Kong

Additional feedback I am sure it is caused by gameplay progress not sent to the cloud. Because when i switch to iphone from ipad, the game pops up "you have played on another device, game will resfresh" and game refreshes, just to realise the gameplay did not update fully (just first half of my game session was there) I went back to the ipad i played on and did couple more actions just to see if the actions are sent to cloud this time, then i open my iphone, progress is correct this time.

I have a similar issue though I am on android, and only on my phone. I'll play for a little while, use a bunch of energy, move things around, tab out or close the game, come back and find that my progress has reverted. For example, when I first bought the third sim slot, this happened. I made him and got all the way through a fashion level, closed the game, then realized I hadn't let him use any energy restores. But when I loaded the game up, it told me to create a new sim again.

Now it's mostly minor stuff, because I try not to do anything important before I close the game, but I've taken to turning my sofa right before I close the game so I can easily see if it screwed up or not...

This morning I contacted EA Help because the in-game settings sidebar indicated that my game was not linked to Game Center despite being logged in to GC, and despite receiving the Welcome Back, messages when entering the game.

I was using my mobile sim account on two different devices but then i noticed some of the work i did was not getting saved. so I deleted it off of one of the devices. however now the baby i had in the crib is gone and i am no longer able to use the crib. i made all my sims click the crib but nothing comes up its useless. and when i tried to put it in inventory it says that the crib is in use so i can't put it away. Can someone please tell me what to do, i even moved around furniture re dowloaded the game, nothing works i can't have anymore babies.

Product: The Sims Mobile

Platform:Apple iPhone

List the specific devices you play with (e.g. iPhone 6s Plus, Samsung Galaxy S7) iPhone X, iPad Air 2

OS Version 11.2.6

Player ID: (Find your Player ID in Sims Mobile: -sims/the-sims-mobile/find-your-player-id-in-the-sims-mobile ) 1003447371410

How often does the bug occur? Often (50% - 99%)

Steps: How can we find the bug ourselves? After playing from one device, switch to another. Ex. Design your home/sim/buy something etc. Switch to another device. Doesn't matter if you forced-kill the app before switching, or placing the app in the background, you'll eventually lose some progress. Minor changes are not noticeable, but try pimping up your house and do the switch right after that.

What do you expect to see? The game is synced properly between devices. There should be no loss of items/progress between devices.

Connection Type Wifi

Please select your region Europe

Country Germany

Additional feedback Most of the time, if not always, the device you recently switched on has an earlier progress than the previous device. And then if you try to switch back to the previous device hoping to get your latest progress, the game is already synced (with you still losing the progress).

I tried force killing the app before switching, or putting the app in the background hoping it would trigger the saving process, but I still lose some progress. I've been playing tons of online mobile games and I don't have this problem when switching between my devices.

How is the saving mechanism triggered? When does the game save our progress? Is it every X minutes(please say no)? Is it based on user-actions(I would've expected this but it seems not to be the case)?

Everyone knows The Sims. The sandbox life simulation has not only defined its own genre but counts among the top-selling game series ever and all major platforms. After four major releases on PC/consoles and countless DLCs, EA and Maxis came with a sequel to a 6-year-old Sims FreePlay, which has racked up close to 300 million installs and over 300 million in IAP bookings (source: Sensor Tower)

The Sims Mobile launched globally in early March 2018 after a long and tumultuous soft-launch, during which massive changes to the game mechanics were made. Yet despite the fantastic visuals, long soft launch and the support of an internal benchmark, Sims Mobile tumbled down. It took less than a month for the 6-year-old Sims FreePlay start outperforming the sequel in terms of revenue despite the fact that Sims Mobile daily installs were over four times higher during the same period of time.

It would be easy to make a case, based on numbers, that launching sequels on mobile is not the way to go about it. After all, there are more than enough warning examples. But the Sims Mobile didn't fail because it's a sequel. The game failed due to much simpler and obvious reason: poor design that didn't deliver to what made the Sims a great franchise in the first place.

*Please remember that we love games. Our goal, as always, is to deconstruct what successful games do right and to understand what keeps other not-so-successful games from reaching their potential. We are all game developers and understand very well how hard it is not only to launch but also to grow a game. Build > Launch > Learn > Repeat!

The genius of the original Sims PC franchise lies in its approachability. It is easy to understand what is expected from the player and the Sim alike: The actions and choices are intuitive, learned from our own life experiences. The metrics of success do not have to be explained, because they are inherently ours: Make more money, get a promotion, get married. The franchise builds on our own fantasies about how we live our lives.

At the same time, the feedback to any action is visible and gives it meaning and progress. Tracking actions reward you for taking them while in real life these are not nearly as gratifying. For example:

This mechanic also builds an immediate next goal: Read books to level up your logic skill to get a better career. Talk to a person until their relationship reaches a high level, so you can get married and have kids.

All in all, the game is a great combination of actions the player can control and those the player has to respond to. Regardless of your story: freedom, feedback, and intuitive goals are the trademark features of the brand and the design principles on which the narrative is built.

Apart from the launch week, Sims Mobile has grossed less than it's almost 7 years older predecessor. Granted that Sims FreePlay is in a cash cow mode, where the majority of players has likely been playing the game for a significant time and are regularly spending.

What is curious to see here is that the installs for Sims FreePlay are now matching the installs of Sims Mobile. This increase in installs can be seen as an increase in the revenue of the legacy title. A sign that EA is potentially shifting its focus from the new Sims Mobile to the old and trusted Sims FreePlay.

To give the player a chance to act, each Sim also has energy that can be used to perform optional actions within the event to speed up the timer and finish earlier. Player chooses the actions through interaction points that are only available during the event.

Clothes and cosmetics for your Sims are different than decorations. These cost Simoleons (soft currency) or hard currency and add to your overall Vanity level. Most clothes and cosmetics do not have a game effect.

To get clothes with in-game effect players have to go to a special design that will generate random - and very unique - clothes. These clothes give a boost for an activity and usually highlighted with a particle effect.

You can throw and visit thematic parties (wedding party when you get married, music party when you play guitar as a hobby etc.). These happen in parallel with other players. While the actions you perform are asynchronous (and act same as actions within an event), you do have some option to interact, such as a real-time chat with all the participants.

While the first part focused on visible systemic changes that were introduced to streamline the game for f2p and mobile, in this part I will talk more about design under the hood in order to get to the answer for our initial question: Why is the game not performing well.

The player is therefore left with limited motivation to purchase furniture. The only game accepted push to decorate comes from the need to improve their vanity. Dropping stats and gameplay impact from furniture for the sake of a simplified experience cuts a major value of the experience.

Through this, the motivation to progress becomes extrinsic since the choice of what happens next has been taken away. There is no surprise, no option to grab the steering wheel and have a fight in a romantic relationship. Pursuing achievements also takes away the option to play freely: Instead of playing what I want, I play what I want to complete, creating a detachment to my Sim.

The removal of the nurture aspect has a huge impact both on the system and the player. It takes away natural onboarding and therefore complicates a relationship you could have built to your characters. It reduces the internal motivation by making the play aspect insignificant.

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