Is the Sims Social anti-social? Gamasutra thinks it is. They compare it to rival Zynga and their games. Not a lot of love for Sims Social from Gamasutra. Can you feel, the love tonight? Nope! It’s ice cold, like a Starbucks Frappuccino.
EA’s The Sims Social on Facebook seems to have taken a surprising number of design lessons from Zynga, the mother of negative stigma on Facebook. To some extent it’s all best practices as established by the market leader: Zynga’s shown that having rewards springing out of every action, scattering everywhere to be clicked — an alluring “pop” that draws players’ attention even in spite of themselves — is strangely compelling, and Sims Social uses this tactic.
So is the “energy” principle, used to limit the amount of actions a player can accomplish in one play session. It seems the thinking is that a user frustrated by the need to manage time and resources in order to keep having fun would be more willing to impose on friends with irritant notifications, or to buy points, to alleviate the frustration.
But unfortunately, The Sims Social takes the absolute worst trait of Zynga’s established games and emulates it — even though it’s not obvious that it needs to.
Source: Infinite Sims
One reason I hate and stoped playing other Facebook games was because they made you send say 60 requests to friends to unlock new things…etc.
While there are still a few times you have to do that with The Sims Social…they tend to only require say, about three. Most other things in the game you can earn yourself and the few times they have made me ask friends, it’s been a very small number.
In this sense, I really enjoy The Sims Social. While I’d prefer not to have to ask friends at all…a smaller number and much less frequent than other games is much appreciated.
Nick, that is true in earlier levels. The higher the level you go, the more requests you need to make to finish even one task. I was really impressed the first couple of days I was playing, but now progress has slowed to a grind. Several items like Fury are notoriously hard to gather.
If this keeps going, I’m going to abandon the game like I did to Cafe World and Farmville. I will never let spam posts overwhelm my or my friends’ walls.
You can always get fury by doing mean interactions to other Sims or selecting the guitar and click “play for fun”. It’s really not that hard and various intractable items give out different quest items, even when the game makes you think you can only get them through your friends.
And the “spam” is an option.
Maybe you’ve had better luck, but trust me, I’ve tried my fair share of mean interactions to get Fury. I was bordering of becoming enemies with my friends and still not one Fury. I finally got a few by having my friends manually send me some, but begging for items, as the above article suggests, is not a fun activity when SO many of the tasks require common items.
And the drop rate seems to be random as well. I’ve seen posts on the official forums about lack of Plans, but I’ve got an abundance of those while lacking in other items that other people seem to be overflowing with.
Yeah, I think the drop rate should have different values too, specially when a quest is requesting an item you use to unlock skills, “plans” would fit as an example perfectly here.
I’m constantly asking people for things yes, but they do the same and I think it’s cool when 2 or more people are “neighbors” and into the game. It’s a win-win I guess… Depends on the perspective perhaps 🙂
I HATE the Faccebook ENERGY shit..
… [Trackback]
[…] Find More Info here on that Topic: beyondsims.com/2011/08/the-sims-social-anti-social/ […]
… [Trackback]
[…] Find More on that Topic: beyondsims.com/2011/08/the-sims-social-anti-social/ […]