Easier Access to Hidden Lots

[samsam713]

Happy Holidays!

While watching the Snowy Escape official live stream, I noticed that the developer’s version of the game would display the hidden (or locked) lots at the top left corner of Map View. I would like to ask Maxis to open up this function for us in Manage Worlds. Also, this presents the perfect opportunity to look into other improvements for freer management of community lots. It can be broken down to a few parts—

Show Hidden Lots
Hermit’s hut, police station, clinic, movie studio, et cetera, there are actually quite a handful of hidden lots that us Worlds Renovators would like to easily edit with. This can simply be in the form of the Developer’s Build—showing as dislocated lots at the corner; or, if we could elevate it even further, be in the form of updated World Maps and integrate these lots back into the map view.

I understand that the original reason to hide those lots was to prevent the removal of gameplay objects. However, this can be mitigated by having the feature as a toggle within the option menu. Checking the box will prompt a warning saying that those lots will function properly when all gameplay objects are accounted for. In another way, this problem can be solved by setting lot requirements like any other community lot type.

The Sims 4 advertises itself as creative and free. Yet, by hiding and locking these venues, it is essentially stripping away the creative freedom for those who enjoy revamping the towns. In my opinion, restricting these venues goes against the very core of The Sims.

Ability to Permanently Edit Dynamic Lot Variants
Ever since Jungle Adventure, we were actually introduced to a new lot technology—dynamic lots. It is my assumption that the Jungle Temple, Movie Studio, Mountain Sites all use this kind of technology. Moreover, I believe that what we see in Eco Lifestyle—the Community Space—shares extremely similar traits to those lot types.

If the hidden dynamic lots were ever freed for us to build, I hope that we are allowed to edit each variant of those venues, much like how we can edit each variant of the Community Space. That way, we can also fix some of the missing wall paints or peculiar placement of objects.

Edit Common Area of Apartments
Speaking of missing wall paints and unusual objects, I hope that the team can open up the common area of apartments for us to edit. There are missing windows, mis-matched doors, missing outer wall paints, and many more issues with the apartments that are not fixable due to the restrictions of editing the common areas.

On top of that, it would be wonderful if we are provided with the tools to edit the Redacted Laboratory in StrangerVille.

I hope many of you will support these points and rally for them to become a reality. If you agree with these suggestions, please hit the “Me Too” button so that the developers will know.

[Psychotps]

@samsam713Agreed. There are a lot of lots like that I'd love to edit.

Some of them you already can. If you have the build cheats enabled, you can edit some of the lots like the Science lab, police station, hospital and such. Edit them all you want and upload a copy to your library before you leave. That way if you start a new game, the first time your sim goes into one of those lots, just entire build mode and place your renovated version back down.

I've been doing it like that for ages. I have renovated versions of the science lab, police station, and hospital. I just have to place them the first time I go there.

Unfortunately, it doesn't work with the movie studio or the lab in strangerville. Any changes you make will be deleted. I think it works on all the others though.

[MamaSimmerPlays]

Likewise, I was discussing wanting to give the hermit a dog - but apparently if you edit the hermit in cas even as an npc they get kicked out of their home and a new hermit spawns. I want to be able to edit that lot to give the hermit a dog food bowl and dog bed, and edit in cas to give them a dog, without making the hermit (and dog) homeless!