I can't blame
@RhombusHatesYou for his reasoning. There's a difference between optimism and straight up naivety. Don't forget that is still EA we are talking about. The same company that has shut down many studios over the pass decade for "failing to meet expectations" or even when a studio did their fucking job. The same company that used online passes to "kill" used games for the rest of the 7th generation. The same company that constantly told the lie for over a decade that "single player is dead". Only to try to backpedal on Twitter last year with a "just joking guys! LOL!", when nobody bought it and the average gamer told them to fuck off. The same company that still has a monopoly on annual releases on sports titles and puts gaming mechanics in to manipulate children and those with addictive tendencies. The same company that won't pay that money back to parents who had their credit/bank cards taken from their kids who either don't know any better, don't understand the concept of money, or have those with the addictive tendencies I mentioned. The same company that tried to push "LIEV SERVACES!" and failed with most of them. Only succeeding with
Apex Legends (and they still had to shut down the mobile versions), because Respawn was allowed to do whatever they want, and made sure the game is fun with no scummy practices.
I get wanting for a publisher to get better or learn something, but let's be real, EA has not learned shit. They'll make the same mistakes again at some point or screw over one of their in-house developers or more. In your case, you are being naïve. I hate it say it, but don't get your hopes up too high. That is all I have to say on the matter.
I am aware of all* EA's sins. When I say EA I refer both to the publisher and its development studios. And those have learnt from other studios in the past. There is some interview with Paradox people where they reveal that while they were developing
Crusader Kings II there was a developer from Maxis that walked up to them on a conference and said "Hey, you should make a sequel to
Crusader Kings". A few years later,
The Sims Medieval was release. They had presumably learnt a thing or two from what their competition, including Paradox, had done.
When it comes to
The Sims, the general picture I've gotten is that they have practically a monopoly since all would-be competitors fizzled out relatively quickly. That is a bad thing for competition; it's possible that people only return to the title out of habit and because there is no valid alternative. It is also bad for
The Sims. It is possible some aspect of the game could stand to update but they dare not change what works or fail to see flaws in their design, flaws that a competitor could come along and highlight.
But I hear what you say: EA the publisher won't change. And to some degree I agree, but there is one aspect they do care about: the bottom line. If a competitor comes along and takes a big chunk out of their userbase then they get less income and that I suspect will prompt a response. If there is some radical new innovative idea with
Life By You then they probably will make some version of that in one of their expansions; if there's not but it is still a success then they'll either have to accept less revenue or step up their game.
I'm basing this on
World of Warcraft, where there were several would-be-WoW-killers that fizzled out and if the WoW developers liked their killer feature they implemented a version of it in WoW. Though I've never played that game, so I might be basing this off of nothing.
So yeah, as I said
ideally it is good enough that it makes EA step up their game.
*well, the part of not paying back parents was news.
