Paralives Early Access Features, QA + More 

I think people genuinely don’t realise that early access IS testing access. So once that comes out, people will be able to test via early access. Early access is always used for testing on larger scale especially seeing how things run on different computers. I don’t think they need testing for a test?

I definitely think there should be a slider for autonomy so players can decide for themselves how independent their parafolk should be. I feel like there should be an advanced settings menu that could function like a built in NRAAS/MCCC that could allow players to get more specific about what parafolk would and wouldn’t be able to do, for example if you want your parafolk to be mostly autonomous but don’t want them to be able to cheat on their partners.

I like how they show what bugs causing the issue and that they are fixing it unlike a certain game that we have to report and don't get response for weeks and throw a few teaser for new packs just for us to get distracted to buy and they never fix the issue at all

I don’t like being overwhelmed with traits because it takes me forever to decide. I think keeping it the options varied but also small is better.

My first thought regarding QA is while it's fine for devs to test their own features, they really need to be tested by other devs as well. Someone with a fresh mind who knows what to look for and where things might fail. People can often be blind to flaws in their own work. It doesn't need to be everyone but I'd love to have custom NPC's inhabit the world. It's makes it more appealing for me when interacting with them. If I could find a way, I'd remove all default Sims 4 NPC's but even with MCCC they always pop up. I agree, more choices is better in character creation, for creating a more well-formed character. They could make it so you don't have to fill in all the slots when creating, just have the option for it if you want.

I wouldn't mind Paras developing crushes on their own. I'm so tired of this "Everything must be perfect" "It always must be happy ending" crap in The Sims community. People should learn to accept how fate works like in real life, if they are not grateful than they should just use cheats (pretty sure there will be cheats for stuff like this)

About the autonomy, they could always have a "choose random" option when the cards pop up, so whoever wants to go with the flow can do it instead of having to pick~

I think Paralives is making the right choice to start small with simple systems and ensure they work. The problem with some of the other games is they are trying to come out the gate as big as the Sims if not bigger and Paralives seems to be planning on growth, but getting the systems they have perfected first before adding onto them. Which I think is smart.

I hope this helps to hone people's expectations of what this game will be by next year.

One thing to note about QA - From what I've heard, usually the bottle neck is development time - Developers not having the time to fix bugs - rather than QA itself. For unstable releases? The way that usually goes is apparently something along the lines of: QA finds things, those things don't get fixed due to rushed development timeline and crunching to get something publishable rather than fixing things within the game, QA gets thrown under the bus by studio management.

I am personally very happy that they have been this forward about the missing features in early acess. After the whole ordeal with the launch of the "full version" of Coral Island, I think communication trumps any missing features or bugs that may come in early releases of the game. It's clear that it's a project from passionate people with big ambitions, and I can wait as long as needed so long as it becomes a good game in the end

One of the reasons you need a QA team is that they go out of the way to do all possible weird stuff that could break a game and report it professionally. As much as it's helpful for a studio to have free help from players and family, I cannot stress enough that unpaid testing isn't (and shouldn't) be the same as someone professionally doing it. You have to replay things over and over, choosing all posible options, in the "wrong" orders, try to break the game. It's not just playing the game normally and see if something happens (although you should do that too). As a professional tester, you're a bug seeker! And then, there's the reporting of such bug, which isn't fun or easy. Many testers in Early Access who reports bugs (not everyone does) will just say something like "the game crashed while I was playing", and although it's good to know that the game crashes under certain circumstances, it's not very helpful. A full report will include much more information such as build, detailed instructions on how to reenact said bug, and more. Summarising: it's a job for a reason. And it's a crucial long before launch, with enough time for bug fixing. About the paras personalities, I prefer to have fewer in-depth options than a lot of superficial ones. Having too many (while also being unsure of how they will impact gameplay) is overwhelming to me. Edit to add more.

Honestly, I really admire their approach to game development, focusing on fewer but more meaningful features rather than just adding a bunch of superficial ones. I'm eagerly looking forward to playing the game, as everything they've revealed so far has been quite intriguing. However, I do hope they refine the design of the babies a bit, as they do look a tad creepy! 😅

Personally I would have liked to have a few more traits slots (but not too much that it can get overboard). And I certainly would not mind having more options in vibes, social perks, talents and lifestyle choices before Early Access rolls in too. But other than that, I think that the devs are doing a good job making the game as playable as they can get it to for the Early Access.

With traits in Paralives I feel a bit conflicted too but I'm also thinking more in terms of Sims 2/3/4 as well. Not necessarily a bad thing but Paralives is it's own game too which also isn't a bad thing. On the one hand I do think more traits would come in handy. Honestly if we threw more well defined Sims 3 personality traits into the Paralives system with vibes, social perks, talents and lifestyle I'd be good. I don't necessarily mind a para having one vibe but I do think at the very least it should be possible for more than one social perk and talent if the creator of the para wants. Even having a general vibe that's projected to other paras and a hidden vibe or two usually reserved for friends, family, and partners could be good. On the other I do agree with not going overboard with too many traits. It's not even that there are too many traits in the Sims 3/4 (I'm personally all for more traits) but more so how traits were done. I never felt like Sims 2 personality point system captured what I was trying to do with a sim, Sims 3 came closest to developing the exact sims I was going for, but with Sims 3 and 4 I don't think the team sat down and really thought about what should and shouldn't be a personality trait. Because of that, sometimes I feel like I'm sacrificing a preference or a lifestyle choice for a personality trait or vice versa and I have to decide what was more important with the character I'm trying to make. This is where I think Paralives is stepping in the right direction by having these different catagories making up a para along with the ability to upgrade and why it's more of a wait an see game for me. I think there's definitely room for improvement but I think the direction they're taking is promising if done well.

I feel like an autonomy on/off toggle when first starting the game and in the pause or main menu might be a good choice. Most players like to have the choice of whether to control playable characters and NPCs or let them do their own thing.

As for traits: Honestly I even find that the sims one aren’t enough. I usually do the mods that give 150+ traits, as well as the horoscope ones etc. I hope that they will allow people to at least make mods to add more traits because personally I prefer to have more traits than less! Otherwise the simulator NPCs end up feeling all the same and a little.. Boring for long term playing? I love customisation, and ofc also being able to make yourself as well as imaginary characters. Hard to make yourself when there aren’t any traits that represent you 😅

In order to keep players engaged for thousands rather than hundreds of hours, even the most creative gameplay will get repetitive and needs to be able to be all turned off so you can put your own storytelling first or play with mods that drastically change the game.

I’d love it if Paralives has the autonomy for crushes/relationships. In Sims 3, I can’t remember if it was because of a mod or base game, but my teen sim had a crush on a girl. Automatically he never did anything about it, and I’d worked to build their friendship up figuring I’d get them together. I was shocked, and actually a little hurt that he found out she’d started seeing another guy in class. The fact I still remember that is solid gameplay. Like you Erin I like many choices/options as long as they’re different enough to stand in their own. Not thrilled that their plan is to run with the minimal QA internally, and have Dev’s test their own code. You have to have a 3rd set of eyes on stuff, because they think differently than you l, and can break it in ways that never occur to them. I’m not a fan of Early Access being QA, but I’m hoping they add a few more people as they get closer to Early Access

I think that if they want to differentiate themselves from the sims 4 they should at least consider leaning more towards autonomy rather than creating a doll house.

Appreciating the update videos! Hope you have a great day!

I'm excited to see the game when it gets to early access

The cafe looks so cute! I'm glad genetics will be in early access, i thought i remembered early on in development them saying that toddlers and children would not be included in Early access. Our am i thinking of Life by You? Anyway i agree with you about having mixed emotions about their approach to traits, i like having alot of traits to choose from but i get what they're trying to do

This was very informative regarding PL’s EA! Thanks for going through it!

I just hope people understand that they are a small team and not a triple-A game, so the updates will be slow. I can’t wait to buy this game and I hope others support them too.

I know I can't play this game but I am looking forward to some playthroughs I'm looking forward for any new gaming company who's doing the life sim Genre over the people that's making the Sims currently we'll see what happens I'm definitely wishing success for the paralives team🤔

I'm all for starting simple, but I would also like to remind them that not having lots of personality traits to pick from (and only three slots in CAS max depending on the age) is one of the things about Sims 4 that people rather DISLIKE. I guess I'd really have to see more of how personalities in this game work in action, as it seems to be a combination of a simple point-build system and traits, but I would like more options for traits and more traits "slots" if possible! Though keeping it simple for Early Access is fine too -- I will happily nose around in their game and see what it does!

The limited number of QA people involved is worrisome to me. If they make a complicated, nuanced game, it's a setup for bugs unless they're careful. The more complicated the game, the harder it is to avoid the bugs. As far as "too many options," that's a reasonable concern. The more options you have, the more likely it is that the player will get overwhelmed. Alvin Toffler discusses this in his book, "Future Shock." He talks about the paralysis folks get when they have a "surfeit of subchoices." There needs to be a balance between having enough choices to make things interesting (and not to same/same with gameplay) and making sure that there aren't so many options that people get overwhelmed.

They still on the right track. Hopefully there will be less bugs. Just hope it don't get boring that current problem with some games.

Regarding Basements, keep in mind that The Sims 3 and The Sims 4 originally didn't have basements until an update with World Adventures and Get to Work respectively. As for pools, The Sims games did have pools included with the exception of The Urbz: Sims in the City, The Sims 2 console games, The Sims Medieval, and The Sims Mobile. The Sims FreePlay and The Sims 4 lacked pools at launch and were later added in an update. I'd say one of Paralives' biggest letdowns is the game being PC/Mac only which could alienate console players. It would be nice to have a proper simulation game which The Sims 4 on PS4 and Xbox One has achieved except there are some issues. The first is the controls on TS4 are not redesigned for controllers which becomes evident in Create a Sim and Build Mode that the interface was reused from Windows/macOS, and the second is the performance/load time issues on PS4 and Xbox One. However, console development would be too much for Paralives and I don't think Paralives Studio would have the capability to develop on other platforms which is something EA, Paradox, and Krafton would be able to achieve.

3:58 I have accessibility needs & so does my spouse. To the point where we have requested refunds & received them for games purchased that had deceptive demos or VERY misleading screenshots on store fronts. The worst game we ever bought was Armello before they had an update. The text was so small on our 65" Tv it was not even legible when you stood a foot away from the TV. I had to take pictures & email them to get money back but I did. There was later a text update that helped other but we still did not buy on that platform. Our issues: - I have dyslexia. This means certain fonts are very difficult for me to read. My understanding is most dyslexics prefer to have serif fonts but I was diagnosed in the 80s when fonts were not changable. The fonts you got in a book were what you were stuck with at printing. So I literally just refused to read at all. Ever. As I grew up & digital reading became possible I realized that sans-serif fonts are VERY easy for me to read. So I only ever read in sans-serif. When I even try to read Times New Roman I get such anxiety & pain all at the same time I just mentally refuse. I'm a 2nd grader again having a panic attack. It can be really bad. I've contacted game devs directly to express concerns over font issues for accessibility and have had some VERY possitive interactions with willing developers. - Spouse has genetic degenerative Keratoconus & at the age of 28 had a complete cornea transplant, which resulted in tissue rejection they had to do again 4 yrs later. This disease is generally considered an elderly issue but for the few rare unlucky it starts to show much younger. The spouse is a software developer so the adivce of "just don't use screens" wasn't an option. Which means when they want to play a game to wind down after a long day of fighting bugs the last thing they want to do is strain to see fonts in games. We never buy games that don't have accessibility in fonts because both of us need that. The spouse needs size & I need font type to be accessible. We also own the absurdly large tv because when they get infections & cannot wear prescription custom contacts & are legally blind because glasses make them rocket vomit the larger the tv the better chance they have of maybe getting to see something. It's a crapshoot. - I have a degenerative genetic disease in my joints. Think of it as arthritis but you start feeling it in grade school & it never gets any better. I was misdiagnosed with carpal tunnel in grade school so my wrists are particularily bad. I prefer to play games with controllers. I play the Sims on console when the game is not completely impossibly broken in that format because I can rest my hands, hook my fingers & claw grip a controller with a pillow on my lap. I cannot possibly do this with a keyboard and mouse set up. I can play a game on console, even a crummy one, much better and for longer than a kb+m version on PC. Controller support IS an accessibility issue, though many developers disagree. I have outright refused to buy games entirely because, if I can't play the game without pain why should I pay the money to hurt myself? I shouldn't, so I don't.

Great video Erin, thanks for keeping us informed👍

I’m personally really exited for this game, I’m glad that the early access is so soon, I think I can wait for 2025. Regarding para autonomy, I do think a certain amount of autonomy is very important when it comes to the gameplay, because unexpected developments can add a lot to the fun. I think that’s part of why I got easily bored with the sims 4, none of the sims seemed to have any actual personality or to change over time. This is also why I like the idea of personalities evolving over time. However I do think there should be a balance between that and player control, especially if you don’t want them doing certain actions that might ruin what you have in mind. Overall, though, I am very excited to play this game, and its gameplay is already looking much better than the sims 4’s gameplay

So Paralives early access is almost equivalent to a Sims 4 base game in 2014? Amusing. Again they are impressing us with level headed responses and knowing what they want and what they won't include in the game or after early access. 2025 cannot come fast enough!

It's all depends how much big the game will be. And I don't think they need a lot of people for QA. It's enough to have 2 for now. Since they are a small team and the game isn't that big like for example Sims 3. I don't really need npc showing up and fill my game, I can live without npc. But I want the possibility to create some npc. Anyway I be fine with whatever the team decide to do

Great video! I hope they continue to work on the personality development aspect. I like the idea of branching skill trees making each person with similar personality traits seem a bit different.

Overall, I am more on the impressed side than I am on the disappointed side when it comes to Paralives. Would I like more traits to choose from and more trait slots? Definitely! Real people are very complex. But what is most important to me is that the trait system actually affects behavior, wants, and interactions. If the team feels that they couldn't make the trait system work properly with too many choices, I am okay with that. I do hope that the paras outside one's household are able to live their own lives and make decisions about what to do without my input; one of the saddest things about Sims 4 (especially after coming from Sims 3, which is my favorite of the main games) is how when you take your sim to a public lot, suddenly 5 - 10 other sims just appear from nowhere so that your sim has someone to interact with. It feels like townie sims are just hanging in a closet somewhere until needed, and that is just so sad. I do understand that some players want total control, at least of the characters they want to involve in their storyline, so maybe the compromise would be a toggle you could switch off if you didn't want townie autonomy. Great update - thank you for covering this! 😁

The whole QA part is a big yikes for me. If they really intend on making a game of the same scope and size as TS4, they *will* have to get a more complex QA department, with testers that are NOT the devs, or friends and family, and not lean entirely on early access as a form of playtesting. Ideally, playtesters should be people from outside the team who never had proper interactions with the game in order to get a full honest report, so I don't think patreons should be used as playtesters as well.

I understand not using free QA. Firstly, QA isn't the same thing as 'just play the game and submit some bug reports' but also as a company I suspect there will be a legal requirement to pay compensation to any actual testers. After all, if you're offering someone a job you do have to pay them money. Family and friends can often skirt around that, and Early Access is it's own thing, since advance access to the game is the compensation there. But if they had a special, extra tier of even Earlier Access players they probably would have to start looking into compensation beyond game access. Which means it has the same budgetary impact as hiring professional testers, but without gaining the benefits of their experience in the role. There's two things on that list I'm a little worried we aren't getting immediate access to - the family tree and memories. The family tree is hopefully a misinterpretation - I hope what they mean is they don't have a big, fancy, UI look up, and not that we'll have no ability to make related paras (if we can't make related parafolk we also can't have child paras, for instance). I'm also a little worried about memories purely because every time the sims has tried to graft that on after the fact it's been a mess. The Sims 2 had an in-built memory system that worked really, really well. TS3 and TS4 both tried to kludge it in later and in both cases most people immediately turned it off because it was an absolute disaster. I mean, correlation isn't causation, this is only two examples etc etc. None of that means that Paralives adding in memories a little further down the track will go poorly. It just makes me worry because I've never yet seen it succeed. But hopefully they'll prove me wrong and pull it off flawlessly! I'd like a calendar, but I guess I can cope without it so long as there is some way to track work days vs not work days. The response to the autonomy matter is definitely interesting. I'd think that by choosing to keep interacting with other parafolk, I'm choosing to pursue deeper relationships with them, right? I shouldn't need to pick it off a card because it should just build to that over time? Personally, if there was a particular parafolk I didn't want to develop an friendly or romantic relationship with, I just wouldn't interact with them. I do think it's currently a bit of a shame, because I suspect this means that, for instance, NPCs will never autonomously pair up because that would take them 'off the market' and theoretically prevent you from dating them. Hearing this, I'm definitely concerned about a too-limited pool of personality traits. I like variety. I'm okay if each Para only has their 3 (or 6) traits, but I want that to come from a nice big pool of ... idk, 30 options? That means you can have a nice pool of different personalities without entire households winding up, say ... Cheerful+Funny+Studious or Cheerful+Funny+Musical etc.

Controller support is a BIG accessibility need for me, because I can't play games for as long without pain without controller support. Hopefully it's available, I dont take that for granted.

Love your channel. You always keep us so informed on everything. Thanks for doing a fabulous job!🎉🎉❤

I actually think less traits is more effective. That is, only if they actually do something (heavy shade on sims 4)!!! Lots of traits is good for storytelling, but how much more unique would a character who has 13 traits constantly conflicting with each other be than one who has 3 very solid traits that influence their every decision? I’ve started doing this in my sims 3 games, usually giving my sims only 3 main traits. So the flirty sim is extra flirty, the artistic extra artsy. They gravitate towards specific items & behaviors more. When you think about the people you know and their personalities, you usually boil it down to the overarching themes anyway. No one actually cares about all your little quirks and what house your venus is in except you and maybe your mother. I’m extremely excited for the paralives personality system for this exact reason. Might seem like less traits on the surface but there are a million interesting combinations. The concept that two people can have the same exact traits/interests yet apply them completely different?? Genius!! So many creative ways to play with it. i can only hope it works

I'll applaud them already if they can have half less game breaking bugs than sims 4 😂

If I want anything in the game,it’s definitely disability representation but I certainly don’t expect that at early access.I feel that I’ve been spoiled by sims with what I’ve seen in my games.

I generally prefer more choices and complexity in creating life sim characters (a downside to TS4 compared to TS3), but generally I'm impressed with how this system of evolving characters Paralives apart from The Sims series (more so it seems at this point than the other up coming competitors). I generally like being able to pick things like traits up front, the more the better, but doing things differently like this really helps make it seem like its own game providing a new experience, and not just a clone.

4:37 as long as i can disable controller vibrations, i'm usually fine. i dislike controller vibrations because of bad memories not because of a disability. i don't think it'll have controller support anyway lol

So they are only letting their friends and family and some other obscure people to play the early access?

ngl i feel like the effort that the sims 4 team puts into the townies bio is useless in the way the game is set up. they dont have memories or any way for the player to learn about the townies story to make what the bio says to be true. in sims 2 and 3 what the bio said actually impacted who the townies were. idk if that makes sense like i appreciate them doing it bc i know a lot of players love it, but it falls short imo. i also really loved the personality point system in sims 2, so i really like that theyre doing that in paralives. however, i do think there needs to be more then the 4 that are up there. i like that you can just be a little creative, so maybe youd would like painting, but maybe a para that has 3 points in creative would be more likely to paint autonomously and have better results. im not sure exactly how it works, but something like that would be intersting.

this worries me, i had such high hopes :(

amazing video friend sorry im late had dr's appt

get letsgameitout to quality test it lol

I was happy when I learned that EA would have some competition, but there is a real laziness present in the character models of this game. It speaks very poorly of them that they expect us to accept such lazy design as they ask us to switch to their product and become addicted to their game instead. Hopefully, the other game coming to compete will be more high effort than this. I don't know about anyone else, but I'm done being exploited by game companies and this reeks of a plan to be just like EA.

They do have a very in depth roadmap, it also shows what they plan on having for early access and what they want at launch. I would say that early access might be a year or two long at least. Overall I love this direction they are going, it really is different and I think it's what i need in a sims game. As for trying to appeal to everyone, luckily for the devs they don't need to appeal to everyone due to there being a few different sims games coming out. I think they might test the automany thing based on what we say during early access and may adjust it. As for accessibility, I have Dyslexia which makes analyzing and learning new words hard. Either having a font that is easy to read, text to speech, or breaking down less common words phentocally is very helpful for me. Right now I use a extension that adds in a highlight ruler and text to speech and another one which has a dictionary that helps with pronouncing words.

I agree the evolving para personalities is a pro and con thing. On the one hand I don't want to have to evolve all my paras in gameplay. On the other hand... They seem to be trying to design the autonomy based on the idea that paras that are not necessarily your mains develop too. So I think if they can pull off that quiet background feature I don't mind. Also I personally *do* think that more traits can be a little overwhelming. I find that what they have given is actually roughly to my level of sims 4 customizeability I use with mods, with the added focus of traits like cleaning and the like we don't get to choose, in choice which I appreciate. I also suspect what they mean by family tree is they want to develop a way for you to create your para's family tree at the start and recessive genetics which is hard but might have a basic one in game with in game genetics from the beginning. I don't know. They're ambitious but at the same time have realistic goals and have pulled off the progress they set for themselves. I'm going to do what I have to do with many artists. Trust the process.

I definitely want some amount of autonomy and the game presenting stories to me to play through (in response to the decisions I'm making that are crafting the stories I'm playing through. And those decisions are in turn in response to what the game presents to me). If I want to be able to craft the story exactly as I envision it? I can already do that. It's called writing. Finding a fun balance is going to be tricky, and I think on this one "The paralives developers should make a decision they like" because there's no perfect decision and I'm not sure how much this can be catered to with sliders. This is where art of game development comes in rather than something a committee (i.e. us folk online) is going to be able to get a good decision with.

Hi Erin, I havent commented in a while, Amazing video as always !