The Sims 4 All-in-one complete collection ? [SOLVED]

New Sims-4 users now have to download:
The base game
Get to Work
Get Together
Ultimate fix

Is there an all-in-one torrent download perhaps ?
(Maybe it already exists, but I couldn't find it)

I think there's no need for The Sims 4 Complete Collection, for now. There will be The Sims 4 Complete Collection at the end of The Sims 4 lifespan. And even if The Sims 4 Complete Collection is created we'll still need to update it with every release of new addon. So it's not practical at all.

I appreciate your comment from the uploaders point of view, however new downloaders would appreciate a fresh download with all items included and a simple setup-file (no copy/paste).
I know by experience that the creation of such a file is very time consuming, but still ....
At present such a download would be just under 12 GB.
If somebody can explain how to create and upload a torrent, I'd be quite willing to undertake that for G4TW.

//MOVED


Topic moved to the "Suggestion box". I appreciate your enthusiasm @Tarac, but at this point I agree with @simmer_tony's comment.

For a start, such a huge global torrent would conflict with the install instructions here, which are specifically aimed at users who have used Games4theworld's items. Regardless of whether new user or veteran user. You could now say "then edit the instructions", but then...really ? Two different sets of instructions, or two different "ways" ?

The next thing is, such a huge torrent would be difficult to seed, at least in the beginning. We do not use seedboxes, and rely on our home internet connections for seeding.

And what if a new user does not have a high-speed internet ? The most recent feedback that we got concerned requests of actually splitting up the items more, due to a lot of people having a slower internet (see e.g. this topic or this here), and I myself at least am going to take the side of these people.

You have a point, and yes, if new users have a fast internet such a global torrent can help. But before this ends up in another discussion about "what release format is the best", I'll give you the following:

Literally ALL other uploaders (FitGirl, XATAB, MrDJ, etc.) are using the format you suggested. Like, really everybody else besides G4TW. I think it is nice if we do things slightly different than the rest. Getting back again to users with a slower internet or a data cap, they can e.g. download just G4TW's base game for the time being. Then they play with that, while they download the other DLC, or whatever. If someone really found the instructions too much of a hassle, then I'm almost tempted to suggest that for the time being they might be better served with the global torrents from the other uploaders. Of course, regarding the support, these users are also more than welcome on G4TW. All TS4 releases are the same anyhow in the end. But for the process of downloading, it may be better if these users consider using different torrents from other uploaders.

What are the practical alternatives ? OK, parallel to our existing TS4 torrents we always compile and seed a global TS4 update for the "new users". And what about the ensuing confusion with the different sets of instructions ? By the way, the creation of such a file is my least concern here. You just pack the entire installation folder of The Sims 4 in a .RAR and tell people to simply extract the .RAR content, to wherever they want to have the game 'installed'. Or use a setup-type, when you want to use .ISOs.

I believe that keeping the status quo has more advantages. But of course, you are free to wait for @Admin's feedback here too.

Living in The Netherlands, I often forget that there still are downloaders with lowspeed or capped internet.
Most people here have no limitations and at least a 30 Mbs provider. The majority has 100 Mbs or even more, like myself with 150 Mbs download-capacity.
Reason why I always have a "complete" version on my Dutch forum.

But yes, for reasons you've explained maybe it's better to leave things as they are for G4TW

Tarac wrote:Living in The Netherlands, I often forget that there still are downloaders with lowspeed or capped internet.
Most people here have no limitations and at least a 30 Mbs provider. The majority has 100 Mbs or even more, like myself with 150 Mbs download-capacity.
Reason why I always have a "complete" version on my Dutch forum.

But yes, for reasons you've explained maybe it's better to leave things as they are for G4TW

I mean, if we edited the "TS4 Must-Read" such that it states under step #1 something like this: "If you are a completely new user, then download this global torrent here. And if you downloaded from G4TW in the past, go with step #2....", then that could do. I still see some potential for confusion, but maybe there is a (small) chance of this actually working.

But then, it remains open what people with a slower internet shall do here ? I mean, they could go with the classic way, of our separate TS4 releases. Though that almost feels like discrimination. 

I also live in Central Europe (though I don't want to give away the exact location), but I live in the technological stone-age around here. Most people are so oblivious of IT technology over here that until about 15-20 years ago, a lot of IT specialists from India were hired to set up the basis for a future infrastructure. Modern high-speed internet costs a fortune over here, and is generally more to be seen with companies, rather than the average Joe or Jane.

But enough rambling for now.   I'm sure @Admin will also comment on this issue here, next time he comes online.

Hi Tarac,

Thanks for your suggestion.

I personally agree with @simmer_tony here.

simmer_tony wrote:There will be The Sims 4 Complete Collection at the end of The Sims 4 lifespan.

The Sims 4 is not yet complete, so that does not justify a "Complete Collection" torrent in my opinion.
Not only because it might cause confusion (E.g. "Complete Collection 1", "Complete Collection 2", "Complete Collection 3", etc...), but also because it makes the download list even more of a mess. That is also the reason that we decided not to add the torrent versions of our Ultimate Fix to our official downloads list. Soon you'll get one page of only "Ultimate Fix" torrents. I prefer to keep the list clean and only add final versions of downloads.
Like with our The Sims 3: The Complete Collection torrent. After the last expansion pack the game was not going to be updated any time soon any more, so we created a Complete torrent to wrap everything up, making a final product.

While I agree that The Sims 4 is currently a mess (Carlos is working on a new set of instructions, which will be put online soon), I don't think a Complete torrent for something that is still incomplete is going to make it any better.

What's in a name ?
I called it "All-in-one upto and incl. Dine Out", but there are plenty of other names you can call it.
Amazingly there still are quite a number of people starting the Sims 4 for the first time. One should think that everybody interested in this game would have it by now, but no.
Basis + Get to Work + Get Together + Ultimate Fix, all separate downloads and installations, copy/paste folders etc.
1 download from Basis upto Dine Out and just 1 setup to click on.
I admit, it's about 12 GB and installation takes 45-60 minutes but at least it's straightforward and simple.
From then onwards you'll have to publish a couple of add-ons until the time has come for a new all-in-one.

It's only a suggestion and as you indicated, momentarily it's a bit of a mess.
Work along 2 lines - the one you have now (call the present Ultimate fix just Dine Out) and a separate for all-in-one's

Question: What are you calling it when Backyard is cracked - The ultimate, ultimate fix ? And every update thereafter ?

Tarac wrote:It's only a suggestion and as you indicated, momentarily it's a bit of a mess.
Work along 2 lines - the one you have now (call the present Ultimate fix just Dine Out) and a separate for all-in-one's

Question: What are you calling it when Backyard is cracked - The ultimate, ultimate fix ? And every update thereafter ?

Here's another thought: on your own forum/sites, are you also working along 2 lines ? If not, why exactly ? Maybe because it can be somewhat unpractical in the end, for the reasons I detailed before ? And if it's possibly unpractical for you, why it should it become more practical for us or any other uploader then ? 

You have pointed out that the creation of such a file is difficult, but then again, my opinion is that this is the smallest problem actually. Even I can create such a global TS4 update; it doesn't take longer than maybe 15-20 minutes. If you have a stronger computer, maybe even less. My main objections are again the possibility of confusion that will likely go hand-in-hand of having two different instructions. And the difficulty of seeding all the stuff. Maybe there is also a misunderstanding here about the term "seeding", which in torrenting refers to the process of uploading an item, at least until a couple of other people have received 100% of the data, so that they can continue seeding (with or without you !). So in this sense, seeding an item will in practice take much more time than merely uploading the item on an external filehoster. The whole issue about seeding alone would be enough reason for me personally to not go ahead with your idea. And I'm not even taking into account yet the other drawback of such an idea, namely that people with slower internet speeds won't be able to take advantage of such a global TS4 release.

When Backyard Stuff is released, we are possibly going to re-hash the current Ultimate fix, or what might also be conceivable is that we will be creating another "milestone", i.e. an official torrent that will also be released on the downloads-page. This new torrent will re-hash the current items (Movie Hangout, Kids Room, Romantic Garden, Dine Out) as well as include Backyard Stuff. The name of such a torrent ? Why not "The Sims 4: Backyard Stuff", meaning that the new install order after that would be Base game -> Get to Work -> Get together -> Backyard Stuff. That could be an idea.

And after such a new milestone has been released, any subsequent minor updates will be packed into a new "Ultimate fix", until the next milestone, and so forth. Such "milestones" are normally reserved for the event that big DLCs are released (expansion packs), and although Backyard Stuff is only a stuffpack, we might make an exception there. Given the fact that expansion packs seem to be released maybe once or twice a year only.

Is this system perfect ? Maybe not. On the other hand though, in the context of G4TW, I don't think your idea is practical either. I'm sorry. It's all about weighing different sets of values, and my overall impression is that having a "second route" will ultimately cause more difficulties for all of us, than benefits. In the other topic from @Keyenpeydee I said that having too many small releases isn't too good either, and that the install order should be kept as simple as possible. But I don't think this is a contradiction of what we have been attempting to explain over the course of this thread. The status quo can be maintained, and yet presented in a friendly way.   Maybe in the event that there are 10 or so different "milestones" in the installation steps we could think about a consolidation, but I don't give TS4 much more than 2 or maybe 3 years at most, before being dumped by EA.

I believe we all can agree that most, if not all of us, are still thinking along the lines of earlier The Sims titles, such as TS2 or TS3, which were fairly easy to install. Now with TS4 being different in so many respects, we are - consciously or not - attempting to find a perfect "one size fits all"-solution. The overall situation is not made easier by EA "overbloating" TS4. For example, did anybody of you ever wonder why the base game of TS4 alone (despite its very marginal content) is almost 9GB in filesize? I believe this was deliberately done by the game developers in order to annoy pirates even more. Of course it doesn't completely prevent piracy, but in the long run it surely makes certain things harder. I say: there is no such thing as a perfect solution. And any further discussion is of course still possible, but maybe not worth the time.

I fully agree that it's very difficult to find the perfect solution especially as EA has made all their downloads extremely large.
As - In the Netherlands - most people have highspeed internet it's not so much of a problem to work along 2 different lines, being 1. the separate direct downloads (no torrents) Basic + Get Together (incl. Get to Work) + Dine Out + future updates and 2. a full download incl. everything up till now.
I realize that G4TW copes with lowerspeeds and that will increase the difficulties of course.

Anyway, too much said already about this subject. I leave it all in your most capable hands.

Tarac wrote:Question: What are you calling it when Backyard is cracked - The ultimate, ultimate fix ? And every update thereafter ?

C'mon @Tarac, this is not your first day here, you know exactly how that works. It's an Ultimate Fix which gets updated whenever new files are available.
Literally quoted from the Ultimate Fix page:

Admin wrote:You will always find the latest game update/Fix on this page, so be sure to check back when a new update has been released for the game.
We'll update the Fix it as soon as possible when new updates for the game are released. (Note the YES and NO, indicating whether the Fix is compatible with the latest game version already)
Always make sure that you only download from the download links below, because these links will be updated whenever new, updated files are available!

The name "Ultimate Fix" was originally adopted for our The Sims 3 Fix. That was not yesterday, that was quite some years ago. As Carlos mentioned, The Sims 3 was different. Back then the "Ultimate Fix" was kind of an ultimate fix. It would actually fix most of the problems people had (and would save us a lot of time). The original Ultimate Fix was made to fix an error that would occur when people would try to update their The Sims 3 game, while still having a crack applied. The game's original updater would recognize those files as "not original" and throw an error. There were to possible solutions: either using the manual patch/superpatch (because that one would not check the files, but just directly replace them with the original ones) or using the Ultimate Fix. It had the original files included, so people could still use the original game updater (which would download smaller patches than the superpatcher).
After some time the "Ultimate Fix" was pretty much only used as a way to provide people with the latest available crack. For ease and other purposes we currently use the same name for our The Sims 4 Ultimate Fix. The purpose is pretty much the same now: providing people with the latest available NoCD crack for the game.

Whether it's useful, confusing, outdated or whatever, is definitely debatable. We've thought about everything very well though, and I believe that discussing these things is somehow a waste of time. It's the way we have decided to do some thing.

I already told you that The Sims 4 is currently a little bit of a mess. I also explained why I don't think it's a good idea to release multiple torrents. (Even though our current The Sims 4 Ultimate Fix is already available in torrent format - I don't see how uploading all the updates to our download list makes a difference, since we're essentially doing the same now, just not publishing the .torrent on our official download list)

Offering the downloads in multiple downloads (e.g. one download for the base game, one for the expansion, etc.) is not even that bad of an idea. Why would it? The torrents are all well-seeded, and if someone has slow internet, then they'll always download with the fastest speed their internet connection allows anyway. For those people it wouldn't matter if we either provide them with one "full" torrent or multiple smaller ones, their capped download speed will stay the same.

fsociety wrote:C'mon @Tarac, this is not your first day here, you know exactly how that works. It's an Ultimate Fix which gets updated whenever new files are available.

(...)

The above may have been intended as a rhetorical question though.

But seriously, another reason it is more feasible to "roll" with what we have right now is the fact that you never know what the future holds. There might be more technical changes about TS4 coming up, and if we now start with a secondary route/method, who knows what's going to happen in a year or so. The new guide for TS4 what we were discussing most recently assumes that G4TW items in their current format are used.

Once EA announces the end of development of TS4, which I estimate could happen around the years 2018/2019, THEN we will work on secondary route: namely the complete collection of TS4.

As I already siad
"Anyway, too much said already about this subject. I leave it all in your most capable hands.

Fair enough. I just wanted to add (even though you may not be aware of this), that we get suggestions of this type, objecting the G4TW-format of TS4 releases, time and time again. 

I want to stress that all suggestions will be heard out. Whether or not they will actually be implemented in practice is another question.

Question(s) answered, case closed, I guess.