alexmasse
patreon
A Sneak Peek Into Our First External Build Mode Playtest!
🕑 Added 2024-05-17 13:05:01 +0000 UTCHello everyone! Chloé here for today’s Patreon post!
Recently, we held our first external, in-person, playtest for people to try out our Build Mode. We also had an internal playtest with the team that same day! I will share what we learned from this first experience and the fun creations that our various players made. This Patreon post is for Patrons only, so please do not share it. Thank you kindly!
The Takeaways From The Playtest
Collage of some pictures taken during the external playtest. Top left: Charlotte and playtester Eliot. Bottom left: Me (Chloe) and playtester Rachel. Right: Alice and playtester Fabien.
Overall, we are very pleased with the feedback received during the playtest. Players enjoyed themselves and wished they had more time to build, even with the little hiccups encountered during play! We are happy that the players all had fun with the game’s Build Mode. Here are the few major points that we compiled through the feedback:
👍 Players had fun and wished they could have played longer
👍 Players found that there was a good diversity of items available in the catalogue
👍 Players found it easy to navigate our new item categories and menus (UI)
👍 Players liked the game’s music and thought it fit well with the Build Mode
👍 Players found it easy to use the camera to move in the Build Mode
👎 Players struggled with placing walls and floors because of different bugs and unclear functionalities
👎 Players struggled to find how to rotate an item and had a hard time using the rotation tools
👎 Players had a hard time placing the roofs and stairs and having them snap and resize properly
We are aiming to focus our efforts on fixing the most prevalent issues that were encountered by players, like the issues with the walls, in the next month in preparation for our next external playtest. We will also keep improving different features to improve the player experience for the Build Mode!
The Different Creations Made by The Team and Testers!
Now, onto the exciting part; seeing what people created, with an afternoon available (for the team) and only an hour (for the testers)! It was fun seeing what people came up with, and seeing how testers were getting creative with the different objects and functionalities of the Build Mode.
Little disclosure: because of the limited time allotted, not every build was finished. For exterior builds, I have taken the liberty of adding some trees and foliage to the scenes.
Every player was given the same starting save that had a large terrain to build whatever they wanted.
The starting save every player had. We realised that the lot was quite huge, and therefore a lot of us ended up building houses that were wayyy too big to fill. It’s something we will take note of when creating the game’s base lots.
The house I built during my playtime. I ended up making it much larger than I thought- while it looks fine from the outside, it ended up giving large rooms.
I also recreated my living room while I was at it; I was curious if I could recreate something similar to my home. With the resizing tool, I was able to recreate something close enough to my redacted Swedish name of boxy shelf with one of the game’s box shelves!
Tester Rachel experimented with all types of roofs to create a unique architecture for her house!
Léa created a modern and spacious house exterior.
Meanwhile, the interior of Lea’s house looks quite retro and colourful! I like the choice of primary colours and the use of bold walls and floorings.
In a similar style to Lea’s build, but in a smaller format, her playtester PA created this tiny home during his playtest. The indoor space was maximised!
Richard decided to recreate a family home from his childhood during his playtime. I get the feel and type of house he went for thanks to the choice of tiles and overabundance of wood! We are able to create such a layout thanks to our split level tools :)
Charlotte made a cozy little country house. I particularly love the round stairs leading to the front door.
Anna went for quite a maximalist approach with her build, making it overflow with plants (which we LOVE). Also, hi Pippin the Cow!
And lastly, a creative build by tester Fabien, who decided to recreate Rapunzel’s tower. While Fabien was playing, he was using every possible tool and advanced tool to check out everything we could do, and it led to this original creation!
I couldn’t feature every build as we had a lot (12 team members, and 12 testers!). It was fun going through what everyone created and noticing how objects were used differently, or similarly, in some cases!
We thank every tester who came to our office to try out the Build Mode! Their feedback is precious to us. We are looking forward to holding more of these in the future and collecting more feedback as we progress and improve the different Build Mode features.
With this, I wish you all a wonderful weekend!
Chloé
Comments
Heather Kiser
The color combinations are so aesthetically pleasing! I can’t wait to build. Building cozy homes are my absolute favorites 😘
Rémy DI-FANT
Bravo l'équipe. J'ai beaucoup moins de temps pour suivre vos avancées par rapport à l'année dernière, mais je suis content de voir que vous avancez bien.
Michelle Koleva
STUNNING!!!
Ellen Kaluza
Thank you for sharing! This is really exciting to see! Building too large is definitely an issue I've faced an inexperienced Sims builder, so it's good to see that being taken into account. It's honestly refreshing for you to share the less than ideal issues you've had with building, acknowledging that they need to be worked on. It makes me feel confident that you want to give the best possible experience!
BooDotBoo .
Everything looks so nice, firstly! Definitely might need a tutorial for building or something to better guide people. Don’t know if the people who playtested play life sims/building games and if this was a result of Paralives specifically having “difficult” build tools or its not knowing how to build, in general. I don’t know if that was shared before and I just don’t remember. Also, about lots. I see that the building lot they were given was pretty large, but I’m actually hoping we do get a few huge lots to build on. I love family play, myself, so I would often use big lots and try to put different houses on the lot (was easier with the apartment expansion in Sims 2) to house multiple generations, so while I do hope we have more normal-sized lots, I do really hope you keep a few of those really big lots in the game.
Nathalie Carluccio
I just love it ❤️ Anna's bathroom is awesome 👍
Levi VonMarx
I'd suggest a toggle-able UI Overlay Buttons. One program I've used for modeling allows for "Axis" Toggles, so rather than having to go to the zero point at the literal feet of my object to see the tiny XYZ or Rotation Axis, The toggle Axis feature makes that same rotation point "appear" down the in the corner of the screen, nice and large and visible at all times and I can immediately tell how, and what directions I can move the object in without having to zoom in. I hope this explanation makes sense.
ZLoves
I agree, a pop of color is gonna do it for me every time! & I just love how it looks in the game! I'm stoked. We're already almost halfway to 2025 😭
Lisa-Marie Berzelius
Wow!! The customization is insane and you can really see it here. Paralives let your imagination run free and it makes me so happy. This is a builders dream 🥹
Amber Plumley
Anna's choice of wallpaper coloring tripped me up some while scrolling through the app. Just waking up and no glasses on, swore the walls were moving temporarily 😂 Nonetheless, personally for me, I prefer the bigger lots. I try not to always make big ol' houses but sometimes I do and when I would do so on Sims 4, I would try to install every single type of skilling objects a Sim could use and that tended to take up a whole floor while the other two floors were for sleeping/eating/dining/cooking etc. Then the backyard I would add in the outdoorsy skilling items which sometimes could be quite large, like the rocketship, the telescope, gotta have bunch of those planters for a garden and maaaaaybe an inground pool. I could definitely use that large plot size to my advantage.
Yvette Lopez
I want to play test!! Whenever that’s available. I’ll catch all the bugs
ladyteruki
Thanks for your answer, Alex. I had seen the advanced placement tool but figured it was "only" for objects that were pretty free, not things more specific like windows or roofs, which I would imagine are more complex because they need to snap to walls and such. In my mind, these are two very different categories of things. It blows my mind that we'll be able to use the advanced placement tool (aptly named "APT" !) that way too, and it expands the possibilities for designs even further !
Fox
Can't blame you for trying katdiane, it was a good effort XD
Ju2pie
Girard is it you on the second screenshot? Can't tell it is too blurry
Jakeara Malloy
Oh my, this game is so amazing to me already and I haven’t even played it yet
max
oh I'm so pleased that you guys included the negatives too ! that transparency makes me even more excited to play the game 🥹
Alex Massé
Thanks so much for the support and kind words everyone! It's truly appreciated!
Alex Massé
Thanks so much for asking! Right now, we are only reaching out to close friends because we only need a handful of testers :)
Alex Massé
Thank you!! The roof and window in Fabien's tower were placed using the advanced placement tool and it's not possible to place them like that without it. See this tool in action here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DcgArA1f4HI We hope that in the next playtest, we will see that people do not have the main issues they had last time since we have worked on them! They will then be able to find other, less urgent issues and after a few playtests, we hope that there will only be small issues remaining!
Jordan Harrison
The build mode in this game is going to be one of the best out there by the time Paralives is fully released. I just know it. The attention to detail at this stage is astonishing, really. I'm so excited to build a little neighborhood in this world
Alex Massé
Thank you! Since it was our first playtest, we decided to not go for something too long because we thought we would get a lot of feedback already from one hour and we were right. The next ones might be longer and it's possible that invite the same people again in the future!
MAXIELL Jamieson
I already love this game!
tey711
Ooooo... I can't wait!! 👏😁
Judi Dielman
Me too!
Judi Dielman
Building is my favorite part of simulation games. This is not only absolutely beautiful, but it’s also very impressive the variety of different builds they were able to achieve. Also thank you for the honesty about the gameplay bugs. I really can’t wait till we can all play. 😊
katdiane
is there any way to sign up to be a potential play tester in the future? i am based in montreal and i’d love the opportunity to be able to play test the game ♥️♥️
Xo.Noe
Ohhh my goodness. *cries. I am so ready to play this game, I genuinely haven't been this excited for a game in such a long time; it is everything I've been wanting. 2025 cannot get here fast enough!
Christina Ozeki
Oh, this is fantastic, I really like everyone's different style build and I can't wait till we can all try building too. Exciting! :)
Zedef
I'm quite impressed with what the testers managed to build in one hour, being completely new to the game! Aside from a standard double-story rectangle house, I used to take longer in a certain life sim to build houses and I'd been playing for years back then. Very impressive. Curious as to why the testers were only given an hour? I'd have expected at least double it but perhaps there was a good reason. Will the same testers return for the next round of testing or are you using different ones? I can see pros and cons for both options. Loving the transparency here (and the builds!).
Marina
😍😍😍😍😍
ladyteruki
I was looking forward to this ! Thanks for the recap, Chloé ! Rachel really understood the assignment. Look at these roofs ! It's also very interesting to see how many different styles are already possible in the game, and will only expand as time goes on. Fabien's tower is interesting because I had NO IDEA we would be able to rotate some features the way he has for this window and the roof above it... was that discussed and I missed it ? Also I'm thankful that you listed the negatives too ; it's the kind of transparency that I really appreciate from the Paradevs, you are not trying to tell us only about the positives, but really give us an understanding of some of the ups and downs of development. It gives us a real appreciation for the work the team puts into the game, and makes us understand why things take the time they take, or some choices are made. It's going to be very interesting to see what the feedback will be once you have course corrected for these three main issues. No doubt there'll be more XD But the question is, what will emerge during the next test ? The more playtests you hold, the more refined the results will be :)
Panthro Samah
Thank you, tester Rachel! You showed us the different roof types available!!
Beau R
So excited for it! You guys are doing an amazing job Keep it up! ❤️ from Australia
Chloé Ouellet
Indeed, right now we are more euro-centric, but once the Early Access has launched, we will have more time to produce items from different cultures and regions of the world! We are looking to expand the Build Mode catalogue through time :)
Artis Zaķis
Rachel's funky house really inspired me to want to build something unique in Paralives, I cannot WAIT to do that!
Beau R
Im sooo excited to make my own little neighbourhood when it comes out. The customisation and polish of the build items & lots (even if there are some bugs) is incredible. It looks like we’re really going to have the possibility to represent a vast number of building styles. I’m hoping there will be some more region specific things in the future to allow players from all over the world to create a neighbourhood they feel at home in. Some places I’ve yet to see truly represented in life sims could include Eastern Europe, northern & Eastern Africa, Central Asia/Eurasia and Indonesia/Malaysia. There’s so many beautiful countries around the globe and I think it would be really amazing to look into some less represented places & create some furnishings / build objects that could be used to represent them. I’m looking forward to hopefully seeing some builds that have taken a step back from westernised styles and to have the potential of a truly diverse builds
DoubleC
That's all so exciting! It sounds like build mode will be a lot of fun. So excited for early access next year :)
Taylor Starkey
Wow, I’m blown away by how unique each build was. I’ve never been a huge build-mode person but this kind of makes me want to be. The split level tool is a game changer for me.
CookieCake
I love Richard's build! Especially the large dining table 😍👍🏼
Star Zoë
This is flippin amazing! And love love love the transparency in "cons" if it were, it shows us that you listen, learn and are eager to fix things (which I mean, we all knew already, but it's just nice extra confirmation!)
Bethy Grace
How AMAZING does this look though!!! 😍😍😍 Oh to be a play tester haha. Thank you for being so open about the positives and negatives of the experience, it is SO ENCOURAGING as a player to see this real play testing, with real external people. I have no doubt that you will get such valuable feedback and make the improvements and changes required ❤️ And the builds look incredible!
Madison Deitch
😍😍😍😍😍😍😍
Team True Destiny
Oooooo fantastic!!!
Julio Saliba
Looks awesome! I can’t wait to see the build mode improved even further!
borismonster6
looks great! good to see the cool build mode and creativity that can be expressed
