BUILD MODE CRITIQUE - build mode is needlessly complicated and should be simplified

[big bungo]

build mode is *rough*. it's overly complicated for no reason and is very, very clunky. sure you could get used to it after maybe playing for a long time, but there's genuinely no reason for it to be this way. it just creates an accessibility problem where there shouldn't be one. i'm not talking about it "being too hard for younger players", i'm almost 30 and have been building in the sims for over 20 years and I'M struggling with this. building should be fun in any game that features it, not frustrating to the point of not wanting to touch it at all.

off the top of my head, here are the things i have issue with:
-walls do not automatically connect to each other when you manually build walls next to pre-existing walls, and you instead have to click on the wall to stretch it against the wall beside it, which causes texture clipping.

-you can't just delete a single section of a wall, you have to delete the whole wall and redo the entire thing.

-in order to build a foundation, you need to build a room, raise the floor, and then delete the walls. why? there is no reason for it to be this way. foundations should be their own unique tool, not directly tied to and hidden behind room creation.

-you can't just select a floor tile and drag it across the floor to easily create whatever formation you want manually. you have to place down a massive square tile (that can't be placed down anywhere near furniture by the way) that you have to manually resize yourself to be smaller. it does not start out as a small 1x1 tile and cannot be adjusted into a formation that isn't a square or a rectangle.

-the ground isn't actually a part of the world, it's a floor tile that you have to set to have a grass texture on it. how are players supposed to do landscaping and create beautiful and natural looking gardens if the ground itself is a floor tile? there is soil in the outdoors, there are supposed to be patches of soil beneath trees and bushes. players may want to have small parts of their lawn not have grass.

-there are needless build and furnishing restrictions that have no reason for existing. you can barely overlap anything. you try to place a window against a wall with a piece of furniture near it, it gives you a "Furniture cannot overlap" message even if the window itself wouldn't overlap with the piece of furniture in front of it. you try to place a floor tile on the ground that has furniture in the area, it gives you a "Furniture cannot overlap" message. you try to place a window at the bottom of a wall against the floor, it gives you a "Cannot place on the corner of a wall" message (even the developers are aware of this one because the house preset that loads in when you enter the build creator has a sliding door with no floor attached on the other side acting as a window because you can't place windows low enough). there are no reason for these restrictions, and they *need* to be loosened significantly.

-building off my last point, you literally cannot build fences on a floor tile. this includes grass which, as i said, is a floor tile. this restriction should not exist and is EXTREMELY frustrating.

-if you want to make a room that connects to the house but isn't built on the same level/on the foundation, it's not possible. you can *attempt* to, but the wall height will not line up and there's no way to put a roof over it because the walls cannot connect and because the walls are not the same height.

-this is more a visual thing, but when placing handrails around a hole in the floor, the handrails are not built along the edge of the floor tile and there is instead a large gap between where the handrails are and where the edge of the floor tile is. it looks really ugly to the point that i can see myself not using handrails/fences at all and instead just using half-walls.

i will say that, at least when it comes to furnishing, the "place freely" button is very much appreciated. i was annoyed that it seemed like you couldn't move furniture to be right up against walls, but the "place freely" button allows you to do this and does not have any placement restrictions.

as it is currently, build mode in its current state is fine for making very, very basic builds. the issue comes with wanting to get creative with the layout and do more interesting builds. is it possible? yes. the house presets have shown this to be the case. but will it be "easy" or enjoyable for most players? absolutely not. build mode needs a lot of work, especially when it comes to placing walls, fencing and flooring, as well as the ground being a floor tile.

i'm making this post in hopes of the developers taking my feedback into account and make adjustments. feel free to leave your own gripes with build mode here in the comments as there may have been things i've missed/didn't notice or didn't think to bring up because they weren't too much of an issue for me.

[mutantbeth]

i dont like the way swatches look.

[big bungo]

Diposting pertama kali oleh Comstock:

Yeah im familiar with acottonsock. I guess that kinda points to your concerns even more.

I'll be super honest. inZOI has been a game i've been personally looking forward to for a long time. But the past week. Won't go into much detail cause I don't wanna go off topic for your thread(which is a great post). But I'm now in a position thinking "I'm just gonna wait a year and see where inZOI is in 2026".

I totally get the "Im so glad to uninstall the sims now" crowd. But. Krafton aren't angels. They're selling an Early Access game for $40. That's a premium price for a starting point. I can't imagine how badly monetised the Game will be after 1.0 launch.

So while I wish the inZOI project and everyone who plays it so much good luck and alot of fun. I do see myself distancing away from the project and investing into something else.

I do personally hope you enjoy your time if you buy it on launch 🫂

i'm 100% with you here on all of these points. honestly i'm not even sure if i'll be buying the game myself, maybe i'll wait a year like you or maybe i won't buy it at all. i'm very, very cautious of anything and everything krafton does, i'm well aware of their business practices and they're definitely not a company that i want to support

this game will not kill the sims, though i hope it scares EA enough for them to up their game and stop treating their players like money generating livestock to feed bland bare minimum slop to every few months

[All_Heil_Lord_Pepe]

Diposting pertama kali oleh big bungo:

build mode is *rough*. it's overly complicated for no reason and is very, very clunky. sure you could get used to it after maybe playing for a long time, but there's genuinely no reason for it to be this way. it just creates an accessibility problem where there shouldn't be one. i'm not talking about it "being too hard for younger players", i'm almost 30 and have been building in the sims for over 20 years and I'M struggling with this. building should be fun in any game that features it, not frustrating to the point of not wanting to touch it at all.

off the top of my head, here are the things i have issue with:
-walls do not automatically connect to each other when you manually build walls next to pre-existing walls, and you instead have to click on the wall to stretch it against the wall beside it, which causes texture clipping.

-you can't just delete a single section of a wall, you have to delete the whole wall and redo the entire thing.

-you can't just select a floor tile and drag it across the floor to easily create whatever formation you want manually. you have to place down a massive square tile (that can't be placed down anywhere near furniture by the way) that you have to manually resize yourself to be smaller. it does not start out as a small 1x1 tile and cannot be adjusted into a formation that isn't a square or a rectangle.

-the ground isn't actually a part of the world, it's a floor tile that you have to set to have a grass texture on it. how are players supposed to do landscaping and create beautiful and natural looking gardens if the ground itself is a floor tile? there is soil in the outdoors, there are supposed to be patches of soil beneath trees and bushes. players may want to have small parts of their lawn not have grass.

-there are needless build and furnishing restrictions that have no reason for existing. you can barely overlap anything. you try to place a window against a wall with a piece of furniture near it, it gives you a "Furniture cannot overlap" message even if the window itself wouldn't overlap with the piece of furniture in front of it. you try to place a floor tile on the ground that has furniture in the area, it gives you a "Furniture cannot overlap" message. you try to place a window at the bottom of a wall against the floor, it gives you a "Cannot place on the corner of a wall" message (even the developers are aware of this one because the house preset that loads in when you enter the build creator has a sliding door with no floor attached on the other side acting as a window because you can't place windows low enough). there are no reason for these restrictions, and they *need* to be loosened significantly.

-building off my last point, you literally cannot build fences on a floor tile. this includes grass which, as i said, is a floor tile. this restriction should not exist and is EXTREMELY frustrating.

-if you want to make a room that connects to the house but isn't built on the same level/on the foundation, it's not possible. you can *attempt* to, but the wall height will not line up and there's no way to put a roof over it because the walls cannot connect and because the walls are not the same height.

-this is more a visual thing, but when placing handrails around a hole in the floor, the handrails are not built along the edge of the floor tile and there is instead a large gap between where the handrails are and where the edge of the floor tile is. it looks really ugly to the point that i can see myself not using handrails/fences at all and instead just using half-walls.

i will say that, at least when it comes to furnishing, the "place freely" button is very much appreciated. i was annoyed that it seemed like you could move furniture to be right up against walls, but the "place freely" button allows you to do this and does not have any placement restrictions.

as it is currently, build mode in its current state is fine for making very, very basic builds. the issue comes with wanting to get creative with the layout and do more interesting builds. is it possible? yes. the house presets have shown this to be the case. but will it be "easy" or enjoyable for most players? absolutely not. build mode needs a lot of work, especially when it comes to placing walls, fencing and flooring, as well as the ground being a floor tile.

i'm making this post in hopes of the developers taking my feedback into account and make adjustments. feel free to leave your own gripes with build mode here in the comments as there may have been things i've missed/didn't notice or didn't think to bring up because they weren't too much of an issue for me.

I'm glad someone said this. I'm also glad I'm not the only one who figured I needed a PhD in whatever ♥♥♥♥♥ thought this was a good UI design. This is crap. The Sims 2,3 and 4 did not give me problems but here we are with a game designed to supersede them but falls flat on its face. Took me 10 minutes to start a blank map for a house. Took ages for me to find the menu option since ESC brings me nowhere near what I should expect. Limits on where I can place a TV, limits on where I can place the printer. The 3D printer has to go above a kitchen sink. GTFO of here with that issue. Textures for the roof are @$$... period. I also found I can't have them intersect to properly build a roof, use the Spanish looking house as an example. Which games did not have this issue? Oh, right the Sims 2,3 and 4. Not without issues, but a game that we're trying to beat in every fashion and we can't do basics. Oh boy, what a joke we're in for now folks. Will update as I find more. (No basements either), bummer.

[Jack]

Diposting pertama kali oleh big bungo:

Diposting pertama kali oleh Comstock:

Yeah im familiar with acottonsock. I guess that kinda points to your concerns even more.

I'll be super honest. inZOI has been a game i've been personally looking forward to for a long time. But the past week. Won't go into much detail cause I don't wanna go off topic for your thread(which is a great post). But I'm now in a position thinking "I'm just gonna wait a year and see where inZOI is in 2026".

I totally get the "Im so glad to uninstall the sims now" crowd. But. Krafton aren't angels. They're selling an Early Access game for $40. That's a premium price for a starting point. I can't imagine how badly monetised the Game will be after 1.0 launch.

So while I wish the inZOI project and everyone who plays it so much good luck and alot of fun. I do see myself distancing away from the project and investing into something else.

I do personally hope you enjoy your time if you buy it on launch 🫂

i'm 100% with you here on all of these points. honestly i'm not even sure if i'll be buying the game myself, maybe i'll wait a year like you or maybe i won't buy it at all. i'm very, very cautious of anything and everything krafton does, i'm well aware of their business practices and they're definitely not a company that i want to support

this game will not kill the sims, though i hope it scares EA enough for them to up their game and stop treating their players like money generating livestock to feed bland bare minimum slop to every few months

Agree ✅️

[All_Heil_Lord_Pepe]

Yeah, I'm not buying it either. But would at least wait and see how Paralives handles things when that comes out. But playing the Sims 2,3 and 4, the game is miles better than this AI generated slop.

[Mysterycookie]

Diposting pertama kali oleh All_Heil_Lord_Pepe:

Yeah, I'm not buying it either. But would at least wait and see how Paralives handles things when that comes out. But playing the Sims 2,3 and 4, the game is miles better than this AI generated slop.

Personally I love the AI built into this type of game, I feel is very innovative. Being able to take literal pictures of lace and designs and have used in the game is so much fun for me. I also really enjoy being able to write random prompts to be used as designs too lol I made a godzilla fighting pikachu prompt, it was terrible and hilarious and I loved the design so much I used it on things lol its fun being able to play with the AI and see what happens with it.

[LJ_Spice]

Yeah, its a confusing mess. Fencing not snapping to gates thus causing weird game. The floor tile thing, i don't like that. What i would prefer is "draw a area" then that floors texture and so on.

[SurrealUniverse]

I can’t even figure out how to make a foundation lol. I just want a front porch.

[Toot]

I turned it on, realized I couldn't change my directional movement keys away from WASD. I need to be able change the keys. I just left it. I'll get there when I get there. I believe everything you say as a concern. This makes me concerned.

[big bungo]

Diposting pertama kali oleh SurrealUniverse:

I can’t even figure out how to make a foundation lol. I just want a front porch.

yeah i couldn't figure out how to build a foundation either. there's no foundation tool. i have a feeling you have to build rooms and then raise the floor in order to create a foundation, which is just... really convoluted.

[Paul Caruso]

Diposting pertama kali oleh Comstock:

Diposting pertama kali oleh big bungo:

that's the thing tho: they did. i know for a fact that content creators who were given access to inzoi since the first playtest have expressed their opinions on the build mode and have let those frustrations be known, and while there have been SOME improvements, they're very minimal and it feels like most of their feedback was just straight up ignored for some reason

the youtuber who i watched the most during the playtests (acottonsock) did a whole video where she tried to build a house and she got so frustrated with it that she went completely silent for a chunk of the video. she sent that video to the developers, and all of the things that frustrated her are still present in the demo and seem to not have been tweaked at all. the only improvement i noticed was with the roofing

i think a good amount of those content creators didn't really spend much time in the build mode either and instead focused on the character creator and live mode, which is understandable, but i wish more attention had been brought to build mode and its issues

Yeah im familiar with acottonsock. I guess that kinda points to your concerns even more.

I'll be super honest. inZOI has been a game i've been personally looking forward to for a long time. But the past week. Won't go into much detail cause I don't wanna go off topic for your thread(which is a great post). But I'm now in a position thinking "I'm just gonna wait a year and see where inZOI is in 2026".

I totally get the "Im so glad to uninstall the sims now" crowd. But. Krafton aren't angels. They're selling an Early Access game for $40. That's a premium price for a starting point. I can't imagine how badly monetised the Game will be after 1.0 launch.

So while I wish the inZOI project and everyone who plays it so much good luck and alot of fun. I do see myself distancing away from the project and investing into something else.

I do personally hope you enjoy your time if you buy it on launch 🫂

$40 really isn't a premium price for an EA title anymore unfortunately, maybe 5 years ago, not a defense of Krafton just a reflection of the market

[big bungo]

Diposting pertama kali oleh Paul Caruso:

$40 really isn't a premium price for an EA title anymore unfortunately, maybe 5 years ago, not a defense of Krafton just a reflection of the market

i know that you're replying to a part of a previous comment, but this isn't relevant to the top of this discussion thread. nothing against your comment since i do agree with you, i just don't want the comments here to be unrelated to build mode, as this thread is intended to be a collection of feedback for the devs and i don't want people to come in and start arguing with you about the price

[Jack]

Diposting pertama kali oleh big bungo:

Diposting pertama kali oleh Paul Caruso:

$40 really isn't a premium price for an EA title anymore unfortunately, maybe 5 years ago, not a defense of Krafton just a reflection of the market

i know that you're replying to a part of a previous comment, but this isn't relevant to the top of this discussion thread. nothing against your comment since i do agree with you, i just don't want the comments here to be unrelated to build mode, as this thread is intended to be a collection of feedback for the devs and i don't want people to come in and start arguing with you about the price

✅️

[All_Heil_Lord_Pepe]

Tried it some more. The UI is still @$$cheeks to what the Sims has, what Paralives looks like. Roofing still requires a PhD if not 2, or more to use. Only 3 retextured underwears for females, 5 swim suits that are complete @$$.

Forgot to mention that its a UE title so enjoy the "loading shader compilation" on loading every single time. But its still a wait for a year at minimum for me.

[AdahamWilliszoon]

Agree with OP. I tried for half an hour to create a house on a foundation and have a short staircase lead up to the front door. It was impossible (furniture overlap error). Tried spacing it out more, to no avail. Finally gave up. That was after struggling to create a grass lot for another half an hour and also giving up on that (well, I did figure out that I had to put down the tile and apply the texture, but what a lame solution to something that wants to be next-gen).

Other frustrations included putting down a room that automatically created a floor, but once I stretched the room to a certain size, the floor would suddenly disappear. Why? Who knows!

Last, but not least...I started with creating a nice fence for my lot and wanted to create a house within its confines. But again: Once I started stretching the room to form the basic outline of the house, the fence disappeared in thin air. Tried it several times, always the same result. Again, no idea why this is happening. Also when I put down individual walls and connected them, once I closed the square and connected the final wall...poof...the fence disappeared. Gave up on the fence.

In fact, gave up on that house project and thought I'd have fun with just designing separate rooms (which I'm not aware we can save as independent rooms yet, it seems like we can only save entire "lot" presets). That works. Sort of. The lighting does weird things at times and makes it hard to judge what color you're actually creating, but it's better. Even had some fun doing that, but then the crashes started. Now I have to save my incomplete room design every half an hour to prevent myself from losing most of my work, as I've done multiple times already.

I'll be honest: I really want to like Inzoi and I'm probably gonna get it anyway. Sticking it to EA is fun and I'm willing to accept early access as being not a polished experience. But if just about everything you do in a certain mode seems to work counterintuitive, then I feel something is wrong. And to be honest, I don't see why these matters couldn't have been addressed at an earlier stage. Again: Translations not being ready, limited functionality, even missing basements and pools...sure, I get that. But these issues stick out like a sore thumb the moment you start using them. How could this not have been addressed months ago? It's beyond me.