Hi there! You are currently browsing as a guest. Why not create an account? Then you get less ads, can thank creators, post feedback, keep a list of your favourites, and more!
Field Researcher
#26 Old 8th Jun 2018 at 7:37 PM
Quote: Originally posted by Motorcitydude
Animal hats, hot dog suits, giant cupcake machines, backyard rocket ships, goofy-ass walkstyles nobody would be caught dead using...

Clearly things that are more important than burglars. Seems their priorities are in order!


How could you forget the talking toilet?!

Not to mention:

Bear suits
Coloured bear suits with parenthood
Raccoon suits
Giant hamster suits
(What is their obsession with animal costumes?)
Advertisement
Forum Resident
Original Poster
#27 Old 8th Jun 2018 at 8:50 PM
Quote: Originally posted by nitromon
Just beating the same dead horse. Too bad you didn't read all the debates earlier before deciding to go into TS4.

It is simple by all definition and assertion, a botched mobile chat program turned into a game in the last min. It is what it is.

While it's true the lack of challenge in the game has been discussed before, I think there is merit to not only constructively criticizing the issue, but also opening a conversation on how to fix it.

While the chances are slim, I think there's still an opportunity for The Sims Studio to release an EP that's less about stuff and more about experimentation. If nothing else, it's good to discuss what went wrong for future projects, EA-led or otherwise.

Also, I purchased TS4 at launch, and failure states were not talked about as in-depth when the open world / toddler / pool losses were much more fresh.

"Given enough time, hydrogen starts to wonder where it came from, and where it is going." - Edward R. Harrison
Field Researcher
#28 Old 8th Jun 2018 at 9:11 PM
Quote: Originally posted by Motorcitydude
Seems a lot of things aren't a priority with these devs.

Just seems like laziness on the part of the devs. Rather than just putting in the work to actually simulate it, they just put a moodlet that tells you instead of showing you. My sim is X? Show me that they are X rather than telling me in boring text! What is this, 1990?

Not true, having to guess why a sim shows a certain emotion may be nice to some, but it’s not lazy to let the player know why. Again, they didn’t take away facial expressions, they just added something to the game that explains why a sim is feeling a certain way. I really had to get used to the fact I didn’t have a clue in Sims 2 (which I played after playing Sims 3 for years) why my sim was angry. I want to know why they are, I don’t want having to guess.
Mad Poster
#29 Old 8th Jun 2018 at 9:18 PM
Yeah. "Laziness" is far more from being true when they even bother implementing and tackle that new system.

P.S. Sorry for my bad english.
Test Subject
#30 Old 8th Jun 2018 at 9:57 PM
Quote: Originally posted by Element
While it's true the lack of challenge in the game has been discussed before, I think there is merit to not only constructively criticizing the issue, but also opening a conversation on how to fix it.

While the chances are slim, I think there's still an opportunity for The Sims Studio to release an EP that's less about stuff and more about experimentation. If nothing else, it's good to discuss what went wrong for future projects, EA-led or otherwise.

Also, I purchased TS4 at launch, and failure states were not talked about as in-depth when the open world / toddler / pool losses were much more fresh.


Agreed, and maybe sharing what we can do ourselves to make the game more interesting helps a bit, too.
So I will elaborate a bit:
As for mods, there are the "fine tuning mods" like making certain actions a bit faster, changing the billing system. So things like that would be possible to implement by Maxis themselves (even though I feel it might be a bit insulting to modders to take their work and turn it into cash? But maybe they'd see it as "imitation is the sincerest form of flattery"? ). Then there are all the career-mods ect. that add to the game. I'd also love it if things like illnesses had a bit more effect. Why not really make a sim TOO sick to not only go to work but even to do much. If they wanna get better fast they gotta take their meds or see a doctor.
And, I know this has been said before, give players the choice when to add or not add things like illnesses via toggles!
Of course there are also mods to play into the health-system, like the Private Practise mod....

I am deeply in love with Icemun's CC, too, especially harvestable plants that not only can be used in recipes but also effect your sims like coconuts refilling the energy bar ect. ... That is one NEAT concept. Maybe one could make it a bit more challenging by only giving that effect, or the strongest effect, to perfect fruits, or you can only plant these plants after maxing your gardening skill. So if you wanna refill your energy bar that easily you have to spend a few days gardening first.... I'd love to see more stuff like that in the vanilla game. But please don't make it too easy (go to fridge, grab drink, done), let there be some working towards a goal being involved.

Now as for challenges, I can really obsess over details. For example I read about an alien hive challenge but heavily modified it by creating an insanely complex sheet with actions to roll for each day (e.g. changing the lot type for a day to add earthquakes, breaking stuff - also manually by deleting objects ect, or having a party that day, a concert with the princess performing, ...) and by crafting objects: Every food would cost ingredients you have to get first (there are also mods to help with that, but I only found that out after I was done with my sheet ), but building objects would also cost ressources, e.g. wood you get for cutting trees, metal you get for collecting metals, cloth and dies you get for plants and flowers ect.
Meat will only be on the table if my sims catch fish, bugs ect. or care for (and slaughter) livestock..
So my alien colony had to build everything from beds and fridges to power generators, and gather materials, which meant exploring the world more and also potential danger of running into trouble like attacks by wild earthen animals or getting caught by the military, or finding useful objects at the junk yard or new plants... Each loading screen means a dice-roll, so the screens finally serve a purpose

Oh, and as for sicknesses... If the workers in my hive get sick they cannot work and, depending on their illness, have to be isolated and treated with very specific cures. If their illness is contageous there is a chance of the whole colony dying from that plague otherwise......

Now I would not want Maxis to put all of that into the game because it would feel too forced for me. Not everyone wants their aliens to run into trouble with the military and not in every game they play with aliens. And not everyone would want to put so much effort into building objects from scratch for their home and hunting for resources first. But giving an option to use more resources might be fun! How about you CAN use wood for crafting, but also for making a fire? And you can either chop that wood yourself when you sacrifice trees and shrubbery or simply buy wood...
And of course I am not the only one who wants farm animals (back) in the game to get eggs and milk and what not

I like the idea of the childhood (and other life stages) influencing a sims future. This is already there in Sims 4. but only rudimentally. I must confess I have not really fully explored parenting yet... But one could certainly add to it, and make the choices even more meaningful. Example: Maybe if a child did not learn to play any instrument it will be a lot harder to learn playing instruments as an adult, but if they mastered one instrument as a child it will be easier to learn any music-related skills (instruments, singing, dancing, ...) later on. The key being that if you don't invest in this in your childhood years it should be significantly harder later....
I think that would lead to even more variety in sims and thus make them more unique.

Is all of that just wishful thinking? Maybe, but look what modders have already added to the game. Maxis is still working on it, so let's see what they will add, and once they are done it will make the modder's lives so much easier without patches getting in the way anymore. From what I understand 4 is a lot easier to mod than former games in the franchise, so I am looking forward to what they will come up with. And while it is a bit sad that to play the Sims the way I enjoy it I feel the need to create complex tables and use SO much imagination pretending things are happening in my game I at least see this as a way of strengthening my "imagination and creativity muscles"
Mad Poster
#31 Old 8th Jun 2018 at 10:01 PM
Quote: Originally posted by Motorcitydude
Animal hats, hot dog suits, giant cupcake machines, backyard rocket ships, goofy-ass walkstyles nobody would be caught dead using...

Clearly things that are more important than burglars. Seems their priorities are in order!


It's funny that literally out of all the walkstyles, only a few of them are actually usable.
Forum Resident
Original Poster
#32 Old 8th Jun 2018 at 10:36 PM
Quote: Originally posted by Unsearchably
Lack of failure and lack of rewards.
Exactly. We may as well be getting participation ribbons if there's no chance to screw up.

"Given enough time, hydrogen starts to wonder where it came from, and where it is going." - Edward R. Harrison
Theorist
#34 Old 9th Jun 2018 at 1:47 AM
Quote: Originally posted by Motorcitydude
Seems a lot of things aren't a priority with these devs.

Just seems like laziness on the part of the devs. Rather than just putting in the work to actually simulate it, they just put a moodlet that tells you instead of showing you. My sim is X? Show me that they are X rather than telling me in boring text! What is this, 1990?



Quote: Originally posted by Jo-Anne
Not true, having to guess why a sim shows a certain emotion may be nice to some, but it’s not lazy to let the player know why. Again, they didn’t take away facial expressions, they just added something to the game that explains why a sim is feeling a certain way. I really had to get used to the fact I didn’t have a clue in Sims 2 (which I played after playing Sims 3 for years) why my sim was angry. I want to know why they are, I don’t want having to guess.


Personally the change to moodlets never really bothered me. There are a lot of things that didn't bother me although they bothered others; mainly what I missed was the way we could simulate relationships, particularly family relationships in TS2. The sim-to-sim animations like the family kiss, the peck on the cheek, bathing babies and toddlers, etc. That was a great loss for me. And the missing car animations. That really made me feel some sadness, too.

But back to moodlets: I see them a little differently now after playing for so many years. In some cases they are just fake markers but in many others they are the mechanism by which a sim experiences a certain state. What I mean is, once I learned that I could shift-ctrl-click on a moodlet and the state would go away, I saw the relationship between them. Don't want your sim to have an alien baby? Simply click on the 'gaining weight' moodlet and your sim will no longer be expecting. Or get rid of the knife moodlet and your sim will no longer feel betrayed and break up with their partner.

They could have made them invisible, but personally I really love all the control that TS3 gives me to play the game my way - although I do use most of the NRAAS mods so it's possible this ability comes from one of those. But for me, the reason I stopped playing TS4 was that I detested the goofy cartooniness of the animations, along with all the ways we lack control over the gameplay. I know there are mods that can help with the lack of control but the juvenile way the sims act was just a total turn off for me (for the most part the sims look good, at least until they start to make goofy faces, but the overall art style is too kiddish for me). So it wasn't about the lack of failure states at all for me. (I shouldn't have to say this, but this is my opinion and YOUR MILEAGE MAY VARY.)

Also, Nitromon I agree with you. One of the other reasons I have such a negative attitude for this game was because it was a total betrayal of a large segment of the fan base by EA, who seems to believe they know better what players want than the players do.

¢¾ Receptacle Refugee ¢¾ ~ Where are we going, and why am I in this handbasket!? ~
Laura's Legacy
Mad Poster
#35 Old 9th Jun 2018 at 3:30 AM
About for TS4 to turn 5 years old, they still have haven't convience me to give respect and trust them. I'm tired of giving hope after these years. Tbere is of course the opportunity, but they're not taking. They rather prefer to spent their last pennies on something mediecore and complaint about their budget not living up to the fans expectations and that they should feel grateful of rubbish they put to us instead. Like on useless plastic than something would bring us decent for once. GTW, CL, C&D, and the upcoming Seasons pack seem to be behind the radiator of close to being experimential. Just by looking back from that retrospective it's hard to give them the benefit of a doubt.

P.S. Sorry for my bad english.
Instructor
#36 Old 9th Jun 2018 at 10:11 AM Last edited by Motorcitydude : 9th Jun 2018 at 2:48 PM.
Quote: Originally posted by jje1000
It's funny that literally out of all the walkstyles, only a few of them are actually usable.

Indeed. I just use the default walk style for 99% of my sims. Maybe the tough guy walk for one or two others, but that's it.
Quote: Originally posted by tangie0906
Personally the change to moodlets never really bothered me. There are a lot of things that didn't bother me although they bothered others; mainly what I missed was the way we could simulate relationships, particularly family relationships in TS2. The sim-to-sim animations like the family kiss, the peck on the cheek, bathing babies and toddlers, etc. That was a great loss for me. And the missing car animations. That really made me feel some sadness, too. But back to moodlets: I see them a little differently now after playing for so many years. In some cases they are just fake markers but in many others they are the mechanism by which a sim experiences a certain state. What I mean is, once I learned that I could shift-ctrl-click on a moodlet and the state would go away, I saw the relationship between them. Don't want your sim to have an alien baby? Simply click on the 'gaining weight' moodlet and your sim will no longer be expecting. Or get rid of the knife moodlet and your sim will no longer feel betrayed and break up with their partner.

The trait system bothers me more than the moodlets, to be honest. I prefer the points-based system that was used until TS2. A person is way more than just three wimpy traits, many of which are minuscule and superficial.
Top Secret Researcher
#37 Old 9th Jun 2018 at 11:10 AM
Combination of genuine, not-useless traits and the point/spectrum system, with opposite traits on the end would be sooo cool and would make sense with genetic passing of traits. Imagine the possibilities. Sims 3 just had way too much useless traits. Sims 4 has useful traits only in name. None of those traits really do anything.
Forum Resident
#38 Old 9th Jun 2018 at 12:50 PM
The game is so lacking in strife. No burglars to steal your stuff, fires rarely happen and get put out before you can blink, death (other than old age) is practically impossible unless you go out of your way to engineer it to happen. I liked how Jungle Adventure made things a little more dangerous...but it wasn't dangerous enough! It's also trivially easy to make money in this game, and there's not much that can take it away. The whims system is lousy, since they're hard to fulfil (due to Sim ADHD) and give very little points anyway. Even once you've saved up some points the reward store is quite uninspiring. There is also a serious dearth of negative traits, especially compared to TS3.

It's dull, and the main thing that stops me from playing every time I go back to the game. The game is no fun when there's no challenge to work against.
Instructor
#39 Old 9th Jun 2018 at 2:47 PM
Quote: Originally posted by Dorsal Axe
The game is so lacking in strife. No burglars to steal your stuff, fires rarely happen and get put out before you can blink, death (other than old age) is practically impossible unless you go out of your way to engineer it to happen. I liked how Jungle Adventure made things a little more dangerous...but it wasn't dangerous enough! It's also trivially easy to make money in this game, and there's not much that can take it away. The whims system is lousy, since they're hard to fulfil (due to Sim ADHD) and give very little points anyway. Even once you've saved up some points the reward store is quite uninspiring. There is also a serious dearth of negative traits, especially compared to TS3. It's dull, and the main thing that stops me from playing every time I go back to the game. The game is no fun when there's no challenge to work against.

Sure the devs may have denied it, but it seems the whole game goes out of the way not to be "Trigger"-ish. So anything remotely edgy is gone.
Mad Poster
#40 Old 9th Jun 2018 at 4:13 PM
Quote: Originally posted by Motorcitydude
The trait system bothers me more than the moodlets, to be honest. I prefer the points-based system that was used until TS2. A person is way more than just three wimpy traits, many of which are minuscule and superficial.


They should have used the trait system in combination with the points-based system- the points as a base for your sims' personalities, and traits as descriptors differentiate them further.

I would almost say that the traits themselves need to also be a spectrum- maybe one to three versions for trait intensity (i.e. 'neat' >> up to 'germophobe')
Lab Assistant
#41 Old 9th Jun 2018 at 4:21 PM
They left out burglars and firefighters because they said it would make people feel "intruded" or something like that but vampires do the exact same thing in the Vampires GP
Getting robbed, getting sick, losing a job because the company is moving or shutting down are all real life problems we have to address and a life simulator wouldn't be a life simulator without them.
People like challenges, that's why they play games. Minecraft would not have been as popular if it was just creative mode.
Everything's so easy, it's an uninteresting repetitive slice of life. Like a sitcom with no "situation"

ooh ee ooh a-ah ting-tang walla walla bing bang
Forum Resident
Original Poster
#42 Old 9th Jun 2018 at 8:28 PM
I always felt that careers were a little too idealistic from the start. Losing your job due to factors out of your control, having to pick a job not suited to your interests (at the risk of higher burnout), and changing careers when you plateau in progression are all things we deal with that could add challenge to the game without feeling unfair.

"Given enough time, hydrogen starts to wonder where it came from, and where it is going." - Edward R. Harrison
Lab Assistant
#43 Old 9th Jun 2018 at 8:37 PM
Quote: Originally posted by Element
I always felt that careers were a little too idealistic from the start. Losing your job due to factors out of your control, having to pick a job not suited to your interests (at the risk of higher burnout), and changing careers when you plateau in progression are all things we deal with that could add challenge to the game without feeling unfair.

True. I find it weird that sims can get promoted on their first day of work?

ooh ee ooh a-ah ting-tang walla walla bing bang
Theorist
#44 Old 11th Jun 2018 at 4:09 AM
Quote: Originally posted by heartkinz17
They left out burglars and firefighters because they said it would make people feel "intruded" or something like that but vampires do the exact same thing in the Vampires GP
Getting robbed, getting sick, losing a job because the company is moving or shutting down are all real life problems we have to address and a life simulator wouldn't be a life simulator without them.
People like challenges, that's why they play games. Minecraft would not have been as popular if it was just creative mode.
Everything's so easy, it's an uninteresting repetitive slice of life. Like a sitcom with no "situation"


I don't think we can rely on 'what they say'. It appears to me that they often make stuff up in an effort to justify their decisions, especially when Simmers are critical of them.

I don't think they will ever honestly explain why some decisions were made, but this game was supposed to be an online chat game and I suspect (speculation only here) they thought burglars stealing your sims' stuff, especially if purchasing it or earning it was required by the player, would have angered people. And yes, it would have! My guess is that adding burglars and Firefighters after they attempted to change the format for the game was likely just a lack of time and funds issue, sort of like swimming pools (altho they did add those after release, at least).

¢¾ Receptacle Refugee ¢¾ ~ Where are we going, and why am I in this handbasket!? ~
Laura's Legacy
Page 2 of 2
Back to top