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Population Editor (Create A Story)
CK213
Posts: 20,529 Member
I believe The Sims 2 had the best story set ups for the population of their worlds.
I would like the power for such setups to be placed in our hands.
What I want is Create A Story.
We should be able to set up our own little scenarios TS2 style.
Not mainly for the sims we are playing, but for the other sims in the world.
I want to create sims and set their:
-Friends
-Love interests (requited or unrequited)
-Enemies
-Careers and career levels
-Skills and Skill levels
-Wealth/Poverty
-Hangouts
This would be very powerful tool for sim stories and scenarios I want to play.
And I dare say, make The Sims 4 a stand out title for new innovations.
[Note]
For the negative Nancy idea killer (in an Ideas corner of all places.)
I am not suggesting how this idea should be implemented.
There is a concern that this is too powerful for people who have no self-control and will play the game from the editor.
To get around that, it could be accessible only at the main screen, or be a program outside the game.
But that's EA's job to figure out, not ours.
And here is a suggestion for people who have never participated in creative groups focused on idea creation.
General rules that are helpful to generating good ideas, EA should post them at the top of the forum.
No negativity.
All ideas are valid at this stage.
Every idea is welcome, even dumb or crazy ones.
Build on other people's ideas.
Come up with as many ideas as you can.
Build on ideas to make them work, even if you don't think they can work.
I would like the power for such setups to be placed in our hands.
What I want is Create A Story.
We should be able to set up our own little scenarios TS2 style.
Not mainly for the sims we are playing, but for the other sims in the world.
I want to create sims and set their:
-Friends
-Love interests (requited or unrequited)
-Enemies
-Careers and career levels
-Skills and Skill levels
-Wealth/Poverty
-Hangouts
This would be very powerful tool for sim stories and scenarios I want to play.
And I dare say, make The Sims 4 a stand out title for new innovations.
[Note]
For the negative Nancy idea killer (in an Ideas corner of all places.)
I am not suggesting how this idea should be implemented.
There is a concern that this is too powerful for people who have no self-control and will play the game from the editor.
To get around that, it could be accessible only at the main screen, or be a program outside the game.
But that's EA's job to figure out, not ours.
And here is a suggestion for people who have never participated in creative groups focused on idea creation.
General rules that are helpful to generating good ideas, EA should post them at the top of the forum.
No negativity.
All ideas are valid at this stage.
Every idea is welcome, even dumb or crazy ones.
Build on other people's ideas.
Come up with as many ideas as you can.
Build on ideas to make them work, even if you don't think they can work.
Post edited by CK213 on
17
Comments
that's actually what I often do and yes it takes agessss to the point that when I'm done I actually don't wanna play with the set up I just created lol.
Everything you suggested we can edit, is the whole point of playing The Sims.
I'm all for telling stories, but at the end of the day, The Sims is a game, and the point of games is that you play them.
Then don't use it.
And the point of it is for the sims you aren't playing, making their lives supportive of the sims and the scenario that you are.
Having to play sims that you don't want to play also takes the fun out of the game and makes it feel like work, as other simmers have said.
In previous games I used to create whole worlds with Sims and it took forever to make them friends and give the right jobs etc. If it could be done via the edit neighbourhood that would be awesome!
It adds gameplay. Honestly, it was one of my favourite parts of Sims 2. Snooping around the townies and finding all of their secrets.
The townies in Sims 4 have no connections to any other sim, there's no drama involved. Instead they're puppets which only come to life after joining your played households. But being the micromanager that I am, story-progression seems like a nightmare to me, I want to be able to control the relationships my townies have myself, but in more detail than CAS allows.
I'd rather not spend days playing every single townie in order to give them some kind of story, at the rate townies are generated I doubt that's even possible. That's why a tool like this is needed. It wouldn't remove any gameplay, if you wanted to spend the time playing every single sim in the game, more power to you. I don't have the time for that.
Shut up and take my money
I'm especially interested in defining enemies and hangouts, something akin to Get together, only more powerful. It always annoys me that the game throws my sims together nilly-willy, to the point where sworn enemies sit together playing chess. What I need is a control mechanism that makes sure that my sims behave like I inted them to while the computer is controlling them.
I haven't gotten around to picking up The Guild 3, but I think that one has such a population editor. You are playing a merchant family and before starting play you define your rivals, their prefered tactics and the town's general economic situation.
Here's a link to the chess desaster: http://enkisstories.tumblr.com/post/146259945616/my-ideal-sims-game-doesnt-need-toddlers-open
The entry got zero comments when I posted it, so I assume it isn't an issue for most players
Then don't play those Sims.
See, I can type in bold, too!
I don't think you grasp the concept of why we want a population editor.
Yeah, I often like to keep track of and half-way "play" with the townies in my game, and this would make this so much easier! (MCCC makes this way fun,tbh :-P) Another thing I'd appreciate is being able to see a characters extended family tree in cas...cause as generations go on, it can get complicated, and I'd like to be able to see who's someone's cousin without going into their game.
But I second being able to see and change all the things mentioned in the original post in CAS and/or household manager. It would so improve my game. As others have mentioned, it's about creating a world that SUPPORTS the sims you're playing. Obviously, we don't want to play every household all the time, but leaving them to their own devices completely also doesn't work, because then the NPCs become so much less alive than then you're active sims and that just makes the whole game feel dead. Being able to go in and be like, yeah, this career suits this sim who lives across the street from me, let's do that, is super.
OR maybe you're playing a themed game, and are designing an entire town based on, say...Sunnydale from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and you're populating the neighborhood with characters from the show but only plan to pla one household but then want all the various relationships and skills to fit each character and that just ISN'T FEASABLE BECAUSE OMG THAT IS INSANE AND TAKES FOREVER.
(...yeah, this may or may not be a thing I'm secretly working on...)
http://fanphoria.blogspot.com/
https://twitter.com/FanPhoria
No more seeing Vlad working the vendors, for example.
It's kind of like a do-it-yourself story progression.
I liked TS3's story progression conceptually, for the sims I wasn't playing. It made the world feel alive, but I hated the choices it made.
A lot of them didn't make any sense and some of them were detrimental to the scenario I had going. Going in to change unwanted changes was a pain. I was very thankful for NRaas mods.
My game play has 3 levels of household/townie status.
-Main Households: About 1-5 households that I play most often.
-Supporting Households: These are households that become interesting to my main characters, or myself for various reasons---by playing the game. They could grow to an additional 10 to 15 households that I dabble with. They are sources of friendship, romantic relationships, or drama. When I start a game, I usually start with 1-3 households. Additional households under my control usually come from interacting with these supporting households.
-Everybody else: These are the households, or homeless townies that I like to observe and interact with as they go about lives. They are also the source of potential supporting sims. And these are the sims I want to edit for many reasons. You can set up so much that may pay unforeseen dividends later. It may be better immersion, game play potential, having what you observe and believe about certain sims actually be true to their nature and reinforce their story, etc.
The Sims 4 is growing larger with each world introduced.
I like setting up my world for great potential, great simming, and maintaining a consistent, or evolving story scenario, but doing it world wide is a lot of work and takes time away from my main and supporting households.
In 4, I'm now a rotational player and I'm more interested in the complex interactions between various sims. I'm also too much of a micro-manager for story progression; yes, I want to decide what happens to my various townies so I like having a tabula rasa. I now have a sizable rotation but I'm at a point where I don't want to add a lot of extraneous new households to my playables unless they are really interesting. I still want to manage the town though and as generations shift, I'm sure I'd use this type of feature.
It's a good idea and I agree that if it doesn't interest someone then they don't have to use it. I could find it useful if something happens to my current save or if I decide to do a spin off save but want to use the same characters. It could be useful for building off of previous developments for my sims if I need to move them to a new save.
Sometimes you want to set a scenario up in order to develop the gameplay. In this game, we're basically directors anyway, so it would just be a tool for that.
I know a mod is not really a solution, but Master Command and Control Center helps with this a lot.
http://fanphoria.blogspot.com/
https://twitter.com/FanPhoria
I do get it.
It's just a really bad way to implement it.
I'm the guy who created the "Townie Job Manager" request that gets bumped back to page 1 every couple of weeks. I understand wanting control over your game.
But this is a dumb way to do it, because you're killing gameplay for the sake of the storytellers.
Why does your play style take precedence over everyone elses? Why not a balanced approach that gives players the ability to assign roles for townies, without undoing the entire point of even playing a family?
Why would I bother playing the game if I have the option to max out their career, get them married to whomever I want, decide how rich they are, and all the other things your OP suggests?
It's optional, but it's too powerful. This is the sort of suggestion that leads the devs to implementing a great big "I win" button. By giving players the option to unlock everything in the game at once for a freshly-created family, there's no reason to play any further. Everything's already accomplished.