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The sims has become predictable and boring.
Please do something about it. One of the biggest problems of the sims , is that it never changes over time. Our sims havent grown significantly after all of these years. By now our sims should be complex characters , with super intelligence who have interests , causes and passions. Each one different and special and they are not like that, at all. As players , our gaming experience should be different from one sim to another.
The lack of meaningfulness bothers me. I want my sims to have feelings , good or bad, about certain topics. Not just repeat some lame recycled animation. Sims lack individuality and an identity. I feel as if Im playing the same old game I was back in 2004. Just with updated graphics, only not as awesome. We need a LOT more interactions and ways make sims feel more human.There's only a few aspirations and they are limited and there are a lot of other dreams that our sims could have. The trait selection is also sad. Then there is the problem of how little traits impact our sims lives. That is a problem. Because again, by now, our sims should have evolved into something more interesting and greater than they were 10 years ago and it hasn't happened.
Im tired of watching the same animations over and over and im tired of what I do, not mattering. Please bring more depth to this series for me, because I want to really love it again. Please give our sims meaningful lives and personalities.
The lack of meaningfulness bothers me. I want my sims to have feelings , good or bad, about certain topics. Not just repeat some lame recycled animation. Sims lack individuality and an identity. I feel as if Im playing the same old game I was back in 2004. Just with updated graphics, only not as awesome. We need a LOT more interactions and ways make sims feel more human.There's only a few aspirations and they are limited and there are a lot of other dreams that our sims could have. The trait selection is also sad. Then there is the problem of how little traits impact our sims lives. That is a problem. Because again, by now, our sims should have evolved into something more interesting and greater than they were 10 years ago and it hasn't happened.
Im tired of watching the same animations over and over and im tired of what I do, not mattering. Please bring more depth to this series for me, because I want to really love it again. Please give our sims meaningful lives and personalities.
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Comments
@Falynios
The problem isn't them adding seasons, pets or any of that stuff. The problem is , they (Maxis EA) don't think of how they can make our sims more interesting or elaborate. They started in that direction by introducing emotion and while that is a nice start it isn't enough. While our sims do have emotion, it's over something silly, like discussing woo hoo. Our sims don't long for a life partner, if they are lonely. Or crave a particular food when hungry and the socials are all repeated over and over. Each sims has the sims social pie menu.
Something needs to be done, to bring some evolution to the sims.
People wanted toddlers, not personality.
People want laundry, not memories.
People want time wasted developing preteens and preschoolers, rather than effort be put into making sims more individual and interesting.
It'd be nice if there was a gp or ep that was about memories, hobbies, interests and individuality.
> Falynios wrote: »
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> i'm gonna attribute the boringness and predictability to the thousands of people demanding the same content, over and over, and over again.
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> @Falynios
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> The problem isn't them adding seasons, pets or any of that stuff. The problem is , they (Maxis EA) don't think of how they can make our sims more interesting or elaborate. They started in that direction by introducing emotion and while that is a nice start it isn't enough. While our sims do have emotion, it's over something silly, like discussing woo hoo. Our sims don't long for a life partner, if they are lonely. Or crave a particular food when hungry and the socials are all repeated over and over. Each sims has the sims social pie menu.
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> Something needs to be done, to bring some evolution to the sims.
But that is exactly what the problem is. I'm sure there are plenty of individuals with lovely ideas about making the sims come more to life, who are stuck just working on pets again.
My sims aren't unique with their own personalities, they all cycle through the same whims
Buy a dishwasher
Buy a 1x1 pool
Research vampires at the computer
Buy a puppet theatre (you already have one, buy another!)
Get to know spouse (you know that spouse you have three teenagers with and should already know pretty well?)
Buy an instrument
Send happy text
Vent if tense
Say forbidden words if tense
Calm down in mirror (from certain emotions)
Take photo
Buy an easel (again you already have one but hey what's one more?)
I find if I put lot traits on it will influence them but I shouldn't have to put on a romantic trait to manipulate my sim to want to have a baby, I would like to see her come to that conclusion on her own without a lot trait forcing it through. It's not like it wasn't possible in the previous games.
Now last time I played the sims 2 my sim cycled through the want to see their child grow up well, bring their husband back to life, go downtown, reach the top of their career, get to level 5 in the cooking skill and have a grandchild,
In the sims 3 my current sim cycled through wanting to learn scuba diving, get a job in the athletic career, go bowling, have their child get on the honour roll and go to the summer festival. My teenager wanted to Beat someone up, stop being friends with her sister, play a prank, join an after school activity and stay up late.
My sims 2 and 3 sims wants/wishes did not repeat constantly like a stuck record. They reacted to what was going on around them and for me more meaningful whims is what I want to see. Not the player having to click away learning about vamps several times an hour. Sims aren't unique as they all want the same generic things and they rarely have whims for things that are personal to them like getting a job in a certain career or wanting their children to do well in school.
But we may be a ways off, unless there are some major breakthroughs in AI design. Machine intelligence already has some pretty significant roadblocks as is, and then on top of that, the sims has roadblocks that machine intelligence doesn't, like the fact that it needs to run smoothly on a computer in long play sessions, while trying to simulate complex human intelligence (and individuality on top of that {and game mechanics on top of that}).
I think the technology has progressed to where it can handle it better (I mean, this was released in 2014 and that's like 10 years in the tech world... ok, maybe I'm exaggerating a little). But I don't know much better, when they have to make sure they aren't outdoing what their target demographic's machines can handle, too. Not everybody has a monster, cutting-edge tech computer to run the game on.
So I mean, I'm all for it, but I've no idea how. From what I understand, the effort at "memories" in (I believe) TS2 was the pac-man of consuming memory (computer memory, that is). Basically, not very good for performance.
And to be fair, TS4 does have some aspects of it that support a sort of bare-bones memory; memory of relationships with other sims, certain hidden traits like First Kiss that define a sim's "newness." Aspirations, the statistics panel that no one is aware of the existence of (I think it's called statistics or something like that, but I almost never click on it, so I'm not sure... maybe it's achievements).
I dunno. It's a subject that intrigues me.
Procedural generation is one appealing approach to creating randomness, but we need only look at how No Man's Sky turned out for how disastrously boring and samey that can be.
I get the impression from my working with TS4 code that it becomes increasingly like precise surgical work when trying to create a game that gives the appearance of true randomness. Like the creation of it is almost the exact opposite of the result.
Exactly. Our sims don't have their own wants. Not really. There is no challenge and there could be so much more to this game at this point, after all of these years. I want things that I do in the game to matter . Per example, a ripple effect of behavior and events . I feel that the sims could be more than what it is. Because it is surface level. I don't feel connected.
Talk to about - Involves talking about an event that has happened during the sims day
Reminisce about - Involves memories . Talk about a memory shared with another sim
Discuss - This is where our sims could discuss topics that matter to them. For example, "world hunger" .
The topics can be positive or not and could change the way that sims view each other and based off of their interests or passions , they might be bored or uncomfortable after having a certain talk.
That's kinda amusing.
The more random and organic a program appears, the more complex the programing seems to be.
Yeah. I thought it was a bit weird at first when I wrote that post, really realizing it in my head in that way, and then I thought about it more and it kinda makes sense, when you consider how complex and precise our body and brains are.
However, I think Parenthood was a proof of concept, there is the Chance we see something similar about Hobbies/interests in the future. A System like that would add so much to the personalities of our sims. In Addition I hope that "Likes/Dislikes" make a (meaningful!) return.
If they manage it right TS4 could eventually become a very deep experience (unlike the trait System in previous iterations). I know the potential is there.
I think there's a lot of contributing factors at work here.
1. It's too easy to manipulate your Sim's moods. You don't ever have to use the negative mood interactions if you don't want to. Makes moods as a whole have almost 0 impact on your experiences as a player. Also negates nearly all of the mood reliant traits.
2. Any whim you don't like, you can remove for a better, more readily accomplished one. Let's you accumulate aspiration points very quickly to get traits that start making everything else about game-play even easier.
3. Your sims also don't try to gravitate to their whims autonomously. They may want to make a grilled cheese, but even if you let them auto-pilot, they may make a salad instead -- even if their whim is grilled cheese.
4. Aspirations being freely changeable makes every sim feel the same. Also suffers from the same downfalls as readily changed whims. It makes sims themselves feel too interchangeable with too fluid personalities.
It'd be a much more interesting game if I could have a Serial Romantic sim with Jealous that got a +10 tense moodlet any time they were apart from their partner and gravitated toward Jealous whims unless I was 100% micromanaging them with no way to change their whims or aspirations. Man. The relationship fires I'd have to put out with a sharp tongued jealous sim.
Parenthood and Get Together help this out a little by expanding on behaviors and needing to micromanagement child development. But at the core, the Sims themselves are just a little too easily manipulated IMO. The devs could lock aspirations and whims as a start, but I'm not sure how'd they could solve the issue as a whole.
Not sure how many people would be open to the idea either, as Sims does still seem to be doing well as a whole.
I thought they were supposed to have that already like for example I thought good sims were the only ones who could donate to charity (but I may be thinking of the sims 3) but I've noticed sims autonomously donating to charity in my current house and none of them have that trait.
Sims 3 had unique interactions and behaviours for certain traits. I really wish this was a thing with the sims 4.
It would help a little if the aspirations were expanded and acted more of a driver to the motivation of the sims than their traits. This would allow you to setup sims to fail or succeed. Seems to me aspirations are what they do and traits are how they behave doing it.
Why does Get to Know not show what the target sim's aspiration is? Isn't that what most people talk to each other about, their aspirations in life?
Also, if I have a sim meet another sim that is buffed with a moodlet, why can't my sim ask the other sim for the cause of that moodlet, perhaps dependent on relationship level? The output could then simply be the moodlet description.
This doesn't deepen the system overally much, but would at least add some feeling of actual dialogue.
I was quite pleased to see the addition of the 'talk about sim' sub menu that was added in. Be nice if this was expanded.
I don't hold much hope for any significant expansion of the relationship system as the introduction of relationship culling punctured my hopes there.
Maybe bring the object attraction system to the foreground and allow us to set it per sim would certainly add more variety to sim behaviour, IMO. I would love to set what objects my sims are more attracted to on a sim by sim basis.
Shake dreams from your hair
My pretty child, my sweet one.
Choose the day and choose the sign of your day
The day's divinity....
The Ghost Song - Jim Morrison
True. I think it's much harder for developers to follow their own path, because contact with their players is so directly nowadays. That has pros and cons I think.
I'm saying that we could do with more weird, unexplained, and certainly not realistic things happen in game.
My simblr: http://chiefdancingbear.tumblr.com/
I am not sure people are necessarily requesting total realism, but rather something believable. No matter how fantastical you make something, there still has to be a core framework that provides suspension of disbelief.
I can only speak for myself, but boredom can set in when the strings become visible within the game. Most social dialogue interactions have options that simply alter a very basic relationship number, a further smaller handful can act as mood manipulators - all well and good, but there came a point, where I realised it didn't matter actually matter as there was no lasting bond or consequences to these interactions in a way that creates an actual believable unique relationship between the sims, it is good old fashioned game grind which, personally, I find boring.
The core unit of gameplay is a sim that is modelled on a human being and so getting the basics for a human is a must, sure it is gonna be simple, but needs to convince. Once that is place then any layer of novelty can be added on top.
Basically the game needs things like an empathy mechanic and more discipline on what is defined as an emotion, trait, aspiration etc. and what the possible consequences are for the interplay between these elements. I remember Lyndsay Pearson being asked in an interview if they had consulted any psychologists on the design of the game and she answered in a very definite negative. I was gob smacked.
Shake dreams from your hair
My pretty child, my sweet one.
Choose the day and choose the sign of your day
The day's divinity....
The Ghost Song - Jim Morrison
Personally, that is only one person in the sea of humanity really, so I fail to see why you'd be gob smacked. Now if it was more than just one psychologist, maybe, but still. I get it........the game DOES need better consequences and some moods need to be tweaked. There needs to be better reactions in general. Also, I can see the argument for traits holding more weight too. As for the options? Those can't actively change up and be different depending on the circumstances. If a sim gets mad at another for something, say cheating, the option is/could be "insult" or "accuse of cheating" (the second would be awesome if they were playing cards).......but the second time they do it, the option is still going to be the same. If that makes sense (only had two cups of coffee this morning....lol).
My simblr: http://chiefdancingbear.tumblr.com/