With all the attention around seasons and it’s features, one of them involves said weather and world changes happening naturally, automatically, progression of the sort.
The same can be said for the general feature in base game involving sims aging naturally, as time passes, people grow older, get jobs, some form relationships (its rare but some can form relationships with random and or neighboring sims) and get as close to story progression as one sim can before it bows out.
The software is there and with seasons being so immersive, does that mean story progression is bound to follow soon after as what is seasons if only one household enjoys the environmental changes with each passing month!?
I’m not going to say “how hard it is to add two extra steps to the sims? Just enable them to get married and have kids!” Because game design and the like is very difficult and it’s ridiculous to say it’s not.
But, that doesn’t mean we can’t ask the question “what about story progression?”
Where is it? Why do we have half of it? Why can we age, get jobs, have relationships but not go all the way and get married and start a family? Why do we only receive half of a feature we should’ve had from the beginning?
With seasons I’m hopeful this means they’ll look at the big behind the scenes feature and get everyone together to say “we need story progressions because how can simmers games be immersive if they can’t go down the street and see neighbouring homes playing in the sun or running in the snow? Why have we made seasons with all these holidays if only the players household can interact with it when it should be all the sims interacting”
EA are finally listening to us so why not use seasons as a microphone to hype up story progression? Whether it’s now, next week, next month, next year, we could get story progression and have our games be a little more realistic.
Just imagine your household grows up and expands, your sims daughters left home and met this cute guy and your son from another marriage has already popped the question to their partner and they’re having triplets! We could have that, and I’m hoping seasons brings us the ability to have that.
Tell me what you think seasons will bring apart of new weather. What you do think it’ll open us up to for the future?
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I still support having the option for those who want it though. As long as it is exactly that, an option.
And before someone says it: Yes there are mods for that, we all know it.
It would be an option. I’m not saying “WE NEED STORY PROGRESSION WHETHER YOU LIKE IT OR NOT” I just mean, have it as an option.
Fully respect those who don’t want it because back in sims 3, as much as I loved the ability to leave a house for so long and come back to a whole new generation created by the games match making, it was also a bit of a pain if it meant I couldn’t marry a specific sim off to one of mine without there being some friction.
Introduce it as an option which can be turned off or filtered in some way, like a sim can do so much without your say so but they can’t go passed said point.
Just give simmers who want it, that ability.
Mods aren’t the be all and end all for everybody. That’s the issue for vanilla simmers who can’t use them, don’t want to and so on.
Don’t get me wrong, the mod creators go harder than the actual creators of sims which is amazing but it doesn’t solve the problem.
Not everyone can rely on mods, or just don’t wanna have to which is understandable.
Story progression needs to be added via an update, whether it’s now or later, but eventually EA need to accept it’s a vital part of sims
I just want them to add story progression. I'd like it if they added it in even if forced. The people who don't want it can just erase the relationships they don't like with cheats and add the ones they'd like and if they have aging off they'd have enough time. Sims have always done things we don't want them to do and it's always only been a minor inconvenience. I just see it as an extension of autonomy/free will, which is also a vital part of gameplay to me.
Toggles would be ideal. I'm optimistic and I could see them pulling it off even if everyone thinks they'd fail at implementing them. MCCC has really good options for it, I wish there was something like it in vanilla, but testingcheats does let you do a lot of things.
I'm okay with an option only to add it. Forced story progression would ruin my game.. non story progress with me making major choices for my sims is a vital part of gameplay to me. If it's a minor inconvenience as you say.. then it's a minor inconvenience for you to live your sims lives. It's posts like that this that make me reply and take a stand against it. You get a mod.. you cheat things in, since it's so very easy to do.
Oh dear god, no. In my game, there would be a HUGE problem with forced story progression because I'm a population player and I kick out the premades and fill all of the neighborhoods with my own Sims. The very last thing I want is the game taking control of my households and marrying them off to each other. I don't want my Sim world filled with nuclear families and more children running around, or forcing all of my Sims into tropes.
Story progression only makes sense if you're a single household player. That's why it made sense in Sims 3 because that game was built for single world, single household play. The Sims 4 went back to the direction of Sims 2 and brought back the ability to play rotationally and connect worlds. Story progression just doesn't make as much sense because it would potentially interfere with too many people's games. If it ever were to make a return (and I really think it shouldn't) it must include a toggle to disable it. But it's already been stated that toggles are very tricky and risky to implement in Sims 4, so it would be a huge waste of resources.
You missed my point..
I'm one of those people who doesn't like using mods.
When I talk about story progression there is always someone who says "there is a mod for that" issue.
But people who like to play without mods shouldn't have to rely on mods to get story progression.
Story progression is an important feature and I honestly would like TS4 A LOT more if it had story progression. I can live without open world but without story progression the game feels empty.
Yeah I see where you're coming from. I like to play the neighborhood too and sometimes mccc gets my sims in crazy situations that I don't always like, but for me it's an easy fix because cheating the relationships is pretty easy. It might be a "too little, too late" situation if they already added it years later so I'll just stick with mccc. I do really want them to add story progression and other forms of progression like they are with seasons.
Problem with mods is that they break and can even mess up a game. Some never get fixed at all and while some are fun and modders are appreciative, we also shouldn't have to rely on mods for some basic features.
Lets make this a reality!
You can save families you don't want culled by clicking the button.
Maybe you can select families you want to progress on their own in a similar way.
I'd prefer my own households to remain untouched, but that's where toggles come in handy.
Pirates!! http://forums.thesims.com/en_US/discussion/906481/pirate-gp-smuggling-dueling-live-on-ship-or-build-own-and-more#latest
I would be fine with that option.
I agree with everything you have said
I was not always happy with the way it tampered with families that I had a clear plan for. Some sims I create are meant to be single, or live in a particular house...but sometimes the progression would change that. But, for other sims, it works pretty cool..randomly pairing up sims and having families come and go, just like in real life. And it was always interesting to see how the kids and teen would grow up.
I recall a time in Sims 3 when I got sidetracked by one particular family and was playing them for a long time. Then, while playing them, I noticed a ton of vampires walking around town. After checking, literally half of Sunset Valley had become vampires during story progression. If any of you have ever read Stephen King's "Salems Lot", it was just like that haha. I was going to go back to a previous save and start over, but then decided to change course and try to just play it out.
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Actually when I think about it I'm sure the makers of this game know how differently we play due to telemetry, so I'm not really worried this would ever be forced on us if only due to the normalcy of non-traditional households at this point in time.
In TS4 you just see sims playing with the gameplay objects or walking into random spots or doing scripted things. Like everytime we go into a CL nighborhood there has to be someone playing a guitar. The sim didn't actually had a guitar on it's inventory and decided to play it.
Who wants to spend all of their game time constantly fixing and adjusting the effects of story progression? No way. If we get story progression, it must come with multiple options to choose how it affects played and non-played families. It shouldn't be forced on anyone who doesn't want it.
I agree with you that forced story progression would be bad, however it's not only used for single household play. I play rotationally and definitely want story progression but only for my un-played families. There's no reason why it has to affect every household.