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What do all of us ACTUALLY want?
munroele
Posts: 286 Member
I keep seeing 2 sides, when it comes to the Sims 4 expansions.
People want reruns of the previous Sims games, and want things like Seasons, University, Pets, some sort of active work expansion, holidays, supernaturals and literally anything the Sims 2 or 3 did. Seasons is the current priority, it seems, and even when people ask, 'what do you want in the Sims next?' and don't include Seasons as an option, it seems to flood the thread.
But then I also see those who want things that are entirely different, like we got for Get Together (my favourite expansion so far), Romance centred expansions and all sorts of other things, and saying Seasons especially can wait, we want something entirely fresh and new and fun to try out.
What do we actually want? Do we want something redone, or do we want something different?
I want something different.
I personally don't care much for Seasons or University, though I would like to see Supernaturals weaved into new packs entirely (like adding fairies to a romance style pack perhaps), I'd like to see more hobbies added (but again, these can be parts of whole new expansions), but i want something completely different to the old games. If I want to play the old games, I'll go do that, that's what they're there for. They're there as a safety net, if you don't like TS4, they aren't going anywhere.
I'll take Seasons or University, but I'm hungry for something different. Even doing every second expansion as an old favourite and the other as something different might be a good compromise for the two sides I see.
I guess I just have an issue with people screaming that the game is limited, boring and isn't trying to be anything different, while those same people are yelling constantly about Seasons, University and how the current iterations of expansions aren't as good as the 'original' versions, or aren't here yet and they're getting impatient with waiting. What is it with the double standard here?
People want reruns of the previous Sims games, and want things like Seasons, University, Pets, some sort of active work expansion, holidays, supernaturals and literally anything the Sims 2 or 3 did. Seasons is the current priority, it seems, and even when people ask, 'what do you want in the Sims next?' and don't include Seasons as an option, it seems to flood the thread.
But then I also see those who want things that are entirely different, like we got for Get Together (my favourite expansion so far), Romance centred expansions and all sorts of other things, and saying Seasons especially can wait, we want something entirely fresh and new and fun to try out.
What do we actually want? Do we want something redone, or do we want something different?
I want something different.
I personally don't care much for Seasons or University, though I would like to see Supernaturals weaved into new packs entirely (like adding fairies to a romance style pack perhaps), I'd like to see more hobbies added (but again, these can be parts of whole new expansions), but i want something completely different to the old games. If I want to play the old games, I'll go do that, that's what they're there for. They're there as a safety net, if you don't like TS4, they aren't going anywhere.
I'll take Seasons or University, but I'm hungry for something different. Even doing every second expansion as an old favourite and the other as something different might be a good compromise for the two sides I see.
I guess I just have an issue with people screaming that the game is limited, boring and isn't trying to be anything different, while those same people are yelling constantly about Seasons, University and how the current iterations of expansions aren't as good as the 'original' versions, or aren't here yet and they're getting impatient with waiting. What is it with the double standard here?
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Comments
Beyond that what I want is something with a lot more interactivity. Less surface, more substance. I want to be able to play tennis with my sims, or golf, but I actually want these activities to be interactive --unlike the half-baked bowling we got. I want surfing, or a casino, or driveable cars, or ballroom dancing, or anything else that gives us something to do with some depth to it.
Fundamentally, I'm okay with anything as long as it's fun and in-depth, as the above post mentioned. That being said, I would like to see something new in the game, something the Devs wanted to do, but didn't in previous games. I don't want TS4 to basically copy everything in TS3.
I've never played TS1. I did play the TS2 base game for a few months as a child. As for TS3, I never even made it past creating my first sim. So for me personally, everything is "new" regardless of whether or not it has been done before in a previous game.
So understandably, it's never been my concern whether or not something has been done before. When people ask for previous features to return, my thoughts are more about how well, or how poorly those features could work in this game, for what it currently is. So when I see people asking for the return of seasons, it's something I can get behind because I could imagine seasons working well in this game. But when I see people asking for something like... the return of drivable cars from TS3... it loses me because it's not something I imagine working very well with the way this game is set up. These are, of course, just examples.
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Interactivity is something I really want, too. I'm tired of them releasing objects with new animations and then calling it gameplay. It's literally watching our Sims perform the same animation over and over again with zero depth. Not gameplay.
Pretty much sums up Spa Day. It was 20 dollars to watch our Sims go to spas, and gain nothing more than moodlets. We did have some skills, but they didn't feel all that exciting to me.
I've been playing The Sims 3 lately, and honestly, I miss opportunities. It made the world feel alive. Having my teacher Sim be asked to tutor a neighbor's son for a sum of money. Having my police Sim have to travel to China and learn martial arts. These quest-like activities were pretty interactive, and gave both myself and my Sims something more to do than simply skill up to perform interactions over and over again. It'd be nice if we saw the optional return of these, expanded in a way that would make them even more exciting.
I feel like weather and outerwear is a fundamental, in the strictest sense of the word, but SEASONS itself isn't. we don't need festivals or anything to make the game more 'complete' as a base. You can include weather as a base, and add seasons later. But University doesn't feel like a core feature to me, idk, not every sim needs university and not all simmers use it either.
I do get what you said about interactivity, while the Sims 4 has been really good (to me, at least), it does have a couple small things missing which make a significant difference, but they also don't break the experience for me.
It's just the two major camps I see people take up; the Seasons or bust side, or the 'please do something different' side. From my few months on the forums, they're the two major sides I've seen. Not meaning to generalise, but it is easiest to try to box people a little to make a point, you know what I mean?
And I feel the same when I see people do the same thing with colour wheels for everything, cars, horses and open world, I don't see them working in this game, and bringing them back could break the game permanently, and I feel like they're features best left to TS3, if you want them, it's still there, but The Sims 4 is different to it in it's core gameplay.
And as a note, I played the Sims 1 very rarely as a VERY young child, I played the Sims 2 from about 2006-2009 non stop, then TS3 for about 2 years on and off, and then I got into the Sims 4 about a year and a quarter ago, so I've played all 4 iterations, and this and 2 are my favourites.
Personally I want it all. I want the old redone to fit in this game.. they can move it around, redo it, and or relable it. I just want some emphasis and focus put on it when it's done. I do want university... or college.. or a higher education system. I think it's part of "life". I also think celebrities are part of our culture and life. I couldn't give two wits if it's done the same way as in the past though. I want it to fit in this game.. and be focused on as they have been doing. It can be broken up or all together as far as I'm concerned. I also think Seasons/Weather is a given.
I hope they continue to make the big supernaturals like they did Vamps... I really think the did it well and hope to see Witches and Werewolves get the same treatment.
I do also want new things.. and they have done this already and or weaved it in with the "old" as packs have come out. I expect more of the same and I don't think I'll be disappointed. I believe they have some ideas though they want to try this time around that we haven't seen yet also.. I'm just looking forward to all of it.
I get we all want something different, those two 'camps' just tend to be the ones I see most, is all. It's either Seasons and University, or something else entirely, from what I have seen in a couple months here.
I was primarily referring to the weather aspect of Seasons, which is the most important feature of that expansion. I couldn't care less about festivals and other extraneous stuff.
I want both returning favs and new themes. I want seasons,vacations,romance theme,uni life and something new like amusement parks in an expansion.
I don't think S4 is even close to the end, so I'm hopeful that most, if not all of what I want, I will get. And maybe a few surprises that never occurred to me.
In my opinion TS4 lacks the depth that it's predecessors had. I don't care what new packs they make. If it doesn't add actual depth to the game it's not worth it. All the packs feel small and are just full of items that doesn't really add anything new to the game.
Parenthood and Vampires were actually pretty good packs, I admit that. But almost everything else about the game is pretty much boring.. at least to me.
I know that TS4 is a very limited game and I do not assume that it will be like it's predecessors. I just miss the depth that TS1, TS2 & TS3 had. I have had fun while playing TS4 but if you compare it to it's predecessors it feels like something is not there.
I really like The Sims games and I hope that TS4 would give us something cool and fresh to TS series(it could also be rerurning content like Seasons, Uni etc but done in new and better way). Something that would surprise everyone.
So yeah, I personally want both the old content and the new. I want it all. And I want more in depth gameplay and for my sims to feel more “alive.” Not an easy thing to just fix in a DLC pack.
I feel we’ve had a lot of modern activities, I’d like something different for my sims to do. Gardening alone is way too boring, I want the crops, the farm animals, a canning skill, or any othe crafting one. I just want it all I guess, old and new.
My tumblr - A world of clutter and color
As for something different I want additional traits & careers… more like "ambitions" but with a totally different career choices that is fitting in this age that we live in. We can have bloggers & vloggers, internet influencers, photographers & so on.
I also liked Get Together but the club activities & filters were limited and I hope they add multiple choices on lot hangouts. :)
I personally don't care at all what happens.
But equally as much, I want more strange, supernatural or fantastical things that are not mundane mimics of real life because I just don't play that way and I think it's boring. I was really frustrated by the first two years of Sims 4 releases because for me, it felt like a lot of nothing. Spas, restaurants, patios, luxury items... those things are bland and forgettable, no matter how well they are done. Again, in terms of my gameplay. It's all safe, it's all banal and it doesn't keep my interest. But when Vampires released...that changed everything for me. So I really prefer something wild, or dangerous, or bizarre. I want werewolves that bite, I want magic everywhere, I want fairies and goblins, I want superheroes, an apocalypse, natural disasters, robots and space travel. I want things that I can put into my game and get a burst of flavor and excitement. I want to be able to change my whole world to be whatever my imagination allows.
I also want deeper mechanics. I want Fear in my game. I want recognition of death and working graveyards with haunting ghosts. I want Sims who fight and argue and hate each other, who remember wrongs done to them and who seek revenge. I want deeper romance, love triangles, rejection and attraction. I want personal preferences and dislikes and surprises. I want flawed Sims with complicated personalities who struggle sometimes. I don't care what they eat, but I do care what they remember. I just want complicated beings in a world of obstacles so that when they overcome the odds, I feel their accomplishments.
Old or new, I don't really care. As long as it adds a good punch of flavor in my game so that I am engaged in the content, I will be happy.
Festivals were already included in an EP (City Living) this time around, only without the weather. I really do think weather and outerwear (beyond just jackets that function as tops) are fundamentals of the game that ideally would have been included at launch, along with cars toddlers and pools (2 out of 3 now I guess) but are usually packaged separately for two reasons: (1) To give the developers more time to make the game complete and fix bugs, and (2) To keep the game's cost from being prohibitive, which I fear it would be if they included all the features people want in base game: pets, seasons, university, and going forward, clubs. The more bells and whistles are included in the base game, the longer it will take to develop, and the harder it would be to debug everything. Heck, I'd even like supernatural life states (vampires, plantsims, werewolves, fairies, mermaids, wizards/witches) in base game too. But not everybody actually wants certain features like university or supernatural. So those make more sense to parcel out in EPs, but we still want those EPs to make our game feel complete.
But just because we want features of the EPs we are used to, like weather, cars (those came in an EP in Sims 2), dorm life/classes, and supernatural features (life states, spellcasting/special powers), doesn't mean we want those done in the same way they were done in previous versions of the Sims. It also doesn't mean we don't want different EPs entirely that aren't related to these things.
A Superheroes/Supervillains EP would be awesome, for instance. (Maybe they could call it SuperSims, or PowerSims.) Maybe a supervillain could be the Mobile version of SimCity's Doctor Vu and create disasters in a new world available only in the EP, and it would be up to a playable superhero to stop the disaster once it had been set in motion by some new Superhero event/challenge. Of course, some players might prefer to play the supervillain, who might have a Supervillain event/challenge. Or there might be requirements to become a Superhero or Supervillain - for instance, superhero must be good, while supervillain must be evil, or superhero must reach a certain charisma level and have a certain number of friends, or reach a certain level in a certain profession, or supervillain must reach a certain mischief skill level and have a certain number of enemies or reach a certain level in a certain profession. Then once the requirements are met, the player could choose whether the Sim accepts the opportunity to become superhero/supervillain.
A Time Travel EP would also be awesome - but please, not back to the Future this time...maybe visit the past: ancient Egypt (hieroglyphics wall stickers), ancient Rome (one of my favorite Sims 1 fan sites/download sites before it closed was ancient Rome themed) or Greece (with intact Alexandrian library and Grecian columns), the Titanic (porthole windows, houseboats, ships crew uniforms), the Wild West (with horses, decorative holsters and new wall decor like wanted posters), the lost city of Atlantis even. Also, if they must show a broken smartphone while time traveling, please give us the option to have a Sim get it repaired/replaced when they return home. It always bugged me that most of my Sims 3 sims always ended up with smartphones that had permanently cracked screens.