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A Plea to Maxis - An Identity Crisis
Logisitcs
Posts: 1,156 Member
Dear Maxis,
With the recent change of leadership I am going to write a very long piece on The Sims 4 hoping that there will be some change. After looking at the trailer for City Living and reading the reveal blog I am absolutely exasperated! I am tired of coming and going, screaming at the top of my lungs about the fundamental problems with the Sims 4 and nothing being done about it. I am going to lay this out, very very clearly.
When it was stated, that the Sims 4 would be about the sims themselves, I believe that was a lie. Because in 11 packs for this game, NOT ONE has done ANYTHING to give further depth to a sims' personality! There was a reason I played BASE TS2 hours on end, and that was because of the sims themselves! They were individual, they were unique, their interactions with each other were all different! Brandi Broke, Cassandra Goth, Jennifer Burb, Dina Caliente; they were all different! Their wants and fears were different, they're autonomous actions were all different! They were complete, individual sims with an identity! Compare this with the Sims 4 and it is a STRIKING contrast because the sims all act the same in TS4!
Going back to the packs, what have they added to deepen a sims personality? Nothing! Nothing at all! Not even an attempt! It's just objects after objects after objects being thrown at us with interactions that have no lasting effect! Where is the chemistry between sims?! Where is the Fury when a sim upsets another sim?! Where is the turn ons and turn offs?! Where are the interests and hobbies?! Give my sim an identity! The Sims 4 is not about the sims themselves it's about what objects our sims can interact with and this DOES NOT make for lasting interesting gameplay!
I am a soap opera player, and I have seen this happen over and over and over again to the point where I stop playing the game out of frustration. Every single sim behaves this way regardless of traits; sim A catches sim B cheating with sim C, the relationship between Sim A and B takes a hit, nothing occurs between A and C. Sim A yells at Sim B and then... ALL 3 of them have a friendly conversation with one another! Please play out that scenario in TS2 and you'll see something very different, that is why I could play TS2 for hours on end and TS4 makes me roll my eyes and quit game. This brings me to my next point.
The emotions system and sims AI needs a massive overhaul! You took, a horrible part of Rod Humble's legacy and made it even worse! What you should have done, was combine the buffs/debuff moodlet mechanic WITH the memory system of TS2, and have those profound buffs/debuffs leave a lasting effect/memory on a sims life. A child sim's parent dies, the child is of course sad for 2 days, but when the moodlet wears off? Happy, happy as can be and the parent is long forgotten and never thought of or mourned again! THIS IS NOT INTERESTING FUN GAMEPLAY! This is broken! Sims should remember and recall moments throughout their life and it should affect them (please watch Inside Out)! and the current system in place doesn't cut it!
Happy is too powerful and happens too often that it overrides almost all of the traits and everything else! The traits don't even define a sim, what they do is indicate which skill a particular sim is gonna skill faster in and what emotional state they're gonna be in if Happy isn't overriding it! Also the switching back and forth of emotions because of the decor of the house is ridiculous, either have the sim locked to a certain emotional state for a period of time or nerf the happy decor buff!
Please listen, it has been 2 years! You make claims that you want TS4 to be a "live service", that you want it running for as long as possible, then fix... the Sims... themselves. Give each one an identity! Why are Lifetime Aspirations RPG goal oriented? Scrap whims, bring back wants and fears, retool Lifetime Aspirations to have more of an effect on a sims autonomous actions, and improve traits! Have the traits work with the lifetime aspiration to control what sim does and doesn't do AUTONOMOUSLY! Have it control what wants and fears gets rolled!
Eg. A painter extraordinaire sim with a loner trait would focus on painting, and when he is disturbed by another sim after a while he would want to shoo them away to continue his work and after a bit he does so on his own! That is an example of a unique sim. Currently, if a painter sim with a loner trait is interrupted from painting by someone, they have a full conversation, the painter can get some lame debuff, and he goes off and does something else and doesn't touch the easel unless directed too! What is that?! That is not the gameplay I've come to know from the Sims series!
Now with all that said I don't know if there's more to City Life, but at the moment it looks like nothing is being added to the sims themselves which is a shame. I can honestly go on and on and list more examples of the sims not being unique, so I'm pleading, begging, STOP! STOP THINKING ON WHAT YOU CAN MAKE THE SIMS DO and start thinking about how to make the sims individual, with unique personalities that respond and react and act in different ways. Because right now, they all act the same, regardless of traits and it is boring.
tl;dr Sims 4 focuses too much on what the sims can do and not on the sims themselves and their personalities and actions.
With the recent change of leadership I am going to write a very long piece on The Sims 4 hoping that there will be some change. After looking at the trailer for City Living and reading the reveal blog I am absolutely exasperated! I am tired of coming and going, screaming at the top of my lungs about the fundamental problems with the Sims 4 and nothing being done about it. I am going to lay this out, very very clearly.
When it was stated, that the Sims 4 would be about the sims themselves, I believe that was a lie. Because in 11 packs for this game, NOT ONE has done ANYTHING to give further depth to a sims' personality! There was a reason I played BASE TS2 hours on end, and that was because of the sims themselves! They were individual, they were unique, their interactions with each other were all different! Brandi Broke, Cassandra Goth, Jennifer Burb, Dina Caliente; they were all different! Their wants and fears were different, they're autonomous actions were all different! They were complete, individual sims with an identity! Compare this with the Sims 4 and it is a STRIKING contrast because the sims all act the same in TS4!
Going back to the packs, what have they added to deepen a sims personality? Nothing! Nothing at all! Not even an attempt! It's just objects after objects after objects being thrown at us with interactions that have no lasting effect! Where is the chemistry between sims?! Where is the Fury when a sim upsets another sim?! Where is the turn ons and turn offs?! Where are the interests and hobbies?! Give my sim an identity! The Sims 4 is not about the sims themselves it's about what objects our sims can interact with and this DOES NOT make for lasting interesting gameplay!
I am a soap opera player, and I have seen this happen over and over and over again to the point where I stop playing the game out of frustration. Every single sim behaves this way regardless of traits; sim A catches sim B cheating with sim C, the relationship between Sim A and B takes a hit, nothing occurs between A and C. Sim A yells at Sim B and then... ALL 3 of them have a friendly conversation with one another! Please play out that scenario in TS2 and you'll see something very different, that is why I could play TS2 for hours on end and TS4 makes me roll my eyes and quit game. This brings me to my next point.
The emotions system and sims AI needs a massive overhaul! You took, a horrible part of Rod Humble's legacy and made it even worse! What you should have done, was combine the buffs/debuff moodlet mechanic WITH the memory system of TS2, and have those profound buffs/debuffs leave a lasting effect/memory on a sims life. A child sim's parent dies, the child is of course sad for 2 days, but when the moodlet wears off? Happy, happy as can be and the parent is long forgotten and never thought of or mourned again! THIS IS NOT INTERESTING FUN GAMEPLAY! This is broken! Sims should remember and recall moments throughout their life and it should affect them (please watch Inside Out)! and the current system in place doesn't cut it!
Happy is too powerful and happens too often that it overrides almost all of the traits and everything else! The traits don't even define a sim, what they do is indicate which skill a particular sim is gonna skill faster in and what emotional state they're gonna be in if Happy isn't overriding it! Also the switching back and forth of emotions because of the decor of the house is ridiculous, either have the sim locked to a certain emotional state for a period of time or nerf the happy decor buff!
Please listen, it has been 2 years! You make claims that you want TS4 to be a "live service", that you want it running for as long as possible, then fix... the Sims... themselves. Give each one an identity! Why are Lifetime Aspirations RPG goal oriented? Scrap whims, bring back wants and fears, retool Lifetime Aspirations to have more of an effect on a sims autonomous actions, and improve traits! Have the traits work with the lifetime aspiration to control what sim does and doesn't do AUTONOMOUSLY! Have it control what wants and fears gets rolled!
Eg. A painter extraordinaire sim with a loner trait would focus on painting, and when he is disturbed by another sim after a while he would want to shoo them away to continue his work and after a bit he does so on his own! That is an example of a unique sim. Currently, if a painter sim with a loner trait is interrupted from painting by someone, they have a full conversation, the painter can get some lame debuff, and he goes off and does something else and doesn't touch the easel unless directed too! What is that?! That is not the gameplay I've come to know from the Sims series!
Now with all that said I don't know if there's more to City Life, but at the moment it looks like nothing is being added to the sims themselves which is a shame. I can honestly go on and on and list more examples of the sims not being unique, so I'm pleading, begging, STOP! STOP THINKING ON WHAT YOU CAN MAKE THE SIMS DO and start thinking about how to make the sims individual, with unique personalities that respond and react and act in different ways. Because right now, they all act the same, regardless of traits and it is boring.
tl;dr Sims 4 focuses too much on what the sims can do and not on the sims themselves and their personalities and actions.
87
Comments
Updated with Werewolf Diaries (1)
This should be a lesson for the team to not throw the baby out with the bathwater, especially since they had partially the same problem with the last game!
Don't remove the things that aren't broken. Keep them in and add to them. Fix the things that were broken from the past that players are expecting a better version of the next time around.
Many of the changes to this series would have been acceptable or at least better palatable if the core base game experience hadn't been drastically strip-mined. Like we had done in the past, we could have modded out the behaviours we didn't like and keep the ones we did.
Now I (personally) can't like the sims themselves at all. If I can't like a base game, how am I expected to be involved or interested in what happens to it and is added to it?
A base game for a series that is released in such an incremental and investable way such as The Sims series should completely blow the player out of the water, removing the need for the developers to try very hard to market all the additional content. If you've got an ecstatic and satisfied base game customer base, you're got the foundation needed for a successful series.
I would like to add on example of my own:
My evil sim Donald Trump had a want to make an enemy. Directed by me he made enemies with Bjorn what´s his face. They had a fist fight.
Donald and Bjorn then autonomousy sits down for nice meal together and start chatting autonomously. They really get along.
But ... they are enemies!!!!
The entire thing is quotable, but this puts it in a nutshell. Without active intervention from me, all my playables basically act like the same Sim, differentiated only by their appearance.
Even as a fan of this game I wholeheartedly agree with you! The emotions system is so imbalanced and traits barely mean anything in this game! I use a mod to completely get rid of the AWFUL surroundings buff because Happy truly does override all other emotions. It does make for repetitive and similar Sims. This game should have the most unique and interesting of all generations of Sims but, without my imagination, they all end up acting the same for the most part. The traits should not be emotion-based but based on the TRAIT ITSELF. I loved in Sims 3 how multiple traits had their own unique animations and you could definitely tell what trait they have. The traits, emotions, and therefore individuality of Sims 4 sims is the number one problem with this game and I wish they would address this!
Too be honest, if you want to see some big changes you won't see that in TS4. Maybe try waiting for TS5 instead?
lol.. always the advocate for TS5. I wish I had the same positive outlook that you have that the next game will be any better.
But.. yeah. I want to applaud OP's post.
I know the missing features from the game are some of the biggest deal breakers for a lot of players, and the missing potential for game styles. I agree with all of this too.. but for me, it's also the very fundamentals of this game that just don't work. It makes no sense to me that my lazy sim suddenly is dropping down and doing push ups, all because they feel 'energized.' It makes no sense to me that my sim is supposed to hate another sim, and all they do is smile and chat with them.
When they said they cut features and certain aspects of the game to focus on the sims themselves, it was like a slap to the face after watching one of your favorite games become something entirely different.. especially when the things they said didn't add up to the final product.
The emotion system could have been really cool, and could have given the game a lot of potential if it worked properly with traits and the individual sims themselves. As it turns out, if I open this game, I'm spent trying to imagine them all as individuals.. because otherwise, they literally do the same thing. It's not immersive, and it's not fun (for me).
Just.. smh.
Yes I am disappointed in the Sims 4, but I do believe it has the POTENTIAL to be a very fun game if the Sims behavior and personalities were looked at and changed. But multiple people have been shouting the same thing for 2 years now and nothing has been done.
Can you please ask your crystal ball if I should buy a lottery ticket or not?
It would be very helpful. Thanks.
Well.. according to a SimGuru, our feedback has an expiration date.
In turn, I personally feel the game's potential also has an expiration date.. and it's not the longevity of the game itself (IMHO).
It would be really nice if they did take a look at the very basics of the game and make the sims seem more unique and livelier. I love the game graphics.. I love CAS.. I love the animations of the sims, etc. I do hope they re-look at some of this stuff.. or at the very least, compile the feedback for future iterations if there ever are any.
Whether they choose to do it or not might depend on how much money they can afford to spend and whether they think this would have a sufficient pay-off for them. After all, they get no money back for this investment unless a significant number of people who haven't bought it decide to purchase the BG afterwards, and if those who bought it but who have dropped the game come back and buy more content for it.
That is a pretty big gamble to make, IMO. I think players are better off assuming that the game will remain as it is and just deciding whether or not that's acceptable to them.
Where are we going, and why am I in this hand basket?!
the sims themselves are the biggest of all TS4 disappointments
but the idea of improvement is just the carrot
their vision progresses as scheduled
This personally bugs me. Because the team loves to come out and say they are "passionate" about this iteration, that they want to give their "best" for the fans! Clearly that is not true, because if they were passionate about the game and the community they would fix and improve upon the core game and take that gamble. From how I'm looking at it, all they care about is their bottom dollar.
2 years in and wedding guests still choose to stand in awkward places instead of using the chairs that have been placed to watch the ceremony, why has this not been fixed? If you're "passionate" about the game as you say you would fix things like this!
Instead they ask for $10 every 2-3 months, ADD to the ongoing problems and ignore the very faulty core game! This is absolutely devastating for me, this franchise is one of my favourites and something I grew up with, and to see it in this condition and the team just IGNORING the issues really really bothers me!
Edit: This is my opinion
Repose en paix mamie tu va me manquer :
1923-2016 mamie
And that is your opinion, but the rest of us do not have the same opinion bout it, and that is what makes us Unique,
I feel you on this OP. I decided to jump back in on Ts4 and took my family to the park. Well after one of the children had a puppet show (the the mother and brother watched) a random sim decided to break the nearby dollhouse causing the kids to cry. I decided to have momma bear come to the rescue and let the guy have it. Well after the rude introduction she decides to sit down and have a pleasant conversation with him! I was like seriously?! NO this guy destroyed the dollhouse and made your children cry and you sit with him and have a happy convo? There really needs to be a change. But nope there she was with that plum smile on her face! Even after making her insult him several times too... *le sigh*
I had a Sim who got married, only to have her husband cheat at the wedding reception. She got the "Very Angry" moodlet, but it knocked off a surprisingly small chunk off their romance bar. She went home, kicked over a bin... and then started flirting with him and rolling romance whims towards him?!
God I miss 2, if your spouse caught you cheating then it was pretty much over. There's not even a yelling at interaction.
And that is why I still play Sims 2 & Sims 3, cause Sims 4 just has to much missing from it for My taste.