Premades in the sims 4

simgame

I feel like the premades in the sims 4 don't have enought depht to them. The premades in the sims 3 and 2 all have long backstories that show up in the game as well. But the backstories in the sims 4 never seem to match them in game. Take a look at the pancakes, their marriage is supposed to be really bad but it's just as good as the marriage between Dominic and Moira, and their marriage is supposed to be really good. And don't even get me started on the Caliente family... Their backstory doesn't match their relationships at all. And they're way uglier than in previous games... It feels like the creators are to lazy to change their relationships etc. In the sims 2 the Caliente sisters had many love interests and a whole family three... I hope they fix this in future worlds cause I am sick of manually fixing it fore them. I have given the Caliente family a makeover where I made them look more like their sims 2 self and I love them waaay more now

Peppermix

Agree. I loved the backstories in Sims 2, especially the Goths and the Calientes. It was so dark and mysterious. In Sims 4 the backstories doesn't add up to the relationships in sims households. Like Travis, Summer and Liberty. Summer and Liberty are supposed to have feelings for Travis, but when you start playing they barely know eachother.

AfterMidnight

The relationship thing does annoy me. I'm also bothered by the lack of skill points needed for their jobs. This isn't a new thing, necessarily. I remember sims in TS3 being way behind in their skills for their jobs, but it was still possible (albeit hard) to get a promotion in that game because you didn't need to be on the suggested skill level in order to be promoted. That's not the case with TS4. I cheated with my rotational save and gave the premade sims the skills needed for their last promotion because I could not be bothered to waste time upping their skills to the level they should already be at.

simgame

Peppermix wrote: »

Agree. I loved the backstories in Sims 2, especially the Goths and the Calientes. It was so dark and mysterious. In Sims 4 the backstories doesn't add up to the relationships in sims households. Like Travis, Summer and Liberty. Summer and Liberty are supposed to have feelings for Travis, but when you start playing they barely know eachother.

Yeah there supposed to be best friends too but the’re not even friends at all

simgame

AfterMidnight wrote: »

The relationship thing does annoy me. I'm also bothered by the lack of skill points needed for their jobs. This isn't a new thing, necessarily. I remember sims in TS3 being way behind in their skills for their jobs, but it was still possible (albeit hard) to get a promotion in that game because you didn't need to be on the suggested skill level in order to be promoted. That's not the case with TS4. I cheated with my rotational save and gave the premade sims the skills needed for their last promotion because I could not be bothered to waste time upping their skills to the level they should already be at.

I know that it was pretty bad in the sims 3 & take Penny Pizazzi as an example: she’s supposed to be a great singer but she does not have any skills in the sinking skill

dreamprisoner

I definitely agree, the descriptions have no actual connection to the premades themselves, so even if they're interesting, once you play it's easy to become bored. Sims 2 premades not only had intricate relationships to match their story, but also large family trees and events set up for when you play them for the first time - Cassandra goth's wedding, Don's date and the Caliente sisters getting burgled. I also think they're pretty limited without having one-sided relationships.

LenaDieters11

I wholeheartedly agree. Sims 2 had the most interesting back stories and I love how even though it was the beginning of your game, it felt as if the sims had an actual life prior to you starting the game. The stories had so much drama.

Firande

Definitely. It's partly for this reason that I never really concerned myself or my Sims with the premades. Only since I got the Vampires pack last Friday did I devise this storyline involving Caleb and Vlad, which I was pretty excited for. In their descriptions it says that they hate each other, yet when you play them you find out they don't actually have any relationship at all. So I felt obliged to turn them into enemies myself so it would actually fit with the story the devs created for them.

When I stay played TS2 (which wasn't all that long ago honestly, I only switched to TS4 this year and never played TS3), whenever I got bored of my own Sims I would go to some premade families and look at their memories. They were always so extensive and in-depth, it was amazing. Also the pictures and descriptions in each neighborhood really gave them their own personalities. Thanks to these in-depth premades, the neighborhoods too were really unique and interesting. I always strove to make my own Sims and neighborhoods as interesting as those premades. In TS4 my own Sims are without doubt a loooott more interesting and complex than any premade they made. The only one whom I feel like they did kind of a good job with is Caleb Vatore. He's also the only premade I've ever actually played and created a story with (okay in one my saves my Sim married Zoe Patel, but that wasn't because of any story they created for her. She was simply the only Sim my Sim got along with ).

SimplyJen

Freewill still stands and this game is not programmed to force sims into scripted behavior (besides traits). So, I don't expect the game to follow the Pancakes description or any other household bio.

But I agree most of the premades have lackluster backstories and for the returning premades, more effort could have been put into them.

LenaDieters11

@Simasaurus09 I think you are misunderstanding what op meant. It is about the relationship meters that should match the backstory when a family is played for the first time. For example, in Sims 2 Daniel Pleasant's backstory reveals that he has an affair with the maid Kaylynn Langerak. When you first load the family both have a romantic relationship in their relationship panels. That is not the case in Sims 4, where relationships do not match the backstories. That has nothing to do with free will.

SimplyJen

LenaDieters11 wrote: »

@Simasaurus09 I think you are misunderstanding what op meant. It is about the relationship meters that should match the backstory when a family is played for the first time. For example, in Sims 2 Daniel Pleasant's backstory reveals that he has an affair with the maid Kaylynn Langerak. When you first load the family both have a romantic relationship in their relationship panels. That is not the case in Sims 4, where relationships do not match the backstories. That has nothing to do with free will.

Ah, yes it would have made sense for the relationship meters to be poor between the two.

Unless they've patched this, I remember sims in this series still autonomously doing friendly interactions even with those they dislike. Only when they had negative traits such as evil would they be more inclined to do mean interactions autonomously. But I haven't played Sims 4 in a while so it could be different now.

edit to add: I know I'm mentioning free will again... If players expect the game to follow the household bio without control that's not going to happen. If OP wasn't talking about this, I have seen people question it before.

EnkiSchmidt

The Sims 4 sketchieness works better for me than the intricate work they did in Sims 2. It took me ten years to get into playing the premades and always takes a lot of retconning to make them mine, energy that I could spend just as well creating my own sims. The family bin families (Traveller, Picaso, Newson and the like) are more comfortably to work in. Sims 4 is more up my alley, especially with none of the deceased ancestors being present in the family trees (no family trees in the game in the beginning).

GmanSim123

> @simgame said:
> I feel like the premades in the sims 4 don't have enought depht to them. The premades in the sims 3 and 2 all have long backstories that show up in the game as well. But the backstories in the sims 4 never seem to match them in game. Take a look at the pancakes, their marriage is supposed to be really bad but it's just as good as the marriage between Dominic and Moira, and their marriage is supposed to be really good. And don't even get me started on the Caliente family... Their backstory doesn't match their relationships at all. And they're way uglier than in previous games... It feels like the creators are to lazy to change their relationships etc. In the sims 2 the Caliente sisters had many love interests and a whole family three... I hope they fix this in future worlds cause I am sick of manually fixing it fore them. I have given the Caliente family a makeover where I made them look more like their sims 2 self and I love them waaay more now

agreed

Omri147

I used to love the premades in TS2 and like the ones in TS3, but it gets worse and more shallow in each game...

In TS2:
Families that are connected to each other
Family descriptions
Personal bios
Family album
Memories
Relationships between sims in town
Family trees up to 2 generations above (minimum)
Skills and careers

In TS3:
Families that are connected to each other
Family descriptions
Personal bios (which doesn't apply to most of the store towns sadly)
Relationships between sims in town
Skills and careers

In TS4:
Family descriptions
Skills and careers

Really that's it for TS4's premades...

imhappy

I remember just reading all the memories, looking at the backstories, family trees, etc in Sims 2. There was so much depth. And when you visited the families, there were so many connections. Cassandra was getting married to Don, but Darren Dreamer had a crush on Cassandra. And all of this was in the information in the game. You didn't have to go to sims wiki to find anything out. But if you wanted to dig deeper, you could. It was amazing.

In this game, there are zero connections with each other. I can sort of understand if there were none between houses. Maybe that's too much for them. But there are no connections even within the same house.

And then they butchered the Calientes and Lothario.



Also, and this might just be me, but I found it annoying that Bella and Nancy are sooo much more attractive then their husbands. All the husbands are all so ugly. Why would they do this on purpose. Don Lothario too, they made him soo ugly, unlike the Calliente girls. While all the female sims are soo s**xy and the men so yucky looking? I think there were some backwards minds working on that base game.

aloadai

The premades in this game are very boring and I rarely bother playing as them. Would be nice if they were connected somehow with backstories like in TS2 but they're not. And yeah the Caliente sisters got the end of the stick.... I just had to edit them, make them look more like their TS2 selves (but more modern clothing and makeup of course).

simgame

aloadai wrote: »

The premades in this game are very boring and I rarely bother playing as them. Would be nice if they were connected somehow with backstories like in TS2 but they're not. And yeah the Caliente sisters got the end of the stick.... I just had to edit them, make them look more like their TS2 selves (but more modern clothing and makeup of course).

Yes the calientes might be the biggest problem

agustd

I think when TS4 launched we didn't even have household descriptions, did we? Correct me if I'm wrong, but they arrived in the CL patch, which was 2 years into the games' run. That definitely didn't help with shaping out the premades' stories and giving them depth. In fact, I don't think this time around sims team strived for any depth. This games' slogan is "you rule", or whatever, after all - may be they just thought forcing players into seeing premades in a certain way instead of giving them the stories they found suitable for them wasn't meshing well with TS4's marketing concept.

I've grown to like all the new maxis townies but I relate to OP's sentiment - the "classic" ones lack depth and TS4's lazy design discouraged me from playing them. I couldn't bother recreating all the relationships, family tree, etc. It just wouldn't feel the same. In a simulation game where it's me who decides how things will play out it was nice to sometimes just "jump in" a household with its own story but it's not everyone's cup of tea. They'd be better off never including the classic townies and just sticking to creating brand new ones for the current generation.

simgame

agustd wrote: »

I think when TS4 launched we didn't even have household descriptions, did we? Correct me if I'm wrong, but they arrived in the CL patch, which was 2 years into the games' run. That definitely didn't help with shaping out the premades' stories and giving them depth. In fact, I don't think this time around sims team strived for any depth. This games' slogan is "you rule", or whatever, after all - may be they just thought forcing players into seeing premades in a certain way instead of giving them the stories they found suitable for them wasn't meshing well with TS4's marketing concept.

I've grown to like all the new maxis townies but I relate to OP's sentiment - the "classic" ones lack depth and TS4's lazy design discouraged me from playing them. I couldn't bother recreating all the relationships, family tree, etc. It just wouldn't feel the same. In a simulation game where it's me who decides how things will play out it was nice to sometimes just "jump in" a household with its own story but it's not everyone's cup of tea. They'd be better off never including the classic townies and just sticking to creating brand new ones for the current generation.

I’m sure that we had the family descriptions before city living, but you’re right. I like the new townies more than the old ones

DeservedCriticism

Their creativity is really bad, too. IIRC there's like 3-4 female premades that have both Hot-Headed and Romantic as traits. They seem to have the same archetypes stuck in their heads and repeatedly make them over and over, just with slight alterations.

simgame

DeservedCriticism wrote: »

Their creativity is really bad, too. IIRC there's like 3-4 female premades that have both Hot-Headed and Romantic as traits. They seem to have the same archetypes stuck in their heads and repeatedly make them over and over, just with slight alterations.

Yes that’s so true, Nina Caliente, Eva C... & that Indian girl (I have forgotten her name)

surraaaaaa

Remember when get together first came out and Siobhan and Romeo were boyfriend/girlfriend?? That didn't last long.... Thanks to relationship culling/decay
I loved sims 2 back stories, I wish they'd do the same for sims 4

Omri147

simgame wrote: »

DeservedCriticism wrote: »

Their creativity is really bad, too. IIRC there's like 3-4 female premades that have both Hot-Headed and Romantic as traits. They seem to have the same archetypes stuck in their heads and repeatedly make them over and over, just with slight alterations.

Yes that’s so true, Nina Caliente, Eva C... & that Indian girl (I have forgotten her name)

Katrina is too.

imhappy

simgame wrote: »

aloadai wrote: »

The premades in this game are very boring and I rarely bother playing as them. Would be nice if they were connected somehow with backstories like in TS2 but they're not. And yeah the Caliente sisters got the end of the stick.... I just had to edit them, make them look more like their TS2 selves (but more modern clothing and makeup of course).

Yes the calientes might be the biggest problem

I agree, they are pretty bad. But I hate what they did to Don. He's just not Don anymore.

Also I've been playing Get Together since it came out and still can't tell the different between that DJ guy and that guy in the Partihouse. Do they have the same personality? Do they have any personalities? Someone help me so I can tell the difference.

(I looked up the names on Wiki: Paolo and Joaquin. It says one of them is an active bro and the other is a outgoing goofball. I still can't tell the difference)

simgame

surraaaaaa wrote: »

Remember when get together first came out and Siobhan and Romeo were boyfriend/girlfriend?? That didn't last long.... Thanks to relationship culling/decay
I loved sims 2 back stories, I wish they'd do the same for sims 4

Yes I made a new save with new townies but Thanks to culling their relationships dissapeared