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The Future of The Sims - More Unexplored Concepts please!
TheGreatGorlon
Posts: 382 Member
So as we know, the Sims 5 is probably somewhere on the horizon, and with it, I have some pretty high expectations. I would like them to conglomerate all of the content that have become generational fixtures of the series into the base game. This means, I don't want there to be a Sims 5 Pets, Seasons, City Life, University, Laundry Day, Get to Work, etc pack. Pets, weather, apartments, live jobs, higher education, laundry mechanics, even witches and vampires, should ALL be in the base game along with several other things. It's been long enough in the series now that it's known what core elements of the game players want and need in order for it to start feeling solid, and enough is enough. That stuff needs to stop showing up as packs and be in the base game already so that the game can explore new and different concepts without having people saying "Well, we still need dogs," or "We still need rain and winter," or "I really want witches to return," and so forth. There's so much stuff out there regarding life and the game that hasn't even been touched by a core Sims title, and all of that untapped potential is just ripe for the picking.
For instance - the Sims has never touched on religion in a core title. They did in Medieval, with the option to play the draconian Jacobians or the meditative Peterans and their different interpretations about what the Watcher (aka you, the player) intends. The Sims 4 introduced the "Clubs" mechanics which could super easily be evolved into a religion/cult mechanic with a bit more expansion. I absolutely don't want real religions in the game, mind you - but it wouldn't be bad to have premade versions of them like they did with Jacobians (Catholics) and Peterans (Prostants). It would be so simple to create the dos and don'ts of your faith via a Clubs style system, as well as a gathering place and time each week, as well as who's in charge, if any. It has potential to be a really fun system, especially if there are things like establishing a god or gods, door-knocking, evangelism, nature rituals, atheism, etc. It's something that's not been done with the Sims before, and even someone like myself who is an atheist can have a lot of fun with it, because who doesn't like a good cult story? Even still, this kind of pack would be a perfect opportunity to introduce funeral services to the game as well, which as been a real life aspect that has been woefully missing from the game since the start. This is just one thing I came up with on a whim - and one thing which would have had to be backburnered until things like dogs, weather, and apartments were added to the game because there isn't ever any bandwidth for new concepts so long as those old concepts keep being missing from the core game.
I'm sure there are many other much needed concepts out there too, and no matter how good those ideas may be, I feel like the game series will continue to cripple itself creatively so long it's stuck in this wash-and-repeat cycle of always needing certain packs added unless those elements are present in the base game. So please, I'm hoping that someone at Maxis reads this and takes it to heart. Break out of the habits of the past for the future of the game!
For instance - the Sims has never touched on religion in a core title. They did in Medieval, with the option to play the draconian Jacobians or the meditative Peterans and their different interpretations about what the Watcher (aka you, the player) intends. The Sims 4 introduced the "Clubs" mechanics which could super easily be evolved into a religion/cult mechanic with a bit more expansion. I absolutely don't want real religions in the game, mind you - but it wouldn't be bad to have premade versions of them like they did with Jacobians (Catholics) and Peterans (Prostants). It would be so simple to create the dos and don'ts of your faith via a Clubs style system, as well as a gathering place and time each week, as well as who's in charge, if any. It has potential to be a really fun system, especially if there are things like establishing a god or gods, door-knocking, evangelism, nature rituals, atheism, etc. It's something that's not been done with the Sims before, and even someone like myself who is an atheist can have a lot of fun with it, because who doesn't like a good cult story? Even still, this kind of pack would be a perfect opportunity to introduce funeral services to the game as well, which as been a real life aspect that has been woefully missing from the game since the start. This is just one thing I came up with on a whim - and one thing which would have had to be backburnered until things like dogs, weather, and apartments were added to the game because there isn't ever any bandwidth for new concepts so long as those old concepts keep being missing from the core game.
I'm sure there are many other much needed concepts out there too, and no matter how good those ideas may be, I feel like the game series will continue to cripple itself creatively so long it's stuck in this wash-and-repeat cycle of always needing certain packs added unless those elements are present in the base game. So please, I'm hoping that someone at Maxis reads this and takes it to heart. Break out of the habits of the past for the future of the game!
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Comments
But, things like occults, university, pets, seasons/weather, and restaurants can't just be slapped in as surface-level props, either. They must be fully fleshed out and satisfying to play with. Occults will need individual on/off toggles so people who don't want some or all of them can do so (instead of crying about their down-to-earth sitcom playstyle being rrueened by werewolves running the streets during the full moon and aliens abducting their husbandos). With Restaurants, your sim should be able to be a more managerial owner, a chef/owner, a line cook, a server, pick friends and family as employees instead of having to choose from a list of randos...and food should come to your sims quickly when they eat at one. Snowball and water balloon fights should be fast-paced and dynamically animated, none of that standing still for what feels like an eternity doing nothing that happens with TS4. We should be able to create appearance archetypes for our occults that the game draws from when randomizing alternate forms and creating NPC occults, so when we decide what vampire dark forms or alien appearances or werewolf forms or plantsims should look like in our game, we can be confident that the game will follow our template instead of making a random mess or following a default template that we find visually unappealing (I'm looking at you, TS3 werewolves...). And don't forget those skill trees...for ALL occults, thanks.
And, speaking of base game content, forget the color wheel. If they REALLY want to knock our socks off, they should give us a real custom content creation tool. Not just recoloring existing CAS and Build/Buy assets with Photoshop or GIMP or Affinity Photo, but full-on mesh edits and custom meshes. Give us some 3D sculpting tools that are easy and intuitive to use even for people who have never touched Maya or Blender before, and pre-made parts that we can stick together and manipulate to our liking to create new meshes quickly and easily. Then, skip the time-consuming (and, sometimes frustrating) unwrapping process and just let us live paint directly on the mesh to create the desired texture. Then, the program would auto-generate a texture map that we could use to recolor it using graphics software. It's a brilliant idea. Maybe hard to execute, but it would definitely make both BodyShop from TS2 and TS3's Create-A-Style and color wheel look like MS Paint in comparison. If they can do it for TS5, they definitely should.
I agree, stuff they add to the next base game does need to be fully fleshed out, no doubt. I don't want a hollow shell like TS4 was and it's "features," like Ghosts, who barely qualify as a life state.
As for creation though, I think the color does need to return. I think giving players a custom content creation tool comes with a massive host of issues. First and foremost, it removes most of the need for Maxis to create new packs if we can just do it ourselves. I don't see them freely giving up money in that vein. The other thing is that if they take control over custom content by giving us the tools and space to use it in our games, that would open the door for them to start censoring or dictating what we can and can't make, and I personally like the large degree of freedom that CC creators have in deciding what they want to put in the game. I applaud your concept, but I think it would choke the creative community around the Sims to a degree.
ETA: It also doesn't hurt creators, because you know why people download some cc, so they can recolor the mesh to what they want it to be...so creators get a bigger bump in downloads if they allow players to recolor their own meshes to some color or pattern they didn't want to do. Everybody wins.
I also think this is why Maxis of old understood all this and was happy to supply creative tools for the masses. Because if you think about it, if someone wasn't going to buy a pack they might simply because they could change something they saw in the pack to be the color or pattern and or shape they would like to see. It doesn't hurt sales it can only increase them.
I was commenting to the other person that the color wheel is a great idea, for the reasons you've listed, but that a full on mesh/custom object creator would encounter problems because it would actively be shooting themselves in the foot in terms of giving players easier access to actually constructing items, furniture, etc, which is something that Sims packs usually give to players and would potentially make pack sales obsolete.
Still not seeing it. Let's say I create a perfectly new mesh. Players download it because it's a totally new mesh. It might hurt those who just fiddle with recolors but it can't hurt creators who actually build meshes of objects and or clothes or hair or whatever. It can only help them, since people are always wanting new gameplay and meshes for these games. Even for TS1 these days. In turn the player can download a creator's new mesh and recolor it with CASt or a colorwheel etc. It can only help creators but I'm against paysites like TSR so yeah, paysites might suffer a set back. But there is always someone willing to pay for custom content. I won't.