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The sims needs more drama.
Fleurra
Posts: 19 Member
TL;DR: The sims needs more dramatic events and more meaningful choices to create better stories.
I: The sims need more drama
The sims means many things for different people. Designing houses, décor, fashion. But for many of us, it's about making interesting stories.
Now think about your favorite story. Whether it's a book or a movie, chances are there it contains conflict and drama that pushes the protagonists to change in some way (Star wars, LoTR, etc). The ancient Greeks knew this and their plays were impossibly dramatic.
The world of the sims is so easy and devoid of drama it really hurts how stories are made. Even the death of a loved one is reduced to a moodlet that goes away after a day while in reality the death of a loved one can be so traumatic that therapy would be required.
This is why the sims needs more random dramatic events or conflict that pushes individual sims to adapt or change.
II: The sims need more personality
Along with many others, I believe that our identities are shaped by our personal choices.
In the sims world, there is a severe lack of meaningful choices which makes it hard to create actually unique identities. All sims feel very similar at some point. And samey sims can't have conflict which makes boring stories (Imagine if everyone in GoT had the same personality of Jon Snow)
The lifestyles feature made a step in the right direction as they affect personalities by the choices that are made but the choices in the lifestyles feature aren't really meaningful.
I think more meaningful choices should be added and tracked in some sort of journal and sims have consequences based on the choices they made.
I realize that many people would probably prefer the normal dollhouse experience rather than a harsher sims world which is why such a system should be optional.
I apologize for my poor english I'm not a native speaker.
I: The sims need more drama
The sims means many things for different people. Designing houses, décor, fashion. But for many of us, it's about making interesting stories.
Now think about your favorite story. Whether it's a book or a movie, chances are there it contains conflict and drama that pushes the protagonists to change in some way (Star wars, LoTR, etc). The ancient Greeks knew this and their plays were impossibly dramatic.
The world of the sims is so easy and devoid of drama it really hurts how stories are made. Even the death of a loved one is reduced to a moodlet that goes away after a day while in reality the death of a loved one can be so traumatic that therapy would be required.
This is why the sims needs more random dramatic events or conflict that pushes individual sims to adapt or change.
II: The sims need more personality
Along with many others, I believe that our identities are shaped by our personal choices.
In the sims world, there is a severe lack of meaningful choices which makes it hard to create actually unique identities. All sims feel very similar at some point. And samey sims can't have conflict which makes boring stories (Imagine if everyone in GoT had the same personality of Jon Snow)
The lifestyles feature made a step in the right direction as they affect personalities by the choices that are made but the choices in the lifestyles feature aren't really meaningful.
I think more meaningful choices should be added and tracked in some sort of journal and sims have consequences based on the choices they made.
I realize that many people would probably prefer the normal dollhouse experience rather than a harsher sims world which is why such a system should be optional.
I apologize for my poor english I'm not a native speaker.
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Comments
You can't randomly die (except by old age and fire). The only way to die in this game is if you actively choose to kill your Sim. Vending machines only kill you after crushing you for the second time in a row. You only get electrocuted to death the same way. Death by flies? Gotta bond with the flies for them to kill you, you're not punished for living in filth.
Same goes for deaths. Oh, a sad moodlet. So what? The Sim doesn't remember them, once the moodlet fades, it's as if they never existed.
Same goes for breakups and divorces, which only happen if you choose to break up--it's insanely easy to max out a relationship in a day, and insanely difficult to make two Sims hate each other, unless you purposefully choose mean interactions, and why would you do that? There's no incentive to do so.
NAPs don't change the game in any meaningful way. Eco footprints don't matter--your Sim coughs occasionally, but that's it. Their needs, their lifespan? Unaffected.
Vampire break-ins? They only happen if Vlad's around to initiate them. He got culled in my game 2 years ago and I haven't seen a vampire since.
I absolutely agree we need more drama, and honestly I think including some scenarios that are out of the player's control is the way to do it. Bring back the randomness!
And if people wanna play their perfect, smiley dress-up-doll game, they can disable the option. This is a game, it's about time it challenged the players, like The Sims used to.
Nowadays I only open the sims to test a new mod or expansion so I really agree with this statement. However, many other developers add "difficulty" to their games by making it more grindy and slow which imo is the worst thing that could happen to the sims. Personally I don't mind the fact that it's fast to make a relationship. What bothers me is that it happens the same way with all the sims and it's boring and ultimately meaningless.
This is absolutely the way to go. I still remember burglars and random chance cards in TS2 (even though they were just text with a simple A or B decision) they added personality to the sims.