Improved Babies (Make Babies No Longer a Object) with Cribs (For Babies & Toddlers to Use), Changing Tables (For Babies & Toddlers to Use) & Baby Moniters as a Base Game Update. Gold-Digger/Black Widow Aspiration added Under Money/Fortune Aspiration Tab. A New Empty World added (like what you did with the Newcrest World). The Ability to have a Home Business (a.k.a A New Residential Lot Type that Allows Sims to Run a Gym, Bar/Pub, Library, Retail Business or a Restaurant Under or Above their Home) as well as it being an Aspiration. Food Being Added to the Likes & Dislikes Tab. A Gothic Bassinet, a Nerdy/Geeky Bassinet, a Posh Bassinet, a Nature Orientated Bassinet & Nautical Bassinet for Babies in Base Game for Goth Sims, Nerdy/Geeky/Genius Sims, Rich/Snobby Sims, Hippy Sims, Sims who love Gardening & Sims that love Fishing. I Can't think of Anything else that is for Base Game Only.
First of all, I'd like to thank you on behalf of the whole community for organizing these feedback events. This really does show that you value the players' opinions and needs. I would like some sliders for the different age groups (Child, Teen, Adult, etc.), so we can adjust the duration of individual life-cycles and ultimately have greater control over their lifespans. Additionally, CAS updates regarding basic things like body hair, blemishes and scars added to the base game are definitely a priority for us all.
Hopefully you can take most of the inputs that are provided in this forum and carry them forward to the game.
I feel in general there is a lack of interconnectedness within the game. I like it when playing one family can impact the lives of other families. (note I am definitely a rotational player) One great way to combat this is the restaurant system in dine out. I have a family open and run all the available restaurants and then my other sims go there to eat. This makes the world feel more interconnected. Your sims are directly contributing to the livelihood of another household. In the sims 3 we could read the books our authors wrote in the library which was another nice touch. I've created a bookstore in the sims 4 just so I can sell books my sims wrote to other households. I would love to be able to do this with all business types particularly nightclubs, gyms and museums. Having a sim be a sports star then open their own gym would be really cool. Also having my family that completes all the collections own a museum to display it and other households can go and enjoy would be great.
Echoing everything that has been said re: relationships and dating, emotions, distinguishing traits for teens, lifetime aspirations and wants/fears especially.
I'd love to bring werewolves back and have them have the ability to randomly turn Sims, I remember that happening to me in TS2 and it blowing my mind.
Bring back the raciness that we had in TS2, maybe introduce a "family friendly" mode, but this game is rated for adults (at least in Australia) and it no longer feels that way - letting teens "mess around" was a great addition to me, but I miss the cheekiness and authenticity of relationships in TS2, they feel so sterile now. And bring back turn offs and ons, chemistry and variations in attraction.
Allow for separate customisation of furniture bases and coverings eg. beds and couches like in TS2 - It's so hard to match furniture coverings, especially for kids' beds, without having everything in the room feel mismatched, and rooms feel less personal as a result.
TS4 just doesn't feel like a lived-in world - everything feels stagnant and repetitive. Even small details like bringing back carpooling for work and school buses adds to the realism. And the ability to create our own neighbourhoods would be nice.
I'd love to see the return of private schools too, it was always a fun challenge to successfully impress the principal, and the addition of school fees might assist in the problem of there being nowhere for simoleons to go after a while because money is made so easily and everything is so cheap in build/buy.
TS4 is pretty but feels hollow - While CAS and some options are a vast improvement, the personalities and gameplay for TS2 has not even been included, let alone bettered the way you would expect several generations later.
1. Add old-fashioned clothes and furniture. 2.add birds around the city 3. enable the Sim to keep a diary 4. give the opportunity to make postcards 5. Add the opportunity to meet the parents of the bride and groom before the wedding.
I have one that I feel quite passionately about, and that would be a remaster/remake of the Sims Bustin out. I know that that is unlikely, so the next best thing would be for a new uneditable world that contains a story based mode thats of a similar format that works alongside the worlds that you have created.
You would start at the point where your sim has just finished high school and becomes a young adult living at home with mom. You have to build your way up through a chosen career path by moving out your parents house and in with a choice of two or three different pre-created NPC roommates in a pre-built house that all have different trait/benefits. There would be missions and goals that you have to completed outside of your career based ones to progress including social and friendship building goals that can be completed by interacting with these unpredictable NPCs that cant be interacted with outside of this fantastic story mode. You'd need to work your way up and out of these houses into different ones to unlock the ability to interact with your characters from the main worlds/edit the story world upon completion of the story.
You would play as one sim throughout the entire story unless you started from the very beginning again and mainly interact with the NPC sims bar for any missions that require more. It would also be a good opportunity to re-introduce the carpool system where you are collected via car or bus to get to work/school rather than running off the lot. I know that a step has been taken get the game to become more open and flexible with the gameplay, but this old school story mode added a depth and direction from the game that I sometimes feel is now lacking.
1) get acquainted - should depend on the character of the sim. 2) romance, should depend on the character of the sim. 2) Sims must buy everything from the shops (clothes, furniture, ingredients, books, etc.).
Thank you for the thread. I'm just writing on top of my head, so please excuse if my thoughts are not as organized as they could be.
For me personally, and as others have already mentioned, the whole economy needs a bit of a rethink. This is to say, how Simoleon is earned, how much is earned doing each activity, and how each activity compares with each other etc. Currently, getting any full time job is worse than gardening or playing for tips in the first game week at least. While activities/jobs should not produce the same amount of simoleons per hour, it needs to be within an ideal range. For example, one should earn between 1000 - 2000 Simoleons in a day after 2 hours of playing. Whatever the numbers you guys decide, there still needs to be a number and a reference point in which all other aspects of the game are balanced against. Please do not introduce new activities in future packs that earn much more beyond this ideal range.
While I don't agree with the comments that salaries in general should be cut (I imagine weekly income as yearly income in real life, where 1 Simoleon is approximately 10 USD), I would greatly prefer it if there are ways to actually spend the money you earned, and spend lots of it. In Sims 3 we had luxury cars, or can buy up properties and businesses for dividends.
Many item costs in the Sims 4 also don't make much sense to me. Let me provide an example on top of my head: the toilet roll costs 50 Simoleons and The Grand Piano costs 3500 Simoleons. So a grand piano is approximately equivalent to 70 toilet rolls. But... we know a Grand Piano should cost much more than 70 toilet rolls.
I know the Sims Economy should not be exactly based on real life, but there needs to be some 'anchors' in order to have any sense of believability. When things are believable, we become more involved in the story. When things are no longer believable in the slightest, we stop being invested in the game we are playing. Some objects are too expensive and some are too cheap.
The game currently showers the player with money, almost as if the game is worried that the player won't have enough money. Maybe the assumption is that if a player struggles to find money, they stop playing? That's not really what happens though. In any game, if a player struggles, they look for cheat codes. In my experience, the game becomes boring when your bank balance rarely changes and you have everything you need. I remember stopping a game when I simply cloned the money tree seed 8 times using the cloning machine and planted them all in my backgarden. It was a lot of money each day, but I never went back to that savegame.
Therefore, I believe it is absolutely necessary for the Sims team to think about how difficult should it be for a player to get a certain object, and then assign the most probable value to the item. Say, how much should a player be able to earn within 60 minutes of playing the game? Have a number ready, then start evaluating whether gameplay features are giving much more than they should, or items are way too undervalued to really be considered an achievement to get.
For more depth and challenge, how about starting a familiy with literally 0 or a small number of Simoleons, then have them 'mortgage' a house and pay weekly for it? Or maybe the starting cash becomes a deposit, and you can buy bigger homes with the mortgage? While it may not be for everyone, at least having it as an option would extend gameplay a little, because the financial ladder can be steep and that adds challenge. This of course, works best if economy is adjusted as I described above.
I like sandbox games to be sandbox-y, so my main wish regarding additional challenge or difficulty is that any such systems or changes be optional.
"Simple Living" Lot Challenge is a fantastic example of additional complexity which I have particularly enjoyed: it is opt-in, and adds a layer of realism to the game in a way that slows me down to plan and think about what my sims would do.
Systems absent from The Sims 4, but present in prior installments in the franchise, which I do NOT miss are things like Burglars in TS3 - the musical notification was creepy and disturbed me when I heard it, the interactions were limited, once begun the occurrence was incredibly disruptive (waking entire households & disrupting sleep schedules) and could not be cancelled. Further, even apprehending the culprit was rarely effective. Zombies in TS3: Supernatural were likewise a "challenging" game-play element which I detested. I can't recall whether TS3 had an option to disable Burglars, but I certainly hope that any such changes to TS4 are made optional.
I have two main contributions which can add to depth and challenge in the Sims 4...apologies if there are any repetitions...
Carreers:
I think it's fair to say that carreers are an important part of an individuals life and can really help define someone. The problem is that actual progression up the career ladder is pretty much the same for every career (base game). Build a particular skill, go to work in a good mood and then BOOM promotion! There's also no distinguishable difference in the carreer paths, I would really like to see the careers have different dynamics and challenges. Want to advance in journalism? Get interviewing Sims and writing articles. Want to advance in Athletics? Best get training and winning sports matches etc.
Personalities:
I have a controversial opinion in that I don't think just having traits to define a Sim work. Let's take Knox Greenburg, his traits are Likes the Outdoors, Green Fiend and Freegan. All good traits, but there's no depth to how tidy he is, how hard working he is and how he relates to other Sims. I appreciate that traits are supposed to give the player freedom but really it does the opposite. The fact is that there are some aspects of personality which should be more important than others and there should be something in place that helps the player decide that before delving into other quirks/traits.
I also miss the Sims 2 aspirations and how you could make a Romance Sim which didn't immediately make them super suave, they could be actually quite shy and slobbish which made interactions more difficult.
Anyways apologies for rambling! Hope these help! 😊😊
Sul Sul ! I apologize in advance because I don't have very good English. I'll do my best to make myself understood. I love sims 4, but at the moment...I'm boring.
1 # There are too many aspirations. Aspirations for every career?
2 # More possibilities in life and career choices,
-My sims is computer expert, how does he use his skills? To become the nastiest of hackers? He want to make the world a better place? -My sims is a politician, will he become a dictator or a liberator? -My sims policeman is a great vigilante or an infiltrated mafieu ... - Is my journalist sims honest in his articles? ...
4 # In the sims 3, there is a lot that I like and that I would like so much to be able to find ...
-Change the size of the land! In sims 4 you can neither modify nor move them! it's missing ... - Be able to change the texture and patterns of clothes, objects, walls, floors ... hairs and eyes! -A pack resembling the sims 3 world adventures, with the possibility of learning martial arts, quests proposed by inhabitants or explorers to find relics or discover hidden ones ... -A pack resembling the Showtime sims 3, become a singer, magician ... And perform in front of an audience! -Animals! My biggest regret in the sims 4 animals is ... the lack of animals! I liked the horses, trying to catch birds ...
Thank you very much for listening and long live the sims!
Hi Sims team!! I have been a player for a few years now and really enjoy the game. - For my gameplay personally, I think that the age scroll settings from the sims 3 would be a great come back, as well.. 2 of my sims are siblings and one is an elder and one is a YA, and I'm on normal lifespan. - Another would be if the calendar's could be linked through my current households, for example if I was to play with "Nook 1" and it was a Wednesday, if I moved to "Nook 2" ( a whole new family that I have created, say the daughter that's moved out of nook 2 and the parents are nook 1) it would still be the same day, and you could get relationship statuses when new babies are born because well its really hard to get everyone in the same house at the same time and switching between to make sure everyone knows the family. - Another update that would be really cool is more like and dislike categories. What's your favourite animal? What's your favourite food? I can see a lot of potential with these game mechanics and I am so looking forward to seeing more.
That's really all I'd like in the game. They're quite simple and would be really beneficial for a lot of gamers who may have the same issue. Thanks for reading!
Right now mastering a skill is really easy. You are able to master a skill in one week, even less. It should take much more time to master skill. Here are some ideas how to make skilling different, fun, and challenging
1. Add talents and weaknesses - All our sims should have their talents and their weakness. One sim could be better in one activvity while the other not. Sims who have talent could continue past 10 while ysims with weakness wouldn't hit even 10.
2. Like & dislikes, traits andd other factors should affect skilling. A sim who doesn't like video games wouldn't get a skill in playing video games just like that.
3. Add tasks - if your sim wants to level up their skill, there should be tasks they would have to complete in order to get a skill point after they have full bar.
4. Add challenges - in TS3 we have interesting challenges for each skill. I would love to see this return
5. Rework skill tree and add hobby system - It would be great if you entirely reworked current skill tree, make a new skills and make current skills complex. Like writing for example - it could be divided in normal writing and then specific genre writing. Same for painting. Hobby system would then have different categories for skills like arts and crafts, tech, sports.
What I sincerely want is better game fixes, and better working graphics. Every time the game gets "updated" it is a "downdate" for my game. Houses disappears, weird graphics occur, trouble with the plants are not solved, and are right out rediculous. Try to fix the so sadly broken but wonderful game expansion Get to Work. It is already altered with bugs several times. I for one don't want more sickness or death, and I don't want to NEED to copy all my houses every time a new expansion on beforehand gives me an update to ruin the gameplay I have now. And I didn't even mention, that many of my/the games' sims, that I have had work to rename to something understandable, all of the sudden either have their "old" names back or something far worse than before. Who is Ukupanipo Hekekia? And who is Akira Kibo? And I have to remember the names, I gave them, so that they can have that names back. Lots of irritating work, when I just want to play. I am NOT ready to buy the new expansion Henford---, and I don't want anything new either, because I will see all the bugs be solved, before I do. Thanks for listening.
Players should be able to experience kids going to school, adults going to work and younger kids going to daycare. It should be somewhat interactive and parents should have to physically go to the daycare or school to pick up kids that aren't teenagers. I did appreciate the ability to at least follow my sims to their jobs or school or hospital in sims 3 and was hoping that in sims 4 we would be able to do more. Also senior citizens should have a place to go as well like a place for bingo night with friends. Also it would be cool to have kids go on field trip to the museum or theater and for example if the parents go to the local museum when their child is scheduled to have a field trip they can see them touring the building with their class.
First off, I want to thank you for giving us the opportunity to give some feedback. I also really want to thank EA_David for very quickly and kindly fixing my problem with my forum account.
English is not my native language, so plase forgive mistakes i may make.
I want to start off with saying some general things about the series and my playstyle
When i think of my favorite Sims game, it's clearly the Sims 2. In the Sims 2, i felt like I had a relationship to my Sims; some i liked better, some not so much, and a gameplay session could suddenly turn sad or very great. They promted emotions in me. The most common emotion that Sims 3 and 4 prompted in me is rage quitting (yes, this is a bit embarassing).
First i want to start off with what i really like about the Sims 4:
- its running well. I don't need an open world as long as my saves are not constantly getting corrupted after a few generations. Thank you for that. Really.
- I personally like the graphic better than in the Sims 3. I think the comic like, slightly exaggerrated style fits the Sims much better than the uncanny-valley Sims 3.
And thats kind of all the positives I can say about the Sims 4 compared to its predecessors. It's pretty and it runs well.
I play a mxiture of legacy and story telling, but currently, i am mostly doing legacy challenges like "make the whole neighborhood be populated with relatives" because even with several mods, the game feels repetetive.
1. I would love to have one sided relationships ( this was mentioned a lot already, so i won't go in depth) and general, more complex and intense relationships. I want my sims to differentiate between their biological and their social parent, if those where two different sims, I want them to react to their spouse being pregnant from someone else. I want them to be disappointed if their artistic daughter decides to study law instead of art history (what a disgrace to the family! what would their greatgrandfather Leonardo DaSimci have thought?). I want them to miss a sibling that died young for the rest of their life.
I am not a game designer, but i feel these things could maybe be integrated as " core believes" (see point 8)the Sims have about themselves, all their relatives, or random other sims ( like their significant other, their arch enemy...). If a sim has the "core believe" "my family is artistic", they would react negatively to a child studying law.
I feel like they also just need to react more, in a sensible way, to what other sims are doing. You Sim thought his son is a family person and now he has run off with his new flame, leaving two young children behind? Have his mother come over and yell at him, prompting him to either refuse to talk to her again or go back to his family.
Your Sims teengaer is having their first kiss and they did observe it? have the parent lecture them and their flame about "save wohoo" and embarassing them completely, or have the parent try and forbid the relationship because their teen should focus on school. Have the teen react to that with either being glad, that they have accepting, though embarassing, parents, or have them run off with their flame if they can't stand the pressure.
Have some couples be the love of their live, and some just fall out with each other.
2. I kind of already adressed this, but more drama. The Sims feel very shallow at the moment; their life is a calm boat ride. More accidental deaths would be great (even if I am careless, my sims never die accidentally. I always have to murder them). And again, have other sims have long term reactions from that ( your Sims mother died in a fire? have the sim have a negative moodlet around fire forever!) .
3. Better families
Have the sims have more intense and diverse family dynamics. Have siblings hate each other for no reason or be very close. Have a teenager be annoyed that they have to share a room with two younger siblings. Give them more interactions with each other that keep them busy ( like, just an option to have them play with each other instead next to each other. they could just sit and imagine!)
Improve the phases. Make them a challenge, by having your kid decide one day it favourite color is blue and go beg it parents for a blue room, only two decide two days later the favourite color is now yellow and have them hate their blue room. Let Adult sims react to these phases! they could be annoyed, amused or remember their own phases.
If a baby is born, give them a relationship to their relatives. For example, all relatives that are on good terms with their parents could just come over and get them in their relationship panel. It's weird if you can't say hi to your grandpa because he is famous.
Give us players a reason to adopt! Make the family tree acknowledge that the adopted child is an adopted child. Also, don't make them use the adoptive parents genetics for their own kids.
Better genetics. They don't have to be as complex as real live genetics, but just give us some dominant/ recessive treats that for hair and eyecolor. For me personally that would be enough to feel more connected to the sims.
Bring back the "serve dinner" option from the sims 2, where they put individual plates on the table and everyone came and sat down to eat. That made them seem so much like a family.
Let sim kids have ridicoulus arguments and let other, older Sims react to that buy trying to intervene, tell them off, etc, depending on that Sims personality.
Give parenting an overhaul and let sims have some parenting values, like "teens shouldn't wear flipflops/makeup/ jeans" "arguing is healthy for siblings/ is terrible between siblings", "kids should only eat what they want"," every toddler needs to grow up with a lama" etc. Those can be absurd, that would be quite on brand i think.
4. Bring back the humor. Sims 2 was a funny game. The descriptions and event texts were hilarious, that would be great to get back and would feel more in depth.
5. Working Sim Autonomity. The Sims Autonomity is a pain currently. It's the biggest challenge in game in my opinion, but not in a good way. Let me describe my struggles in a description of a typical sim- morning in my Sim family with 3 kids (teen, child, toddler) and two parents:
3.25: Teen- Sim and child Sim get up. I tell them to go use the toilet and shower in separate bathrooms. Parents get up. Parent 1 i tell to go use the downstairs bathroom, parent 2 is supposed to make breakfast.
4.00: after struggling with Parent 1, who got hindered from using the bathroom because some pet was in the way, i notice that the kitchen is empty. A quick search leads me to parent 2 playing on the computer. I send them to the fridge again. They complain that thats not possible. I skip through the household and find that the teen abandoned their command to shower and instead is on the way to get leftovers from the fridge. Why, you ask? because the toddler is autonomously using the potty chair in the hallway, and their sibling apparently cant walk past that.
Meanwhile, the other parent and the child are on their 5th glass of water.
Autonomity is a great idea, but currently its often a hinderance. Give them some useful autonomity please, and stop them from overhydrating themselves everyday please.
6. Bring back wishes and fears. I loved that in the Sims 2, it gave so much input for stories.
7. Make pets less demanding. Maybe its just me, but my pets are constantly ill, unhappy or misbehaving. So as soon as my sims start a family, they can't have pets anymore, because going to the vet every three days is just to disruptive to my storytelling. Maybe a trait "non-demanding" where the pets wouldn't get sick or unhappy as often would just be enough to make this an optional choice for players.
8. Give the sims some worldviews to act upon. As mentioned above, that could be a trait like "we are artists", that is formed from their enviroment, or something stemming from their personality, like "I am a strict parent" or "the world is a scary/wonderful place" . These could be hidden or partially open and could influence the sims reactions and autonomous actions.
I am coming to an end here, i hope i don't come off as rude. ( Sorry, if I do; again, not my first language.)
What I miss is are proper guidebooks with all packs covered, not only the base game and that pack.
You go back to playing a world and find many more interactions included with every pack involved or tidied up to get rid of previous bugs. I don't think anyone has done this with a guide. They've only covered a single pack. Nobody has time to remember everything in the Patches and some don't read the notes at all.
Thus we get complaints about things from those who don't use the Forum, don't patch or don't update mods etc.
- [b]consequences[/b] for actions - [b]Story progression[/b] for NPCs, I wanna see sims outside my played sims get in relationships, get married, have kids all on their own - [b]memories[/b], have our sims remember that time something embarrassing happened or that time their partner flirted with someone else and get annoyed again - Flesh out [b]teens[/b], I miss prom so much! It was one of the best things about being a teen in the sims 3, more things for them to do, more events for teens - [b]Children’s traits[/b] to be carried on to teens, I hate when I have a high level trait for a kid then at teen level it’s completely gone, a trait over 5 for a kid should start them off at the equivalent trait at a 3 or 4 so your hard work isn’t lost, the way it is now I don’t even bother focusing on my children sims traits because what’s the point - [b]family gameplay[/b], eg family reunions, taking family group photos, being able to ask aunt/uncle/granny/grandad to babysit - [b]attraction[/b] to other sims, like how in the sims 3 a notification would appear saying your sim is attracted to a certain person in the area - More [b]autonomy[/b] for sims, like my partner would ask my sim to be gf/bf or ask them to marry them (even if they’re in the same household already would be a plus) - [b]Cheekiness/character[/b], one of the things I really miss from previous sims packs was the little jokes or innuendos or just character from the game itself - [b]Traits & aspirations[/b], I’d like more traits and for them to have more of an impact on my sim, I’d love sliders for basic traits like shy vs outgoing, active vs lazy. Etc just like sims 2 then we can add 2 or 3 more traits relating to hobbies/lifestyles to create a more dynamic sim, more aspiration options would be nice - [b]Likes & dislikes[/b] needs to be fleshed out, not all hobbies are on the likes/dislikes eg knitting isn’t there
Meaningful relationships where households are intertwined through their career, neighborhood, school & extended family would provide a more immersive experience in rotational & single household gameplay. To experience a changing world with neighborhood amenities that grow with the generations, would enable a little more realism & creative gameplay as Sims enjoy diverse activities while deepening their community connections.
Comments
First of all, I'd like to thank you on behalf of the whole community for organizing these feedback events. This really does show that you value the players' opinions and needs. I would like some sliders for the different age groups (Child, Teen, Adult, etc.), so we can adjust the duration of individual life-cycles and ultimately have greater control over their lifespans. Additionally, CAS updates regarding basic things like body hair, blemishes and scars added to the base game are definitely a priority for us all.
Hopefully you can take most of the inputs that are provided in this forum and carry them forward to the game.
Thank you!
Thanks for listening :)
I'd love to bring werewolves back and have them have the ability to randomly turn Sims, I remember that happening to me in TS2 and it blowing my mind.
Bring back the raciness that we had in TS2, maybe introduce a "family friendly" mode, but this game is rated for adults (at least in Australia) and it no longer feels that way - letting teens "mess around" was a great addition to me, but I miss the cheekiness and authenticity of relationships in TS2, they feel so sterile now. And bring back turn offs and ons, chemistry and variations in attraction.
Allow for separate customisation of furniture bases and coverings eg. beds and couches like in TS2 - It's so hard to match furniture coverings, especially for kids' beds, without having everything in the room feel mismatched, and rooms feel less personal as a result.
TS4 just doesn't feel like a lived-in world - everything feels stagnant and repetitive. Even small details like bringing back carpooling for work and school buses adds to the realism. And the ability to create our own neighbourhoods would be nice.
I'd love to see the return of private schools too, it was always a fun challenge to successfully impress the principal, and the addition of school fees might assist in the problem of there being nowhere for simoleons to go after a while because money is made so easily and everything is so cheap in build/buy.
TS4 is pretty but feels hollow - While CAS and some options are a vast improvement, the personalities and gameplay for TS2 has not even been included, let alone bettered the way you would expect several generations later.
2.add birds around the city
3. enable the Sim to keep a diary
4. give the opportunity to make postcards
5. Add the opportunity to meet the parents of the bride and groom before the wedding.
You would start at the point where your sim has just finished high school and becomes a young adult living at home with mom. You have to build your way up through a chosen career path by moving out your parents house and in with a choice of two or three different pre-created NPC roommates in a pre-built house that all have different trait/benefits. There would be missions and goals that you have to completed outside of your career based ones to progress including social and friendship building goals that can be completed by interacting with these unpredictable NPCs that cant be interacted with outside of this fantastic story mode. You'd need to work your way up and out of these houses into different ones to unlock the ability to interact with your characters from the main worlds/edit the story world upon completion of the story.
You would play as one sim throughout the entire story unless you started from the very beginning again and mainly interact with the NPC sims bar for any missions that require more. It would also be a good opportunity to re-introduce the carpool system where you are collected via car or bus to get to work/school rather than running off the lot. I know that a step has been taken get the game to become more open and flexible with the gameplay, but this old school story mode added a depth and direction from the game that I sometimes feel is now lacking.
2) romance, should depend on the character of the sim.
2) Sims must buy everything from the shops (clothes, furniture, ingredients, books, etc.).
Thank you for the thread. I'm just writing on top of my head, so please excuse if my thoughts are not as organized as they could be.
For me personally, and as others have already mentioned, the whole economy needs a bit of a rethink. This is to say, how Simoleon is earned, how much is earned doing each activity, and how each activity compares with each other etc. Currently, getting any full time job is worse than gardening or playing for tips in the first game week at least. While activities/jobs should not produce the same amount of simoleons per hour, it needs to be within an ideal range. For example, one should earn between 1000 - 2000 Simoleons in a day after 2 hours of playing. Whatever the numbers you guys decide, there still needs to be a number and a reference point in which all other aspects of the game are balanced against. Please do not introduce new activities in future packs that earn much more beyond this ideal range.
While I don't agree with the comments that salaries in general should be cut (I imagine weekly income as yearly income in real life, where 1 Simoleon is approximately 10 USD), I would greatly prefer it if there are ways to actually spend the money you earned, and spend lots of it. In Sims 3 we had luxury cars, or can buy up properties and businesses for dividends.
Many item costs in the Sims 4 also don't make much sense to me. Let me provide an example on top of my head: the toilet roll costs 50 Simoleons and The Grand Piano costs 3500 Simoleons. So a grand piano is approximately equivalent to 70 toilet rolls. But... we know a Grand Piano should cost much more than 70 toilet rolls.
I know the Sims Economy should not be exactly based on real life, but there needs to be some 'anchors' in order to have any sense of believability. When things are believable, we become more involved in the story. When things are no longer believable in the slightest, we stop being invested in the game we are playing. Some objects are too expensive and some are too cheap.
The game currently showers the player with money, almost as if the game is worried that the player won't have enough money. Maybe the assumption is that if a player struggles to find money, they stop playing? That's not really what happens though. In any game, if a player struggles, they look for cheat codes. In my experience, the game becomes boring when your bank balance rarely changes and you have everything you need. I remember stopping a game when I simply cloned the money tree seed 8 times using the cloning machine and planted them all in my backgarden. It was a lot of money each day, but I never went back to that savegame.
Therefore, I believe it is absolutely necessary for the Sims team to think about how difficult should it be for a player to get a certain object, and then assign the most probable value to the item. Say, how much should a player be able to earn within 60 minutes of playing the game? Have a number ready, then start evaluating whether gameplay features are giving much more than they should, or items are way too undervalued to really be considered an achievement to get.
For more depth and challenge, how about starting a familiy with literally 0 or a small number of Simoleons, then have them 'mortgage' a house and pay weekly for it? Or maybe the starting cash becomes a deposit, and you can buy bigger homes with the mortgage? While it may not be for everyone, at least having it as an option would extend gameplay a little, because the financial ladder can be steep and that adds challenge. This of course, works best if economy is adjusted as I described above.
Thanks.
"Simple Living" Lot Challenge is a fantastic example of additional complexity which I have particularly enjoyed: it is opt-in, and adds a layer of realism to the game in a way that slows me down to plan and think about what my sims would do.
Systems absent from The Sims 4, but present in prior installments in the franchise, which I do NOT miss are things like Burglars in TS3 - the musical notification was creepy and disturbed me when I heard it, the interactions were limited, once begun the occurrence was incredibly disruptive (waking entire households & disrupting sleep schedules) and could not be cancelled. Further, even apprehending the culprit was rarely effective. Zombies in TS3: Supernatural were likewise a "challenging" game-play element which I detested. I can't recall whether TS3 had an option to disable Burglars, but I certainly hope that any such changes to TS4 are made optional.
Carreers:
I think it's fair to say that carreers are an important part of an individuals life and can really help define someone. The problem is that actual progression up the career ladder is pretty much the same for every career (base game). Build a particular skill, go to work in a good mood and then BOOM promotion! There's also no distinguishable difference in the carreer paths, I would really like to see the careers have different dynamics and challenges. Want to advance in journalism? Get interviewing Sims and writing articles. Want to advance in Athletics? Best get training and winning sports matches etc.
Personalities:
I have a controversial opinion in that I don't think just having traits to define a Sim work. Let's take Knox Greenburg, his traits are Likes the Outdoors, Green Fiend and Freegan. All good traits, but there's no depth to how tidy he is, how hard working he is and how he relates to other Sims. I appreciate that traits are supposed to give the player freedom but really it does the opposite. The fact is that there are some aspects of personality which should be more important than others and there should be something in place that helps the player decide that before delving into other quirks/traits.
I also miss the Sims 2 aspirations and how you could make a Romance Sim which didn't immediately make them super suave, they could be actually quite shy and slobbish which made interactions more difficult.
Anyways apologies for rambling! Hope these help! 😊😊
I apologize in advance because I don't have very good English. I'll do my best to make myself understood.
I love sims 4, but at the moment...I'm boring.
1 # There are too many aspirations.
Aspirations for every career?
2 # More possibilities in life and career choices,
-My sims is computer expert, how does he use his skills? To become the nastiest of hackers? He want to make the world a better place?
-My sims is a politician, will he become a dictator or a liberator?
-My sims policeman is a great vigilante or an infiltrated mafieu ...
- Is my journalist sims honest in his articles?
...
3 # More character traits.
-Anxious / Relaxed, Diplomatic, Courageous / Cowardly, Charismatic, Curious, Enigmatic, Impatient, Intelligent, Dishonest / Honest, Mythomaniac, Pragmatic / Dreamer, Frowning / Smiling, Wise, Serious / Whimsical ...
4 # In the sims 3, there is a lot that I like and that I would like so much to be able to find ...
-Change the size of the land! In sims 4 you can neither modify nor move them! it's missing ...
- Be able to change the texture and patterns of clothes, objects, walls, floors ... hairs and eyes!
-A pack resembling the sims 3 world adventures, with the possibility of learning martial arts, quests proposed by inhabitants or explorers to find relics or discover hidden ones ...
-A pack resembling the Showtime sims 3, become a singer, magician ... And perform in front of an audience!
-Animals! My biggest regret in the sims 4 animals is ... the lack of animals! I liked the horses, trying to catch birds ...
Thank you very much for listening and long live the sims!
- For my gameplay personally, I think that the age scroll settings from the sims 3 would be a great come back, as well.. 2 of my sims are siblings and one is an elder and one is a YA, and I'm on normal lifespan.
- Another would be if the calendar's could be linked through my current households, for example if I was to play with "Nook 1" and it was a Wednesday, if I moved to "Nook 2" ( a whole new family that I have created, say the daughter that's moved out of nook 2 and the parents are nook 1) it would still be the same day, and you could get relationship statuses when new babies are born because well its really hard to get everyone in the same house at the same time and switching between to make sure everyone knows the family.
- Another update that would be really cool is more like and dislike categories. What's your favourite animal? What's your favourite food? I can see a lot of potential with these game mechanics and I am so looking forward to seeing more.
That's really all I'd like in the game. They're quite simple and would be really beneficial for a lot of gamers who may have the same issue. Thanks for reading!
Love Lizzy, a sims 4 gamer <3
Right now mastering a skill is really easy. You are able to master a skill in one week, even less. It should take much more time to master skill. Here are some ideas how to make skilling different, fun, and challenging
1. Add talents and weaknesses - All our sims should have their talents and their weakness. One sim could be better in one activvity while the other not. Sims who have talent could continue past 10 while ysims with weakness wouldn't hit even 10.
2. Like & dislikes, traits andd other factors should affect skilling. A sim who doesn't like video games wouldn't get a skill in playing video games just like that.
3. Add tasks - if your sim wants to level up their skill, there should be tasks they would have to complete in order to get a skill point after they have full bar.
4. Add challenges - in TS3 we have interesting challenges for each skill. I would love to see this return
5. Rework skill tree and add hobby system - It would be great if you entirely reworked current skill tree, make a new skills and make current skills complex. Like writing for example - it could be divided in normal writing and then specific genre writing. Same for painting. Hobby system would then have different categories for skills like arts and crafts, tech, sports.
English is not my native language, so plase forgive mistakes i may make.
I want to start off with saying some general things about the series and my playstyle
When i think of my favorite Sims game, it's clearly the Sims 2. In the Sims 2, i felt like I had a relationship to my Sims; some i liked better, some not so much, and a gameplay session could suddenly turn sad or very great. They promted emotions in me. The most common emotion that Sims 3 and 4 prompted in me is rage quitting (yes, this is a bit embarassing).
First i want to start off with what i really like about the Sims 4:
- its running well. I don't need an open world as long as my saves are not constantly getting corrupted after a few generations. Thank you for that. Really.
- I personally like the graphic better than in the Sims 3. I think the comic like, slightly exaggerrated style fits the Sims much better than the uncanny-valley Sims 3.
And thats kind of all the positives I can say about the Sims 4 compared to its predecessors. It's pretty and it runs well.
I play a mxiture of legacy and story telling, but currently, i am mostly doing legacy challenges like "make the whole neighborhood be populated with relatives" because even with several mods, the game feels repetetive.
I am not a game designer, but i feel these things could maybe be integrated as " core believes" (see point 8)the Sims have about themselves, all their relatives, or random other sims ( like their significant other, their arch enemy...). If a sim has the "core believe" "my family is artistic", they would react negatively to a child studying law.
I feel like they also just need to react more, in a sensible way, to what other sims are doing. You Sim thought his son is a family person and now he has run off with his new flame, leaving two young children behind? Have his mother come over and yell at him, prompting him to either refuse to talk to her again or go back to his family.
Your Sims teengaer is having their first kiss and they did observe it? have the parent lecture them and their flame about "save wohoo" and embarassing them completely, or have the parent try and forbid the relationship because their teen should focus on school. Have the teen react to that with either being glad, that they have accepting, though embarassing, parents, or have them run off with their flame if they can't stand the pressure.
Have some couples be the love of their live, and some just fall out with each other.
Have the sims have more intense and diverse family dynamics. Have siblings hate each other for no reason or be very close. Have a teenager be annoyed that they have to share a room with two younger siblings. Give them more interactions with each other that keep them busy ( like, just an option to have them play with each other instead next to each other. they could just sit and imagine!)
Improve the phases. Make them a challenge, by having your kid decide one day it favourite color is blue and go beg it parents for a blue room, only two decide two days later the favourite color is now yellow and have them hate their blue room. Let Adult sims react to these phases! they could be annoyed, amused or remember their own phases.
If a baby is born, give them a relationship to their relatives. For example, all relatives that are on good terms with their parents could just come over and get them in their relationship panel. It's weird if you can't say hi to your grandpa because he is famous.
Give us players a reason to adopt! Make the family tree acknowledge that the adopted child is an adopted child. Also, don't make them use the adoptive parents genetics for their own kids.
Better genetics. They don't have to be as complex as real live genetics, but just give us some dominant/ recessive treats that for hair and eyecolor. For me personally that would be enough to feel more connected to the sims.
Bring back the "serve dinner" option from the sims 2, where they put individual plates on the table and everyone came and sat down to eat. That made them seem so much like a family.
Let sim kids have ridicoulus arguments and let other, older Sims react to that buy trying to intervene, tell them off, etc, depending on that Sims personality.
Give parenting an overhaul and let sims have some parenting values, like "teens shouldn't wear flipflops/makeup/ jeans" "arguing is healthy for siblings/ is terrible between siblings", "kids should only eat what they want"," every toddler needs to grow up with a lama" etc. Those can be absurd, that would be quite on brand i think.
3.25: Teen- Sim and child Sim get up. I tell them to go use the toilet and shower in separate bathrooms. Parents get up. Parent 1 i tell to go use the downstairs bathroom, parent 2 is supposed to make breakfast.
4.00: after struggling with Parent 1, who got hindered from using the bathroom because some pet was in the way, i notice that the kitchen is empty. A quick search leads me to parent 2 playing on the computer. I send them to the fridge again. They complain that thats not possible. I skip through the household and find that the teen abandoned their command to shower and instead is on the way to get leftovers from the fridge. Why, you ask? because the toddler is autonomously using the potty chair in the hallway, and their sibling apparently cant walk past that.
Meanwhile, the other parent and the child are on their 5th glass of water.
Autonomity is a great idea, but currently its often a hinderance. Give them some useful autonomity please, and stop them from overhydrating themselves everyday please.
I am coming to an end here, i hope i don't come off as rude. ( Sorry, if I do; again, not my first language.)
best wishes!
You go back to playing a world and find many more interactions included with every pack involved or tidied up to get rid of previous bugs. I don't think anyone has done this with a guide. They've only covered a single pack. Nobody has time to remember everything in the Patches and some don't read the notes at all.
Thus we get complaints about things from those who don't use the Forum, don't patch or don't update mods etc.
Family gameplay
All Stages:
Different stages of school:
(Sorry, the Swedish school system is quite complicated)
Transportation:
Work:
Exercise/Workout/Health:
Thank you for listening and for trying to understand!
And sorry once again for the complicated Swedish School System!
- [b]consequences[/b] for actions
- [b]Story progression[/b] for NPCs, I wanna see sims outside my played sims get in relationships, get married, have kids all on their own
- [b]memories[/b], have our sims remember that time something embarrassing happened or that time their partner flirted with someone else and get annoyed again
- Flesh out [b]teens[/b], I miss prom so much! It was one of the best things about being a teen in the sims 3, more things for them to do, more events for teens
- [b]Children’s traits[/b] to be carried on to teens, I hate when I have a high level trait for a kid then at teen level it’s completely gone, a trait over 5 for a kid should start them off at the equivalent trait at a 3 or 4 so your hard work isn’t lost, the way it is now I don’t even bother focusing on my children sims traits because what’s the point
- [b]family gameplay[/b], eg family reunions, taking family group photos, being able to ask aunt/uncle/granny/grandad to babysit
- [b]attraction[/b] to other sims, like how in the sims 3 a notification would appear saying your sim is attracted to a certain person in the area
- More [b]autonomy[/b] for sims, like my partner would ask my sim to be gf/bf or ask them to marry them (even if they’re in the same household already would be a plus)
- [b]Cheekiness/character[/b], one of the things I really miss from previous sims packs was the little jokes or innuendos or just character from the game itself
- [b]Traits & aspirations[/b], I’d like more traits and for them to have more of an impact on my sim, I’d love sliders for basic traits like shy vs outgoing, active vs lazy. Etc just like sims 2 then we can add 2 or 3 more traits relating to hobbies/lifestyles to create a more dynamic sim, more aspiration options would be nice
- [b]Likes & dislikes[/b] needs to be fleshed out, not all hobbies are on the likes/dislikes eg knitting isn’t there