I am thinking starting a new thread to start over may have been a good idea, given the controversy that arose. It may cause confusion and/or reluctance for potential new signees.
Having said that, you can definitely keep me on the list.
It has also come to my attention that I never gave a reason for my signing.
I am uncertain how to state my disatisfaction and feel I can only do so by explaining myself from the beginning, which is why I've been reluctant to state my reasons from the get-go.
Warning: Long-winded post to follow:
I played the Original The Sims, and I loved it due to it being something entirely new. It was a game that allowed me to play with life in a way I never imagined. It taught me to face and meet challenges that made the overall experience rewarding. Every EP introduced something entirely new and I installed every EP with great anticipation.
When 2 came out, I felt like everything I loved about The Sims had been greatly fleshed out. A satisfying range of life stages was added, and Sims could create and leave behind their legacies, generation after generation. On the first day, I was able to use SimCity 4 to create my own worlds so I could play in my own creation. This was an added bonus. BodyShop also installed with the base game, allowing me to create my own re-colours and express my creativity to further aid me in creating my own vision of the game (story) I wanted to play out. The first day I played, the most exciting moment for me was when my sim received a phone call and they spoke on the phone until their social was full. It was a small thing, but it was a step in the right direction. S4 even removed that.
For the first time, I was able to place lots, move lots, and remove lots. I was able to use terrain tools to create a basement and add windows to it with the foundation tool. The basic staples of the carppol still existed. Wants and fears existed, aspirations were a new concept, and it added more personality to my sims. Overall, both 1 and 2 had a certain charm to them that I can't really put into words. The added bonus to both games was that I could rotate and play all of my sims without the fear of losing any progress I made. The game never tampered with my creations.
All I can really say is they felt like a simulation game. Both good and bad things happened. The consequences and fears of the daily dangers my sims could possibly face added an extra sense of excitement to the game and it allowed me to play in an alternate universe. I could add characters from my stories, my favourite games, shows, movies, etc, and I could give them life in this strange made-up world.
When 3 came out, I was disappointed. At the time, story progression was aggressive and couldn't be properly turned off. It took almost half a year until I was able to create a world. I still bought WA and enjoyed the questing side of it though. But my enjoyment of WA was more or less due to those quests being a side-quest rather than the main focus of the game. That was satisfactory to me, but I couldn't successfuly rotate through my sims and I ran into major issues with China's poor design that resulted in lag. I also ran into issues when my sims returned home from vacation and I wound up with strange dopplegangers and invisible sims, rendering my save practically useless. I've since then learned it was an easy fix to avoid those issues. No mods required.
It was then that I decided I would never play a poorly designed game again. I would not play a game that forced me to use mods to play it the way I had grown accustomed to, and I would not play a game that focused more on paid content than the game itself.
I went through enough of that near the end of 2. The negligence started near the end there and only became worse. I did not want a repeat. That was how I felt at the time.
So, where does that put me with 4?
I'll tell you. I put in over 1,000 hours on the PC, and when it came out for Mac, I switched and put in over another 1,000 hours. I paid full price for the Deluxe version of the base game under the surmise that it was a triple-A game. I bought all the SP's, GPs, and EPs up to GT. I believe I have developed enough info to know exactly how I feel about this game.
I was put off at first with the town map, but I decided to give it a chance anyway. I am still put off by it
I was surprised when my first baby turned into a child. I am still put off by it.
I was, and still am, put off that babies are nothing but objects.
I was, and still am, disappointed by the way foundations affect all buildings on a lot.
I was, and still am, disappointed with the limited size of the world(s).
I was surprised when I discovered the incredible limitations involving recolouring an object. I am still put off by it.
I led myself to believe much of the things I desired would eventually be integrated. It's been 2 years. I don't believe this anymore.
Why did I buy it?
I purchased 4 because I was told they decided to focus more on the sims themselves.
I was told I could play my way.
I was led to believe this game had potential.
I was told they were going back to their roots.
I was led to believe everything that was missing would eventually be added and/or improved.
I was led to believe rotational play was once again possible.
I was led to believe they would take care to offer a more stable game and more responsible development.
Why do I feel it's beyond redemption now?
To put it bluntly, I played it and saw for myself that everything I believed was not true.
Why have I decided I will no longer invest in this game?
We are a few GPs, 2 EPs, and several SPs in. Nothing has changed regarding core game play.
introducing oversized objects does not compensate for everything that is missing, and they are completely useless to me in a game I felt should have been a simulation.
The venues are locked to behave as a micro-world, disallowing any freedom of creativity or opennes. All lots are treated this way. It is by design. This leaves me with little faith that anything of any real value regarding gameplay can be added. A lot can not be treated as a dual-purpose lot, leaving us with the inablity to have a retail/home lot, for example.
The neighbourhoods are too small and only 2 have been added in two years, offering a small smidgen of extra space for all those sims in rotation I'd like to play. This would have been easily remedied if it were possible to offer us a way to create our own, but I feel this will not happen, and I feel it is by design.
They release venue after venue in an attempt to offer new gameplay, adding to the clastrophic sense of the micro-hoods that are already too small.
They offered party invites in a patch that do not work properly. They have neither been modified nor fixed since they were introduced. I do not want them if they have no intention to fix them.
All GTW offered was more tasks and goals, a feature I already dislike immensely; most of which is broken.
All GT offered was groups, and that became old real fast. It got to a point where it became annoying rather than revolutional.
OR offered bug collection, but it can only be done in OR because they can not add new functionality to existing neighbourhoods and I began to believe this is true for everything they add unless the functionality is tied to a venue (by design).
Almost every second month, they broke something in the game that broke my immersion, leaving me unable to play due to me having to put my game on hold until it was fixed—Live Service, my foot.
Nearly everything they have introduced is either broken or it doesn't work properly, and I am left with little faith that it will ever be addressed.
Culling and random romances have made the game feel unnatural and like a joke to me.
Sneaking in relationship culling in a patch left me scrambling to repair relationships and wondering why my sims kept having to re-introduce themselves. Sorry, but this is not a great experience. Nor does it make me feel like they're trying to deliver a great game.
They introduce features. Then they remove them, expressing a total lack of respect regarding the players.
They introduce features that introduce limitations, like the TV scrambling effect that forces me to play at a speed that feels unnatural to me.
They completely ignore those who play rotationally, by treating our sims as invaluable objects whose sole purpose is to make the neighbourhood feel alive. I can only watch the same sims do pushups in front of my active sims home all day until it totally does not feel alive. To top it off, they are gaining skills I do not want them to gain when I'm not playing them, completely breaking all the effort I put into moulding their personailies into something tangeably relatable to who I created them to be.
They completely ignore the toddler fans and continuously promise that they are looking into things I feel they are not looking into.
The bogus surrounding emotional buffs make all my sims behave the same, and while I'm at it, what's the point of making an evil or mean sim? They only smile and express friendly interactions the moment I turn my back on them.
In short, this game feels like a sham to me. It is a glossy coating of paint that is designed to hide a highy flawed base. It is not a simulation of any kind. Everything is too happy, too clean, and too big—bigger than life, I guess.
The only consequences I run into are those introduced by the monthly patches that add more frustration than anything else to my play style.
I admit the last few SPs had some interesting objects that really looked great, but then I had to remind myself exactly how I felt about the game overall, and that temptation was easily overridden. Those objects will not fix nor change a single thing that is wrong with this game. I can only imagine how many times I would use the restaurants—maybe once or twice before I remembered just how disatisfied I am with the overall game simply by trying to play it without getting frustrated by the developer's negligence regarding everything else this game is missing; never mind the things that need fixing.
Like I said, I haven't played this game in months and I have no intention to play it again. When I am told there is a mod or that I can just use the flaws in my stories as a way to work around the underlying issues, I am left scratching my head and biting my tongue.
Well, plum, if I have to jump through hoops for an unfished game that doesn't cater to me at all from the get-go due to the possibility that it may have potential, I am led to believe that I might as well jump through those hoops and play S3, which feels like far less effort and is actually enjoyable, imo.
It is a shame that this franchise has no competition to keep it alive. I am tired of playing S2 and would have loved to move on, but I can't in good conscience call this game a sims game. It has no simulation elements at all and I get better satisfaction from Animal Crossing than I do from Sims 4.
What this game needs to bring back is CAW, either a sytem like S2 or CASt for recolouring, terrain tools, all lifestages, more realistic objects that aren't restricted to the modular nature introduced with S4. It needs to offer freedom and individuality to express myself like the previous games. The open world has grown on me and as much as I disliked it at first, I feel it is far superior to this venue/lot driven world they've created in its stead. Full lifestages need to return and emotions need to take a flipping hike. Multitasking has left me scratching my head as to why it's what drives this game yet sims can't socialize while fishing? Sounds fishy to me, mind the pun. All I see and hear is lies, half-truths, and poor behaviour by the representatives. This all needs to change.
Now you know why I've held back from stating my opinion. No matter how I put it, it makes me sound angry.
*end of rant*
Well said!
And somewhat off-topic, but I searched my entire house for Animal Crossing just last week because I desperately wanted to play a game but S4 was doing nothing for me. I've gotten really into Animal Crossing these last few days and I'm enjoying it immensely.
@kremesch73 :
That was so beautifully written - honest and factual. I think you nailed all the concerns and dislikes in one post!
Currently, I am switching between S3 and S4. I have horrible lag and loading time in S3, so when I start to feel annoyed, I switch to S4. My favourite world in S3 is Midnight Hollow, and while building a home is time consuming and the Sims are not as customizable, I still have the opportunity to change the fabrics and colours of everything! Plus there are toddlers and activities and rich gameplay... For S4, I love the customization in create-a-sim and the ease of building a home (but what is with the foundation tool? (I want ground floor and raised flooring at the same time!) Gameplay is alright, but I stay away from the Doctor career - too glitchy.
I really miss the open world concept. I was hoping that we would have open neighbourhoods in S4 at the very least. Instead, we get - "Mom, can I go next door to Johnny's house? Sure sweetie, be back for dinner!" (queue the 2 min loading screen) - for EVERY lot!
Now that I'm mad about that again, I'm off to play S3 until the lag gets to me....sigh.
I am thinking starting a new thread to start over may have been a good idea, given the controversy that arose. It may cause confusion and/or reluctance for potential new signees.
Having said that, you can definitely keep me on the list.
It has also come to my attention that I never gave a reason for my signing.
I am uncertain how to state my disatisfaction and feel I can only do so by explaining myself from the beginning, which is why I've been reluctant to state my reasons from the get-go.
Warning: Long-winded post to follow:
I played the Original The Sims, and I loved it due to it being something entirely new. It was a game that allowed me to play with life in a way I never imagined. It taught me to face and meet challenges that made the overall experience rewarding. Every EP introduced something entirely new and I installed every EP with great anticipation.
When 2 came out, I felt like everything I loved about The Sims had been greatly fleshed out. A satisfying range of life stages was added, and Sims could create and leave behind their legacies, generation after generation. On the first day, I was able to use SimCity 4 to create my own worlds so I could play in my own creation. This was an added bonus. BodyShop also installed with the base game, allowing me to create my own re-colours and express my creativity to further aid me in creating my own vision of the game (story) I wanted to play out. The first day I played, the most exciting moment for me was when my sim received a phone call and they spoke on the phone until their social was full. It was a small thing, but it was a step in the right direction. S4 even removed that.
For the first time, I was able to place lots, move lots, and remove lots. I was able to use terrain tools to create a basement and add windows to it with the foundation tool. The basic staples of the carppol still existed. Wants and fears existed, aspirations were a new concept, and it added more personality to my sims. Overall, both 1 and 2 had a certain charm to them that I can't really put into words. The added bonus to both games was that I could rotate and play all of my sims without the fear of losing any progress I made. The game never tampered with my creations.
All I can really say is they felt like a simulation game. Both good and bad things happened. The consequences and fears of the daily dangers my sims could possibly face added an extra sense of excitement to the game and it allowed me to play in an alternate universe. I could add characters from my stories, my favourite games, shows, movies, etc, and I could give them life in this strange made-up world.
When 3 came out, I was disappointed. At the time, story progression was aggressive and couldn't be properly turned off. It took almost half a year until I was able to create a world. I still bought WA and enjoyed the questing side of it though. But my enjoyment of WA was more or less due to those quests being a side-quest rather than the main focus of the game. That was satisfactory to me, but I couldn't successfuly rotate through my sims and I ran into major issues with China's poor design that resulted in lag. I also ran into issues when my sims returned home from vacation and I wound up with strange dopplegangers and invisible sims, rendering my save practically useless. I've since then learned it was an easy fix to avoid those issues. No mods required.
It was then that I decided I would never play a poorly designed game again. I would not play a game that forced me to use mods to play it the way I had grown accustomed to, and I would not play a game that focused more on paid content than the game itself.
I went through enough of that near the end of 2. The negligence started near the end there and only became worse. I did not want a repeat. That was how I felt at the time.
So, where does that put me with 4?
I'll tell you. I put in over 1,000 hours on the PC, and when it came out for Mac, I switched and put in over another 1,000 hours. I paid full price for the Deluxe version of the base game under the surmise that it was a triple-A game. I bought all the SP's, GPs, and EPs up to GT. I believe I have developed enough info to know exactly how I feel about this game.
I was put off at first with the town map, but I decided to give it a chance anyway. I am still put off by it
I was surprised when my first baby turned into a child. I am still put off by it.
I was, and still am, put off that babies are nothing but objects.
I was, and still am, disappointed by the way foundations affect all buildings on a lot.
I was, and still am, disappointed with the limited size of the world(s).
I was surprised when I discovered the incredible limitations involving recolouring an object. I am still put off by it.
I led myself to believe much of the things I desired would eventually be integrated. It's been 2 years. I don't believe this anymore.
Why did I buy it?
I purchased 4 because I was told they decided to focus more on the sims themselves.
I was told I could play my way.
I was led to believe this game had potential.
I was told they were going back to their roots.
I was led to believe everything that was missing would eventually be added and/or improved.
I was led to believe rotational play was once again possible.
I was led to believe they would take care to offer a more stable game and more responsible development.
Why do I feel it's beyond redemption now?
To put it bluntly, I played it and saw for myself that everything I believed was not true.
Why have I decided I will no longer invest in this game?
We are a few GPs, 2 EPs, and several SPs in. Nothing has changed regarding core game play.
introducing oversized objects does not compensate for everything that is missing, and they are completely useless to me in a game I felt should have been a simulation.
The venues are locked to behave as a micro-world, disallowing any freedom of creativity or opennes. All lots are treated this way. It is by design. This leaves me with little faith that anything of any real value regarding gameplay can be added. A lot can not be treated as a dual-purpose lot, leaving us with the inablity to have a retail/home lot, for example.
The neighbourhoods are too small and only 2 have been added in two years, offering a small smidgen of extra space for all those sims in rotation I'd like to play. This would have been easily remedied if it were possible to offer us a way to create our own, but I feel this will not happen, and I feel it is by design.
They release venue after venue in an attempt to offer new gameplay, adding to the clastrophic sense of the micro-hoods that are already too small.
They offered party invites in a patch that do not work properly. They have neither been modified nor fixed since they were introduced. I do not want them if they have no intention to fix them.
All GTW offered was more tasks and goals, a feature I already dislike immensely; most of which is broken.
All GT offered was groups, and that became old real fast. It got to a point where it became annoying rather than revolutional.
OR offered bug collection, but it can only be done in OR because they can not add new functionality to existing neighbourhoods and I began to believe this is true for everything they add unless the functionality is tied to a venue (by design).
Almost every second month, they broke something in the game that broke my immersion, leaving me unable to play due to me having to put my game on hold until it was fixed—Live Service, my foot.
Nearly everything they have introduced is either broken or it doesn't work properly, and I am left with little faith that it will ever be addressed.
Culling and random romances have made the game feel unnatural and like a joke to me.
Sneaking in relationship culling in a patch left me scrambling to repair relationships and wondering why my sims kept having to re-introduce themselves. Sorry, but this is not a great experience. Nor does it make me feel like they're trying to deliver a great game.
They introduce features. Then they remove them, expressing a total lack of respect regarding the players.
They introduce features that introduce limitations, like the TV scrambling effect that forces me to play at a speed that feels unnatural to me.
They completely ignore those who play rotationally, by treating our sims as invaluable objects whose sole purpose is to make the neighbourhood feel alive. I can only watch the same sims do pushups in front of my active sims home all day until it totally does not feel alive. To top it off, they are gaining skills I do not want them to gain when I'm not playing them, completely breaking all the effort I put into moulding their personailies into something tangeably relatable to who I created them to be.
They completely ignore the toddler fans and continuously promise that they are looking into things I feel they are not looking into.
The bogus surrounding emotional buffs make all my sims behave the same, and while I'm at it, what's the point of making an evil or mean sim? They only smile and express friendly interactions the moment I turn my back on them.
In short, this game feels like a sham to me. It is a glossy coating of paint that is designed to hide a highy flawed base. It is not a simulation of any kind. Everything is too happy, too clean, and too big—bigger than life, I guess.
The only consequences I run into are those introduced by the monthly patches that add more frustration than anything else to my play style.
I admit the last few SPs had some interesting objects that really looked great, but then I had to remind myself exactly how I felt about the game overall, and that temptation was easily overridden. Those objects will not fix nor change a single thing that is wrong with this game. I can only imagine how many times I would use the restaurants—maybe once or twice before I remembered just how disatisfied I am with the overall game simply by trying to play it without getting frustrated by the developer's negligence regarding everything else this game is missing; never mind the things that need fixing.
Like I said, I haven't played this game in months and I have no intention to play it again. When I am told there is a mod or that I can just use the flaws in my stories as a way to work around the underlying issues, I am left scratching my head and biting my tongue.
Well, plum, if I have to jump through hoops for an unfished game that doesn't cater to me at all from the get-go due to the possibility that it may have potential, I am led to believe that I might as well jump through those hoops and play S3, which feels like far less effort and is actually enjoyable, imo.
It is a shame that this franchise has no competition to keep it alive. I am tired of playing S2 and would have loved to move on, but I can't in good conscience call this game a sims game. It has no simulation elements at all and I get better satisfaction from Animal Crossing than I do from Sims 4.
What this game needs to bring back is CAW, either a sytem like S2 or CASt for recolouring, terrain tools, all lifestages, more realistic objects that aren't restricted to the modular nature introduced with S4. It needs to offer freedom and individuality to express myself like the previous games. The open world has grown on me and as much as I disliked it at first, I feel it is far superior to this venue/lot driven world they've created in its stead. Full lifestages need to return and emotions need to take a flipping hike. Multitasking has left me scratching my head as to why it's what drives this game yet sims can't socialize while fishing? Sounds fishy to me, mind the pun. All I see and hear is lies, half-truths, and poor behaviour by the representatives. This all needs to change.
Now you know why I've held back from stating my opinion. No matter how I put it, it makes me sound angry.
*end of rant*
Well said!
And somewhat off-topic, but I searched my entire house for Animal Crossing just last week because I desperately wanted to play a game but S4 was doing nothing for me. I've gotten really into Animal Crossing these last few days and I'm enjoying it immensely.
I went looking for my ancient sega dreamcast just to play a game called Fur Fighters. A game I love with all my heart. Or I could play Earthbound again on my Wii U lol which is another game I can play over and over again. Or I can whip out the Gamecube and Finally finish Luigis mansion TeeHee so many choices lol but I still go back to TS3 when I crave that life simulation play.
"Bada su the gorn bada su the brawn bada bady oda aba donk donk donk gerbits gerbits vo gerbits".
Sign me up, please. The Sims 4 is ungodly boring, even with all those DLCs. There are so many things missing in this game. It has felt incomplete and rushed since Day 1. It had the potential to be a fantastic game, but it's not. It's mediocre. The Sims 2 is way more fun than 4, and it's so old, you'd expect it to be the opposite. Major disappointment of a game.
I am thinking starting a new thread to start over may have been a good idea, given the controversy that arose. It may cause confusion and/or reluctance for potential new signees.
Having said that, you can definitely keep me on the list.
It has also come to my attention that I never gave a reason for my signing.
I am uncertain how to state my disatisfaction and feel I can only do so by explaining myself from the beginning, which is why I've been reluctant to state my reasons from the get-go.
Warning: Long-winded post to follow:
I played the Original The Sims, and I loved it due to it being something entirely new. It was a game that allowed me to play with life in a way I never imagined. It taught me to face and meet challenges that made the overall experience rewarding. Every EP introduced something entirely new and I installed every EP with great anticipation.
When 2 came out, I felt like everything I loved about The Sims had been greatly fleshed out. A satisfying range of life stages was added, and Sims could create and leave behind their legacies, generation after generation. On the first day, I was able to use SimCity 4 to create my own worlds so I could play in my own creation. This was an added bonus. BodyShop also installed with the base game, allowing me to create my own re-colours and express my creativity to further aid me in creating my own vision of the game (story) I wanted to play out. The first day I played, the most exciting moment for me was when my sim received a phone call and they spoke on the phone until their social was full. It was a small thing, but it was a step in the right direction. S4 even removed that.
For the first time, I was able to place lots, move lots, and remove lots. I was able to use terrain tools to create a basement and add windows to it with the foundation tool. The basic staples of the carppol still existed. Wants and fears existed, aspirations were a new concept, and it added more personality to my sims. Overall, both 1 and 2 had a certain charm to them that I can't really put into words. The added bonus to both games was that I could rotate and play all of my sims without the fear of losing any progress I made. The game never tampered with my creations.
All I can really say is they felt like a simulation game. Both good and bad things happened. The consequences and fears of the daily dangers my sims could possibly face added an extra sense of excitement to the game and it allowed me to play in an alternate universe. I could add characters from my stories, my favourite games, shows, movies, etc, and I could give them life in this strange made-up world.
When 3 came out, I was disappointed. At the time, story progression was aggressive and couldn't be properly turned off. It took almost half a year until I was able to create a world. I still bought WA and enjoyed the questing side of it though. But my enjoyment of WA was more or less due to those quests being a side-quest rather than the main focus of the game. That was satisfactory to me, but I couldn't successfuly rotate through my sims and I ran into major issues with China's poor design that resulted in lag. I also ran into issues when my sims returned home from vacation and I wound up with strange dopplegangers and invisible sims, rendering my save practically useless. I've since then learned it was an easy fix to avoid those issues. No mods required.
It was then that I decided I would never play a poorly designed game again. I would not play a game that forced me to use mods to play it the way I had grown accustomed to, and I would not play a game that focused more on paid content than the game itself.
I went through enough of that near the end of 2. The negligence started near the end there and only became worse. I did not want a repeat. That was how I felt at the time.
So, where does that put me with 4?
I'll tell you. I put in over 1,000 hours on the PC, and when it came out for Mac, I switched and put in over another 1,000 hours. I paid full price for the Deluxe version of the base game under the surmise that it was a triple-A game. I bought all the SP's, GPs, and EPs up to GT. I believe I have developed enough info to know exactly how I feel about this game.
I was put off at first with the town map, but I decided to give it a chance anyway. I am still put off by it
I was surprised when my first baby turned into a child. I am still put off by it.
I was, and still am, put off that babies are nothing but objects.
I was, and still am, disappointed by the way foundations affect all buildings on a lot.
I was, and still am, disappointed with the limited size of the world(s).
I was surprised when I discovered the incredible limitations involving recolouring an object. I am still put off by it.
I led myself to believe much of the things I desired would eventually be integrated. It's been 2 years. I don't believe this anymore.
Why did I buy it?
I purchased 4 because I was told they decided to focus more on the sims themselves.
I was told I could play my way.
I was led to believe this game had potential.
I was told they were going back to their roots.
I was led to believe everything that was missing would eventually be added and/or improved.
I was led to believe rotational play was once again possible.
I was led to believe they would take care to offer a more stable game and more responsible development.
Why do I feel it's beyond redemption now?
To put it bluntly, I played it and saw for myself that everything I believed was not true.
Why have I decided I will no longer invest in this game?
We are a few GPs, 2 EPs, and several SPs in. Nothing has changed regarding core game play.
introducing oversized objects does not compensate for everything that is missing, and they are completely useless to me in a game I felt should have been a simulation.
The venues are locked to behave as a micro-world, disallowing any freedom of creativity or opennes. All lots are treated this way. It is by design. This leaves me with little faith that anything of any real value regarding gameplay can be added. A lot can not be treated as a dual-purpose lot, leaving us with the inablity to have a retail/home lot, for example.
The neighbourhoods are too small and only 2 have been added in two years, offering a small smidgen of extra space for all those sims in rotation I'd like to play. This would have been easily remedied if it were possible to offer us a way to create our own, but I feel this will not happen, and I feel it is by design.
They release venue after venue in an attempt to offer new gameplay, adding to the clastrophic sense of the micro-hoods that are already too small.
They offered party invites in a patch that do not work properly. They have neither been modified nor fixed since they were introduced. I do not want them if they have no intention to fix them.
All GTW offered was more tasks and goals, a feature I already dislike immensely; most of which is broken.
All GT offered was groups, and that became old real fast. It got to a point where it became annoying rather than revolutional.
OR offered bug collection, but it can only be done in OR because they can not add new functionality to existing neighbourhoods and I began to believe this is true for everything they add unless the functionality is tied to a venue (by design).
Almost every second month, they broke something in the game that broke my immersion, leaving me unable to play due to me having to put my game on hold until it was fixed—Live Service, my foot.
Nearly everything they have introduced is either broken or it doesn't work properly, and I am left with little faith that it will ever be addressed.
Culling and random romances have made the game feel unnatural and like a joke to me.
Sneaking in relationship culling in a patch left me scrambling to repair relationships and wondering why my sims kept having to re-introduce themselves. Sorry, but this is not a great experience. Nor does it make me feel like they're trying to deliver a great game.
They introduce features. Then they remove them, expressing a total lack of respect regarding the players.
They introduce features that introduce limitations, like the TV scrambling effect that forces me to play at a speed that feels unnatural to me.
They completely ignore those who play rotationally, by treating our sims as invaluable objects whose sole purpose is to make the neighbourhood feel alive. I can only watch the same sims do pushups in front of my active sims home all day until it totally does not feel alive. To top it off, they are gaining skills I do not want them to gain when I'm not playing them, completely breaking all the effort I put into moulding their personailies into something tangeably relatable to who I created them to be.
They completely ignore the toddler fans and continuously promise that they are looking into things I feel they are not looking into.
The bogus surrounding emotional buffs make all my sims behave the same, and while I'm at it, what's the point of making an evil or mean sim? They only smile and express friendly interactions the moment I turn my back on them.
In short, this game feels like a sham to me. It is a glossy coating of paint that is designed to hide a highy flawed base. It is not a simulation of any kind. Everything is too happy, too clean, and too big—bigger than life, I guess.
The only consequences I run into are those introduced by the monthly patches that add more frustration than anything else to my play style.
I admit the last few SPs had some interesting objects that really looked great, but then I had to remind myself exactly how I felt about the game overall, and that temptation was easily overridden. Those objects will not fix nor change a single thing that is wrong with this game. I can only imagine how many times I would use the restaurants—maybe once or twice before I remembered just how disatisfied I am with the overall game simply by trying to play it without getting frustrated by the developer's negligence regarding everything else this game is missing; never mind the things that need fixing.
Like I said, I haven't played this game in months and I have no intention to play it again. When I am told there is a mod or that I can just use the flaws in my stories as a way to work around the underlying issues, I am left scratching my head and biting my tongue.
Well, plum, if I have to jump through hoops for an unfished game that doesn't cater to me at all from the get-go due to the possibility that it may have potential, I am led to believe that I might as well jump through those hoops and play S3, which feels like far less effort and is actually enjoyable, imo.
It is a shame that this franchise has no competition to keep it alive. I am tired of playing S2 and would have loved to move on, but I can't in good conscience call this game a sims game. It has no simulation elements at all and I get better satisfaction from Animal Crossing than I do from Sims 4.
What this game needs to bring back is CAW, either a sytem like S2 or CASt for recolouring, terrain tools, all lifestages, more realistic objects that aren't restricted to the modular nature introduced with S4. It needs to offer freedom and individuality to express myself like the previous games. The open world has grown on me and as much as I disliked it at first, I feel it is far superior to this venue/lot driven world they've created in its stead. Full lifestages need to return and emotions need to take a flipping hike. Multitasking has left me scratching my head as to why it's what drives this game yet sims can't socialize while fishing? Sounds fishy to me, mind the pun. All I see and hear is lies, half-truths, and poor behaviour by the representatives. This all needs to change.
Now you know why I've held back from stating my opinion. No matter how I put it, it makes me sound angry.
*end of rant*
Make sure to check this post out. @SimGuruDrake@SimGuruDaniel@SimGuruHouts@SimGuruGraham It might give the team a few ideas of why Simmers can't quite understand the vision of the Sims 4 yet and why Simmers feel like there isn't enough room on maps for the addition of packs.
“Although the world is full of suffering, it is full also of the overcoming of it.” –Helen Keller
Put me on the list again. Loved Sims1, 2 and 3. But Sims4 is more of a side game rather than a continuation of the main series - and has nothing that appeals to me - I won't spend any money on it.
You can put my name back on again I still feel like this game is unfinished and lacks so much content and depth, and I will not be purchasing any game 'til I feel like that is fixed (and I dream that one day it will be fixed).
Couldn't we have a thread about happy and satisfied players like myself? I love how the game is processing, and I love all the free stuff and updates we have.
You could start one? But I believe there already are threads like that. This thread just isn't for you but does every thread have to be?
No, and most threads obviously are NOT for me? But I am allowed to read them, aren't I? This was just a bit of a sigh from my simsheart. Sorry if it offended you.
I am thinking starting a new thread to start over may have been a good idea, given the controversy that arose. It may cause confusion and/or reluctance for potential new signees.
Having said that, you can definitely keep me on the list.
It has also come to my attention that I never gave a reason for my signing.
I am uncertain how to state my dissatisfaction and feel I can only do so by explaining myself from the beginning, which is why I've been reluctant to state my reasons from the get-go.
Warning: Long-winded post to follow:
I played the Original The Sims, and I loved it due to it being something entirely new. It was a game that allowed me to play with life in a way I never imagined. It taught me to face and meet challenges that made the overall experience rewarding. Every EP introduced something entirely new and I installed every EP with great anticipation.
When 2 came out, I felt like everything I loved about The Sims had been greatly fleshed out. A satisfying range of life stages was added, and Sims could create and leave behind their legacies, generation after generation. On the first day, I was able to use SimCity 4 to create my own worlds so I could play in my own creation. This was an added bonus. BodyShop also installed with the base game, allowing me to create my own re-colours and express my creativity to further aid me in creating my own vision of the game (story) I wanted to play out. The first day I played, the most exciting moment for me was when my sim received a phone call and they spoke on the phone until their social was full. It was a small thing, but it was a step in the right direction. S4 even removed that.
For the first time, I was able to place lots, move lots, and remove lots. I was able to use terrain tools to create a basement and add windows to it with the foundation tool. The basic staples of the carpool still existed. Wants and fears existed, aspirations were a new concept, and it added more personality to my sims. Overall, both 1 and 2 had a certain charm to them that I can't really put into words. The added bonus to both games was that I could rotate and play all of my sims without the fear of losing any progress I made. The game never tampered with my creations.
All I can really say is they felt like a simulation game. Both good and bad things happened. The consequences and fears of the daily dangers my sims could possibly face added an extra sense of excitement to the game and it allowed me to play in an alternate universe. I could add characters from my stories, my favourite games, shows, movies, etc, and I could give them life in this strange made-up world.
When 3 came out, I was disappointed. At the time, story progression was aggressive and couldn't be properly turned off. It took almost half a year until I was able to create a world. I still bought WA and enjoyed the questing side of it though. But my enjoyment of WA was more or less due to those quests being a side-quest rather than the main focus of the game. That was satisfactory to me, but I couldn't successfully rotate through my sims and I ran into major issues with China's poor design that resulted in lag. I also ran into issues when my sims returned home from vacation and I wound up with strange doppelgangers and invisible sims, rendering my save practically useless. I've since then learned it was an easy fix to avoid those issues. No mods required.
It was then that I decided I would never play a poorly designed game again. I would not play a game that forced me to use mods to play it the way I had grown accustomed to, and I would not play a game that focused more on paid content than the game itself.
I went through enough of that near the end of 2. The negligence started near the end there and only became worse. I did not want a repeat. That was how I felt at the time.
So, where does that put me with 4?
I'll tell you. I put in over 1,000 hours on the PC, and when it came out for Mac, I switched and put in over another 1,000 hours. I paid full price for the Deluxe version of the base game under the surmise that it was a triple-A game. I bought all the SP's, GPs, and EPs up to GT. I believe I have developed enough info to know exactly how I feel about this game.
I was put off at first with the town map, but I decided to give it a chance anyway. I am still put off by it
I was surprised when my first baby turned into a child. I am still put off by it.
I was, and still am, put off that babies are nothing but objects.
I was, and still am, disappointed by the way foundations affect all buildings on a lot.
I was, and still am, disappointed with the limited size of the world(s).
I was surprised when I discovered the incredible limitations involving recolouring an object. I am still put off by it.
I led myself to believe much of the things I desired would eventually be integrated. It's been 2 years. I don't believe this anymore.
Why did I buy it?
I purchased 4 because I was told they decided to focus more on the sims themselves.
I was told I could play my way.
I was led to believe this game had potential.
I was told they were going back to their roots.
I was led to believe everything that was missing would eventually be added and/or improved.
I was led to believe rotational play was once again possible.
I was led to believe they would take care to offer a more stable game and more responsible development.
Why do I feel it's beyond redemption now?
To put it bluntly, I played it and saw for myself that everything I believed was not true.
Why have I decided I will no longer invest in this game?
We are a few GPs, 2 EPs, and several SPs in. Nothing has changed regarding core game play.
introducing oversized objects does not compensate for everything that is missing, and they are completely useless to me in a game I felt should have been a simulation.
The venues are locked to behave as a micro-world, disallowing any freedom of creativity or openness. All lots are treated this way. It is by design. This leaves me with little faith that anything of any real value regarding gameplay can be added. A lot can not be treated as a dual-purpose lot, leaving us with the inability to have a retail/home lot, for example.
The neighbourhoods are too small and only 2 have been added in two years, offering a small smidgen of extra space for all those sims in rotation I'd like to play. This would have been easily remedied if it were possible to offer us a way to create our own, but I feel this will not happen, and I feel it is by design.
They release venue after venue in an attempt to offer new gameplay, adding to the claustrophobic sense of the micro-hoods that are already too small.
They offered party invites in a patch that do not work properly. They have neither been modified nor fixed since they were introduced. I do not want them if they have no intention to fix them.
All GTW offered was more tasks and goals, a feature I already dislike immensely; most of which is broken.
All GT offered was groups, and that became old real fast. It got to a point where it became annoying rather than revolutionary.
OR offered bug collection, but it can only be done in OR because they can not add new functionality to existing neighbourhoods and I began to believe this is true for everything they add unless the functionality is tied to a venue (by design).
Almost every second month, they broke something in the game that broke my immersion, leaving me unable to play due to me having to put my game on hold until it was fixed—Live Service, my foot.
Nearly everything they have introduced is either broken or it doesn't work properly, and I am left with little faith that it will ever be addressed.
Culling and random romances have made the game feel unnatural and like a joke to me.
Sneaking in relationship culling in a patch left me scrambling to repair relationships and wondering why my sims kept having to re-introduce themselves. Sorry, but this is not a great experience. Nor does it make me feel like they're trying to deliver a great game.
They introduce features. Then they remove them, expressing a total lack of respect regarding the players.
They introduce features that introduce limitations, like the TV scrambling effect that forces me to play at a speed that feels unnatural to me.
They completely ignore those who play rotationally, by treating our sims as invaluable objects whose sole purpose is to make the neighbourhood feel alive. I can only watch the same sims do pushups in front of my active sims home all day until it totally does not feel alive. To top it off, they are gaining skills I do not want them to gain when I'm not playing them, completely breaking all the effort I put into moulding their personalities into something tangibly relatable to who I created them to be.
They completely ignore the toddler fans and continuously promise that they are looking into things I feel they are not looking into.
The bogus surrounding emotional buffs make all my sims behave the same, and while I'm at it, what's the point of making an evil or mean sim? They only smile and express friendly interactions the moment I turn my back on them.
In short, this game feels like a sham to me. It is a glossy coating of paint that is designed to hide a highly flawed base. It is not a simulation of any kind. Everything is too happy, too clean, and too big—bigger than life, I guess.
The only consequences I run into are those introduced by the monthly patches that add more frustration than anything else to my play style.
I admit the last few SPs had some interesting objects that really looked great, but then I had to remind myself exactly how I felt about the game overall, and that temptation was easily overridden. Those objects will not fix nor change a single thing that is wrong with this game. I can only imagine how many times I would use the restaurants—maybe once or twice before I remembered just how dissatisfied I am with the overall game simply by trying to play it without getting frustrated by the developer's negligence regarding everything else this game is missing; never mind the things that need fixing.
Like I said, I haven't played this game in months and I have no intention to play it again. When I am told there is a mod or that I can just use the flaws in my stories as a way to work around the underlying issues, I am left scratching my head and biting my tongue.
Well, plum, if I have to jump through hoops for an unfinished game that doesn't cater to me at all from the get-go due to the possibility that it may have potential, I am led to believe that I might as well jump through those hoops and play S3, which feels like far less effort and is actually enjoyable, imo.
It is a shame that this franchise has no competition to keep it alive. I am tired of playing S2 and would have loved to move on, but I can't in good conscience call this game a sims game. It has no simulation elements at all and I get better satisfaction from Animal Crossing than I do from Sims 4.
What this game needs to bring back is CAW, either a system like S2 or CASt for recolouring, terrain tools, all life stages, more realistic objects that aren't restricted to the modular nature introduced with S4. It needs to offer freedom and individuality to express myself like the previous games. The open world has grown on me and as much as I disliked it at first, I feel it is far superior to this venue/lot driven world they've created in its stead. Full life stages need to return and emotions need to take a flipping hike. Multitasking has left me scratching my head as to why it's what drives this game yet sims can't socialize while fishing? Sounds fishy to me, mind the pun. All I see and hear is lies, half-truths, and poor behaviour by the representatives. This all needs to change.
Now you know why I've held back from stating my opinion. No matter how I put it, it makes me sound angry.
*end of rant*
EDIT: Edited for spelling.
Masterful. I envy your energy and dedication. Your comment shows more care and consideration for ts4 than I suspect EA is mustering at this point (or even perhaps from the beginning). They seem as fatigued and perplexed and ashamed for it as I do.
My reasons for sighing this petition are as follows
No toddlers and defined life stages (teens look like young adults.
Useless content. All these stuff packs that have come out are just pointless and a waste of money. I have no idea why they are jut putting out a crap ton of stuff packs and very few EPs or GPs.
Missing objects that should have been in the base game, Like sliding glass doors.
No pets, seasons, university, or generations EPs yet. All the games leading up to Sims 4 had them in some iterations Why haven't we gotten them now?
Play longevity is not there. you cant play the way you want because there are things missing from the game play. For example I love playing my sim families with a housewife and make her have as many kids as possible, I like having her seem overwhelmed with all her kids but when there aren't any toddlers I can't do that. All of my stories I like playing with require toddlers.
I may or may not add more to this list but most everyone here has basically stated what I feel.
No, and most threads obviously are NOT for me? But I am allowed to read them, aren't I? This was just a bit of a sigh from my simsheart. Sorry if it offended you.
I love @kremesch73 's post, so I thought I'd share my story too. Sorry it's so long, but I think it helps to express the problems I'm having with the game better than just focusing on missing features:
One of the most fun times I've ever had in the Sims franchise was playing the Pleasantview families in The Sims 2, playing one family, then the next in rotation. The families started out with backstories that were really compelling and made the neighborhood really feel connected because every family had a history with at least one other family in the neighborhood. In my game, Mary Sue kicked Daniel Pleasant out of the house and he went to live with his sister Jennifer Burb for awhile until he got back on his feet. Lilith ran away from home and moved in with her boyfriend, Dirk Dreamer. After Herb Oldie passed away, Coral moved in with her daughter Mary Sue so she wouldn't be all alone. Mortimer goth married Dina Caliente, who brought her sister Nina to live in the Goth mansion with her. Cassandra Goth broke up with Don Lothario and married Darren Dreamer and moved in with him, bringing her younger brother Alexander with her as she didn't want to leave him under the influence of the Caliente sisters. This is just a brief summary, but I'm guessing that anyone here who's played TS2 can follow all that pretty easily and understand a lot of what was going on and why, even if the exact same things didn't happen in their town, because most people are familiar with those characters and their backstory.
But what happens when I decide to try a similar thing in TS4? First of all, I can't even start a new game without moving in a new family, which I found incredibly frustrating. But I decided to move in one of the premades from the gallery. In TS2, the premades in the bin included the Burb family and the Oldies, both of which had connections to sims already living in town. In TS4, the options were all just random single sims with no relationship to anyone anywhere, and none of them even have the barest backstory, the description is just left blank. I ended up merging two of them, making them siblings and editing them a bit and moved them in. I played them for a week and was mostly having fun, they were two young adults focused on their careers and dating, and then I was ready to switch to the next family to start the rotation. I decided to check out the different families in neighborhoods to see what their histories are and get some ideas of what stories I might want to play out next. And it turns out that there is no connection between ANY sims in the town. Not only is the total number of premade sims in ALL the neighborhoods and the gallery less than in TS2 base game, and significantly less than TS3 base game, but their history and backstories are the simplest, laziest things ever. Absolutely no one has even a single friend outside of their household. The only two families that are supposedly related (Johnny Zest and the Landgraabs) don't even know each other exist. Furthermore, the stories in the family descriptions don't even match internally within the households: the Pancakes don't actually have a troubled relationship, and the BFFs aren't even friends, they're acquaintances! The whole neighborhood setup has so little work put into it that it's insulting and I haven't been able to bring myself to play that save since because thinking about it just makes me angry.
My other save is my legacy, a way I've also played since TS2, and especially in TS3 where rotational play wasn't as supported. It started off pretty nicely, while having only one sim I could really focus on the animations as my sim performs interactions, which is one of the places where I think TS4 does great. The emotions are cute and add a bit of flavor, but overall it's a typical beginning legacy focused on career to make money and trying to find someone to have babies with. And eventually I find a spouse, and they have a baby. And the baby is boring. She's kinda cute, but it's frustrating that they still after all this time can't make it so babies have the correct hair, skin and eye color they inherited so there's at least something unique about them and that connects them to their parents. And you still can't customize their outfits (not even simple different colored onesies) meaning that almost all babies are exactly identical and you can't tell one from the other unless they're different genders or vastly different skin colors. I realize that it was the same in previous games, but since they cut out toddlers I was really hoping they'd make up for it by putting more effort into the lifestages we do get. The animations for the interactions with the babies are cute, but there are only so many of them and most of the time the bassinet is just sitting in the other room being ignored because there's no way to include the baby in anything else the family is doing at all. They later had a second baby (I downloaded a default replacement skin so she didn't look like an exact, boring duplicate of her sister in every single way or else I probably wouldn't have bothered), and I tried to have the older kid talk to the mom while she was breastfeeding the new baby, but apparently even with multitasking supposedly being an important new feature in this iteration, that was expecting too much.
After the first baby grew up, I tried to have the three of them have dinner together as a family. They all sat down at the table and then the kid decided she needed to run off with her dinner and her homework. I cancelled whatever she was trying to do and she went into her parents room to sit on the bed and eat. Then the mom decided she wanted to go eat in the bedroom with her kid, leaving the dad alone at the table. I cancelled that and she stopped in the middle of the room and just stood there eating.
I missed both of the babies growing up into children. Both times I had the game on fast speed and it did not pause or slow down to warn me, the camera did not focus on the bassinet, there was no pop-up, none of the other sims stopped what they were doing to go see the baby's birthday, and even afterwards no one in the house had any reaction whatsoever to their family member growing up. That lack of any attention to this transition is the kind of thing that really hurts family gameplay because it completely breaks the illusion of an actual family who is invested in and cares about each other. On top of that, when the second baby grew up, I was busy watching the older kid standing in the middle of the yard doing absolutely nothing. I have full autonomy on, and I didn't have anything particular I wanted her to do, so I figured I'd just let her do whatever she wanted. So I waited to see what she'd do... and waited... and put it on speed 3... and hours later she eventually got hungry and went inside to get some food and that's when I discovered her sister had grown up.
I tried sending a kid to make friends at the park, and they kept just walking circles around the monkey bars and complaining that they couldn't reach any of the other kids. Another time, my adult sims were having a flirty conversation asking to go Woohoo and the kid joins in the conversation which seems really inappropriate but none of the sims seem to notice anything wrong with the situation. They could have at least had the decency to be embarrassed. I put the kid to bed in the evening and sent the parents out on a date and when they got home at 2am the kid was running around awake and ruining their sleep schedule because the AI when they're left alone apparently can't figure out that kids should be in bed in the middle of the night, much less remember to just keep doing what you told them to do when you left. Meanwhile, the date was incredibly annoying to play because random sims kept interrupting them to join in group conversations. You'd think the game could have checks for if sims are on a date or having a flirty conversation and not have complete strangers think it's a good idea to just butt in, but no. This has been a recurring annoyance every single time I've sent my sims on dates and it is incredibly frustrating.
One of the kids was going to grow into a teen soon, so I wanted to take them on a camping trip to Granite Falls to celebrate. The mom's an artist, but you can't carry easels in your inventory. You also can't bring the wooden folding chairs I wanted to bring, so I ended up having to go and edit the camping lot instead of just bringing the things I wanted with me even though on the surface those things seem like they should be portable and I feel frustrated that the game is going against what seems like common sense to me. I bake a cake to bring with me for my sim's birthday, but once there I realize that it will go bad before it's time. I'd put an ice chest on the lot, but you can't store food in it, once again going against common sense, so I quit the game and make a mod for it. My sim grows up and I want to use the new gender options just patched in, but there's no dresser at the campsite and those options weren't added to tents, so I can't.
This sim is a geek and loves collecting things. She spends a day on the camping trip collecting things and gets a positive moodlet for being a geek. Then she simultaneously gets a negative moodlet for being a geek... because she's been collecting things instead of playing video games. She's tense from not wanting to play games, so she wants to take a bath. There's nowhere to take a bath while camping and I'm not sure how taking a bath would make you feel better about not playing games, but spending the day doing something you love wouldn't. I tell her to play games on her phone and she does for only a few seconds before stopping autonomously in favor of just standing there doing nothing while she still has the negative moodlet for not playing video games. I have to tell her to do it again. She then has a conversation with another sim while they're both facing away from each other, looking over their shoulders at one another. The whole trip everyone is constantly rolling whims to eat popcorn, even though there's no popcorn maker anywhere in Granite Falls. The dad gets a homesick moodlet and the next day I send them home. When he gets home he's tense from being a geek and not playing video games. His whim to deal with this is to take a trip to Granite Falls. He then hugs his younger daughter, but it's bugged and they don't move into position and instead their arms just warp into bizarre shapes.
It's now time for the teen to go to her first day of high school, so I change her from the camping outfit I had her wearing, to a regular everyday outfit and tell her to go to school. She immediately switches back to the camping outfit. I quit the game because I'm tired of it constantly being illogical and working against me every step of the way. I forget that I was planning to buy Dine Out after I was done playing because I'd seen that it was on sale when I started up the game earlier. Now the sale's over and I missed it, and for some reason I'm not hugely insentivized to pay full price right now, even though I was excited when it was first announced, and I'm starting to wonder why I keep even trying to play a game that constantly makes me feel frustrated and seems like it's fighting against me. I want to like it, I really do, but half the time it seems like I spend more time being upset while playing than actually having fun.
I love @kremesch73 's post, so I thought I'd share my story too. Sorry it's so long, but I think it helps to express the problems I'm having with the game better than just focusing on missing features:
One of the most fun times I've ever had in the Sims franchise was playing the Pleasantview families in The Sims 2, playing one family, then the next in rotation. The families started out with backstories that were really compelling and made the neighborhood really feel connected because every family had a history with at least one other family in the neighborhood. In my game, Mary Sue kicked Daniel Pleasant out of the house and he went to live with his sister Jennifer Burb for awhile until he got back on his feet. Lilith ran away from home and moved in with her boyfriend, Dirk Dreamer. After Herb Oldie passed away, Coral moved in with her daughter Mary Sue so she wouldn't be all alone. Mortimer goth married Dina Caliente, who brought her sister Nina to live in the Goth mansion with her. Cassandra Goth broke up with Don Lothario and married Darren Dreamer and moved in with him, bringing her younger brother Alexander with her as she didn't want to leave him under the influence of the Caliente sisters. This is just a brief summary, but I'm guessing that anyone here who's played TS2 can follow all that pretty easily and understand a lot of what was going on and why, even if the exact same things didn't happen in their town, because most people are familiar with those characters and their backstory.
But what happens when I decide to try a similar thing in TS4? First of all, I can't even start a new game without moving in a new family, which I found incredibly frustrating. But I decided to move in one of the premades from the gallery. In TS2, the premades in the bin included the Burb family and the Oldies, both of which had connections to sims already living in town. In TS4, the options were all just random single sims with no relationship to anyone anywhere, and none of them even have the barest backstory, the description is just left blank. I ended up merging two of them, making them siblings and editing them a bit and moved them in. I played them for a week and was mostly having fun, they were two young adults focused on their careers and dating, and then I was ready to switch to the next family to start the rotation. I decided to check out the different families in neighborhoods to see what their histories are and get some ideas of what stories I might want to play out next. And it turns out that there is no connection between ANY sims in the town. Not only is the total number of premade sims in ALL the neighborhoods and the gallery less than in TS2 base game, and significantly less than TS3 base game, but their history and backstories are the simplest, laziest things ever. Absolutely no one has even a single friend outside of their household. The only two families that are supposedly related (Johnny Zest and the Landgraabs) don't even know each other exist. Furthermore, the stories in the family descriptions don't even match internally within the households: the Pancakes don't actually have a troubled relationship, and the BFFs aren't even friends, they're acquaintances! The whole neighborhood setup has so little work put into it that it's insulting and I haven't been able to bring myself to play that save since because thinking about it just makes me angry.
My other save is my legacy, a way I've also played since TS2, and especially in TS3 where rotational play wasn't as supported. It started off pretty nicely, while having only one sim I could really focus on the animations as my sim performs interactions, which is one of the places where I think TS4 does great. The emotions are cute and add a bit of flavor, but overall it's a typical beginning legacy focused on career to make money and trying to find someone to have babies with. And eventually I find a spouse, and they have a baby. And the baby is boring. She's kinda cute, but it's frustrating that they still after all this time can't make it so babies have the correct hair, skin and eye color they inherited so there's at least something unique about them and that connects them to their parents. And you still can't customize their outfits (not even simple different colored onesies) meaning that almost all babies are exactly identical and you can't tell one from the other unless they're different genders or vastly different skin colors. I realize that it was the same in previous games, but since they cut out toddlers I was really hoping they'd make up for it by putting more effort into the lifestages we do get. The animations for the interactions with the babies are cute, but there are only so many of them and most of the time the bassinet is just sitting in the other room being ignored because there's no way to include the baby in anything else the family is doing at all. They later had a second baby (I downloaded a default replacement skin so she didn't look like an exact, boring duplicate of her sister in every single way or else I probably wouldn't have bothered), and I tried to have the older kid talk to the mom while she was breastfeeding the new baby, but apparently even with multitasking supposedly being an important new feature in this iteration, that was expecting too much.
After the first baby grew up, I tried to have the three of them have dinner together as a family. They all sat down at the table and then the kid decided she needed to run off with her dinner and her homework. I cancelled whatever she was trying to do and she went into her parents room to sit on the bed and eat. Then the mom decided she wanted to go eat in the bedroom with her kid, leaving the dad alone at the table. I cancelled that and she stopped in the middle of the room and just stood there eating.
I missed both of the babies growing up into children. Both times I had the game on fast speed and it did not pause or slow down to warn me, the camera did not focus on the bassinet, there was no pop-up, none of the other sims stopped what they were doing to go see the baby's birthday, and even afterwards no one in the house had any reaction whatsoever to their family member growing up. That lack of any attention to this transition is the kind of thing that really hurts family gameplay because it completely breaks the illusion of an actual family who is invested in and cares about each other. On top of that, when the second baby grew up, I was busy watching the older kid standing in the middle of the yard doing absolutely nothing. I have full autonomy on, and I didn't have anything particular I wanted her to do, so I figured I'd just let her do whatever she wanted. So I waited to see what she'd do... and waited... and put it on speed 3... and hours later she eventually got hungry and went inside to get some food and that's when I discovered her sister had grown up.
I tried sending a kid to make friends at the park, and they kept just walking circles around the monkey bars and complaining that they couldn't reach any of the other kids. Another time, my adult sims were having a flirty conversation asking to go Woohoo and the kid joins in the conversation which seems really inappropriate but none of the sims seem to notice anything wrong with the situation. They could have at least had the decency to be embarrassed. I put the kid to bed in the evening and sent the parents out on a date and when they got home at 2am the kid was running around awake and ruining their sleep schedule because the AI when they're left alone apparently can't figure out that kids should be in bed in the middle of the night, much less remember to just keep doing what you told them to do when you left. Meanwhile, the date was incredibly annoying to play because random sims kept interrupting them to join in group conversations. You'd think the game could have checks for if sims are on a date or having a flirty conversation and not have complete strangers think it's a good idea to just butt in, but no. This has been a recurring annoyance every single time I've sent my sims on dates and it is incredibly frustrating.
One of the kids was going to grow into a teen soon, so I wanted to take them on a camping trip to Granite Falls to celebrate. The mom's an artist, but you can't carry easels in your inventory. You also can't bring the wooden folding chairs I wanted to bring, so I ended up having to go and edit the camping lot instead of just bringing the things I wanted with me even though on the surface those things seem like they should be portable and I feel frustrated that the game is going against what seems like common sense to me. I bake a cake to bring with me for my sim's birthday, but once there I realize that it will go bad before it's time. I'd put an ice chest on the lot, but you can't store food in it, once again going against common sense, so I quit the game and make a mod for it. My sim grows up and I want to use the new gender options just patched in, but there's no dresser at the campsite and those options weren't added to tents, so I can't.
This sim is a geek and loves collecting things. She spends a day on the camping trip collecting things and gets a positive moodlet for being a geek. Then she simultaneously gets a negative moodlet for being a geek... because she's been collecting things instead of playing video games. She's tense from not wanting to play games, so she wants to take a bath. There's nowhere to take a bath while camping and I'm not sure how taking a bath would make you feel better about not playing games, but spending the day doing something you love wouldn't. I tell her to play games on her phone and she does for only a few seconds before stopping autonomously in favor of just standing there doing nothing while she still has the negative moodlet for not playing video games. I have to tell her to do it again. She then has a conversation with another sim while they're both facing away from each other, looking over their shoulders at one another. The whole trip everyone is constantly rolling whims to eat popcorn, even though there's no popcorn maker anywhere in Granite Falls. The dad gets a homesick moodlet and the next day I send them home. When he gets home he's tense from being a geek and not playing video games. His whim to deal with this is to take a trip to Granite Falls. He then hugs his younger daughter, but it's bugged and they don't move into position and instead their arms just warp into bizarre shapes.
It's now time for the teen to go to her first day of high school, so I change her from the camping outfit I had her wearing, to a regular everyday outfit and tell her to go to school. She immediately switches back to the camping outfit. I quit the game because I'm tired of it constantly being illogical and working against me every step of the way. I forget that I was planning to buy Dine Out after I was done playing because I'd seen that it was on sale when I started up the game earlier. Now the sale's over and I missed it, and for some reason I'm not hugely insentivized to pay full price right now, even though I was excited when it was first announced, and I'm starting to wonder why I keep even trying to play a game that constantly makes me feel frustrated and seems like it's fighting against me. I want to like it, I really do, but half the time it seems like I spend more time being upset while playing than actually having fun.
This is a great story, and one I feel I can relate to. That last line though. That's exactly how I feel about the game. I just don't feel like a game should be upsetting me so much. Yet it does, and that's why I can't play it any more.
Life is too short. If the developers don't care enough to put real thought into what they offer (like family trees and phone calls, and everything else you mentioned), why on Earth should I care? Sadly, I obviously do, or I wouldn't be here. I just don't care enough to keep paying for this type of abuse.
Dissatisfied with Sims 4 and hoping for a better Sims 5
The Sims 4 is almost 2 years old and we're still missing so many things from the other games. It's almost as if the game content has gone down. And they keep adding excessive, irrelevant game packs that no one asked for.
I should've just bought the Sims 3 it was a way better game with more content. The Sims 4 is just good graphics there's nothing to do! They need to start adding stuff from the Sims 3 or create new stuff to the base game. Stop making awful stuff packs and expansions packs and make the base game good! This game has been out since 2014! I would expect it to be WAY better now but it is still the same as it was in 2014! Whats the deal???
Lack of family based content
Removal of toddler life stage.
Sims randomly delete themselves
Teens are basically Adults with restrictions
Babies tied to the crib annoy me so much
Worlds are too small and mobile app looking
Too many unnecessary loading screens
Culling
Repetitive game play
Lack of Traits and customization
Sims randomly teleport to locations
Lack of service NPC's
I'm not really sure what's going on since I've been gone recovering from an accident, but you're welcome to keep my name on the list as my original post still stands. I also can't in good conscience give TS4 any more of my money. To help with that I went ahead and uninstalled it, it was hard for me to do actually because I've never uninstalled a Sims game from my computer because of disappointment before. I don't like that feeling but it's there. Maybe I'm being naive or a pathological optimist but right now my hope is with a potential TS5. TS4 is already there, the people who love it have it. It can't be uncreated so me hoping for TS5 shouldn't be threatening to them. Big hugs to you guys and I hope the fighting ceases. Life is way too fragile to be up in arms with each other for personal preferences.
Comments
"Games Are Not The Place To Tell Stories, Games Are Meant To Let People Tell Their Own Stories"...Will Wright.
In dreams - I LIVE!
In REALITY, I simply exist.....
Well said!
And somewhat off-topic, but I searched my entire house for Animal Crossing just last week because I desperately wanted to play a game but S4 was doing nothing for me. I've gotten really into Animal Crossing these last few days and I'm enjoying it immensely.
That was so beautifully written - honest and factual. I think you nailed all the concerns and dislikes in one post!
Currently, I am switching between S3 and S4. I have horrible lag and loading time in S3, so when I start to feel annoyed, I switch to S4. My favourite world in S3 is Midnight Hollow, and while building a home is time consuming and the Sims are not as customizable, I still have the opportunity to change the fabrics and colours of everything! Plus there are toddlers and activities and rich gameplay... For S4, I love the customization in create-a-sim and the ease of building a home (but what is with the foundation tool? (I want ground floor and raised flooring at the same time!) Gameplay is alright, but I stay away from the Doctor career - too glitchy.
I really miss the open world concept. I was hoping that we would have open neighbourhoods in S4 at the very least. Instead, we get - "Mom, can I go next door to Johnny's house? Sure sweetie, be back for dinner!" (queue the 2 min loading screen) - for EVERY lot!
Now that I'm mad about that again, I'm off to play S3 until the lag gets to me....sigh.
Simming since the beginning
I went looking for my ancient sega dreamcast just to play a game called Fur Fighters. A game I love with all my heart. Or I could play Earthbound again on my Wii U lol which is another game I can play over and over again. Or I can whip out the Gamecube and Finally finish Luigis mansion TeeHee so many choices lol but I still go back to TS3 when I crave that life simulation play.
Sign me up, please. The Sims 4 is ungodly boring, even with all those DLCs. There are so many things missing in this game. It has felt incomplete and rushed since Day 1. It had the potential to be a fantastic game, but it's not. It's mediocre. The Sims 2 is way more fun than 4, and it's so old, you'd expect it to be the opposite. Major disappointment of a game.
No, and most threads obviously are NOT for me? But I am allowed to read them, aren't I? This was just a bit of a sigh from my simsheart. Sorry if it offended you.
Masterful. I envy your energy and dedication. Your comment shows more care and consideration for ts4 than I suspect EA is mustering at this point (or even perhaps from the beginning). They seem as fatigued and perplexed and ashamed for it as I do.
My reasons for sighing this petition are as follows
I may or may not add more to this list but most everyone here has basically stated what I feel.
http://forums.thesims.com/en_US/discussion/886576/33-day-create-a-sim-challenge#latest
http://forums.thesims.com/en_US/discussion/802325/helpful-links-for-playing-and-creating-in-sims-4#latest
http://forums.thesims.com/en_US/discussion/851180/townie-fashion-police#latest
http://forums.thesims.com/en_US/discussion/788517/favorite-screenshot#latest
http://forums.thesims.com/en_US/discussion/837334/the-sims-4-happy-play-thread#latest
Most of them are just kept in general. Feedback I guess is where mods move the unhappy ones? *Shrugs* Ideas is full of happy suggestions too.
One of the most fun times I've ever had in the Sims franchise was playing the Pleasantview families in The Sims 2, playing one family, then the next in rotation. The families started out with backstories that were really compelling and made the neighborhood really feel connected because every family had a history with at least one other family in the neighborhood. In my game, Mary Sue kicked Daniel Pleasant out of the house and he went to live with his sister Jennifer Burb for awhile until he got back on his feet. Lilith ran away from home and moved in with her boyfriend, Dirk Dreamer. After Herb Oldie passed away, Coral moved in with her daughter Mary Sue so she wouldn't be all alone. Mortimer goth married Dina Caliente, who brought her sister Nina to live in the Goth mansion with her. Cassandra Goth broke up with Don Lothario and married Darren Dreamer and moved in with him, bringing her younger brother Alexander with her as she didn't want to leave him under the influence of the Caliente sisters. This is just a brief summary, but I'm guessing that anyone here who's played TS2 can follow all that pretty easily and understand a lot of what was going on and why, even if the exact same things didn't happen in their town, because most people are familiar with those characters and their backstory.
But what happens when I decide to try a similar thing in TS4? First of all, I can't even start a new game without moving in a new family, which I found incredibly frustrating. But I decided to move in one of the premades from the gallery. In TS2, the premades in the bin included the Burb family and the Oldies, both of which had connections to sims already living in town. In TS4, the options were all just random single sims with no relationship to anyone anywhere, and none of them even have the barest backstory, the description is just left blank. I ended up merging two of them, making them siblings and editing them a bit and moved them in. I played them for a week and was mostly having fun, they were two young adults focused on their careers and dating, and then I was ready to switch to the next family to start the rotation. I decided to check out the different families in neighborhoods to see what their histories are and get some ideas of what stories I might want to play out next. And it turns out that there is no connection between ANY sims in the town. Not only is the total number of premade sims in ALL the neighborhoods and the gallery less than in TS2 base game, and significantly less than TS3 base game, but their history and backstories are the simplest, laziest things ever. Absolutely no one has even a single friend outside of their household. The only two families that are supposedly related (Johnny Zest and the Landgraabs) don't even know each other exist. Furthermore, the stories in the family descriptions don't even match internally within the households: the Pancakes don't actually have a troubled relationship, and the BFFs aren't even friends, they're acquaintances! The whole neighborhood setup has so little work put into it that it's insulting and I haven't been able to bring myself to play that save since because thinking about it just makes me angry.
My other save is my legacy, a way I've also played since TS2, and especially in TS3 where rotational play wasn't as supported. It started off pretty nicely, while having only one sim I could really focus on the animations as my sim performs interactions, which is one of the places where I think TS4 does great. The emotions are cute and add a bit of flavor, but overall it's a typical beginning legacy focused on career to make money and trying to find someone to have babies with. And eventually I find a spouse, and they have a baby. And the baby is boring. She's kinda cute, but it's frustrating that they still after all this time can't make it so babies have the correct hair, skin and eye color they inherited so there's at least something unique about them and that connects them to their parents. And you still can't customize their outfits (not even simple different colored onesies) meaning that almost all babies are exactly identical and you can't tell one from the other unless they're different genders or vastly different skin colors. I realize that it was the same in previous games, but since they cut out toddlers I was really hoping they'd make up for it by putting more effort into the lifestages we do get. The animations for the interactions with the babies are cute, but there are only so many of them and most of the time the bassinet is just sitting in the other room being ignored because there's no way to include the baby in anything else the family is doing at all. They later had a second baby (I downloaded a default replacement skin so she didn't look like an exact, boring duplicate of her sister in every single way or else I probably wouldn't have bothered), and I tried to have the older kid talk to the mom while she was breastfeeding the new baby, but apparently even with multitasking supposedly being an important new feature in this iteration, that was expecting too much.
After the first baby grew up, I tried to have the three of them have dinner together as a family. They all sat down at the table and then the kid decided she needed to run off with her dinner and her homework. I cancelled whatever she was trying to do and she went into her parents room to sit on the bed and eat. Then the mom decided she wanted to go eat in the bedroom with her kid, leaving the dad alone at the table. I cancelled that and she stopped in the middle of the room and just stood there eating.
I missed both of the babies growing up into children. Both times I had the game on fast speed and it did not pause or slow down to warn me, the camera did not focus on the bassinet, there was no pop-up, none of the other sims stopped what they were doing to go see the baby's birthday, and even afterwards no one in the house had any reaction whatsoever to their family member growing up. That lack of any attention to this transition is the kind of thing that really hurts family gameplay because it completely breaks the illusion of an actual family who is invested in and cares about each other. On top of that, when the second baby grew up, I was busy watching the older kid standing in the middle of the yard doing absolutely nothing. I have full autonomy on, and I didn't have anything particular I wanted her to do, so I figured I'd just let her do whatever she wanted. So I waited to see what she'd do... and waited... and put it on speed 3... and hours later she eventually got hungry and went inside to get some food and that's when I discovered her sister had grown up.
I tried sending a kid to make friends at the park, and they kept just walking circles around the monkey bars and complaining that they couldn't reach any of the other kids. Another time, my adult sims were having a flirty conversation asking to go Woohoo and the kid joins in the conversation which seems really inappropriate but none of the sims seem to notice anything wrong with the situation. They could have at least had the decency to be embarrassed. I put the kid to bed in the evening and sent the parents out on a date and when they got home at 2am the kid was running around awake and ruining their sleep schedule because the AI when they're left alone apparently can't figure out that kids should be in bed in the middle of the night, much less remember to just keep doing what you told them to do when you left. Meanwhile, the date was incredibly annoying to play because random sims kept interrupting them to join in group conversations. You'd think the game could have checks for if sims are on a date or having a flirty conversation and not have complete strangers think it's a good idea to just butt in, but no. This has been a recurring annoyance every single time I've sent my sims on dates and it is incredibly frustrating.
One of the kids was going to grow into a teen soon, so I wanted to take them on a camping trip to Granite Falls to celebrate. The mom's an artist, but you can't carry easels in your inventory. You also can't bring the wooden folding chairs I wanted to bring, so I ended up having to go and edit the camping lot instead of just bringing the things I wanted with me even though on the surface those things seem like they should be portable and I feel frustrated that the game is going against what seems like common sense to me. I bake a cake to bring with me for my sim's birthday, but once there I realize that it will go bad before it's time. I'd put an ice chest on the lot, but you can't store food in it, once again going against common sense, so I quit the game and make a mod for it. My sim grows up and I want to use the new gender options just patched in, but there's no dresser at the campsite and those options weren't added to tents, so I can't.
This sim is a geek and loves collecting things. She spends a day on the camping trip collecting things and gets a positive moodlet for being a geek. Then she simultaneously gets a negative moodlet for being a geek... because she's been collecting things instead of playing video games. She's tense from not wanting to play games, so she wants to take a bath. There's nowhere to take a bath while camping and I'm not sure how taking a bath would make you feel better about not playing games, but spending the day doing something you love wouldn't. I tell her to play games on her phone and she does for only a few seconds before stopping autonomously in favor of just standing there doing nothing while she still has the negative moodlet for not playing video games. I have to tell her to do it again. She then has a conversation with another sim while they're both facing away from each other, looking over their shoulders at one another. The whole trip everyone is constantly rolling whims to eat popcorn, even though there's no popcorn maker anywhere in Granite Falls. The dad gets a homesick moodlet and the next day I send them home. When he gets home he's tense from being a geek and not playing video games. His whim to deal with this is to take a trip to Granite Falls. He then hugs his younger daughter, but it's bugged and they don't move into position and instead their arms just warp into bizarre shapes.
It's now time for the teen to go to her first day of high school, so I change her from the camping outfit I had her wearing, to a regular everyday outfit and tell her to go to school. She immediately switches back to the camping outfit. I quit the game because I'm tired of it constantly being illogical and working against me every step of the way. I forget that I was planning to buy Dine Out after I was done playing because I'd seen that it was on sale when I started up the game earlier. Now the sale's over and I missed it, and for some reason I'm not hugely insentivized to pay full price right now, even though I was excited when it was first announced, and I'm starting to wonder why I keep even trying to play a game that constantly makes me feel frustrated and seems like it's fighting against me. I want to like it, I really do, but half the time it seems like I spend more time being upset while playing than actually having fun.
This is a great story, and one I feel I can relate to. That last line though. That's exactly how I feel about the game. I just don't feel like a game should be upsetting me so much. Yet it does, and that's why I can't play it any more.
Life is too short. If the developers don't care enough to put real thought into what they offer (like family trees and phone calls, and everything else you mentioned), why on Earth should I care? Sadly, I obviously do, or I wouldn't be here. I just don't care enough to keep paying for this type of abuse.
Lack of family based content
Removal of toddler life stage.
Sims randomly delete themselves
Teens are basically Adults with restrictions
Babies tied to the crib annoy me so much
Worlds are too small and mobile app looking
Too many unnecessary loading screens
Culling
Repetitive game play
Lack of Traits and customization
Sims randomly teleport to locations
Lack of service NPC's
No toddlers
No open world
Missing some jobs I liked to play in previous iterations BASE game
Baby object -_-*