I like some of the background stories for TS4 premades, but the annoying thing about TS4 is the backstories are just for show. In TS2, the Pleasant-twins had a horrible relationship. The relationship bars of the Fyres-twins and the Villareal-siblings are just fine, even though they are in clubs who hate each other. To start playing a TS2 premade family was often a real challenge if you wanted them to be successful and get along and be happy. My all time favorite premade family are the Brokes and the real struggle that came with trying to get their lives back on track. Nothing in TS4 even comes close, and that's why I never play the premade families now but prefer to create my own stories.
To that end I've been trying to recreate Sims from TS3 to introduce to this game. Not terribly good at it, but it would be cool if other more skillful folks could give it a try. So far I've made a "meh" version of Buster Round ( Bridgeport) and Yolanda Shaw (Lucky Palms).
@Omri147 is brilliant at recreating residents and townies from Sims 3. He has uploaded so many of them.
(ID: Omri147)
I have fond memories of the great backstories and personalities in Sims 2. It was the kind of characterization we were promised in Sims 4 but didn't happen. Sigh...
Yeah, first Sim I played was Darren Dreamer - I was horrified since he wasn't only practically broke, he had overdue bills that needed to paid! (The dreaded repo-man would come all the time in his house) and he was in love with Cassandra Goth (who was in love with Don Lothario). Sims 2 was like a TV daytime drama - where I could be director. Good memories!
To that end I've been trying to recreate Sims from TS3 to introduce to this game. Not terribly good at it, but it would be cool if other more skillful folks could give it a try. So far I've made a "meh" version of Buster Round ( Bridgeport) and Yolanda Shaw (Lucky Palms).
@Omri147 is brilliant at recreating residents and townies from Sims 3. He has uploaded so many of them.
(ID: Omri147)
Thank you!
I actually just today recreated and uploaded 3 more Bridgeport sims.
I miss all the background stories. They sometimes kick started my imagination and made me want to play a family. Maybe it's that it's so hard to find a real individual personality among these Sims.
"People really love to explore 'failure states. In fact, the failure states are really much more interesting than the success states." ~ Will Wright
I keep all of my premades, because I want to love them. However, I agree with you on this. I don't have an extremely validated reason why, though? I feel like in TS2 all I ever played were the premades. I felt like their stories were a bit deeper? Maybe that's just me?
I used to love the pre-mades in other games -- I think a lot of it came from the stories that described them before.. TS4 doesn't have that.
So take that, and add to the fact that all of the sims generally react to everything the same/are basically the same anyway.. then yes. I find them very boring.
Premades do have story description in TS4, it's there if you go to manage household. It is how we know that Johnny Zest is a Landgraab.
I really enjoyed the pre-made townies in TS2, but that's because I was playing the game like I would an RPG... living within the pre-designated guidelines. Once I realized I can re-write and create my own "story" I have paid almost no attention to them. In both TS3 and TS4, I clear all those guys out and move in my own sims.
On occasion I'll be inspired by other simmers who actually play and create interesting stories for the premades, and I'll fire up the game and try to do the same... but I really do like playing my sims.
This is one of those situations where I don't think the devs can win, though. When they write back stories for townies, some people are going to complain that they don't want someone else's vision pushed on them, if they leave it for the players to flesh out, peeps will complain they're boring. There is no way for them to win here. lol
Mmm...I'm odd I like the premades with less of a story because it gives me more room to make my own. I thought there was a lot of scope for story telling with the Villareals, so I took Hugo, Luna and Max into CAS and created their Mother. I then split the household so they had a relationship with her and Jaques had the usual husband wife relationship from the get go. Nobody ever mentions Luna's mother they just assume she's dead. In my game she's working as a barmaid in WillowCreek, trying desperately to forget her nefarious and evil ex husband, and doing her best to raise the money to hire a good lawyer to get custody of her kids. The Munch's now they were doing my head in! Then I read the thread for them and thought Mila always, always flirts in my game with anyone she comes across...hmmm....so seeing as her divorce settlement came through in the form of the motherlode, she paid for plastic surgery, botox and slimmed down at the Gym. She threw her chef aspiration out of the window and now she's kicking up her heels with every guy in town, much to Wolfgangs disgust, Gunther's horror and Lucas's confusion. Then I thought why did Mila's husband walk out...yes, she has a daughter living with him in the town now as well and thanks to that lovely MCC command they hate each others guts.
I like some of the background stories for TS4 premades, but the annoying thing about TS4 is the backstories are just for show. In TS2, the Pleasant-twins had a horrible relationship. The relationship bars of the Fyres-twins and the Villareal-siblings are just fine, even though they are in clubs who hate each other. To start playing a TS2 premade family was often a real challenge if you wanted them to be successful and get along and be happy. My all time favorite premade family are the Brokes and the real struggle that came with trying to get their lives back on track. Nothing in TS4 even comes close, and that's why I never play the premade families now but prefer to create my own stories.
The Brokes weren't even broke.
I started a game with them once to see exactly how much they had. I sold Brandi's fancy bed, wardrobe and art and Dustin's pinball machine and ended up with about 15-20K. That's enough money to buy lower level furnishings and provide a buffer of savings.
That hoarding, along with the backstory, made me think that Brandi killed her own husband (after all, it's the owners of the lot that buy or sell pool ladders) and spent the insurance money on the fancy items.
To that end I've been trying to recreate Sims from TS3 to introduce to this game. Not terribly good at it, but it would be cool if other more skillful folks could give it a try. So far I've made a "meh" version of Buster Round ( Bridgeport) and Yolanda Shaw (Lucky Palms).
@Omri147 is brilliant at recreating residents and townies from Sims 3. He has uploaded so many of them.
(ID: Omri147)
Thank you!
I actually just today recreated and uploaded 3 more Bridgeport sims.
Awesome!!! Just loaded the game, downloading your Sims now! Thank you!!
I actively play the Goths, LAngraabs, Pancakes, Kim-Lewis (Dennis Kim have been abducted twice, both times with an alien baby. lol), Calientes, and Lothario. I've kept all the Windenburg folks. But I may need to downsize. I even threw in other MAxis created sims such as Vernon Morse and his mother. Then, I've tweaked Mortimer and the Caliente twins to look more like their past selves from other iterations.
Also I like for my sims to marry with some of the premades.
Me on:
Twitch jovi_jov
Twitter BarbieSimmy
Origin SimsBarbie
I agree and disagree with OP
Yes, the premades are less fun than in TS2. But they are not different than TS3 premades.
In TS2 there were a set of events that were created for the player that he could not escape or avoid. For example playing the Caliente sisters for the first time would always make that burglar appear. Playing Brandi Brooke for the first time will always make you deal with her pregnancy. In addition to these set of events there was the "Awesome story album" feature in TS2 which had a brief history about each premade household.
TS2 with all the above would set the beginning of the story for you and then let you go on with it your own way. I really wish we get the story album back. The screen shot feature in TS4 is a mess specially after Dec patch. I used to like it more before the patch.
TS3 and TS4 premades have no background stories and it is up to you to start with your own the way you want. There are no set of predetermined events. At least the premades in TS4 look very unique and nice.
The sims 3 was horrible in both areas be it lack of story or how the pre made sims looked.
Everything I post is an opinion here and I think every post of others is as well.
I agree and disagree with OP
Yes, the premades are less fun than in TS2. But they are not different than TS3 premades.
In TS2 there were a set of events that were created for the player that he could not escape or avoid. For example playing the Caliente sisters for the first time would always make that burglar appear. Playing Brandi Brooke for the first time will always make you deal with her pregnancy. In addition to these set of events there was the "Awesome story album" feature in TS2 which had a brief history about each premade household.
TS2 with all the above would set the beginning of the story for you and then let you go on with it your own way. I really wish we get the story album back. The screen shot feature in TS4 is a mess specially after Dec patch. I used to like it more before the patch.
TS3 and TS4 premades have no background stories and it is up to you to start with your own the way you want. There are no set of predetermined events. At least the premades in TS4 look very unique and nice.
The sims 3 was horrible in both areas be it lack of story or how the pre made sims looked.
Ohhhh how i missed the story album and memories feature!!!
You sir, had just made me reinstall sims 2! Time for some nostalgic gaming to fill in time while i wait for city living EP!
Nighat was Dina's and Nina's mother in Sims2. I don't understand why they didn't just update her (and her husband, Flamenco) to Sims4.
EDIT:
Really? Since when was the name "N i g h a t" a bad word? Well if THIS is plummed again - Katrina wasn't their mother in Sims2. It was (someone else) and even though they both died as elders, they still could've brought back their elder parents.
I have all the premades in my game and aging off so that they stay that way, I suppose I see the premades as a sort on sim celebrity, the cannon game characters, especially returning families like the Goths and Calientes. I appreciate that they gave them descriptions, but the reason they are so boring is that, unlike the Sims 2, there were no correlating relationships set up or family history. I remember that in the Sims 2 there was a family that had a graveyard at the back of their house for acestors, and the vampires had graves stashed away under the house, these gave some importance and mystery to the characters. There were also pre determined relationships, Don had romantic relations with the Calientes, a married goldigger, Cassandra and his maid, he also tried to kiss Bella before she dissapeared; all of this gave the stories some meaning and truth, unlike Sims 4 where Don has no romance with anyone. I also believe that some basic events were set up to start the stories, Don had accidentally scheduled a date with all of the girls, a burglar robbed the Caliente's, and often elders were on the brink of death when you began playing. The sims 4 premades are empty vessels, that's their problem.
Sims 4 is the only game where I actually play the premades. At the moment I am playing Amber and Vernon as a couple.
I've married her off to Elvis in one of my saves. I've got a few of the other advertisement premades too.
Personally, I've never paid much attention to the backstories of the premades in any of the version. If I play them or use them while playing another Sim, I'll often tell myself my own story for them. I like a good lot of the Sims 4 premades, including some recurring characters. I've got a story going with Malcolm Landgraab, and Jacques Villereal has so many different possibilities - he's evil but he's a lot else besides, not a caricature.
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I kept the premades...just heavily edited them because they were pretty boring. I even changed Bob Pancakes last name and made him related to the Lewis family. The Landgraabs are like their TS3 counterparts, Caliente and Lothario are like their TS2 counterparts. I made premades from all three previous games because they were definitely better and more thought out. And with MC there is amazing drama.
I know what you mean, I feel the sims 4 story lines aren't so deep or meaningful like the Sims 2, this is why I think so:
Pre-mades in the Sims 2 storyline just felt more realistic. It was more deep in the sense that the pre-mades were connected to each other, they had dramatic story lines like Brandi's husband just died with her oldest son been a delinquent to take care of the family and the pleasant rich perfect family having a dark secret in the family like Daniel Pleasant cheating on his wife with the maid while his daughters who were twins hated each other because one of them was more loved in the family than the other one. The more loved twin was also dating a "bad boy" which was Brandi's son Dustin; a very poor family living in a trailer home etc...these are just small examples of the rich/deep story lines sims 2 have...
On top of that to make those stories feel more "real" sims in the sims 2, each sim had a long family tree a player could see and keep a track of, they had an album with pictures of their past, past memories players could also read in the sim panel.... situations/events were already pre-determined like Cassandra Goth in a wedding with don and Brandi already pregnant...and on top of that, the storylines left the door open for players to think a lot of theories of what happened in the sims storyline that was not told or explained completely...for example Brandi's husband died...but players have theories that she killed her husband...Bella goth was perhaps kidnapped etc. Anyways, Sims 4 just has a different style I guess, but I very much preferred the pre-mades of the Sims 2 for the reasons I explained above.
The thing is I leave most of the pre-made families because I have no desire to remodel the entire town each time I play, they are basically their for background color if you will. Kinda like you get to know your neighbors. Plus with each expanding area it introduces MORE unique Sims.
I never play the pre-made families but I never intended too anyway no matter how "cool" they could be.
That said...I must admit I'm going to play the blonde in all the City Life trailers (in the hat) and put her through the ringer. Kinda like show what happens to the naive farm girl who moves to the city lol...just so tempting from the footage they've shown of her.
Ya i have an evil streak and needs to be let out to play lol....
In all honesty, I never thought anything about the premades at all.
From the first time I started up sims 1 and they asked me if I wanted a tutorial and said yes. That's ALL I ever thought of Bob and Betty Newby, or the Goths who seemed to come by to visit.
Once I was done with Bob and Betty in the tutorial to show me how to play, I was on my own and never looked back at any sim that was in the game aside from my own.
I still play that way and have through each of the series. It's always been "my" game. I prefer filling it with my own and seeing and interacting with my own.
Comments
@Omri147 is brilliant at recreating residents and townies from Sims 3. He has uploaded so many of them.
(ID: Omri147)
Yeah, first Sim I played was Darren Dreamer - I was horrified since he wasn't only practically broke, he had overdue bills that needed to paid! (The dreaded repo-man would come all the time in his house) and he was in love with Cassandra Goth (who was in love with Don Lothario). Sims 2 was like a TV daytime drama - where I could be director. Good memories!
I kept this guy, and added two more grown daughters. I also kept Don, the rest I deleted, so tired of Bella.
Thank you!
I actually just today recreated and uploaded 3 more Bridgeport sims.
On occasion I'll be inspired by other simmers who actually play and create interesting stories for the premades, and I'll fire up the game and try to do the same... but I really do like playing my sims.
This is one of those situations where I don't think the devs can win, though. When they write back stories for townies, some people are going to complain that they don't want someone else's vision pushed on them, if they leave it for the players to flesh out, peeps will complain they're boring. There is no way for them to win here.
The Brokes weren't even broke.
I started a game with them once to see exactly how much they had. I sold Brandi's fancy bed, wardrobe and art and Dustin's pinball machine and ended up with about 15-20K. That's enough money to buy lower level furnishings and provide a buffer of savings.
That hoarding, along with the backstory, made me think that Brandi killed her own husband (after all, it's the owners of the lot that buy or sell pool ladders) and spent the insurance money on the fancy items.
Ts4 is set in an alternate universe , do they felt no need to keep up with the amazing back stories of the ts2 pre made households.
So very disappointed and it took out what made the world feel alive.
Awesome!!! Just loaded the game, downloading your Sims now! Thank you!!
I actively play the Goths, LAngraabs, Pancakes, Kim-Lewis (Dennis Kim have been abducted twice, both times with an alien baby. lol), Calientes, and Lothario. I've kept all the Windenburg folks. But I may need to downsize. I even threw in other MAxis created sims such as Vernon Morse and his mother. Then, I've tweaked Mortimer and the Caliente twins to look more like their past selves from other iterations.
Also I like for my sims to marry with some of the premades.
Twitch jovi_jov
Twitter BarbieSimmy
Origin SimsBarbie
Yes, the premades are less fun than in TS2. But they are not different than TS3 premades.
In TS2 there were a set of events that were created for the player that he could not escape or avoid. For example playing the Caliente sisters for the first time would always make that burglar appear. Playing Brandi Brooke for the first time will always make you deal with her pregnancy. In addition to these set of events there was the "Awesome story album" feature in TS2 which had a brief history about each premade household.
TS2 with all the above would set the beginning of the story for you and then let you go on with it your own way. I really wish we get the story album back. The screen shot feature in TS4 is a mess specially after Dec patch. I used to like it more before the patch.
TS3 and TS4 premades have no background stories and it is up to you to start with your own the way you want. There are no set of predetermined events. At least the premades in TS4 look very unique and nice.
The sims 3 was horrible in both areas be it lack of story or how the pre made sims looked.
Ohhhh how i missed the story album and memories feature!!!
You sir, had just made me reinstall sims 2! Time for some nostalgic gaming to fill in time while i wait for city living EP!
EDIT:
Really? Since when was the name "N i g h a t" a bad word? Well if THIS is plummed again - Katrina wasn't their mother in Sims2. It was (someone else) and even though they both died as elders, they still could've brought back their elder parents.
I've married her off to Elvis in one of my saves. I've got a few of the other advertisement premades too.
Personally, I've never paid much attention to the backstories of the premades in any of the version. If I play them or use them while playing another Sim, I'll often tell myself my own story for them. I like a good lot of the Sims 4 premades, including some recurring characters. I've got a story going with Malcolm Landgraab, and Jacques Villereal has so many different possibilities - he's evil but he's a lot else besides, not a caricature.
Pre-mades in the Sims 2 storyline just felt more realistic. It was more deep in the sense that the pre-mades were connected to each other, they had dramatic story lines like Brandi's husband just died with her oldest son been a delinquent to take care of the family and the pleasant rich perfect family having a dark secret in the family like Daniel Pleasant cheating on his wife with the maid while his daughters who were twins hated each other because one of them was more loved in the family than the other one. The more loved twin was also dating a "bad boy" which was Brandi's son Dustin; a very poor family living in a trailer home etc...these are just small examples of the rich/deep story lines sims 2 have...
On top of that to make those stories feel more "real" sims in the sims 2, each sim had a long family tree a player could see and keep a track of, they had an album with pictures of their past, past memories players could also read in the sim panel.... situations/events were already pre-determined like Cassandra Goth in a wedding with don and Brandi already pregnant...and on top of that, the storylines left the door open for players to think a lot of theories of what happened in the sims storyline that was not told or explained completely...for example Brandi's husband died...but players have theories that she killed her husband...Bella goth was perhaps kidnapped etc. Anyways, Sims 4 just has a different style I guess, but I very much preferred the pre-mades of the Sims 2 for the reasons I explained above.
I never play the pre-made families but I never intended too anyway no matter how "cool" they could be.
That said...I must admit I'm going to play the blonde in all the City Life trailers (in the hat) and put her through the ringer. Kinda like show what happens to the naive farm girl who moves to the city lol...just so tempting from the footage they've shown of her.
Ya i have an evil streak and needs to be let out to play lol....
From the first time I started up sims 1 and they asked me if I wanted a tutorial and said yes. That's ALL I ever thought of Bob and Betty Newby, or the Goths who seemed to come by to visit.
Once I was done with Bob and Betty in the tutorial to show me how to play, I was on my own and never looked back at any sim that was in the game aside from my own.
I still play that way and have through each of the series. It's always been "my" game. I prefer filling it with my own and seeing and interacting with my own.