Every game has its glowing virtues and horrible sins, and TS4 is no exception. This thread is a place to name our most favorite and most despised aspects of The Sims 4.
My list?:
Pros
1. The lifting of irritating and unrealistic restrictions on pre-adult life stages. No more arbitrary hard curfews to ruin your weekday hangout sessions for Children and Teens (Maybe those of you who barely ever had your kids do their homework didn't mind, but for players like me who always have our kids do their homework as soon as they get home unless their fun meter is dangerously low, those herd curfews were a pain in the hiney!), no more busybody social workers preventing you from playing a family with working parents and latchkey kids, no more having Children restricted to eating snacks and leftovers because they're not allowed to make a simple sandwich or bowl of cereal, no more bland babydoll Toddlers that were totally helpless and sickeningly tame. In TS4, we've got the most fun Toddlers ever in terms of being playable sims (They climb the stairs alone or in pairs, they play in the toilet bowl! They tear up the shelves, and disrobe themselves! They're Toddlers, yeah!), no overzealous social worker or stupid universal hard curfews for NPC sims to mess up your fun, Children can eat actual healthy food without needing an Adult or Teen to cook for them...If they could just patch in "Cops and Robbers", "Tag", and the other non-object play interactions and the ability to send the parents out of the house for a set number of in-game hours so our Teens could have truly wild house parties, then TS4's pre-adult sims would be just about perfect. Some may argue that we also need to unglue Babies from their cribs, I never took them out of the nursery in TS2 because of the sims' bad habit of tossing their babies on the floor to do fun things, so I'm cool with the little bundles of joy being stuck to the crib.
2. Buildings are easier to remodel. No more knocking down walls to resize rooms and buildings. Now, we've got handy arrows to push and pull that allow us to tweak our builds as easily as molding clay. It's a small improvement, but it impacts the efficiency of our building process in a big way.
3. Create-A-Sim is incredible on the body/face end of things. We can tweak our sims' facial features to be as cartoonish or realistic as we see fit, we can give them impossibly buff/voluptuous bods or we can give them the most unremarkably average figures ever, we can even choose whether our sims of either gender have a masculine or feminine build. The tagline "You Rule"may not apply to a lot of things in this game, but when it comes to the character creator it's pretty spot-on (Yes, even without a color wheel or height slider.).
4. Supernatural sims are shaping up to be really fun to play. Aliens came along with GTW and are probably the best part of that pack with their unique looks and some fun interactions. Vampires are even better, with their customization powers and weaknesses that allow us to make our vamps as Classic Hollywood or Modern Urban Fantasy as we want. The way things are going, I've got a good feeling about werewolves, fairies, merfolk, and witchcraft (which I hope they'll make into a skill that any sim can learn like TS2 instead of being a witch being a non-layerable lifestate like TS3).
Cons
1. Not nearly enough gameplay options. We just got some control over population culling, but we still don't have the ability to control things like townie generation, full story progression, and so-on. MC Command Center proves that those options can be given to us players, but we still haven't gotten everything officially patched in. What are they, scared we'll fry our computers from getting too option happy and sue them?
2. No official custom content creation tool. TS2 came packaged with BodyShop, which allowed players to make their own custom recolors and texture edits of existing CAS items and hair styles. Later, HomeCrafter was also released to let us make our own custom build mode components, like floor and wall textures. TS3 gave us Create-A-Style and a color wheel that allowed us to do that stuff on the fly in-game. TS4...we have to download a third-party application to make even the simplest of CC. We should have moved forward with customization options for players, not backward. Some sort of official external custom content editor or an internal customization system is just something that TS4 should have had at or not long after launch, period.
3. Unnatural hair colors are not heritable or available to sims younger than Teen. I know this probably dates back to a complaint that some players had in TS3 where if they changed a sim's hair color to something crazy, the kids could inherit it even if it wasn't the parent's born/natural hair color...but, come on. We should have gotten a way to define a sim's natural hair color in TS4 instead of just banning Child and Toddler sims from having unusual hair colors. Having only natural hair colors available to the younger two age groups without mods is unacceptable.
4. No Create-A-World. In TS2, I never played the pre-made worlds. I always made my own neighborhoods, to build and grow entirely based on my tastes and gameplay needs. In TS4, all we have is Maxis-made worlds to play and build in and, honestly, it can get just a little stale playing in Willow Creek or Newcrest or Oasis Springs for the umpteenmillionth time, with buying an expansion pack being your only chance to play someplace different...which will no doubt grow stale too soon enough. The worlds are beautiful, sure...but it's just not the same as building your own little town from scratch.
5. The emotions system is an unbalanced joke due to too many items, events, and actions that give Happy moodlets and there being no booster emotion for negative moods. As a result, even if your sim has an emotional trait that gives them negative emotional moodlets like Sad or Angry, they'll still be either straight-up happy or in some sort of productive mood. Only Toddlers are immune to this plague of joy due to their resistance to environmental Happy moodlets (and thank goodness for that). Uncomfortable would make a grand booster emotion for negative moods because it's just as easy to come by as Happy...but they haven't patched that counterbalance into the game yet. Yes, there are mods that can help...but mods can be broken by patches, and since these are things people make in their spare time, sometimes the updates are slow in coming or the mod isn't maintained at all due to a loss of interest by the maker or real life drama. Modders shouldn't be left to fix everything...especially not an integral game mechanic that is about as balanced as a scale with a cricket on one side and a brachiosaurus on the other.
Those are my biggest Sims 4 pros and cons. What are yours?
There is a song I hear, a melody from the past...
When I woke for the first time, when I slept for the last.
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Comments
- Toddlers. Never liked them in past games, never liked them in real life, but in TS4 they're just great. I hated how they couldn't even get in and out of their cribs in TS2 without my help, so I sometimes let them sleep in pet beds instead. Now they can do a lot more on their own without requiring constant surveillance.
- The new building tools. I can't even imagine playing without them anymore. And it's not just the ability to easily move or change the size of rooms without tearing everything down, but also that you can now place objects diagonally or change their size without cheats, and sims can actually still use them.
- I've mentioned it countless times, but it can't be stressed enough how much I'm in love with CAS. I've always wanted to be able to model my sims' bodies, as well as choose shoes separately from the rest of the outfit, and I realise that this has been around since TS3, but I haven't played that, so to me it's all new and fascinating.
- Genetics are more diverse and less predictable than in TS2, and randomly generated sims aren't so freaking ugly anymore. One issue I still encounter occasionally is abnormally huge cheekbones, but that alone is not so bad.
- The worlds look absolutely beautiful, but there is also a negative in that, which I'll get to in a second...
Cons
- As someone who played TS2 for years before moving on to 4, I can't help noticing the severe limitations when it comes to creating the world our sims live in. We can't edit the scenery, place our own lots, add new worlds, or change the terrain type. There is only one desert world, and more than half of it isn't even covered by sand.
- Teenagers are basically just young adults with less possibilities. Visually, I can hardly tell them apart from actual young adults, yet they're so much taller than children that the transition is absolutely ridiculous. No, I don't want preteens, just more distinguished teens.
- Sorry if this sounds racist, but my game creates too many townies with Asian names that I can't even pronounce. I appreciate diversity in all shapes and sizes, but this overbundance seems a little random, especially because many of the sims in question don't even look remotely Asian.
- The lack of sim memories. I think TS2 overdid this by generating a memory for every little thing my sims experienced, but not having it at all, not being able to look back at my sims' accomplishments, makes their lives feel a little empty. I suggest toning down emotions and moodlets a little and adding memories instead.
- The exagerrated love, peace and harmony theme of the entire game. That's something that has always bothered me about The Sims, but 4 takes it to new levels. No burglars, no death by illness, no serious drama. And the one pack idea that might have changed that ("Danger pack" or whatever it was called in the poll) was ditched in favour of laundry. It's not just the developers' decisions that I question sometimes...
- Also, the game often seems to be more about looks than actual gameplay.
Something wicked this way comes!
I don't use MCCC.
With that I also recommend the personality please mod since it fixes the sims and makes their traits mean something.
The other day I had a nice sims and an evil sim in one house trying to get them to date and it was a hilarious nightmare. The woman constantly being mean when she gets a chance and the guy in tears XD
I'll say I looooove the toddlers and their different personalities.
complete forum tutorial
Thank you @MDianaSanders for halloween-fying Golluma
1. It looks good. It's a beautiful game. Animations seem more "fluid" in this game as opposed to the previous ones.
2. ....struggling to think of something else.
Cons:
1. We don't rule anything. We can't build apartments outside of SanMyshuno. Actually, we can't build apartments at all. We can only renovate. We can assign sims outfits and have fun dressing them up in CAS, but the game dictates what they will actually wear out in the world ( and especially if we aren't currently playing that household). We can buy a business, but can't hire who we want.
The way they coded sims to behave on lots has basically made it so that it "looks" good. ( see #1) but it doesn't play good. because see #2. We have no control over that.
2. It feels like we are supposed to just watch what they created rather than play it.
I disagree. Having that only adds to the fact that we are watching the game play out instead of actually playing it. It takes away from control of the player. As a rotational player, I don't like the game playing my sims in any way, shape, or form, and there's already enough going on in regards to the game playing itself and over-riding the game I try to set up.
2. Toddlers
Cons:
1. Everything else
Pros:
-I prefer rotational gameplay and the new options to activate aging SOLELY for the active sim or SOLELY for unplayed Sims are excellent. Those should be used in every game from now on.
-The income-to-bills ratio is the best in the franchise. Bills in Sims 2 are only like $300 or so while the Sims earn thousands a day, whereas in Sims 3 you get promoted to president of the universe for smiling at the secretary on your way to your desk. Sims 4 is nice in the sense a Sim can reasonably expect to earn $12,000 a week, but then pay $7,500 in taxes. Painting and writing are where the money is at, so if you desperately want money, just do that. If you want more balanced gameplay though with poorer Sims? This is completely doable. I would actually prefer they even take this further in the future and develop a way for the taxes to be income/property-based as they are now, but to also allow for their bills to exceed their income without demanding a mansion. I hate only having rich Sims to play, so it's a breath of fresh air to see this game's economy more balanced.
-The animations are a subtle means to help Sims feel more alive. Yes it's all smoke and mirrors considering the personality variations are actually abysmal, but they're still a nice touch that I'd like to keep.
-The graphics and Sim customization are currently the best. Something that I hated about Sims 3 was that Bridgeport was the only neighborhood where female Sims would have big breasts; the breast slider was disabled beyond a certain size for randomly generated Sims. What's the point in such a feature if they're just gonna disable it...? I know I say that and it sounds perverted, but for me it was about 1) having more diversity in appearance is nice and also means more diversity in the gene pool for family play, and 2) some women - yes - have bigger breasts. If I were a woman with bigger breasts, I'd be annoyed I can't make myself properly just because someone thinks kids are gonna view that sexually or something (no, that's not how kids think), so my body type is inadvertedly being censored. It's taken a looooong time for a lot of body modifications to be included in the game because of their possible sexual usage or because the body type is viewed as atypical or unattractive, but the fact of the matter is that sometimes a guy or a girl has a nice butt, sometimes someone is fat without having a big butt, sometimes a woman has bigger breasts and sometimes a person has a rather unfortunate figure altogether. The past games seemed to shun any body forms that could either be seen as unfortunate and unattractive while also shunning any body forms considered overtly sexual. I want everyone and everything included, because it provides better diversity and better representation of the world. Sims 4 allows for that better than the other games, and I look forward to a Sims game where they can actually figure out how to reasonably animate varying degrees of height, because I think height is another trademark appearance characteristic for certain people that needs to be included.
Cons:
-Personalities are terrible and the Sims have absolutely no character. The problem is the personality system was gutted and moved to emotions to try and make the emotions system feel more impactful. However, it simply doesn't work, because it means that if I have a socially awkward geek loner and a ladies man romantic that's constantly hooking up, then both of them exhibit the EXACT same proficiency at seducing women if they're both flirty, and both of them exhibit the EXACT same socially awkward tendencies if they're embarassed.
-Moods are a terrible system that needs to be trashed. This could work as a supportive system to do little more than govern their expression, the animations they use or add minor bonuses/penalties to actions, but as a centerstage feature they're constantly trying to make it be...? No, get off the stage. It cannot handle being a main attraction, it's simply not an exciting or meaningful enough system to pull it off. The fact that they refuse to drop this system means we get spammed out with moodlets as though they were actual gameplay. These moods crowd out any potential for actual gameplay and seriously overstay their welcome.
-Relationship culling. It's hard to build a town and craft it exactly as I please when my Sims constantly forget each other and their relationships to one another. Relationships should freeze when a Sim is not being actively played, cause it's an a pain for rotational play the way it is now.
-Wall decals are not gameplay. You could apply that statement to any CAS or build mode object, the point remains the same: we want gameplay, not things. There was actually a study on happiness that found people who spend their wealth on things aren't any happier than those lacking wealth. The people that spend their wealth on experiences typically are happier. It's no different for this game: gameplay experiences are satisfying, things and nice clothing or hairstyles are not.
-Too few Expansions, too many Stuff Packs. I still find it ridiculous they consider a year-long wait for an expansion to be acceptable. No, that is ridiculous. It means you could starve to death in the time it takes this game to come out with meaningful content, but by God they need to make sure you buy a half-hearted, phoned-in stuff pack every three months.
-Bugs are bad. It is very difficult to be in the same ballpark as Sims 3, yet somehow they've succeeded. There's constantly new bugs coming out that actively disrupt people's gameplay. Sims 3's crime was always lag and slow performance, but it had comparatively less bugs that got in the way of gameplay. The complaints were more that the game runs slow rather than that feature X doesn't function. Sims 4 isn't quite as slow, but for crying out loud we cannot use Speed x3 and there's been a great number of bugs that singlehandedly ruin careers, playstyles or even life states. It's pathetic, and it needs to be fixed.
-The worst AI in the entire series. I don't know why it's so hard to get a Sim to go to the nearest sink when washing dishes. I don't know why it's so hard to get them to pick up those dishes in a logical order prioritizing the nearest dishes first. I don't know why it's so hard to tweak their AI so that Sims with social need at 75% fullness or higher will NOT obsessively queue up social interactions. I don't know why it's so hard to give MY orders absolute priority so that my Sims can't cancel them out with their autonomous actions. I don't know why musical chairs is so impossible to destroy. I just know it's truly impressive that they somehow managed to create an AI system that's even worse than Sims 1.
I could honestly go on and on with the cons for some time, but I think those touch on major issues. Honorable mentions go to the limited world spaces, smaller lots, ridiculously oversized furniture objects for no explainable reason, terrible priorities in design, consistently disappointing packs, and any half-hearted feature that clearly had corners cut during it's development. (example, retail has no cash register, Pets has no dog houses)
1) You can travel between worlds without mods
2) the search bar in build mode
3) The game is pretty if you like clay hair.
Cons
1)No colour wheel for Sims just pets. I won't lie it bums me out that I can't make my hair which has highlights without using cc which I don't want to do but I can make a purple poodle with yellow stripes.
2) Sims are all the same. Traits don't mean diddily squat other than a moodlet which will get overriden with 10 happy Moodlets. Being evil consists of manic laughing occasionally whilst giving out hugs and compliments to the neighbourhood.
3) Emotional system is again useless, little Jimmy won't care if he sees a parent cheating on the other with the next door neighbour/bar tender they just met but it doesn't matter because the parent that got cheated on will get a... wait for it...moodlet But don't worry send the next room and they will be instantly happy. Because everyone is always cheered up by life changing news by a decorated room no matter how often you have seen it.
4) been mentioned already but the player lacks control. We can't make our own worlds, we can't make our own venues without following a check list. What if I want to make a small independent cinema with no bar? I can't. If I do no sims will come. I swear my sims should be in some sort of group for their addiction to erm nectar.
5) Following on from 4, playing rotational is getting to be a nightmare. Don't spend too long giving your sims the perfect party outfit because the game will override your decision. What do you mean you don't want your snob sims parading around in a green top hat, multicoloured tights and shorts at a night club?
6) The game tries way to hard to be "down with the kids" and not in a natural good way. More like an awkward uncle trying to dance at a wedding way. Which is limiting for story telling. If I want to create a medieval world with no tech? I can't.
7) The game is trying to hard to play it safe, deviant playstyles suffer. Everything is watered down and made super friendly. Heck even the vampire that comes to suck your blood will strike up a friendly discussion first. Don't even get me started on romance or lack of it. High fiving before woohoo? Please.
Aesthetics (to an extent; bloom + ppe are nice, the overused world decor is not)
Animation fluidity
CAS (this was essentially the game’s main selling point, but I still think it could be better)
Toddler life stage
*Clubs - as a concept, they are great. Not perfect, but overall a really cool addition to the game.
*Character values - again, great concept. The end rewards are actually pretty good too. The only part that I feel could use some work is the balance for positive and negative actions. There’s a lot of things that affect your CV’s in a positive way, but the negative ones require active involvement of the player to not be overtaken by the autonomous positive actions.
Cons:
Simplified building tools
Poor AI (in some cases it’s far too structured and predictable, in other cases it’s just not believable)
No world creation or editing (this tips the scale heavily for me.. shouldn’t even be a question as to whether a modern Sims game should support this feature)
Tiny worlds - epic fail in the functionality department, decoration presents a deceptive ‘world’ compared to what can actually be used.
BG content heavily skewed toward YA social/party life.
Too many exaggerated animations/not enough animation variety.
Too many copied actions amongst age groups (children, teens, and elders all behave too much like YA Sims. No variety there, and kids feel like mini adults. Teens are just adults who go to school, otherwise minimal difference)
*underwhelming implementation of several major game features (active careers that only work in their designated areas, apartments that only exist in their designated areas and cannot be modified any further than small decorative changes, pets that by default have no info panels, retail lots that become a social trap, etc etc etc)
*too large of a focus on cuisine, a new recipe is not a new gameplay addition and frankly it’s about as exciting as seeing a box of crayons that has the color red in it (hint hint, it’s super low level and expected. Sims 2&3 added new recipes w/o making a huge deal about it)
*broken gameplay features: active careers (EP01) broken, but still being sold w/o any clarification on whether a fix will ever become reality. Retail (EP01), restaurants (GP03), and Vet (EP04) [essentially all ownable venues] have bugged employees who chit chat excessively even with maxed skills and training (when I said ‘retail lots become social trap’ earlier this is what I’m referring to).
**Vet works a tiny bit differently than the other two even though they all essentially work on the same system. Employees still stand around/socialize, but if they have actually taken a pet to the examination table that action should complete since it’s locked into the action cue. The only times I have encountered a bug where they will stop working on a pet is when the owner tries to talk to the vet examining their pet.
*Incomplete Pets - this might be a matter of opinion, but the vanilla Cats/dogs do not feel complete. Not in terms of gameplay, not in terms of functionality. For the EP they feel like the very last thing they added, because there’s just not enough to do given the excuses we were supplied for why ONLY cats and dogs were included. Cats have more than dogs, but neither have an acceptable amount of gameplay OR content associated with them.
** Something that is bothersome is the lack of a destruction/chew need for dogs. Dogs ARE natural chewers, but in the ‘realistic’ interpretation Sims 4 C&D they are angelic even with the worst traits. There is no chewing, or destruction of furniture. Dogs can barely interact with any furniture. They also never go potty in the house, a fully untrained dog will always go whine by the door - which is what a trained dog would do. So the whole training aspect is woefully undercooked and frankly, just terrible.
* - denotes features from DLC packs, not solely base game stuff.
** - additional explanation of point above
I tend to agree with a lot of your insights around the forums; however, while I partially agree with the above, stating 'we want gameplay, not things,' isn't strictly true. You've got to remember that The Sims is meant to cater to many different play styles. A builder/decorator would probably go crazy for the wall decals. BUT, a lack of balance between the different play styles is a definite con.
- Simpler building/moving rooms around
- The Gallery for instant downloading of new homes
- The way the sims look and move
- The art style
- Search ability in build/buy
- Cas system (though I would like even more pull/push areas)
- Hats on any hair
- Any clothing wearable for pregnancy
- Toddlers
Cons:I could go on a long time, but those are my main ones.
Cons
You're right, but a lack of balance is exactly what they had. In City Living, they bracked about a truckload of oversized paintings that most people can't fit in their homes. In Cats and Dogs, they bragged about wall decals. The diversity provided isn't even that good and constantly seems to involve the same object types being overdeveloped. Builders for example readily complain about a lack of build features, but I can't name one that thinks "omg I'm so excited to have 30 new decals/wall hangings."
CAS is about the only thing that seems remotely satisfying, but even here we could argue it would've saved a load of time and effort to just give us Create-A-Style. I mean the last expansion pack had like 5-6 male hairstyles with only tiny variations in the hair. If this game had CASt, they could've just made one hairstyle and let the users create the variants, so even when CAS is succeeding, I have to question if they couldn't be more productive focusing their time elsewhere.
• Toddlers
• CAS even though its missing a few basics such as body hair
• No pudding face
• Game runs smooth no crashing
Cons
• Teens are adults
• Bassinet babies
• Missing animations
• No cars
• Windows doors arches furniture and so on never matching and no CAST to fix this basic thing they could of done right without it
• Emotions
• Build mode has to many limitations cant raise one building on a lot they all get a foundation no driveways garages water tools or elevation
• Tablets instead of cash registers
• No create a world tool or way to change the worlds they are basic and stagnant
• Expansions are for the most part now mini games and don't expand the game
• Traits mean nothing
This haha.
Seriously though, there are very few things I like off the top of my head.
1. Vampires
2. Toddlers (still should’ve been added at beginning)
3. How pregnancy is handled this time around
4. Looks pretty
What I don’t like.
1. Lack of NPCs especially social worker, burglars, firemen, newspaper boy/girl, carpools.
2. Step parents. They’re not recognised in game - this needs to be sorted.
3. No consequences for anything. Don’t go to school? Who cares? Sick? Who cares? A child home alone at 3am? NOBODY CARES. Yeah, well I care.
4. Traits don’t do anything other than a random buff every couple of days that goes away in 4 sim minutes.
5. Sims have no memories. Literally. Cheat on your sim? WHO CARES? NOBODY!!!!!!
6. Musical chairs - does my head in JUST.SIT.DOWN.WHERE.I.TELL.YOU!
7. Self employed and retired sims, or lack thereof - need I say more? Hey, what do you do for a living? Oh me? I’m unemployed but I own several shops and now a vet clinic. I’m also a retired elder but WHO CARES? Apparently not EA.
8. Culling, even with the new settings, why is this even a thing?
9. No story progression, I do however like the age setting where I can choose who ages and who doesn’t.
10. Just to round it up, elders. Boy, are they boring as heck. They were fun in TS2, now? Not so much.
—T
The things I don't like:
-The look of the game (it is the main reason I don't go back to sims 3)
-Traveling to different worlds
-Being able to make adjustments to rooms easy
Cons:
- Lack of customizability (same as what others are saying how you have to have certain things when you make a venue or what you can't make). I love making my own worlds and no matter how much I try (without the help of mods) EA will find a way to stick in something unimmersive. I don't mind using mods but this game is expensive so mods shouldn't be needed to play.
-Sims are so dumb and annoying sometimes. Like when I invite for a party and I set out like 5 group meals and call them. They will eat that and there is still a ton on the counter but they go to fridge to grab food to set out without eating. Sometimes I see sims just standing there doing nothing at all for hours in the game. With free will on, my vampire would still stand outside to burn and die.
-So annoying to be happy all the time even when a sim's husband just died or something. Can we turn of decoration buffs like with the mood buffs they have. I had two sims die in my legacy load from being hysterical and their birthday parties. I have to remember to remove decor out of my living room when I throw a party.
1. More realistic emotions and multitasking.
2. Smoother and funnier animations
2. Graphic that looks warmer and softer, shadow and sunlight.
→This is the main reason why I can't get back to TS3 (lol).
3. Very user-friendly building tool, and well-done room models with many styles
4. CAS!!
Cons
1. No U-shaped, L-shaped staircase
2. Even though one lot and the others are in the same section, it still runs loading among them
3. Can't shape the ground.
1. Artstyle/Animation
2. CAS
3. Vampires
4. Pets
5. Brindleton Bay world
Cons:
1. Weak Romance/Relationships system
2. No self-employment
3. Emotion system/traits (a Sim cheats on their boyfriend/girlfriend/husband/wife and there is barely any reaction. Traits also really have no gameplay effects on your Sim.)
4. No memories
5. No Darkwave/Goth music stations or Horror Book type for writers
6. Toddlers (sorry family players, toddlers are time-consuming and annoying to play/care for, to me anyway.)