“Smarter Sims!”
If sims are so “smart” then why is their reaction to death so awful and lackluster? Why is death in general in this game so... bad?
Yesterday I drowned the boyfriend of one of my Sims. For context, there are six Sims in the household. My female sim Tricia and her ex husband Wesley, Tricia’s new boyfriend Jared, Wesley’s new fiancé Don, and two children. (Jackson: Wesley and Tricia’s kid and Jessica: Jared and Tricia’s kid)
I keep them all living together for drama, and I decided to add to that drama by finally killing off a sim. I settled for Jared, so I did the whole drowning thing, since killing off a sim in this game is also way too hard (but that’s another issue lmao)
Well after like 17 freakin’ hours he finally drowned. All the sims on the lot (Wesley, Tricia, and Jessica) were on their way to witness the death. The problem is Jessica was in her high chair (she’s a toddler) and Tricia interrupted her “witness death” interaction to get her out. Once Tricia got her out, she didn’t go back to witnessing her boyfriend’s death, (and Jessica didn’t go back to witnessing her dad’s death) so in the end Grim came and went and only WESLEY (who barely even KNEW the guy) was sad from grief.
It’s so incredibly frustrating. I wanted to have Tricia be a “survivor” of some sorts, with her first getting over being cheated on by her ex husband and now having to get over the sudden death of her long term boyfriend. But it like she never even knew the guy. She was happy and went back to writing her book, and of course their daughter Jessica didn’t care either.
So... if you made it to the end of this rant, are you satisfied with how death is handled in this game? If no, how could it be improved?
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Are you satisfied with death in this game? 161 votes
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I did have a couple split up once, and that was awesomely done because I carried on playing with the female and she was SO sad for days afterwards. Her lower lip would tremble, she'd have crying fits, she'd mope around. Her best friend started calling round to her house regularly to cheer her up. I was pretty impressed.
They'll only get a moodlet if they witness the event, and it'll vary dependent on the relationship they had... Which breaks the immersion for me. Close relatives who live in separate houses should still get a sad moodlet, and they should be able to hear about the loss somehow. A phone call, anything.
Death mechanics in general are sorta boring since it takes a while for them to die, or you'd have to jump through hoops to kill them. I resort to cheating to get them to die nowadays since it's so safe
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All the family should be notified, as well as anyone with Friend/Good Friend level of relationship. Even co-workers and club members, perhaps.
If/how hard/long sims grieve for should be related to their average relationship score over knowing each other (if possible) or final relationship at time of death (this would allow elders to make up with family before passing if desired).
Examples:
I'm fine with everything EXCEPT who knows about death. Everyone with a close relationship to a Sim should know they've died, period.
I play with aging off, so I don't end up with frequent deaths. But they tend to come in batches, and then this starts to annoy me.
Added: Funerals and wakes and cemeteries are a nice-to-have but I don't personally need them. Just want them.
I loved how in sims 3 funerals were added to the party list
Also I loved how Sims 3 would let you know of someone last few days even if they were in a different household.
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My main want for this game that is death related.. is funerals. I also want more ways for sims to kick the bucket but I'm sure we will be getting those. I'm good with the grieving time period... sometimes I want to fast forward through it now. I don't play extended families enough to be affected the way other simmers are by no death notifications but I agree it makes sense that that should be part of the game.
It would be nice also to have some sort of in game property distribution upon the death of a played sim.. it would also be nice if the played sims dependents such as pets or small children could be managed via a pop up.. as in do you want to adopt them, send them to managed worlds, or have the social worker remove them (that sounds ominous.. I like it).
And it's not that I'm out to kill my sims, or anything like that. It's just that a little risk keeps me on my toes, makes things more fun and interesting.
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Not only is it far too easy to keep your Sims happy, not only is it difficult to get them to recognize when someone they hold a kind of affection for die, it's hard to even kill them in the first place. Added to that with the lack of a graveyard, death as a whole in this game is really just an inconvienence as opposed to an actual tragedy.
Say you take a male Sim. If you made him the greatest, most influential Sim ever, I'm talking a LOT of children, rich as hell, accomplisher of many great things... his family and friends will only be saddened for less than an in-game week and not only can that moodlet's timer be able to go down more quickly, but because of the game's enviromental mood givers, they'll probably stay happy regardless.
There's no connection, nothing to insinuate that the related Sim is actually in deep mourning for the loss of a loved one. When I was first playing the Sims 3, my loner of a Sim got involved with another one and he didn't realize she was already married. When he found out, he was torn up for like 3 in-game days.
I couldn't get the moodlet to progress any faster and no matter what I did, he continued to wail dramtically and randomly. I liked that.
And then there's the obvious lack of danger and consequence in this game. No, I think death needs a BIG patch.
Clearly, we're not all playing the same game. You're using mods that have changed the death experience for you.
An experiment: Try the same events without those mods and then come back to share the results. They might prove eye opening.
You saved me a whole lot of typing. Thanks.
From a storytelling standpoint, the reactions are very important to me. However, I totally agree with everything else. The level of risk in this game is practically nil. And the emotional deaths, they just tick me off. They're too juvenile -- even for a game about little pretend people.
Actually I don't play with mods like that at all and yes my sims do react to death and the mourning period last long enough to be irritating to me (days) they have upped the sadness evidently that the sims experience. If I don't pick up the urns they do go and grieve. So you don't have to go into your game and test it out for someone else.. it's happening the way you see it.
I think most people that have issues with it mostly have issues with how sims off the lot or in other households don't acknowledge the deaths. Personally this doesn't bother me.. I don't play in a way that it would. For the most part I don't have a problem with the way death is handled. If people want more chaos and untimely stuff there are lots of traits to add this and easier deaths to their games... They should try playing with them you know as an experiment and come back and tell us how that went.
I'm mostly good with the way death is handled. I just want more of it.. especially funerals, does that mod cause errors in your game?
The death of a loved one moodlet can bug me too. I also play deviantly and when my murdering sim barely has a friendship with their victim (not an in game mechanic) they are also sad for days after the death.. this kind of bugs me but I work it into the story as more of a let down time. Or make them enemies but that doesn't always fit the story since they are often sneaky about what they plan to do. I do like that the enemies can laugh at the grave.
The problem is with reactions to death - at least that I've found in my games - is that it's so easy to have a Sim be distracted by something else around the house (those dratted toddlers!) that they don't actually witness the death and therefore remain blithely clueless about the passing of a loved one in the next room...
I'd love it if were possible to have a Sim get a notification (which would trigger a strong sadness buff) about the death of a relative or friend who lives on another lot. I have MCCC and you can enable such notifications (though they don't trigger a buff) so I would think that it's doable. I'd also love to have the feature that was (I think?) in TS3 where you'd get a pop-up saying that a relative had died and left your Sim some money in their will - loved that (slightly morbid) little feature
It doesn't bother me that it's hard to make a Sim die - it shouldn't be easy, right? Right??!! (Though I can appreciate that the storytellers might want to make it easier to accomplish.)
Wouldn't it be great for evil sims not to automatically get sad moodlets when death happens? They should be overjoyed bad things are happening. It would be a great example to show that traits actually do matter and that emotions do NOT override them as they should.