Having just welcomed another content patch, I once again log into my seemingly perfect and smooth running world with almost little to no negativity unless the fates allow a thunderstorm or two, or one of my locals decides to die of their own accord, which is nearly never.
Speaking of said thunderstorm, whilst tending to my latest sim who is currently drying her chilled and damp bones in a nice warm lavender soak bath, a thought hit me...this would be the most brilliant opportunity for a home invasion, with the howling winds, patter of heavy rain against the homes many windows, bolts of lightening illuminating the night sky as she enjoys herself in her luxury bathroom full of expensive things, surely items a thief would be quick to pick a lock or two in order to reach.
Following the rumour and hearsay, it's fairly obvious that the Staff and development team have not ruled Burglars out just yet, and the fact a guru or two has come forward to deny the current rumours as to why we do not have burglars (Someone or someone's came out claiming they had openly expressed the want to not trigger those with anxiety or whom are easily upset and thus scrapped the burglar idea completely, this claim has since been busted by a few of the gurus in charge) means they may still hold a place in our game, hence why I am making this thread in order to grasp their attention and explain why we NEED burglars to be added into the sims 4, why their presence in our games are wanted and the negativity behind them yearned for as a way to prove nothing is realistically perfect or gums drops and rainbows as the sims currently seems to portray.
I urge Simmers WHO WANT this feature to comment below as to why they want burglars to return and how the development team can improve them, give them some zest to keep the addition feeling new and making it as fun as it will ultimately be terrifying.
I, myself, long for the sims 2 burglars, creepy music and zoom cam with the works, but with a twist of my pets being capable of driving them away as well as sims with certain traits, maybe an added fear of vampires and grandmothers (Maybe a new animation of a grandmother sim beating a burglar with her slipper. DON'T MESS WITH NANNY).
Leave below what you think should entice and keep away a burglar if they were to be added into the sims 4, also leave your thoughts and ideas regarding the feature and what it could do for the game and sims involved!
#BringBackBurglars2k18
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However it’s my belief that the burglar won’t be returning because anything even slightly negative is either not there or if it’s there is toned right down. For example sims don’t die if fixing electronics and they get shocked the first time, death in the temples in jungle adventure is rare If not non existent. Currently the most dangerous feature in game is the tumble dryer if you don’t clean the lint trap.
How would that work with a burglar? He creeps in the front door and is so overcome with happiness moodlets he decides not to rob you? He is confronted by your sim and they stop and have a friendly discussion, after which he picks up your sims valuables and walks out the door? Or what if he gets the current trend of visiting your house and not leaving for hours? It would be really immersion breaking got see the burglar rob you then make a beeline for your sims pc to play games.
Your sims spot a burglar and who they going to call? The police? What police? Without the police a burglar would be pointless as much as it pains me to admit it.
But please Gurus prove me wrong!
Good point! I had almost completely forgot about the police involvement needed for this feature to actually make sense, your comment leading to the realisation and quick tweet to a guru of expanding the active police career we currently have via GTW.
For the record, we DO have police, technically, just not in NPC form as of yet, however, they are there and should EA decide to add the negative feature to our game, they could simply revamp that career so we had off duty, or at least semi active police sims walking the beat and or patrolling in an NPC cop car, cars are a decorative feature in the sims 4 so it wouldn't be too crazy a push to have them roll up during a robbery or even some sort of negative altercation and see what the problem is.
This in itself brings the question of "Because we have police, shouldn't we have a reason for them being here?"
Yes we have the lazy, poorly designed interactions of checking out a crime scene and asking witnesses for their statements before looking for the criminal responsible, but that in itself just adds to the subject, we can visit a crime scene of a burglary, yet we don't have actual burglars, simply oddly dressed NPC's who act as a stand-in for what who we should really be locking up!
Again, the more we look into it, the more it doesn't make sense, why don't we have burglars when we can look at crime scenes and arrest sims? Why can we do X Y and Z but don't actually have active thieves?! Why do we have everything BUT burglars.
It doesn't make sense, and though I agree with everything you've said, we do have police, and hopefully the DEV team will, should they add burglars, work on their animations and features so we don't have them hanging around playing on our sims computers or eating their food (Actually that sounds sorta funny, they break in and raid your fridge) before deciding to loot the place.
It won't be a clean cut patch, it wont be perfect and we should accept that now, BUT it doesn't mean we shouldn't demand something we have the tools for but lack in terms of presence.
...Why can I imagine a burglar eating Bob's pancakes? Why is that a fight scene I want right now?
I wonder how difficult it would be to increase the number of lot traits available for each lot. I wouldn't mind having 4 instead of 3.
Now firefighters! Who doesn't love a hot firefighter. We need those back as soon as possible.
With the rocketing heater bills caused by seasons, it would be very realistic for sims to get into debt and have repo turn up demanding their items! However if you were a living off the land simmer who had nothing, they could leave you a tab, meaning once you started working, or somehow got a certain amount, the money would leave your bank automatically, maybe even charging relatives to cover your losses.
With firemen, it would be great having them come back to save thanksgiving when Jeff has set the turkey on fire! Allow fines for fake calls and maybe have them encourage fire safety with tips and tricks for avoiding incidents. The ability to work as a fireman would be nice too, able to save your own home from disaster or answer neighbors calls for help
For example, your sim has a good friend down the road, or in the neighborhood over, that sim turns out to be the local thief and so when they break into your home and you cannot confront them as you’re asleep or somewhere else, they have a 50/50 chance of realizing their mistake and either leaving the home immediately, falling pray to the alarm system, stealing a few minor cheap objects or stealing only one item of value, this of course depends how many valuables you own.
Also what could change them is the fact you do or do not have children.
That example being: the theft breaks in, whether they know you or not, they see a toddler or baby item and again, have the 50/50 chance of a speech bubble displaying their sudden bout of a conscious and leaving you alone, or perhaps even GIVING you something as a good Will gesture to help with the family, of course this can be either left around the home or sent via the mail anonymously or even given to your via that sim however if you haven’t seen them as a thief yet, they simply say it’s a little gift for being a friend or they just found it and thought you’d like it.
This not only lightens the tone, meaning EA don’t have to worry so much about upsetting simmers, but also means if you do choose to become a burglar, you can make bad, good or neutral choices based on your preference of play style.
Speaking of tone, I would also like to see how thieves react to certain situations or even times of year during the game! Such as an elderly sim dying of fright should they catch the burglar in their home, a snow storm occurring meaning the thief has to trudge around leaving footprints in and outside the home, overheating under their wool mask during the summer and so on, maybe even running into the family pet whose a big lovable pooch but to them is scary as plum!
For pet interactions, I imagine something along the lines of: if the burglar breaks in and there’s a dog, it can chase them away, start barking loudly, run away out of fear, follow them around and even out of the house, or just blatantly ignore them and go back to sleep. For cats, I see something a little sneakier, and perhaps more violent such as should they be territorial, they leap at the burglar and claw at them, if they’re stealthy or spoiled then they knock things over and alert sims or trip the alarm which can be turned off if the thief is skilled enough, similar to dogs they can just ignore them, but if they follow the burglar out they can return with evidence which you can use to help police Sims find them, maybe they can even lead you straight to the Sims home.
If interacting as a human sim, then the obvious would occur along with some newer options to spice things up: you’d have your usual fight or flight responses. Call police if you didn’t have an alarm or if it was turned off. Fight them if you’re brave enough. Tell them to leave and avoid conflict or maybe even seduce them into staying a little longer, yes you have to be a romantic sim for this but in the right circumstances they may leave with nothing except your heart....and a few other things if you catch my drift.
If you have children below teenager range then they can go run for help, they’ll be able to out run the burglar and fetch neighbors who may follow or call the police, or maybe they’ll just cry and hide.
If you do have teenagers then depending on their traits, they’ll either fight with or without you, hide away or go call for help, this can be either by fetching locals or calling the police, should they be throwing a tantrum at the time they may even just drive the thief off by being a brat, even they have limits you know.
Just a few things my brain decided to throw out.
Everyone is welcome to add more and give their thoughts on new and exciting interactions and possibilities! Have a nice day, everyone
Someone above made a good point about having a house trait which allows burglars, or encourages them at least, this could work as a toggle function without having to mess with the games overall settings too much.
I do see your argument, if we can toggle burglars then why not occult sims/etc as a whole? I believe they are working on something similar after the hub-bub regarding over spawn of vampires following the Vamp game pack (Ironic like why buy a vampire pack if you don't want vampires all over the place?), so i can't imagine it being completely off the cards for staff to introduce other toggles for townies, creature sims, etc. But that's another matter we'll have to talk to the gurus about.
Thinking about it, we do need more toggles than are offered, we have the main ones such as seasons, graphics, filling houses, etc, but nothing about what occult sims/townie amount we'd prefer, I do understand the issues with time and software and with recent patches messing up the game rather than repairing it, I get if they're cautious of destroying the game whilst trying to craft a simple on/off switch.
I am curious, where are our toggles? Why don't we have more and what can be done to convince Staff to add them? but again, another matter for another day.
This would make sense. It wouldn’t end the yes or no argument but it would count as a toggle option where players could rest peacefully knowing they weren’t going to get hit unless they CHOSE to be hit, although I do want at least ONE apartment with a fixed bad neighborhood trait to make things interesting, like in city living where some of the homes have a non removable trait fixer upper trait. Something like that for fun.
This idea is brilliant and a good work around for those who do and don’t want it
This. Almost anytime someone says burglars (or a similar feature) adds 'challenge', to me it just adds pointless tedium. In Sims 1, literally all it did was make my lots look ugly because I had to put corner walls up with alarms.
I'm down for the lot trait idea to activate them. That way people can choose to deal with them or not. If they're forced on us randomly, I don't want them. Because ultimately, they only serve to annoy. Some people like that but I certainly don't.
as it stands now, we do have a criminal career (boss and oracle) so why not burglars as part of that? we have the kleptomaniac trait which would be perfect for petty thieves. we could have potential burglars in the lower level, of the criminal career and once they progress up the career path they get their own minions who burgle for them. some of the 'on the job' tasks could be 'case house - offers chance for focused buff, if cased long enough can offer chance to break in' or 'practice alarm deactivation - lowers job performance, raises handy skill, offers chance of energized buff'
with regards to the traits, why not add a 4th 'neighborhood' trait for things like 'bad neighborhood - increases the chances of burglars and social worker visits if children are unattended' or 'safe neighborhood - burglaries and social worker visits are almost non-existent'. the sims 4 is already broken down into little neighborhoods so this would blanket each house with the same trait but if you dont want burglaries set them all to good neighborhood.
having burglars back could open a new career path: emergency services which branches into 3 job roles, fire, police or ambulance with the top job being police chief, fire chief, or paramedic controller (not sure what top job is in real life paramedics).
fires already happen so its silly to not have firemen. the detectives are almost police but itd be nice for a non-follow option like police and id also like an option for a medical career where i can have the option to follow to work or not.
they could even go a step further and have it as a stuff pack so those that dont want any of it dont have to