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Do you like the emotional deaths?
LiELF
Posts: 6,448 Member
Hi all. I've noticed lately that there have been a few discussions regarding the emotional deaths in the game, and how they can negatively affect gameplay. Sometimes the danger pops up quickly and unexpectedly (like when playing with a toddler) before the player gets a chance to calm their Sim down. Other times it interferes with the flow of gameplay when the player is forced to keep sending their Sim to the mirror to "try to calm down" before they go into the danger zone.
I've personally had to deal with the latter example a few times in my last play session, and my Sim was even on a community lot when she suddenly reached the hysterical level and had to run to the bathroom to get herself in check before she died. She was merely interacting with fans and other famous people at a lounge. Apparently, humorous conversation nearly brought her over the edge.
Now, despite this being an obstacle in normal play, I do like that Vampires can influence Sims' emotions to the point of causing mass death. It's a lovely bit of deviance that exists that I just wouldn't want to be without. I also like the concept of ghosts with emotional auras that can grant moodlets to influence the Sims around them. However, I do feel, at this point, that perhaps Occults should be the exception to cause such deaths (this would mean some tweaking to ghostly powers) and that emotional deaths in normal gameplay should be a very rare, if obsolete, thing.
I saw that @Triplis had some very interesting points on this in another thread here: https://forums.thesims.com/en_US/discussion/952438/is-the-emotion-bomb-quirk-deadly (second post down) and it had me wondering how many people would prefer to see the emotional deaths turned off, or at least, something that becomes an option that can be toggled on or off.
(Just to note, I am aware that the MC Command mod allows a toggle for this, but there are many players who don't use mods and I'd like to know the general consensus regarding these types of deaths.)
I'm very curious to see what people have to say, so please feel free to discuss below.
I've personally had to deal with the latter example a few times in my last play session, and my Sim was even on a community lot when she suddenly reached the hysterical level and had to run to the bathroom to get herself in check before she died. She was merely interacting with fans and other famous people at a lounge. Apparently, humorous conversation nearly brought her over the edge.
Now, despite this being an obstacle in normal play, I do like that Vampires can influence Sims' emotions to the point of causing mass death. It's a lovely bit of deviance that exists that I just wouldn't want to be without. I also like the concept of ghosts with emotional auras that can grant moodlets to influence the Sims around them. However, I do feel, at this point, that perhaps Occults should be the exception to cause such deaths (this would mean some tweaking to ghostly powers) and that emotional deaths in normal gameplay should be a very rare, if obsolete, thing.
I saw that @Triplis had some very interesting points on this in another thread here: https://forums.thesims.com/en_US/discussion/952438/is-the-emotion-bomb-quirk-deadly (second post down) and it had me wondering how many people would prefer to see the emotional deaths turned off, or at least, something that becomes an option that can be toggled on or off.
(Just to note, I am aware that the MC Command mod allows a toggle for this, but there are many players who don't use mods and I'd like to know the general consensus regarding these types of deaths.)
I'm very curious to see what people have to say, so please feel free to discuss below.
#Team Occult
Do you like the emotional deaths? 167 votes
I want to see the emotional deaths turned off completely.
7%
13 votes
I like the emotional deaths the way they are now.
25%
43 votes
I think the emotional deaths just need a little tuning to be circumstantial and/or more difficult for Sims to attain.
20%
34 votes
Emotional deaths should be limited to be caused by Occult/Supernatural states like Vampires, Ghosts, etc. ONLY.
3%
6 votes
I would like to see a game toggle for emotional deaths.
31%
53 votes
Other (Leave comment below)
10%
18 votes
1
Comments
Race Against the Clock: Can your elder sim turn back the clock before their time runs out?
Also, there really is a lot of randomness involved. I had one Sim who was hysterical for almost a full day and was fine. Another Sim (a hothead) was enraged for less than an hour before she died.
I've had more issues with my Sims trying to enjoy their fireplace during a heat wave and nearly killing themselves that way. (Although there actually is a toggle for that.)
Hmm... maybe my Sims just need to keep a cowplant around to quickly drain their emotions if they get too worked up. I'm sure that won't have unforeseen negative consequences.
Thankfully, MCCC lets me turn them off already...but honestly, I'd prefer to have them on and just not have sims dying left and right from PTHD (Playful Toddler Hysterical Disorder).
The Winters family Tree --- My Mods
Assuming that this won't happen, Hysteria should be tweaked at the very least. My vampire currently gets +13 happiness every night in his house from doing absolutely nothing. Without the Deadened Emotions power he would've been gone a long time ago.
(◡‿◡✿)
Saying "not to be rude", then blatently being rude does not excuse rude behavior.
When I want a sim to die from an emotional death:
I remember trying to create a playful ghost from scratch. Feed the sim gummibear pancakes and had paintings and kid's TV and another sim tried to tell that one jokes and that sim just.wouldn't. die. It was exhausting trying to kill him. In the end after a loooong loooong painful session I just googled for a cheat. It was a long time ago so it can have been tuned since then. I also tried killing a group of sims with my vampire and I got them laughing like crazy but nosim died. It took forever, in the end I gave up and just built the traditional deathpool. Both me and the poor vampire took a drink after that. Felt like my little Master Vampire should ask to have those fangs removed because she clearly wasn't the big bad I was hoping for.
When I don't want a sim to die from an emotional death
I don't let my sims hang around in a playful mode because I don't want them to die. Sometimes that gets in the way of having fun with kids or friends but what are you going to do. It has not happened too often so that is not so bad. But I like having fun with kids and friends so it is a bit of a bummer.
I do want there to be interesting deaths in the game. And I like things to be somewhat risky at times and dangerous. Hmm... It is like I cannot be nefarious when I want to, my poor vampire and I worked so hard to kill those sims and it just didn't work. Then when I rotate away from my dear little 🐸🐸🐸🐸 in order to play the regulars then I find playful to be a irritation.
I mod my game so I have risky vampirism and woohoo. I have clubs that at random intervals let hungry vampire attack specific lots if your sim is stupid enough to go there. I like the idea of having deaths that occur at random but I just haven't found the fun in emotional deaths and I cannot pinpoint really how to fix it. Just that it has not been all that fun for me.
Thing is I usually want sims to die when I want them too and to escape when I want them too because I plan out the stories some. Although I've got to say I appreciated chaos moments way more often in this iteration than the past ones. I know how to move in a sim and bring them to life again and I know when I'm beat and have to close the game without saving. Which I think has only happened once due to sim death. They just aren't that easy to make happen for me and they happen on their own very, very rarely for me.
I wouldn't use a toggle... but if they did that it would be fine with me. I wouldn't use a no death option personally. I might use an option where we could click on a sim and make them immune though, or even have some potion or reward trait that does that.
Those of you who are fed up of them...throw them my way please
It seems there's way less of a consensus on this than I had the impression of (at least, so far).
To reiterate somewhat what I said in the other thread, I think the most important current drawback for me that it feels like the emotions in question (Playful, Angry, Embarrassed) are almost nonexistent in most of my games, either because I purposefully avoid them to avoid risk of emotional death, or because they are hard to come by and expire easily.
If I had to pick one key area of the three where I believe this deprives gameplay the most, it's in the ability for conflict in relationships to occur. Autonomy for mean socials mostly seems to be tied to the Angry emotion, but if you're playing to avoid death, Angry is something to avoid like the plague. I would guess that this contributes to the perception that some players complain of, of Happy moodlets being run rampant and being too powerful. If Anger was diametrically opposed to it in equal possibility of strength and frequency of application, my guess is that managing relationships and conflict between sims would be much more challenging and engaging.
Granted, none of this gets into some of the great points brought up in this thread about the challenge of avoiding the death type itself, the risk involved, and the idea that that would go missing if the deaths were turned off. I don't know what the answer is to that, but if Angry was made to be death-risk-free and became more focused on relationship tension/risk, I'm confident that I would trade ongoing relationship conflict and management over the "extreme consequence but extremely rare" cloud of game over if I had to choose, at least for that particular emotion.
Variety is important and the game is lacking in risks, but given some people saying they rarely even encounter the emotional deaths (sometimes when trying very hard to get them) it just seems like the system could be done better.
Some people more like to play puppetmaster and others more like to see what happens, and I think a toggle would be a good start toward accounting for that difference in style of play. Even if it was just something like a rewards store trait by sim, as @Hermitgirl suggested; that would probably be the best way to account for differences in style of play, as some people may want one sim exposed to emotional death, but not another, as indicated by some of the responses here.
I haven't toggled off the emotional deaths because I may want them some time, but I have had to use MCCC's change-emotion cheat every 5 to 10 real-life minutes to keep several sims from dying of hysteria because they were having such a good time during a holiday, and one of 'em told such a good story that of course several of them nearly died laughing. 'Cuz that happens in real life all the time, doncha know.
That's not my idea of fun. The game's mechanics are interrupting and interfering with my gameplay.
And that is TS4 in a nutshell: annoying programming interrupting and interfering with our gameplay.
It ain't a random event when it's happening every 5-10 minutes of MY time. /rolleyes
I just had a Sim die of that a few days ago, I had only been playing her for a few Sim hours, and while I was trying to get her through the positivity challenge, and since the game wasn't allowing me to use the friendly interaction one, I had to use the funny one instead, and so she had to repeatedly say the same funny thing over and over and over again, until she became hysterical and died!
And she was almost done with the challenge too, which made it worst, because then I had to start all over again!
So I say either get rid of them completely or allow us to turn it off, without having to turn death off completely!
But frankly I would like more control with my game beyond that even, like being allowed to turn off vampires and ghosts if we want, because I really find vampires annoying, because they come to my sims house at night, and even when I put garlic all over the outside of their house, the vampires will still hang around for a nearly the same amount of time as they do without the garlic, so it doesn't work too well!
But back to the subject of this post, I find it odd that they say the reason why they didn't allow us to control the Cats and Dogs, was because in real life we can't control them either, but then there are SO many totally unrealistic things in the game, and they use that as an excuse for not allowing us to control the pets?
I think I've only had one or two emotional deaths since the release. And it doesn't really bother me if a sim dies, because then I'll just reload the save.
Save and save often, peeps!
I guess the toddler deal is something that needs to be looked at though, I don't know what moodlets are making your sims hysterical.
Either way it seems hysteria is the main problem here. Although people are quick to jump on the bandwagon of removing things. I can't for the life of me understand why you are targeting the whole emotional death system instead of the moodlets that make sims hysterical. I believe that seems to be the problem, the occurancy of this exact type of emotional death. It's just something that needs to be looked at from the devs part.
TS2 has aspiration failure, death by flies, and so on. TS3 also had a lot of ridiculous deaths, they are just fun quirks that can happen if you aren't careful.
If you knew your sim could get rejected again, why not wait? Why not increase the relationship bar a bit more? It seems like some of these are triggered by making poor gameplay decisions. It happens, you can always not save and load again. Chill.