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Feedback: My thoughts on Sims 4 after 5 years and its future
Xiraiya
Posts: 38 Member
I was introduced to The Sims 3 in around 2012 by my SO at the time, I knew of the series and roughly what it was about but had somehow never delved into it before. I primarily played a lot of RPGs and such but I've always had a supreme soft spot for "simulation" games, I had no idea just how much "The Sims" as a concept would be something I was into.
The Sims 3 was addicting, it looked ugly, it ran like garbage even on a decently powerful PC but I didn't care. I was hooked, building houses, designing families, giving them personalities, using mods that increased the global autonomy as a whole to be more like a living little world where they make their own choices. It was truly a beautiful, addictive mess that I sunk hundreds of hours into.
Skipping ahead to the release of Sims 4: A new game, a new engine. The loss of Open Worlds was at first startling but the more I thought about it, I realized I never really ventured too far from home anyway (Though I thought it was weird neighboring houses needed to be loaded) and the load times for me were quick enough to not really care. But the game was no longer ugly, it ran fine, it looked fine. However I realized relatively quickly that there was no real story progression, not a lot would happen over time, even with full autonomy. I felt like the potential with this game was like a puddle, wide, but about an inch deep.
After 5 years of coming and going, playing Sims 4 over and over, buying up new expansions and packs that come out with the hope that it'll... change the game in some fundamental way. I have to say that I like the Sims 4 and it has genuinely come a long way, but I don't love it. Then why play it? Because it works well and really nothing else like The Sims exists I'm afraid.
So I feel beholden to put up with the series for the sake of a type of Gameplay I can't find anywhere else. Sims doesn't have a rival franchise so what choice do I have? It's kind of a sad position to be in as a fan, I think.
I'm not one of those people that feels that the base game has to have every feature from the previous iteration, I get why can't just include everything from the start but I do think there were things that should have been there.
I'm going to try my best to articulate the point that I am trying to make, so bear with me. When new content is announced, or a new expansion, I want to be able to go "Fantastic, I can't wait to see how this new stuff expands the gameplay and how my sims interact with it". That's what I WANT to think, WANT to say. But the reality is I'm thinking "Well it's something different to look at and mess with for a few hours and maybe it'll add a little thing to do sometimes but that's it". Which is not what I want to be thinking, so what is the problem? Are the expansions bad? are the packs bad?
No, ...well look, I think some of the pack stuff feels like a "regret buy' more often than not. But I don't inherently hate the additions to the game, I think they're generally fine, could they be better or more interesting? Sure but I don't think they are the problem.
I think the foundation of Sims 4 is the problem. I could have seen myself playing Vanilla Sims 4 contently and happily, for months, and months, and months without any extra worlds or features IF the simulation aspect and the interactions between sims had more to them. Traits don't matter, they really don't, they feel mostly cosmetic with a slight emotional effect which doesn't really matter "My sim is tense for 5 minutes now because of this thing" Groundbreaking. Traits should inform so much more of their autonomous behavior than they currently do, things they're prone to doing, things they won't do (Unless you really make them). Traits combining together should theoretically cause Sims to seem like they have a personality from all the different behaviors and habits given to them by the traits.
For example. There are games that exist now that aren't The Sims but have taken what I'd call "aspects" of the Sims systems and put them in a different setting entirely, they then evolved on those aspects in a way that makes for some really profound (and dumb) interactions and behavior between AI characters that frankly just never gets old to watch. All because you never know how things in your current playthrough/save file will play out, due to the RNG element born from the possible decisions NPCs might make and the snowball effect that can be born from that.
Story progression of Sims in your town and AI talking with AI and making decisions at any given time based how they bounce off of eachother should never get boring, it just shouldn't. All because it shouldn't result in the exact same outcome everytime, unless nothing is happening in the first place, everytime.
I would love, LOVE if in the future (possibly with Sims 5), this series could build on what matters, the simulation and AI. All the "pretty" stuff like playing dress up is great and all, but I would never find myself complaining about a lack of features if I felt like my Sims were changing over time from happenstance of who they interact with and how, and the possible factors that affect what they do, traits for example being designed to affect their behavior and then being influenced by the other core traits that they have.
Imagine A Scenario
Lets say you start a new game, move your family in, you never really see the Goths, maybe you see Bella sometimes on the street or Mortimer one day, they're generally pleasant and for now nothing of note happens. Lets make another new save file, this time Mortimer happens to be in a bad mood somehow, maybe he encountered a different Sim on the street who was nasty or whatever. That then might cause him to start having problems interacting with people he would usually have no problem interacting with, which then causes him to get into a worse mood by having these relationships start grading, little by little.
Maybe at this point, you decide to go and calm him down and cheer him up, maybe he decides to calm himself down by going for a jog, who knows. Or maybe... just maybe, by chance things just get worse for ol' Mortimer because of these variables bouncing off of eachother with so many different sims, interactions and traits all being at play. Maybe this bad mood leads to him taking it out on his family as they're the ones around him the most at home. Until we started this current save file, he's in theory been a perfectly fine individual, but today has just not been his day, and this puts a strain on his family relationships, degrading them faster.
By now you've been doing whatever with your Sims, living life, playing out drama, whatever you feel inclined to do and have never thought twice about Mortimer again. But you eventually find out, maybe you go into Manage World and spot the Goth Household "What the hell happened, Mortimer is Homeless? he was kicked out? They hate him now?" and for the rest of your game, you'll remember this particular instance of Mortimer as the man who self destructed and ruined his own life, maybe he dies eventually in a fit of rage or maybe things get better for him with your help, who knows. The beauty is in the fact you wouldn't know, and maybe you wouldn't care about him, but you'd have a story to tell others about your save.
And all of that yhat wouldn't even be a scripted story, that would be purely a case of eventuality because a chance encounter with a bad mood and a unlucky set of decisions by him and his traits lead to him "self destructing".
Sims as a series going forward having the possibility of having some of these wild outcomes is what would give The Sims true endless replayability and attachment to the game and the series. And hey if you like your sims quiet and placid, turn down/off autonomy, there is nothing wrong with options, but I want my Sims to be a simulation, I just want to see them carry on with their lives change over time from being in the world long enough to have all these interactions affect them and their relationships, new or old.
Because then, while I'm still thinking about the downfall of Mortimer and how amazing that way to see play out by chance. News comes out "New Expansion, Vampires" and all I would be able to think think is "Oh man, how are Vampires going to play into this nonsense? I can't wait" Could you imagine any major expansion with that sort of functionality with characters doing things and living their life influenced by their traits? It would add so much.
Alright. That was very Long winded I know, but the simulation aspect of Sims 4 and the lacking story progression has been on my mind awhile, there are mods that do try to fix it. But it's sort of "band-aid' for pretty large fundamental problem that frankly should have been something that the game was built around in the first place, I mean that just seems like a given.
Not to mention, the fact pre-existing Sims don't even have unique relationships or how setting up genealogy and stuff is so restricted and awkward in CAS (Why we don't have total freedom setting that stuff up however we want boggles my mind) and how traits kind of don't matter beyond "In my mind my sim is AMBITIOUS!!!" is just so unfortunate. So many aspects of Sims 4 had so much promise and would be genuinely great but are so dampened by this lack of "life", when that "Life" is what should be the game's strongest point.
Speaking of lack of Life, a rant on Vampires: "oooh it's 11PM better watch out for another random old man/old woman/vlad creeping up my street but quickly turning around for the 6th time this week because my Sims are still up and that's all Vampires can really do and they don't seem to think to harass anyone else or have any other interactions with them if they aren't controlled by the player"
The Sims 3 was addicting, it looked ugly, it ran like garbage even on a decently powerful PC but I didn't care. I was hooked, building houses, designing families, giving them personalities, using mods that increased the global autonomy as a whole to be more like a living little world where they make their own choices. It was truly a beautiful, addictive mess that I sunk hundreds of hours into.
Skipping ahead to the release of Sims 4: A new game, a new engine. The loss of Open Worlds was at first startling but the more I thought about it, I realized I never really ventured too far from home anyway (Though I thought it was weird neighboring houses needed to be loaded) and the load times for me were quick enough to not really care. But the game was no longer ugly, it ran fine, it looked fine. However I realized relatively quickly that there was no real story progression, not a lot would happen over time, even with full autonomy. I felt like the potential with this game was like a puddle, wide, but about an inch deep.
After 5 years of coming and going, playing Sims 4 over and over, buying up new expansions and packs that come out with the hope that it'll... change the game in some fundamental way. I have to say that I like the Sims 4 and it has genuinely come a long way, but I don't love it. Then why play it? Because it works well and really nothing else like The Sims exists I'm afraid.
So I feel beholden to put up with the series for the sake of a type of Gameplay I can't find anywhere else. Sims doesn't have a rival franchise so what choice do I have? It's kind of a sad position to be in as a fan, I think.
I'm not one of those people that feels that the base game has to have every feature from the previous iteration, I get why can't just include everything from the start but I do think there were things that should have been there.
I'm going to try my best to articulate the point that I am trying to make, so bear with me. When new content is announced, or a new expansion, I want to be able to go "Fantastic, I can't wait to see how this new stuff expands the gameplay and how my sims interact with it". That's what I WANT to think, WANT to say. But the reality is I'm thinking "Well it's something different to look at and mess with for a few hours and maybe it'll add a little thing to do sometimes but that's it". Which is not what I want to be thinking, so what is the problem? Are the expansions bad? are the packs bad?
No, ...well look, I think some of the pack stuff feels like a "regret buy' more often than not. But I don't inherently hate the additions to the game, I think they're generally fine, could they be better or more interesting? Sure but I don't think they are the problem.
I think the foundation of Sims 4 is the problem. I could have seen myself playing Vanilla Sims 4 contently and happily, for months, and months, and months without any extra worlds or features IF the simulation aspect and the interactions between sims had more to them. Traits don't matter, they really don't, they feel mostly cosmetic with a slight emotional effect which doesn't really matter "My sim is tense for 5 minutes now because of this thing" Groundbreaking. Traits should inform so much more of their autonomous behavior than they currently do, things they're prone to doing, things they won't do (Unless you really make them). Traits combining together should theoretically cause Sims to seem like they have a personality from all the different behaviors and habits given to them by the traits.
For example. There are games that exist now that aren't The Sims but have taken what I'd call "aspects" of the Sims systems and put them in a different setting entirely, they then evolved on those aspects in a way that makes for some really profound (and dumb) interactions and behavior between AI characters that frankly just never gets old to watch. All because you never know how things in your current playthrough/save file will play out, due to the RNG element born from the possible decisions NPCs might make and the snowball effect that can be born from that.
Story progression of Sims in your town and AI talking with AI and making decisions at any given time based how they bounce off of eachother should never get boring, it just shouldn't. All because it shouldn't result in the exact same outcome everytime, unless nothing is happening in the first place, everytime.
I would love, LOVE if in the future (possibly with Sims 5), this series could build on what matters, the simulation and AI. All the "pretty" stuff like playing dress up is great and all, but I would never find myself complaining about a lack of features if I felt like my Sims were changing over time from happenstance of who they interact with and how, and the possible factors that affect what they do, traits for example being designed to affect their behavior and then being influenced by the other core traits that they have.
Imagine A Scenario
Lets say you start a new game, move your family in, you never really see the Goths, maybe you see Bella sometimes on the street or Mortimer one day, they're generally pleasant and for now nothing of note happens. Lets make another new save file, this time Mortimer happens to be in a bad mood somehow, maybe he encountered a different Sim on the street who was nasty or whatever. That then might cause him to start having problems interacting with people he would usually have no problem interacting with, which then causes him to get into a worse mood by having these relationships start grading, little by little.
Maybe at this point, you decide to go and calm him down and cheer him up, maybe he decides to calm himself down by going for a jog, who knows. Or maybe... just maybe, by chance things just get worse for ol' Mortimer because of these variables bouncing off of eachother with so many different sims, interactions and traits all being at play. Maybe this bad mood leads to him taking it out on his family as they're the ones around him the most at home. Until we started this current save file, he's in theory been a perfectly fine individual, but today has just not been his day, and this puts a strain on his family relationships, degrading them faster.
By now you've been doing whatever with your Sims, living life, playing out drama, whatever you feel inclined to do and have never thought twice about Mortimer again. But you eventually find out, maybe you go into Manage World and spot the Goth Household "What the hell happened, Mortimer is Homeless? he was kicked out? They hate him now?" and for the rest of your game, you'll remember this particular instance of Mortimer as the man who self destructed and ruined his own life, maybe he dies eventually in a fit of rage or maybe things get better for him with your help, who knows. The beauty is in the fact you wouldn't know, and maybe you wouldn't care about him, but you'd have a story to tell others about your save.
And all of that yhat wouldn't even be a scripted story, that would be purely a case of eventuality because a chance encounter with a bad mood and a unlucky set of decisions by him and his traits lead to him "self destructing".
Sims as a series going forward having the possibility of having some of these wild outcomes is what would give The Sims true endless replayability and attachment to the game and the series. And hey if you like your sims quiet and placid, turn down/off autonomy, there is nothing wrong with options, but I want my Sims to be a simulation, I just want to see them carry on with their lives change over time from being in the world long enough to have all these interactions affect them and their relationships, new or old.
Because then, while I'm still thinking about the downfall of Mortimer and how amazing that way to see play out by chance. News comes out "New Expansion, Vampires" and all I would be able to think think is "Oh man, how are Vampires going to play into this nonsense? I can't wait" Could you imagine any major expansion with that sort of functionality with characters doing things and living their life influenced by their traits? It would add so much.
Alright. That was very Long winded I know, but the simulation aspect of Sims 4 and the lacking story progression has been on my mind awhile, there are mods that do try to fix it. But it's sort of "band-aid' for pretty large fundamental problem that frankly should have been something that the game was built around in the first place, I mean that just seems like a given.
Not to mention, the fact pre-existing Sims don't even have unique relationships or how setting up genealogy and stuff is so restricted and awkward in CAS (Why we don't have total freedom setting that stuff up however we want boggles my mind) and how traits kind of don't matter beyond "In my mind my sim is AMBITIOUS!!!" is just so unfortunate. So many aspects of Sims 4 had so much promise and would be genuinely great but are so dampened by this lack of "life", when that "Life" is what should be the game's strongest point.
Speaking of lack of Life, a rant on Vampires: "oooh it's 11PM better watch out for another random old man/old woman/vlad creeping up my street but quickly turning around for the 6th time this week because my Sims are still up and that's all Vampires can really do and they don't seem to think to harass anyone else or have any other interactions with them if they aren't controlled by the player"
Post edited by Xiraiya on
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Comments
Thanks for the read!
That is why in my mind I'm thinking more in the context of "Lets push this idea now so that maybe someday Sims 5 does focus on the simulation aspect from the start"
The main reason why I don't quit this game is because it has so much potential, I wanna see it become better, StrangerVille & vampires are fun and there is no other game similar to this (yet). (Maybe the creators from Cities: Skylines will do a simulation game similar to The Sims
There also isn't much challenge in the game, like in the sims 2 the chance cards if I choose the wrong answer then my sim would get fired, so many careers gone due to those chance cards, I'd really love to have the difficulty to getting rich back. it's very hard to fail in a career in the sims 4.
and Paradox blew my expectations out of the water with CIties:Skylines compared to what EA came out with SimCity. Its not perfect but its a good game. Would be nice to give EA/maxis a bit of competition in the Sim life market.
> From all the series, sims 4 is what I enjoy more, cause it's way less buggy than all the others.
Tell me your secrets to really enjoying the game, because despite it being less buggy and better optimised I still haven't been able to play a legacy for more than 2 generations(Founder CAS made sims and their kid(s)). Once the kids age out of toddlers I get bored and go back to sims 3 or sims 2. I've tried to do every challenge that doesn't have an encyclopedia of rules attached to it while doing a legacy and just find game play meh after my sims kids aged up into children and my sims made a bunch of money, which doesn't take very long even when doing an extreme rags to riches challenge.
Well, I don't have any secret. Mostly i play around stories i have in my head inspired by movies, series, books... And I also play random legacies. I have made my own Generational goals based on what I like and trying to get the best of all dlc I own. I put my goals on a list on a randomizer app. It's already up to 100 challenges. But that's nothing I wouldn't do with sims 1,2 or 3. But the thing is, for me, with the pc I have, I mean, as much as I loved the previous games, I could never use everything. It was buggy as hell. For example, I could never play properly with island paradise. It would just crash all the time. In Bridgeport going on the underground or on elevators crashed my game too. Just having a kid ride a bike would crash my game. So, what I mean is I enjoy more sims 4 because I can actually play for hours. And with a good amount of dlc right now there's stuff to do. But as I also said before, what I feel lacking is personally. The sims just autonomously act the same, even having different traits. That is for me the biggest flaw in this series. IMHO.
Sims 2 didn't have a variety of traits...they were either neat or slob, outgoing or shy, active or not, etc The depth came with they way they behaved(no moodlets no emotions), fears, topics they wanted to talk about vs topics they had no interest in, aspirations that drove want and then a secondary aspirations which made sims want more variety lending to even more uniqueness and the memories of important events was like a cherry on a cake. Even if I never played the sim I could read the memories and get an idea of WHO this sim is not WHO I can head cannon this sim to be.
That's what I thought, I'm really hoping they make a new simulation game from cities skyline, it's time for the sims to have a competitor.
As I said in my original post, the next Sims game I feel really needs lean hard into the AI and to kind of be centered around that AI and Simulation/autonomy aspect. Because THAT is the longevity of the game as far as I'm concerned. Other Sims in your game need to always feel like you're never quite sure how they'll turn out if you play the game long enough.
Sims 4 has bugs but design wise is in a pretty good place in terms of how different build/creation features work, so you could make most of the build functions and features the same (A bit more refined) in the next game and I'd be fine with it.
But I need my Sims AI and Behavior to just be better, I need them to be doing stuff, it doesn't have to be perfectly designed, RNG is fine as long as it's informed by something, like personality traits so sims feel a bit less samey. Story progression needs to be a core function of the game, that stuff has to matter or else what is the point of this series?
If they nail that stuff or at least try to, then I would feel a whole lot better about going into a new iteration that no doubt costs a 🐸🐸🐸🐸 fortune and is probably featureless.
Though as I said in my first post. Another core feature, the CAS is really baffling, you can't have any consistency with Alien face shapes to disguises like you can with Vampires. Genealogy is a useless and broken system that is unreasonably restrictive and may as well not exist half of the time anyway (I saw the family tree stuff from the older Sims and thought that was awesome) you can't really do anything with relationships in the CAS so a lot of the premade Sims have CAS relationships that don't accurately reflect their stories.
Going back to my rant about AI and Story Progression, there's no real point in playing with premade "canon" sims because they don't do anything that really resembles their story or character, I feel like I'm expected to get rid of them and use galley stuff which is a bit sad I think. A lot of that care and detail with characters in the previous games is part of what made The Sims awesome to begin with.
I have a lot of frustrations but I know they can do it, they have a better engine with the Sims 4, it's been a rocky road but now that they've created a much more stable game I think it's time to really do some interesting stuff with it, I want to feel good about how much money I put into this series and feel that I am supporting something that is good, and not half baked.
(As good as the Sims 4 is, it still feels very much half baked even after all these years)
Anyway I'm just repeating myself at this point.
It’s funny you should say that. I realized this a couple of days ago when I was dressing the ITF mannequins for my mall in Sims 3. Probably because I used already adjusted mannequins (when I created the mall years ago and saved it to my library; the mannequins are pretty fragile and glitch easily), my game would constantly crash. So over and over again I had to restart my game and continue, not exactly knowing why I constantly crashed (drew that conclusion later). So that was pretty frustrating, and then at one point I realized to my own surprise, I was actually still having more fun than I ever did playing Sims 4. I just kept opening the game because apart from the crashing, I was having fun. I can live with frustration and setback, I can't live with boredom
I agree there. The ship sailed on potential years ago. The game is nearly five years old.
I agree with the OP. Well written post.
In all honesty it doesn't even feel like it's been 5 years since the game launched because development has been so slow and sluggish. If someone told me at the release of TS4 that it would take more than 5 years for it to have cars, doorbells, trash compactors, graveyards, funerals, witches, university etc, I wouldn't even have bought it to begin with.
You're so right. Boring sims, boring worlds, boring interactions, boring animations, boring gameplay, no cars, no graveyards, no cinema, no curved pools, no spiral staircases, no doghouses, no bunkbeds, no NPcs such as burglars, firefighters, no recliners etc.. That's all they need to start with in TS5 if they want me to buy it.
That's a good point too, what happened to things like burglary and firefighters, how is it burglary never made a comeback with Get To Work when we got a detective career?
How is it Firefighting never came back as a service, let alone another potential job in Get To Work?
I don't remember if burglary was a base game thing in 3 or not, but it was something that made the world feel slightly more alive.
In my opinion a Sims base game should feel like its a complete game, you live in a normal town, living a normal life, everything is very vanilla looking but feature rich, but also have the core gameplay and the simulation be deep enough and interesting enough to hold your interest, that needs to be the key I feel. With expansions then expanding on all of that or branching off in fun weird ways.
4 has the worst issue of "You get nothing, buy the expansions" The expansions are suppose to be for the really weird and wild things and really specific indepth mechanics and features that have no real relevance to the rest of the game.
I've heard someone else make a pretty good comparison before, that the Sims world feels like a set, and not a world. They were talking literally but I feel like that analogy is true for most of the way the Sims 4 is designed where you see something, a feature or a mechanic in the game or whatever and think "Oh wow that looks awesome I need to take a closer look at this stuff" and you realize its nothing, a flat piece of cardboard that you can't really do anything with.
But again, there is no other series like The Sims, so 🐸🐸🐸🐸 if you do, 🐸🐸🐸🐸 if you don't.
But I don't think it fits "the perfect version of reality" (his words) scenario an ex producer wanted the Sims 4 to be, so there I suspect is the answer as to why its not there.