I reaaally like CAS in TS4, I think it's the best looking and most diverse one yet. The graphics are nice and the loading times are not bad at all. But that's about it... TS4 is a GAME, and it's so lacking 5 years in that it's not even funny:
- No motivation to keep playing (like wants/fears)
- No chemistry
- hideous generated townies that are bugged and ignored since City Living (clothes and names)
- annoying sims appearing everywhere in random npc jobs
- no proper NPCs: burglar, repo man, social worker or any sense of humor/risk/challenge
- no cars (even schoolbuses and carpools and personal cars ts2 style)
- no proper memories for sims to feel like they have some history, or lived a little.
- packs are just themes and not expanded meaningful gameplay that builds pack after pack. The only packs that really added a meaningful system are Get Together and Parenthood maybe. And those were the last two where a system outlived the pack.
All of these things can be fixed if they just focus on them now instead of adding meaningless things that bloat the game and keep it super boring. Sure we need university, of course we need beaches and sure you want to try new things with packs like Strangerville. But dropping things that made the game so deep(memories,chemistry,humor in tragedy) and showcased all the things that were being added to the game (wants/fears would suggest things that are available to do), is a HUGE oversight.
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If the basegame is lacking that spark, good functionality and proper features from previous iterations then no amount of packs is going to make up for that. Something will always feel missing.
I could play The Sims 2 with no expansions for years (I didn't get my first two expansions until about three years later) and it felt wholesome, whilst The Sims 4 basegame feels like a demo after they removed the things they did.
First of all, Get Together and Parenthood are the only packs that add meaningful gameplay is an opinion, but I feel you stated it as a fact. I'm an occult player, and not a family player, and as a result I don't even own Parenthood and really enjoyed Vampires. Seasons was an incredible pack, and I seem to be in the minority of people who enjoyed Get Famous.
Second, cars are extremely unlikely to come to The Sims 4 this late. Sure, we now have boats and jet-skis with Island Living, but we shouldn't get our hopes up.
Third, making things for games like this take time. You can't expect everything to be perfect, and you can report bugs that need to be fixed. Just because it hasn't been yet, doesn't mean it won't. For example, there is a house in Del Sol Valley that has the most annoying glitch ever, and they still don't know what's happening. They might still be trying to figure out how to fix the townies, we don't know.
I'm not trying to be rude or anything, just stating my opinion. Sorry if it came across as rude.
I can't even get excited for the new pack. Yeah, it looks nice, but I'm more excited about the potential bug fixes and updates and hope it makes an impact.
I made a Sims 4 Save File set 15 years into the future using the premade sims by giving them family trees, storylines and lore, fixed and added relationships, and more!
Check it out here! -> kookablarn.tumblr.com
We need some serious attention dedicated to Sim personalities and balancing the game back out with threat of failures, less happy, more sensible and believable reactions, and fears and flaws. These Sims have no individuality whatsoever.
I have a feeling that once the initial high of Island Living is over, people are going to be bored and looking for the next thing again, lodging complaints and not quite understanding why the pack burns out so quickly. Well, this is why. The game never should have released in such a sorry, incomplete state. Especially when the prospect of fixing these things seems like such a challenge.
Personalities should have been improved long ago. It should have been first priority while the game was still small enough to manage. I just can't justify buying this new pack until the actual gameplay exists in the base game.
Believe me I feel the same as that how I feel with every pack and for the best pack that I really liked was GT and almost forgot Parent hood.
The Sims 4's core game consists of whims, aspirations, and the reward store. There unfortunately isn't much else to it.
Whims are a useless re-hash of the wants system of The Sims 2. In fact, they're so much a waste of time, the developers have turned this system off by default now, as of a recent patch.
They reward your Sim with a measly 25-50 satisfaction points, whereas the decent rewards cost upwards of thousands. So why should I send my Sim to the library to read a book, waste my own time incurring a loading screen, so they get ONLY 50 points? The Sims 2's Wants system was balanced and realistic. If Sims didn't do what they wanted, they'd get depressed. Again, realistic; we all get depressed when we don't go after our wants in life. TS2's Wants were always impacted by the personality, environment, and interests of my Sim. Additionally, it was offset by Fears, adding a layer of depth/challenge to the mix.
Aspirations are universally the same in everyone's game and have mostly been unchanged since 2014, with the same old linear and specific quest-like commands to achieve meaningless rewards. E.g: My painter Sim has to do things like paint 3 times while inspired, go to a museum and simply look at art, etc. just for a reward trait that doesn't really do much. Nothing else to really say on this topic, it's just a terribly designed system that is the opposite of what The Sims usually provides -- freedom.
And then we get to the reward system which, to summarize, makes an already terribly easy game even easier. Rewards are mostly "traits" that just delay Sim Needs from decaying quickly. In The Sims 2, rewards were awesome, creatively designed objects that offset a sometimes challenging game, and were fun to play/experiment with.
You remove these three things from the equation of The Sims 4, and what else do you have? A "life simulator" where you play with an annoying emotion system and grinding careers/skills before your Sim dies. It's like someone thought The Sims 2 and The Sims 3 were neat and tried to design this game in their image, but failed to actually make it fun/unique.
In Sims 4, the culinary career grants a knife rack on the wall as one of its rewards. Purely decorative, no interactivity. Sims 2 had a miniature chocolate factory! New animations, it made money, built the cooking skill and restored some hunger all at once.
It just feels like 2 had so much more thought put into it. Some of those aspiration rewards were powerful things, like the machine that would refill all of a Sim's needs, but you couldn't just up and use them. Use them with less than gold in terms of aspiration and you risked a negative outcome. Plus many had limited uses; the needs machine would burn out after five uses, the elixir of life would empty after several drinks. They actually felt like amazing rewards you had to earn the right to use.
Aspirations in 4 are so boring. The same things, over and over again. Once you've completed one once in one file it just feels repetitive when you do it in another. 2's aspiration system, for steering a Sim's wants rather than having set goals, worked much better in my opinion. It required more input, more thought, without being overtly difficult if you played well. That and the fears added a whole new layer of gameplay to consider.
I'm trying to be as constructive as possible in case any devs lurk around here for feedback: the game feels hollow because they cut out these things. Memories, wants/fears, proper risks and rewards at the end of aspirations and careers, etc. Systems that made the previous games have impactful gameplay and less make-believe which the TS4 team is embracing. The fact that they added boats and jet-skis should be a sign that cars are coming next.
I know things take time, that's why I'm still here 5 years in. I have hope that they'll prioritize and add these things in as they go forward.
Dating is a simple as spam romantic interactions until relationship bar fills up. I have said repeatedly that an attraction and friendship system of some kind would be game changing, story telling potential would immediately go up.
I think a big problem is that traits cover personality, likes/dislikes and characteristics. So, if I pick a sim with cat lover, bookworm and foodie traits it doesn't leave any room for, you know the meat, like stubborn, shy, socially awkward or whatever. It's like its trying to do too many things that would have been much better off a separate pieces.
With the recent news they revealed, it doesn't give me much hope that they'll make changes to the base game. They seem to be focused on adding new packs, youtubers and gimmicks like alexa and such. I don't have a problem with them adding things. However, when they advertise features that clearly are not there, with no improvement in almost 5 years, it makes me wonder if they think it's fine the way it is or that the update wouldn't make them as much money compared to a shiny new piece of dlc.
They could have easily delayed the release until the base game was ready and polished and I'm sure we would have been fine with that and they still would have made some great sales, but for some reason they felt they could get away with delivering it half baked and well... they did and they still are. I think, honestly, that's the reason why they aren't going to work on a fix. Its gotten to the point where they think everything is okay and there are a lot of players who have hopped on that bandwagon as well who are still buying and think this game is the absolute bees knees. Which is fine for them. But at the same time to say it has no flaws at all and nothing needs to be fixed well that's just being delusional.
My family has 5 generations and half of Sims have been deleted from the family tree.
by the game?
Which sims did you think had the best personalities or uniqueness in the 4 games?
I think in sims in 1 and 2, where you could fill out personality points into "neat, active, outgoing, nice/mean, etc" worked pretty well. I don't remember if I really liked sims 3 traits since the sims in that one felt really robotic and waxy to me.
This is why I think that aspirations and their wants/fears have a much more important role in making sims feel different to play with. In TS2, a romance sim is veeery different from a family or fortune sim, for example.
But ultimately, I think the 3 previous games certainly did a better job with how sims behaved according to those options.
Sims 4 is the first sims game I have ever played actually, so I went in blind and optimistic. After doing a little research, it's very clear to me that TS2 has the most unique sims, when you factor in personality sliders, chemistry system, zodiac sign and so on.
It's embarrassing that TS2 came out 15 years ago and still has better sim personalities than sims 4. There is no way to explain this other than oversight and poor game design, which seems to be a key features of sims 4. What makes it even worse is trying to understand why nothing has been done about it. There are way to many parts of this game that feel like they were rushed out to meet a deadline.
I agree with your post and the lack of personality in Sims 4 has been done by design Imho because EA/Maxis does not want to stress out lower end machines and in turn those that have more than capable systems are effected by it as well as Sims 4 cannot scale to an high end system. All systems are treated the same and the only difference one may see is graphically. For some better features are not necessary because for them Sims 4 runs well even if it does not have many robust features. Also, EA/Maxis is catering to an new generation of players so far as dwvelopers preference goes EA/Maxis is one of the only companies that caters to low and some mid level systems.
That's a tired excuse they're using. I don't believe traits or deeper aspiration gameplay would have made the game run worse *cough* TS2 coming out in 2004 *cough*. The things that make the game run better are an optimized engine which we thankfully have. Loading isn't bad at all, no crashes ever on my end. I don't want to say they sacrificed too much for "performance", because performance is really important, but i feel like it's an exaggeration to hide the fact they're doing alot less with TS4. TS3 churned out content via packs and the store non-stop. But it was an unoptimized 32-bit mess that could have benefited from more ram. If only they found a balance between content/performance in TS4
We'll see going forward, when the game becomes 64-bit only, if we'll get better updates, bigger worlds, changes to existing things. Then we'll see if performance was really the reason they butchered so many important features.
If you are right Goldmoldar, and this has been done by design (regardless of the reason), the developers will be well aware that the core of their game is hollow. Again, this would be yet another example of poor game design. In my opinion, trying to overhaul personalities now would be a very difficult task, even though there's not much there to start with, so they have that going for them I guess.
I think the best thing they could do is:
There is no way that this can't be done, they aren't trying to sprout wings and fly. It's code, where there's a will, there's a way.
The question is, is there a will?
This would be great if they added this i really really hope they will this would make the game feel much more alive and interesting to play and i completely agree the sims 2 a game that is 15 YEARS OLD to this day still has so much more to offer much more drama and personality i just wish ts4 will get to this level
I couldn't have said it better myself. I miss the "little things" that Sims 2 and 3 had to enrich the whole gameplay experience. I never once used mods or CC in The Sims, Sims 2 and Sims 3 not even with Medieval.
Sims with no manners just breaking into your home and going straight for your computer. Not a hey how you doing. I hate most of the premades in San Myshuno. They have no manners, invade your home and are just so plumb annoying. .