Honestly I feel like all the emotions are too over the top, but as a story creator nothing is worse then having to deal with the "constant" joker smile sims walk around with all the time. Forget about story telling, its just creepy. Nobody smiles that much, smiling actually requires a lot of muscles and your face would literally start to hurt.
Regardless could you please make it so sims don't constantly smile or pout, or show exaggerated facial expressions ALL the time they feel said emotion. It should be more like off and on. More so if they smile occassionally while happy it would make them appear more natural, rather then walking around with this pasted on expression that looks like a mask.
Its like emotions cranked up facial expressions to 1000%. I get the game has a visual style but this constant smiling is just unnatural to see and annoying as a story teller to deal with.
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I can't stand the "happy simulator" aspect of this game. It makes for very dull gameplay.
I totally agree with you! Moodlets should be related to traits. The way it is now it becomes dull for sure! Never felt like this on 20 years of siming! Ive really tried to enjoy this game. Ive tried for 4 years. But i can't if this can't be fixed i'm recently back to sims 3 because of this. And im happy cause, with a more capable computer, im really enjoying it without any lagging, which is the only complain i had of it.
While I understand your point, this is something that CAN be fixed at a coding level. Its not a foundation aka permanent aspect that can't be change and to that point as has been clearly demonstrated people would like Maxis to make this change. Its in their power, lots of us do enjoy the Sims 4. I also enjoy the sims 3, but like 4 there are things I wish didn't exist/I could change about 3.
As they are working on 4 still and updating/making changes/additions this seems like a perfect moment to address community feedback and make their game even better.
They aren't ever going to change this one. This is the animators' work. Do you really expect them to remove an animation having to do with facial expressions? Something that is baked into the core game deep in the animations? This is the sixth year of TS4, it's like spitting into the wind, as much as I dislike the joker grin, I don't think they will ever tone it down, or stop them from doing it since it's part of an animation. It's four years since the situanational outfit problems spread through the game, they aren't going to fix that, either.
Um....what? Animations are updated and created constantly not only for the sims 4 but most games in general. Its part of game development and maintenance, its what art team is paid to do and all they do. Art teams have down time too. As the animation already exists, tweaking an animation is REALLY easy once you know what you want, its more the time it takes to alter it and add any new frames into it speaking as an artist myself.
Regardless your point that its been six years is more relevant to this, but hey if you don't ask and keep asking nothing changes. So I'll keep asking and clearly I'm not the only one.
Doing nothing achieves nothing lol.
As the for outfits comment, we had a huge swath of bug fixes over the last few patches in 2019 that addressed bugs that literally had been around since the games release or years that followed.
So clearly they do fix things, it just takes time.
The situational outfits is a little more complex though, less a bug and more a gameplay mechanic that needs to be rethought which is more complicated. I'm not saying it won't be fixed for that reason, but ALL games have issues.
Man, I wish the Sims team would have done something similar to this. The constantly smiling and the lack of unique sims and emotions have been a struggle in my enjoyment in this game from the beginning. I need 4 different personality mods in this game alone to make the game even somewhat enjoyable for me.
While we may all experience the same emotions generally, we certainly don't portray them in the exact same ways. Every embarrassed sim wants to hide under the covers or tell a self deprecating joke. Every sad sim wants to call another sim or the sadness hotline. Happy sims want to hug someone. This is a major way in which the emotions system falls flat, imo.
To lay it out further, cancel the mechanic of Happy strengthening other positive emotions and make it a stand-alone emotion. “Fine” should be the base emotion, so I suggest most of the Happy moodlets that we have now (e.g., Have a Good Meal, Decorated, Cozy Fire, etc.) should be changed into Fine. And the points of the positive and negative moodlets should be increased to make Fine not overpowering.
I believe by doing this, the constant happy issue can be solved, and the emotional flip-flopping could be alleviated.
Stop the press. This diagram is AMAZING. What do you mean.
Sims team, pay attention??
I love this.
Yeah, I agree with this. I also think Sims shouldn't be stuck to the happy emotion if all of their needs are met -- that could be changed to simply being in the fine emotion.
As far as emotion flip-flopping, I don't know if it's something they'd really change. I mean, it makes sense that our emotions change multiple times within the span of 3 hours. The thing that makes it seem as if they're unstable is the fact that a lot of us play in double or triple speed, so that translates to emotions changing numerous times within seconds. So from a realism standpoint, it makes sense, but from a gameplay standpoint, it doesn't whatsoever, and it's a nuisance.
I hope the next Sims game is built with more focus on the gameplay and ensuring things make sense from a gameplay point of view. There is a distinct lack of game design in The Sims 4, and I don't know if it stems from conceptualization or poor Q&A. If I had to guess, I'd say both.
One is Sims constantly beeing in a happy mood (which can be changed by using mods like RoBurky's True Happiness mod or any happybuffschangedtofine mod (e.g. http://modthesims.info/download.php?t=579603 and if one wants to go even further additionally lesshappyfoodanddrink and/or laundy buffs fix)
The other one are overtoned facial expressions (which has already been discussed in this thread
https://forums.thesims.com/en_US/discussion/822154/please-adjust-the-ear-to-ear-happy-smile/p1
can be fixed by using mods like Shimrods Facial Overlay mod
http://modthesims.info/download.php?t=574482
or a similar mod like my lessfacialoveraction
https://deichschafblog.de/bienchen/sonstige-mods-misc-mods/)
So we are just supposed to rely on the modding community to fix every shortfall this game has? I don't think so...this also doesn't help people who refuse or simply don't like to use mods in their game.