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6 years of Shallow Sims
bixters
Posts: 2,299 Member
This is a post just to remind people that after 6 years of this game, sims are still as shallow as ever, and that there have been no attempts to fix it or improve it.
1. Not enough substantial traits or aspirations:
The Sims 4 has an alarmingly low number of traits to actually choose from. Even more significant is that very few of them actually make any difference to your game. Traits like Active merely give you an energized moodlet that lasts an hour then disappears. Music Lover simply gives them fun when their playing or listening to music. Neither make a substantial dent in a Sim's personality. Even worse, are the pack specific traits we receive with Expansion and Game Packs. Child of the Islands merely gives you a happy buff when you're doing island activities. Dog Lover lets you improve your relationships with dogs faster. What's worse is that you can only pick 3 traits, so your sims never form an interesting or unique personality.
As for aspirations, again there are far too few of them. The developers have been reluctant to add more to the game at all, and most of the time when they are added to a pack, they are simply tutorials for how to play that specific pack. In Island Living, for example, one of the goals of the Beach Life aspiration is to "get a suntan" and to "eat a coconut." How is this interesting gameplay?
2. Emotions are still bogged down by environmental & happy buffs:
The "well-decorated" buff overrides negative emotions constantly. Did your sim's spouse just die? Well, they won't care, since the room is so well decorated! This goes for all positive emotions in the game, most of the time they will override any negative emotions. Is your sims embarrassed from wetting themselves? Well, they won't be once they get a happy buff from playing a video game. Emotions are far too changeable, shallow, and just too happy. Unless playing in a shallow Utopia is your idea of a fun time, and this goes into my next point...
3. Not enough consequences:
Along with positive emotions overriding negative emotions all the time, the game just has too few consequences. If your sim child is failing school, the parents will not care, and there are no consequences. If your spouse cheats on you, the cheating spouse will only receive a slight negative relationship decline, and sometimes they don't even care. Children don't care if their parents get divorced. Your sim will almost never get fired from their job even when they perform badly. If your sim is mean to another sim, the other sim will simply continue chatting and smiling in the conversation. Add to this, we still don't have any burglars, an essential feature from the Sims 1, 2 and 3.
4. Whims were eliminated and never fixed:
Whims were things your sim wanted to do in order to gain aspiration points. From the beginning, they weren't very well thought out, with ridiculous whims such as "build a 1x1 pool" or "become dazed," completely random and not based on the sim's traits at all. They recently stopped having them altogether. You can re enable them in settings, but they have not been updated with any of the current packs, so there are no whims about magic, college, or becoming a star. Why they never updated or fixed them in the first place is anyone's guess.
5. No attraction, turn ons/ offs, hobbies, likes/ dislikes, favorites:
The Sims 2 and 3 both had systems for having favorite colors, food and music. They also had unique attraction systems that made dating and romance more interesting. 6 years in, we still don't have these things in the Sims 4.
All of these things together make the sims in the Sims 4 incredibly shallow, which is why most people complain that all the sims act the same.
And we shouldn't have to rely on mods to fix these problems!
So listen up EA/ Maxis, you can sell as many copies of the Sims 4 as you want, get as much money as you want from people, but the same complaints are still there and have been there from the beginning! Just because they're spending money on your game doesn't mean they love it, and once the new customers realize how shallow the sims are, they won't be interested in the game either.
I think it's high time these issues get fixed!
1. Not enough substantial traits or aspirations:
The Sims 4 has an alarmingly low number of traits to actually choose from. Even more significant is that very few of them actually make any difference to your game. Traits like Active merely give you an energized moodlet that lasts an hour then disappears. Music Lover simply gives them fun when their playing or listening to music. Neither make a substantial dent in a Sim's personality. Even worse, are the pack specific traits we receive with Expansion and Game Packs. Child of the Islands merely gives you a happy buff when you're doing island activities. Dog Lover lets you improve your relationships with dogs faster. What's worse is that you can only pick 3 traits, so your sims never form an interesting or unique personality.
As for aspirations, again there are far too few of them. The developers have been reluctant to add more to the game at all, and most of the time when they are added to a pack, they are simply tutorials for how to play that specific pack. In Island Living, for example, one of the goals of the Beach Life aspiration is to "get a suntan" and to "eat a coconut." How is this interesting gameplay?
2. Emotions are still bogged down by environmental & happy buffs:
The "well-decorated" buff overrides negative emotions constantly. Did your sim's spouse just die? Well, they won't care, since the room is so well decorated! This goes for all positive emotions in the game, most of the time they will override any negative emotions. Is your sims embarrassed from wetting themselves? Well, they won't be once they get a happy buff from playing a video game. Emotions are far too changeable, shallow, and just too happy. Unless playing in a shallow Utopia is your idea of a fun time, and this goes into my next point...
3. Not enough consequences:
Along with positive emotions overriding negative emotions all the time, the game just has too few consequences. If your sim child is failing school, the parents will not care, and there are no consequences. If your spouse cheats on you, the cheating spouse will only receive a slight negative relationship decline, and sometimes they don't even care. Children don't care if their parents get divorced. Your sim will almost never get fired from their job even when they perform badly. If your sim is mean to another sim, the other sim will simply continue chatting and smiling in the conversation. Add to this, we still don't have any burglars, an essential feature from the Sims 1, 2 and 3.
4. Whims were eliminated and never fixed:
Whims were things your sim wanted to do in order to gain aspiration points. From the beginning, they weren't very well thought out, with ridiculous whims such as "build a 1x1 pool" or "become dazed," completely random and not based on the sim's traits at all. They recently stopped having them altogether. You can re enable them in settings, but they have not been updated with any of the current packs, so there are no whims about magic, college, or becoming a star. Why they never updated or fixed them in the first place is anyone's guess.
5. No attraction, turn ons/ offs, hobbies, likes/ dislikes, favorites:
The Sims 2 and 3 both had systems for having favorite colors, food and music. They also had unique attraction systems that made dating and romance more interesting. 6 years in, we still don't have these things in the Sims 4.
All of these things together make the sims in the Sims 4 incredibly shallow, which is why most people complain that all the sims act the same.
And we shouldn't have to rely on mods to fix these problems!
So listen up EA/ Maxis, you can sell as many copies of the Sims 4 as you want, get as much money as you want from people, but the same complaints are still there and have been there from the beginning! Just because they're spending money on your game doesn't mean they love it, and once the new customers realize how shallow the sims are, they won't be interested in the game either.
I think it's high time these issues get fixed!
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Comments
As for your second point, the issue with happy buffs overriding any negative emotions could easily be fixed. I just witnessed this recently in my game. Things like death moodlets don't give a strong enough sad buff to really make a difference. I don't know the exact number, but I think it's something like +3, maybe +5? Compare that to the asleep-moodlet, which gives a buff of +10,000 to make sure the sim stays in the "asleep" emotion until they wake up again. Now if they would just increase the value of sad buffs for witnessing a death, for example to +30 or something, sims would actually stay sad even while walking into a well decorated room. It would take a ridiculously high amount of buffs to get them into an emotion other than sad at this point. The fix would actually be so easy, so why isn't this a thing yet? They should also tone down originally happy buffs increasing other emotions like playful or flirty. It's just unbalanced. I am also currently using a mod that removes the well decorated buff from the game completely, and it makes such a big difference.
I also agree with the lack of consequences. The issue with parents not caring about their children's grades can be fixed in case you have Parenthood, since parents have the option to either scold the child for bad grades or talk to them about it. It doesn't affect their mood however, which is a bit weird. Depending on their personality, they could be sad or angry because of their child's bad grades. I also think it's too easy to reconcile a relationship after one partner cheated. In TS3, I have a sim who has the non-commital trait and flirted and even kissed another sim right in front of his current partner. I eventually managed to get them back to a good relationship, but it was really hard because they were constantly rejecting each other's advances and it was just really hard for them to reconcile after he cheated on her- in TS4, it seems like you just need to apologize, ask about day a few times and everything is well again. I also don't understand why they haven't added burglars into the game yet. They would just need to take the system for vampire break-ins, replace the vampire with a burglar, and instead of him drinking from another sim make him steal a random object from the home - they wouldn't even need to make an animation for that since it already came with the kleptomaniac trait. Or am I missing something? I am kinda surprised that no modder has done it yet.
I can't really agree on the whims though. Often enough, they are based on traits, there just not a high enough variety of them and they're pretty unexciting, which is my only complaint about them. My evil sim rolls whims like "become angry", while my child-hating sim has whims like being mean to a child. Sims with other traits usually don't roll those whims. Aspirations also play a part in what whims a sim will have, like my evil sim rolling whims to be mean to a specific sim because he has the public enemy aspiration.
I agree on the fifth point. I'd love favorites to make a return, as well as everything else you've listed.
I like to build stuff
Daredevil made it so that the Sims didn't go into panic mode around Fire. Which if you think about it, in the World of Sims makes them stand out from 99% of the Sims. They also liked seeing people get divorced for some reason. The traits in general did a lot more in Sims 3, whereareas in Sims 4 it's just one thing, which is why they influenced so many more things in Sims3.
Most Sims 4 traits are simply useless, because of this shallowness. I think one of the best traits in Sims 4 is Active, because it actually influences the lifestate of your Sims but I can't think of anything else as game changing as it. The Traits seemed to be tied to Whims but since Whims are no longer core part of the game, the traits need to be overhauled to make up for it.
I agree with OP on just about everything, everyone in Sims 4 seems like every other one, not even making Evil Sim they just laugh sometimes evily but are otherwise just the same as someone who's Good. There's absolute no difference in Sim with only "negative" traits like "Evil, Jealous, Mean and Erratic" compared to a nice Sim who's "Loves Outdoors, Ambitious, Bro and Good" and any differences are skin deep.
I hope that, whenever it happens, the game isn't abandoned with this issues...
They're not seen as isuses by the developers. The Sims in 4 are the way they are because of design choices. They've never been fixed because there's nothing to fix from their point of view - hence six years of no changes.
Freetime is also probably the best The Sims 2 pack, and The Sims 4 is in DESPERATE need of it. Give children more activities to do it in, and more hobbies for all sims that aren't just surface level.
I don't like the aspiration system at all in general. I feel like it's almost like a step by step guide on all the things you can do with the skill in question, but the ones in City Living, Outdoor Retreat, Discover Uni, Vampires and Island Living are the absolute worst offenders of this.
Let's not even talk about Cats & Dogs' ONE aspiration, and how it's essentially just "befriend a ton of random stray cats you find on the street", instead of about being a good pet owner, or being a vet despite the perfectly good vet clinic they made.
The fact that Get to Work came out, and there was no aspiration for business owners is insane to me?? No aspiration for the controlled careers either. Shrug. Yet they give something like Outdoor Retreat a whole aspiration when it's a camping pack? I'm sure there's someone out there with a lifelong dream to make the most out of their camping trips, but I feel like becoming a doctor or a opening a business is far more common and substantial dream. Dine Out has no aspiration either, even though again, it's so obvious. Build a 5 star restaurant.
I don't know, the aspirations in The Sims 3 made way more sense and utilised everything the game added.
Magnezone, the lover of Calientes, Lotharios, Landgraabs and Curiouses everywhere.
Amazing how that epic thread was created in 2015 and to this day nothing changed.
I have never seen this before as I'm not an active forum user despite being signed up for 9 years. It's absolutely hilarious! Love it.
Magnezone, the lover of Calientes, Lotharios, Landgraabs and Curiouses everywhere.
Good point! I completely forgot about children's aspirations. Kids and elders are totally neglected as it is. Kids are so boring that I usually ignore them, there's barely anything for them to do. Sad really!
That's exactly why we need to keep posting on here, and on Twitter if you have one (they seem to care more about Twitter anyway).
If they keep seeing these complaints, maybe they'll actually do something about it! At least that's what I'm hoping, although I know at this point the chance of them fixing things is slim, maybe, just maybe they'll listen to our feedback!
I tried, but I'd done all the aspirations and things you could do with kids with Malcolm's kids already so I wasn't interested in replaying this aspect of the game. Malcolm also did like half of the adult aspirations during his lifespan too, so I felt after Malcolm disappeared, I'd pretty much done everything, and so the dust settled on the game for AGES until uhm. Get Famous, I think?
Magnezone, the lover of Calientes, Lotharios, Landgraabs and Curiouses everywhere.
I am so burnt out, it's been 6 years of horrid....Seriously the only thing I enjoy and thankful in the sims 4 are the parenthood, vampire gamepack, and the toddler lifestage....otherwise...this game......just.....sucks....so much...
I am so done...6 years TOO long....please just move on, and I hope and pray they take note on feedback and make a better TS5...
because I am truly...so tired of this 4th installment...
Someone commented that they think Paralives look a mobile game....don't make me laugh Paralives has put MORE effort in a game from the beginning than EA even bothered with TS4....
You do realize this was made in 1999 and was the first game....
This almost offends me...
NEVERMIND
I personally hate the moodlets and I prefer memories. In Sims2, I always knew when my sims were angry, sad, happy, afraid or worried because my sim expressed those emotions. I was always able to find out what happened to my sim by going through their memories or furious portrait of another sim that angered my sim. I don't know the system felt more fluid back then. Now I have these cheesy moodlets that mean nothing after 2 sim hours. NOTHING IS WORSE THAN MY SIM GETTING INTO A FIGHT WITH ANOTHER SIM AND THEN START TALKING TO THEM AS IF NOTHING HAPPENED. This would never happen in the sims2. I would be lucky if I can get them to stop fighting...LOL Let's not even talk about how many times that sim will come over and kick the garbage can over...lol
I loved the memory system in TS2..one of my favorites
It is so awesome and I really do miss it. I used to love starting to play a premade house and read through the memories to get an idea of who the sims were.
I use to this ALL the time, I would go through the premades and take a look at their memories, family tree and look through their albums
I think BeardedGeek meant to say that the only thing Sims 4 got right was the graphics, everything else Sims 1 did equally well or better. I don't think he was deriding the Sims 1
Sadly, this is quite accurate. I just have a slim hope that maybe, just maybe, they'll listen to their fans once and make the base game better and the sims more substantial. This post was my attempt to do that.
But, if they don't bother listening, I hope Paralives wipes them out of existence
OOOOOH! My bad!!!! I thought xD NEVERMIND...my bad I'm sorry...but yes, I agree with that.