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We need an overhaul on the traits, emotions, whims, and aspirations systems!

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These systems are very outdated and are completely holding TS4 from being one of the best Sims games ever.

At the moment the game runs perfectly and is quite fun. However these are the 4 main issues which are holding the game back and are making it lack depth and variety.

Traits:
The traits in this game are a lot fewer than the sims 3 so it makes me wonder why they aren't a lot more fleshed out and actually define our sims. They lack any impact and choosing traits now doesn't feel like I'm defining my sim to be who they are. It feels more like an afterthought and something there just to have them get a specific mood or emotion a lot more quickly. I feel like traits are just there to change our sims emotions and not actually define them.

They should be updated to actually effect our sims as they did in the Sims 3. For example let's compare the Mean trait with Sims 3 and Sims 4.

In Sims 4 it states that: "These Sims become Happy when being Mean or Mischievous to other Sims and become Confident after winning a fight."

In Sims 3 it states that: "Mean Spirited Sims love to fight, mostly because they never lose in a brawl. They take satisfaction with every new enemy made and dream of new ways to be nasty to others."

We can already see the differences clearly. Sims 4 sims with the Mean trait gain the Happy emotion when being mean and gain the Confident emotion when they win a fight. In Sims 3 these sims love to fight which means they will fight whenever they can even autonomously; they never lose their fights, and love having new enemies and being mean to random sims.

A way Sims 4 could improve this is by making it so sims with the Mean trait still get happy when they are mean to other sims, never lose fights, love making new enemies and being mean to everyone. These things should happen autonomously as I believe at the moment they do not act on their traits autonomously.

Emotions

Emotions are sadly just a gimmick. There is no point in having traits effect sims emotions as it is so extremely easy to alter a sims mood. Since the game has been out for so long there have been many packs with many different items which allow us to change our sims moods whenever we want to. If you want your sim to be playful there is no point in having the childish trait as they can just play with their cat or watch a comedy show. The emotions are quite pointless and to be honest they should be a lot more impactful and there should not be so many. I wouldn't mind if they cut down emotions to just happy, fine, sad, and angry. Just 4 different emotions that would impact our sims lives and choices. I'm not sure about the other simmers but I don't go out of my way to make my sim be inspired before painting a picture, I just have them paint.

Whims

Whims can be so much more, such as they were in the Sims 3. In Sims 4 they have been toned down so so much and this is quite disappointing. They feel absolutely random and do not feel like something specific to just one sim. It feels like all sims get all the exact same whims, and with every new pack the whims just have us buy the items even though our sim has not done anything related to the new pack at all.

Aspirations

The aspirations are glorified tutorials and it has become so upsetting to see how much worse they get with every new pack. I hate the fact we can switch them out whenever we want - it makes the game extremely easy and lack any consequences. These should work like life time wishes in the Sims 3. However if our sim completes their aspiration they then should have the option to switch it or have there be something to buy in the reward store to allow you to swap it. We should not be able to switch them out whenever and they should be stuck for our sim to help define them more. The rewards also need an overhaul and balance update, some of them are useless and too cheap to buy making it so easy again. For example the aspiration store is also where it can be very easy to just swap emotions whenever you want to as the rewards are so cheap to do so.

The Sims 4 is getting a lot better than what it was at release to be quite honest. I am enjoying it a lot more and if they add a Generations Expansion Pack which gives a lot more activities for our sims of every single life stage then this game would be complete for me. A Generations pack NEEDS to include cars and bunk beds as well as a baby update though! (The sims 4 would can also improve so so much if they just find a way to open upm neighbourhoods at the very least.) This will cut down loading screens so that we can actually do some more things outside of our sims homes.

Comments

  • simgirl1010simgirl1010 Posts: 35,708 Member
    Switching aspirations is one of my favorite features so I would hate to see that go.
  • SharoniaSharonia Posts: 4,853 Member
    edited October 2020
    Switching aspirations is one of my favorite features so I would hate to see that go.

    It makes them seem rather pointless to me when we can just switch them. I prefer how the Lifetime Wishes work in the Sims 3.
  • simgirl1010simgirl1010 Posts: 35,708 Member
    Sharonia wrote: »
    Switching aspirations is one of my favorite features so I would hate to see that go.

    It makes them seem rather pointless to me when we can just switch them. I prefer how the Lifetime Wishes work in the Sims 3.

    I prefer the ability to switch because for the most part I play with one sim who's completing all the aspirations, careers, skills, etc. Sometimes I get a whim to switch to a new aspiration and return to a partially completed one at a later time with no loss of progress. Especially when a new pack releases. Maybe if I rotated families and gave everyone a different aspiration I'd be okay with locking aspirations. So I do understand why some don't like it.
  • SharoniaSharonia Posts: 4,853 Member
    edited October 2020
    Sharonia wrote: »
    Switching aspirations is one of my favorite features so I would hate to see that go.

    It makes them seem rather pointless to me when we can just switch them. I prefer how the Lifetime Wishes work in the Sims 3.

    I prefer the ability to switch because for the most part I play with one sim who's completing all the aspirations, careers, skills, etc. Sometimes I get a whim to switch to a new aspiration and return to a partially completed one at a later time with no loss of progress. Especially when a new pack releases. Maybe if I rotated families and gave everyone a different aspiration I'd be okay with locking aspirations. So I do understand why some don't like it.

    Yeah I can see the benefits of it if that's your play style.
    Post edited by Sharonia on
  • HopeyStarrHopeyStarr Posts: 1,276 Member
    I disagree with the aspirations bit. I like being able to switch out my aspiration if I decide that my sim should pursue different goals. The one thing I would like is for teens to have unique aspirations. Some of them, like the family aspirations, cannot be completed until the sim becomes an adult anyway so why would teen have access to that?
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  • ArcherDKArcherDK Posts: 1,130 Member
    There are mods that make Emotions much more impactful and because of that I don't really care if EAxis will change anything or no (They won't).

    Whims are EXPLICITLY stated to be something that player does NOT have to appeal to. They were intended to be optional. If you are following them, then what is the problem? I guess there could be more depth to one of them, as in 'Two easy and quick to complete, one much more complicated and rewarding..." Oh wait, there ARE these in game already. Have a baby, anyone? I get the point, but still.

    Switching aspirations is actually VERY good - this prevents players from being locked with something too hard, too boring or worse, BROKEN. With that said, some aspirations are indeed more of a tutorial than anything and therefore are pointless. There WAS a time when aspirations in Sims 4 were MUCH harder (3 first kisses on one date, anyone?) but I guess people complained and now they ar complaining about how EASY they are.

    After playing SIms 4 for a while I have to point out that some traits are actually rather deep, but because this depth is not apparent and is kind of hidden, players complain. SO I have to concede on this one. Effects should indeed be more obvious.

    And now the big one. If players are so willing to compare Sims 4 to Sims 2 and 3 and praise them, then why don't those people do the most logical thing and go play those games? Better graphics is NOT a good enough answer. We are talking about GAMEPLAY here.
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  • MindofyMindofy Posts: 313 Member
    I feel switching aspirations are justified as I can switch mine in rl. I would like there to be more dramatic emotions though like how over the top sims 2 was.
  • jimbbqjimbbq Posts: 2,734 Member
    Literally all simmers would agree with these points. Yet nothing has been done and I doubt will ever be done to fix them. Sims 5 better be good.
  • RouensimsRouensims Posts: 4,858 Member
    jimbbq wrote: »
    Literally all simmers would agree with these points. Yet nothing has been done and I doubt will ever be done to fix them. Sims 5 better be good.

    Untrue. This simmer doesn’t agree. I like this game as it is.

    Ooh Be Gah!! Whipna Choba-Dog? Whipna Choba-Dog!! :smiley:
  • foxybillyfoxybilly Posts: 231 Member
    Rouensims wrote: »
    jimbbq wrote: »
    Literally all simmers would agree with these points. Yet nothing has been done and I doubt will ever be done to fix them. Sims 5 better be good.

    Untrue. This simmer doesn’t agree. I like this game as it is.

    I agree, I have turned whims off, I use the same traits for every one of my sims - cheerful, outgoing and self assured - and I chose the same aspiration for everyone (money) and never complete it. Ive just discovered the sims have perk points in Get Famous after playing it for years :) the story to me is the actual game not all the other stuff like whims etc.

    I wouldn't want this system changed - unless it can be turned off for those like me who dont want to do them
  • Nate_Whiplash1Nate_Whiplash1 Posts: 4,085 Member
    But aren't some of these things supposed to be fixed with the new pack?
  • SharoniaSharonia Posts: 4,853 Member
    edited October 2020
    My game play is quite driven by whims. I would so love for them to be improved on to be more specific to the sims individuality. Sometimes the sims will get whims relating to their personalities now and I love it when it happens but it doesn't happen often enough. I would really like it if whims such as buying a bee box were limited to sims that had an interest in the outdoors or gardening and not just pop up for everybody regardless of traits all the time until you eventually just give in a buy the bee box.

    Also for the love of god remove or alter the pool whim. Nobody has any use for a 1x1 pool ever. Either make it just pool specific so a sim could just roll a whim to have a pool or remove it. It's the most weird whim in the game. Own a 1x1 pool, no go away silly whim. :D
  • Nate_Whiplash1Nate_Whiplash1 Posts: 4,085 Member
    Sharonia wrote: »
    My game play is quite driven by whims. I would so love for them to be improved on to be more specific to the sims individuality. Sometimes the sims will get whims relating to their personalities now and I love it when it happens but it doesn't happen often enough. I would really like it if whims such as buying a bee box were limited to sims that had an interest in the outdoors or gardening and not just pop up for everybody regardless of traits all the time until you eventually just give in a buy the bee box.

    Also for the love of god remove or alter the pool whim. Nobody has any use for a 1x1 pool ever. Either make it just pool specific so a sim could just roll a whim to have a pool or remove it. It's the most weird whim in the game. Own a 1x1 pool, no go away silly whim. :D

    I have a use for a 1x2. Try having a Sim swim laps in that, it's hilarious :smile:
  • SharoniaSharonia Posts: 4,853 Member
    Sharonia wrote: »
    My game play is quite driven by whims. I would so love for them to be improved on to be more specific to the sims individuality. Sometimes the sims will get whims relating to their personalities now and I love it when it happens but it doesn't happen often enough. I would really like it if whims such as buying a bee box were limited to sims that had an interest in the outdoors or gardening and not just pop up for everybody regardless of traits all the time until you eventually just give in a buy the bee box.

    Also for the love of god remove or alter the pool whim. Nobody has any use for a 1x1 pool ever. Either make it just pool specific so a sim could just roll a whim to have a pool or remove it. It's the most weird whim in the game. Own a 1x1 pool, no go away silly whim. :D

    I have a use for a 1x2. Try having a Sim swim laps in that, it's hilarious :smile:

    I've seen it before in GrayStillPlays videos on youTube. It is really funny to watch. I still don't think it needs a whim though. :D
  • AHolyToiletAHolyToilet Posts: 870 Member
    edited October 2020
    I concur with your points about traits. In fact, I'm not sure if anyone could disagree with them. It is strange how despite TS3 allowing your Sim to have more traits, TS3's traits also had more depth. You'd think there would've been a trade-off. Instead, they're just another (very easy) way to manipulate your Sim's emotions. But because the emotions themselves don't have any depth, traits suffer because of it. It's also hard to use traits as a way to add flaws to your Sim. Vampires did this the best with the Weakness system, but the drawback is that your Sim has to be a vampire to have weaknesses at all.

    Comparing traits from TS3 and TS4 is something I've done for a while now myself. You can easily tell how much they affect their respective games by just looking at their wiki pages. TS3's pages for its traits have way more information than TS4's... because they do a lot more.

    You raise an interesting point with the Inspired emotion. It's a rather exclusive one, by that I mean only creative Sims would really get any use out of it coupled with the fact that the only thing it does is boost your Sim's creativity in the arts when in reality, inspiration can help you with many things. You can be inspired to pull off a mean and clever prank on someone or accomplish some inspirational good or a creative way to impress your date. With that, I too wonder why it's even there when it's so one-dimensional in this game.

    Somebody made the point that whims were meant to be optional, but I don't think that's the point of the OP's statement. In TS3, whims would correspond with what your Sim was doing as well as their traits and many of them were unique. This gave points towards interesting and unique rewards. TS4's lacks variety, purpose, and memorability.

    Aspirations, I'm undecided on. I do agree they should be more interesting, but they're aspirations, not Lifetime Goals like in TS3. Perhaps this is semantical, but to me, a "lifetime goal" has more weight and requires far more time than an aspiration. I also see both points in how easy they are to switch. Making them easy to switch allows for more things for your Sim to do which could be appealing, gameplay-wise, especially if you're like me and have a very goal-oriented playstyle, but it damages the individuality of each Sim and in this game, Sims are absolutely lacking ways to make them unique from others apart from their appearance.
  • AHolyToiletAHolyToilet Posts: 870 Member
    edited October 2020
    ArcherDK wrote: »
    And now the big one. If players are so willing to compare Sims 4 to Sims 2 and 3 and praise them, then why don't those people do the most logical thing and go play those games? Better graphics is NOT a good enough answer. We are talking about GAMEPLAY here.

    This isn't a "big one" because this is a fallacy that attempts to shut down critical thinking on the issues raised by the OP. We compare to critique and give (seemingly unheard) feedback on a series we all care about. This fallacy seems to be as common as a person's nose. Pops up everywhere. I should also point out that TS3's gameplay isn't perfect because its optimization is quite terrible and many people do not enjoy having to deal with stuttering, crashing, and the game failing to save because you got too into the game (because it's fun as heck) and it gives you an error code 12.

    With TS4, I've had issues with being bored. With TS3, I've had to backup saves and revert to previous saves multiple times due to bugs and failing to save every 20 minutes or so. In fact, I believe the current TS3 version, 1.69 is infamous for forcing the player to be unable to bypass the launcher using the TS3W shortcut and for adding in multiple bugs, some of them supposedly game-breaking. The fact that we don't have a modern Sims game that runs well and is completely engaging is why so many people compare.
  • RememberJoyRememberJoy Posts: 1,138 Member
    It's funny to me that people rave over TS3's traits as being so deep when I remember being unimpressed by them from the start. I never felt they really did much and I would usually just randomize them and go play.
    I still feel that way about TS4's traits as well, and think they could be improved. But I will say, the mean trait is more than just a happy moodlet when being mean, sims will autonomously use mean interactions and are constantly sabotaging their own relationships because of it. Adding likes and dislikes could improve in this area because than mean sims might be more likely to argue/start fights over differences of opinion rather than just being mean to everyone equally.

    Emotions could use some work but I do like the inspired emotion (I do play a lot of creative sims though). I would love them to add a fear emotion for more depth and stop using uncomfortable for everything.

    Whims I agree need a workover with a smarter AI for choosing whims based more on sim's traits and perhaps where they live and what aspiration they have.

    I personally like that aspirations can be changed whenever as sometimes a sim is spawned or aged up with a aspiration that doesn't fit them. I like the flexibility of choosing whether they have to complete it or not before changing. I do wish that fewer aspirations required a certain career to complete them.
  • FlyingPotato659FlyingPotato659 Posts: 1,473 Member
    I find the aspirations very basic in my opinion like I wish there was more detail. But however I do like the aspiration change feature because we all once had a dream career or lifestyle then realize its not what we wanted.

    I honestly don't find the sims unique in personality in TS4 (without the mods) which is disappointing.
  • DaepheneDaephene Posts: 1,760 Member
    I do wish traits influenced autonomous behavior more. It seems like they changed the concept between 3 and 4 from "this trait influences what the sim will do autonomously" to "this trait affects how what you make your sim do will make them feel." Probably because they wanted to focus on the new emotions system. I do see that my active sims are more likely to turn up at the gym, but that doesn't carry across to every lot type and the unplayed sims who show up are random rather than trait-based.

    I think with whims, I like the fact that they are optional, because I played Sims2 for 10 years and I was ready for something other than fulfilling wants all the time. But I feel like because they were optional and not everyone bothered with them, they never got any development. They pay way too much attention to what their metrics say people are using to drive development, rather than seeing that better developed features would get more use (see the whole childhood stage).

    I like the base game aspirations. Again, coming from sims 2, I was ready for something other than every romance sim wants to make out with three sims, and when you do that they'll roll the want to make out with five sims, and then 10... it wasn't that different from the checklist version in 4, except for what the other wants might be on a given day. The variety of aspirations in the base game and the depth of some of them is nice. But the ones that have come with most of the packs have been pretty shallow and easy to achieve. The existence of childhood aspirations is a nice touch, but the same four over multiple generations get old. I would love teen and elder aspirations that are something like the childhood ones but that have to do with teen social and school performance and after school activities, or with retirement and hobbies and volunteering etc. And more childhood options. It's like the idea was good but there wasn't enough depth or breadth to last for years of gameplay.
  • SharoniaSharonia Posts: 4,853 Member
    ArcherDK wrote: »
    And now the big one. If players are so willing to compare Sims 4 to Sims 2 and 3 and praise them, then why don't those people do the most logical thing and go play those games? Better graphics is NOT a good enough answer. We are talking about GAMEPLAY here.

    I don’t know if this is aimed at me or not since I mentioned the Sims 3 earlier but I do also play the Sims 3 and yes I think that it has the better game play. However I still prefer the Sims 4 and not just for the graphics. I like many things about the Sims 4 but that doesn’t mean that I shouldn’t be allowed to think it needs improvements or express my opinion on the subject of improvements. It’s a game that I spend a lot of my time playing and I have every right to express my opinions on things I feel could be improved upon. I don’t know about anybody else here but I very much don’t like being told to shut up and go play a previous version.
  • ConfutusConfutus Posts: 113 Member
    I would like to see aspirations connected to the skills and careers introduced in extended packs and game packs, such as Photography or Singing, instead of limiting them to things found in the base game.
  • ScobreScobre Posts: 20,665 Member
    I miss aspiration failures. Aspirations seem too easy without the risk of failing any of them.
    “Although the world is full of suffering, it is full also of the overcoming of it.” –Helen Keller
  • izecsonizecson Posts: 2,875 Member
    I dont care much about the sims 4 traits and aspirations, ill randomize them as they never have any meaning to my sims.

    using mod that alters personality also didnt help much, my sims still acts the same as the rest of the household member..
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  • SimmerGeorgeSimmerGeorge Posts: 2,724 Member
    I agree but I don't want them to do it with the Sims 4. We've played this game for 6 years already, it's not worth remaking just before the game ends.
    They better give us better traits, personalities etc in Sims 5
    Where's my Sims 5 squad at?
  • LeaselmaryLeaselmary Posts: 108 Member
    Well, these "issues" are what make sims 4 the sims 4 basically.

    If you don't like emotions affecting your sims, if you prefer goal oriented wants (woohoo ten sims, paint 10 masterpices) over little lifestyle whims (flirt with somebody, read a book, walk the dog), if you want your sims to have a locked lifetime want instead of working on different goals, and if you want more obvious and over the top traits, the sims 4 is simply not the game for you.

    Sims 4 truly has some issues with all of this, but beeing it's own game is not an issue. Traits, whims and aspiration could be improved, but I would like them improved in sims 4 style. We have sims 3. It exists. It runs on win 10 and sims can be pretty with good defaults. Sims 4 doesn't have to copy sims 3. I don't understand why some people act like sims 4 killed sims 3 and now has to be its clone to make up for it. True, sims 3 has a terrible optimisation issue... and many players simply can't play sims 3 because it's unplayable on their PC but sims 4 runs ok. But it's a sims 3 fault.

    About the "evil" thing in the game. In sims 4 there is at least 7 ways for sim to kill another sim. In sims 3 you can steal candy. The way I feel sims 3 is childish, cartoony and cheerfull at its core and Sims 4 is quite dark under the sugar coat. Both styles are ok with me, I love sims 3 for beeing sims 3 and I love sims 4 for beeing sims 4.

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