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How intelligent do you want Sims to be?
Peral
Posts: 873 Member
If my Sims was alot smarter then today, I expect I woulöd feel like an intruder or an peeping tom when they performed intimate options for example like woo hoo. Even today I prefer not to look in when they woo hoo, but with smarter Sims?! Also when it come to child care, with high parenting skill I tend to do the wrong choices and send them of to give the toddler a bath when they are really hungry and a warning text comes up about if the toddler don'''t get feed they will be taken away...
How intelligent do you want Sims to be? 102 votes
Now is smart enough
6%
7 votes
Smarter
92%
94 votes
Not as smart as now
0%
1 vote
1
Comments
i want smarter sims than the ones in ts4. sims 1 was a great example, although for today's standards some parts of their AI is quite primitive (like not being able to get out of the pool without ladders) i think it was very well coded and researched. the creator of the sims & the old maxis also read lots of psychology and other genre books to be able to make a decent AI that could fit in a life simulator.
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But maybe more importantly, I just want sims actions to feel like they are leading somewhere. Nobody has a visible "Fulfillment" need, for example, which makes them like hollow creatures. They know to Sleep, but they don't have any need to yearn, to imagine, to help others, to be a part of something, etc. Apart from the extremely general Social and Fun, all the non-physical needs are nowhere to be found, or might be found in some capacity in mood buffs that don't lead much of anywhere. As a reflection of real life, this makes it hard to relate to them as characters and learn and feel from the stories that result.
Some will disagree, I know. Some find other ways to get story out of this and I have tried the "projecting onto sims" thing. It's interesting, but I don't have much creative energy for it by the time I'm opening up a game to play.
And I will say, to the credit of the sims team, there are clearly some on it who have listened to various problems about this and have tried to do something about it over the years, and it shows. I'm just not sure the core of the game is where it needs to be and that makes it difficult for surface improvements to be very noticeable overall.
It depends on what you mean by smarter. If you mean smarter as in adding new skills for sims to learn, No. As it is, I would love to stop my sims from learning comedy and mischief skills. All of my sims maxing out almost all skills is boring and unrealistic. I want my sims to be individuals and I would like to be able to choose what skills they learn and when.
If you mean smarter as in more autonomous, No. what's the point in the game if the sims do everything themselves.
If you mean Smarter as in having the common sense to not stand in a fire, tamper with electronics, or cook without appropriate skills, Yes.
It all depends on what you mean by smarter.
They're getting real close though, because I'm beginning to find it incredibly hard to understand them these days...
We could be living in the same universe as Sims 4 for all we know, I've noticed that a lot of IRL people are stupid and lack common sense, Corona just made it even more apparent than usual, you know people are dumb AF when the first thing they grab is toilet paper and not food during a pandemic.
My problem is that they nap on their assigned bed until I tell them to sleep properly, they drink water and grab quick meals when they are hungry and someone else is cooking, sims with no skill randomly make bar drinks, they constantly flock to certain kitchen appliances (coffee maker, ice cream maker, popcorn popper, etc.), for some reason I cannot keep them from bringing the Murphy bed down even if they do not plan to nap on it (it doubles as a sofa in front of a TV, but they never sit there unless told for some reason), no one autonomously likes to feed the small pets from my experience, they wash dishes in the bathroom (I have sort of accepted this, but still), I have had some really odd pathing issues with cooking and eating if you have multiple kitchens, they do not have a system to move laundry/dishes/trash/anything into their inventory and out to navigate ladders with them (it makes ladders barely viable in my builds), and the list goes on.
This is not even including lackluster personalities (traits, turn ons, preferences, interests, you name it), missing emotions, and an almost irrelevant whim and aspiration system. Even if we get more aspirations, they barely affect whims and we rarely get new aspiration rewards to buy with satisfaction.
I dare say the smarter than ever sims claim flopped.
This is meat. This is not meat. Do not eat the meat!
Whoops, wrong topic.
Sims 3 sims were way smarter than this and they do not need to put anything in their inventory as they climb the ladder with one hand and the other holding trash bag, plate of food or even cats, It seems that Maxis developed sims in Sims 4 to be a total opposite of the word "Smarter Sims" as they heavily advertised back then.
- walk all the way to the downstairs bathroom to prepare food on the counter there instead of using the perfectly good one in the kitchen,
- stop on the way to the toilet to complain about how seriously they need to pee, dropping the solution to their problem out of their queue in the process,
- are vegetarians, but autonomously decide to get meaty leftovers when vegetarian alternatives are available,
- are vampires burning in the sun, but ignore your direct order to run inside in favour of finishing their current idle animation,
- claim they can't use the fridge because another sim is currently taking something out, despite being far enough away from it that the other sim will be done by the time they get there,
- claim they can't go somewhere despite absolutely nothing being the way,
- casually chat with someone they just had a physical fight with (although the new sentiments system might correct that behaviour somewhat),
- don't react to anything around them that doesn't specifically affect them,
... and do some other insanely stupid things on a regular basis that just won't come to my mind right now, I'm not sure why the other two poll options are even there. The "smarter sims" claim didn't just flop, it was the biggest lie in the history of The Sims.
Something wicked this way comes!
I don't use MCCC.
That is what upsets me so much about it. The autonomy worked in Sims 3 and they could still randomly die and do a million other things. What happened? (I do appreciate the less restricted furniture placement and things like double beds still being usable for two sims against the wall, not that I trust it to try and use it, but just the last few patches broke some of my stairs in EA builds like the Ward Den.)
The AI Sims have needs to be massively overhauled. I hate the graphics, quite basic Sims, and time anomalies of TS2, but in every other regard, it is miles better.
Simmies if you have leftovers in the fridge, why make a new meal.
Simmies you have a perfectly good sink in the kitchen, don't go to the bathroom to wash those dishes.
Simmies you just got into a fight with your neighbor and you despise them, this is not the time to ask how are you
Simmies don't go outside to prepare the food when you have such lovely counters in the kitchen.
Simmies you have a nice kitchen table, you don't have to go outside in the cold and eat at the backyard table.
Simmies it is freezing outside, now is not the time to jump in the pool.
Yeah I can go on but you guys get the idea...
oh I just had to add this one...Simmies, you are at a restaurant, you don't get up and walk over to random sim tables and have conversations.
I see squeamish sims pick up dog poop, love outdoors sims stay inside, lazy sims doing chores, loner sims converse with strangers, evil sims being friendly and popular, the list goes on.
That brings to my mind an interesting idea. What if there was a skill cap on how many different skills your sim could learn? I did a bit of research and there are about 30+ skills our sims could learn and I think you're right: it is unrealistic that they would be able to learn them all. Though there were no limitations before, it might be good for gameplay if a sim couldn't learn everything but put a cap on it of say 10 or so after that if you want to learn something else you have to give up skills to learn a new one.