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Downsides of The Sims 4 Building
waterywatermelon
Posts: 473 Member
The Sims 4 is commonly touted by players to have the best building tools - easy and intuitive design, relatively fast game performance, etc. However, I have discovered that The Sims 4 Buy/Build Mode has its own drawbacks compared to previous Sims titles.
Foundation Tool. Some people love the new foundation tool that comes with The Sims 4, because you can now raise/lower the foundation easily, even after you have all the rooms and furniture in place. Personally, I am perfectly happy with The Sims 3's foundation tool. Sure, you do have to plan ahead before you build your own house, but the result is, I can achieve the same effect - different foundation heights. Even more so, I can carve out a foundation-based basement. The Sims 3 is the only game in the franchise to allow the ability to have 2 different kinds of basements - one kind is very similar to TS2-style foundation-basements and the other kind (the tomb-basement kind) is carried over to TS4's basement tool. You may argue that TS3 is less convenient to use, but I'd say it's more versatile because in TS3 and TS2, you can build walk-out basements and cliffside homes much more easily.
Auto Wallpapering. Some people love the automatic wallpapering on TS4 walls. It's very convenient, I get it. The Sims 3 also has this function, but even more so, you can place the walls individually. This can come in handy if you want siding on the exterior walls with the little vertical border wherever you want it, whereas the Sims 4 automatically assigns the vertical border, giving you no options to customize the placement of the vertical border even if you place the siding wall pattern individually.
Terrain Textures. If you have ever played TS2 on high graphics settings or TS3 on Advanced Rendering, then you can see very detailed and realistic terrain textures. Though, TS2 looks gorgeous even on medium settings because the high-resolution terrain textures will just blur to create a more smooth look, while TS3 without any advanced rendering looks hideous and unrealistic. The Sims 4 Terrain Textures look too smooth, hand-painted and unrealistic. But, I suppose this is just a personal preference kind of thing.
All Walls Of One Story Will Be The Same Height. The Sims 4 does offer a convenient way to change the wall height, but all the walls of one story will be the same height. Sometimes, I just want one building on the lot to have a different wall height than another building. I can do that with The Sims 2 and 3's constrainFloorElevation tool.
No Create-A-Style. Some people may complain that The Sims 3's Create-A-Style takes a long time to load up all the patterns, but that doesn't seem to affect my game that much probably because (1) I only own 5 expansion packs and 1 stuff pack (Seasons, Pets, World Adventures, Generations, Late Night, High-End Loft Stuff) and (2) there are online tutorials aimed at improving game performance in The Sims 3 and I followed that and that just seemed to help with dragging the new Create-A-Style pattern onto some other article of clothing or object. When I decorate a house, I want all the woods to match up. There are a lot of matching woods in The Sims 2, because that game tends to have light wood, medium wood and dark wood as common wood textures. The Sims 3 explodes in the number of wood textures.
Fixed Neighborhood Screen. In The Sims 2, you have to place the lot near the road and make sure that it snaps. This is a base game feature, and the base game was published in 2004. In The Sims 3, you can align the lot to the road if you want or you can make the lot in the middle of the woods and away from society. Have a misanthrope in your The Sims 3 game? Well, just place a lot far away from town, and live off the land! You can arrange the lots however you want in the world, and on top of that, EA has released Create-A-World so you can design your own custom world that is compatible for your game because you can't download others due to compatibility issues.
No Pond Tool. You can use the pool tool to create pools and disguise them to look like ponds, but then you can't fish out of them. You can use the debug fishing pond, but then you can't swim out of them. In The Sims 3, you can create a pond that is deep enough for both fishing and swimming!
No CAS Bypass. In The Sims 2, you can create a brand-new empty neighborhood and just build your lots. To stop the Pleasantview Townies from generating, you have to disable the N001 file by adding .bak extension to it. You can also remove the secret subneighborhood folders and place them in a different location on your computer to stop the subneighborhood Townies from generating. In The Sims 3, you can create a new save file and just go to Edit Town immediately, before selecting or creating a family. Create-A-World also has a mini or light version of the Sims 3 game in which you can just build your own world. In The Sims 4, you have to go through the whole CAS page, create a family, delete that family and then start building. It makes sense if you are trying to make The Sims 4 an online social game, but as a personal stand-alone game, it's extremely annoying for people who just want to build and create their own worlds.
All in all, The Sims 4 has made great improvements to building houses, but there are also some drawbacks with the way The Sims 4 is set up.
In my opinion, I think The Sims 3 is a super upgrade to The Sims 2, giving players so many options - options that The Sims 4 can never do - neighborhood-wide customization, advanced lot placement, no CAS screen every time you create a new save file, the pond tool for fishing and swimming and more versatile foundations. But then, the Sims 4 has a lot of good clutter objects for detailing and furnishing.
I disagree with the sentiment that The Sims 4 is absolutely better/superior in building than earlier Sims games. It is better in some aspects, but it is also worse in others.
Foundation Tool. Some people love the new foundation tool that comes with The Sims 4, because you can now raise/lower the foundation easily, even after you have all the rooms and furniture in place. Personally, I am perfectly happy with The Sims 3's foundation tool. Sure, you do have to plan ahead before you build your own house, but the result is, I can achieve the same effect - different foundation heights. Even more so, I can carve out a foundation-based basement. The Sims 3 is the only game in the franchise to allow the ability to have 2 different kinds of basements - one kind is very similar to TS2-style foundation-basements and the other kind (the tomb-basement kind) is carried over to TS4's basement tool. You may argue that TS3 is less convenient to use, but I'd say it's more versatile because in TS3 and TS2, you can build walk-out basements and cliffside homes much more easily.
Auto Wallpapering. Some people love the automatic wallpapering on TS4 walls. It's very convenient, I get it. The Sims 3 also has this function, but even more so, you can place the walls individually. This can come in handy if you want siding on the exterior walls with the little vertical border wherever you want it, whereas the Sims 4 automatically assigns the vertical border, giving you no options to customize the placement of the vertical border even if you place the siding wall pattern individually.
Terrain Textures. If you have ever played TS2 on high graphics settings or TS3 on Advanced Rendering, then you can see very detailed and realistic terrain textures. Though, TS2 looks gorgeous even on medium settings because the high-resolution terrain textures will just blur to create a more smooth look, while TS3 without any advanced rendering looks hideous and unrealistic. The Sims 4 Terrain Textures look too smooth, hand-painted and unrealistic. But, I suppose this is just a personal preference kind of thing.
All Walls Of One Story Will Be The Same Height. The Sims 4 does offer a convenient way to change the wall height, but all the walls of one story will be the same height. Sometimes, I just want one building on the lot to have a different wall height than another building. I can do that with The Sims 2 and 3's constrainFloorElevation tool.
No Create-A-Style. Some people may complain that The Sims 3's Create-A-Style takes a long time to load up all the patterns, but that doesn't seem to affect my game that much probably because (1) I only own 5 expansion packs and 1 stuff pack (Seasons, Pets, World Adventures, Generations, Late Night, High-End Loft Stuff) and (2) there are online tutorials aimed at improving game performance in The Sims 3 and I followed that and that just seemed to help with dragging the new Create-A-Style pattern onto some other article of clothing or object. When I decorate a house, I want all the woods to match up. There are a lot of matching woods in The Sims 2, because that game tends to have light wood, medium wood and dark wood as common wood textures. The Sims 3 explodes in the number of wood textures.
Fixed Neighborhood Screen. In The Sims 2, you have to place the lot near the road and make sure that it snaps. This is a base game feature, and the base game was published in 2004. In The Sims 3, you can align the lot to the road if you want or you can make the lot in the middle of the woods and away from society. Have a misanthrope in your The Sims 3 game? Well, just place a lot far away from town, and live off the land! You can arrange the lots however you want in the world, and on top of that, EA has released Create-A-World so you can design your own custom world that is compatible for your game because you can't download others due to compatibility issues.
No Pond Tool. You can use the pool tool to create pools and disguise them to look like ponds, but then you can't fish out of them. You can use the debug fishing pond, but then you can't swim out of them. In The Sims 3, you can create a pond that is deep enough for both fishing and swimming!
No CAS Bypass. In The Sims 2, you can create a brand-new empty neighborhood and just build your lots. To stop the Pleasantview Townies from generating, you have to disable the N001 file by adding .bak extension to it. You can also remove the secret subneighborhood folders and place them in a different location on your computer to stop the subneighborhood Townies from generating. In The Sims 3, you can create a new save file and just go to Edit Town immediately, before selecting or creating a family. Create-A-World also has a mini or light version of the Sims 3 game in which you can just build your own world. In The Sims 4, you have to go through the whole CAS page, create a family, delete that family and then start building. It makes sense if you are trying to make The Sims 4 an online social game, but as a personal stand-alone game, it's extremely annoying for people who just want to build and create their own worlds.
All in all, The Sims 4 has made great improvements to building houses, but there are also some drawbacks with the way The Sims 4 is set up.
In my opinion, I think The Sims 3 is a super upgrade to The Sims 2, giving players so many options - options that The Sims 4 can never do - neighborhood-wide customization, advanced lot placement, no CAS screen every time you create a new save file, the pond tool for fishing and swimming and more versatile foundations. But then, the Sims 4 has a lot of good clutter objects for detailing and furnishing.
I disagree with the sentiment that The Sims 4 is absolutely better/superior in building than earlier Sims games. It is better in some aspects, but it is also worse in others.
Post edited by waterywatermelon on
3
Comments
I 100% agree with this statement. It does have some new innovative aspects to it that are superior to the older games.
What it gets "right" in my opinion:
Where it falls behind for me:
I once posted on The Sims Reddit the exact same post, but the people didn't get it or disagreed with it, insisting that The Sims 4 Build Mode is superior to previous installments while lacking in everything else.
First of all, I do not think that The Sims 4 Build Mode is superior than previous installments of The Sims in every way, but it is better in some ways, but it is quite lacking in others. Apparently, those people didn't get it.
Where the build mode is good:
• Ability to copy, rotate or move entire rooms.
• Ability to move the entire building or lot.
• You can drag walls out to change the size of the room.
• Adjust the wall heights at any point during the build.
• Add a foundation, or change the height of the foundation at any time.
• Drag out the roof to get the roof size.
• Freely place and stack windows.
• Adjust platform height during the build.
Where the build mode is restrictive:
• No pond tool.
• No auto roof. Not even preset L and U shaped roofs.
• No curved walls or roof. I can not even place a curved shelter over a curved deck.
• No flat roof option. This would be great for sheltered decks.
• Can not place lots.
• When applying patterns to the walls attached to the roof, all walls both inside and out have the same pattern. You can not have one square of timber cladding, but the rest brick. You can not have brick outside, but GIB inside.
• You can not remove floor tiles individually. Ctrl + click and drag does not work for floors in this iteration.
• You can not use wall textures on foundations. They have their own very limited selection which often doesn't match the walls exterior cladding.
• Not enough variety of wall paterns like vertical timber cladding and there's no plain cream coloured interior wall pattern. Same with roof patterns, only 1 longrun roof option and the colours are ick.
• Can not have one building on the lot a different wall height to another. Eg. A wedding venue I built has medium height walls to fit the wedding arch. The bathroom, which is not attached, is stuck at the same height. I can not make the bathroom a small wall height without changing the height of the other buildings on the lot.
https://youtube.com/channel/UCaj9o4hycNSPy8U1Ip0OCFA/videos
I agree 100% these points. A point I would add is how annoying the rooms are in the Sims 4 especially when you place friezes. While friezes are a nice architectural detail for builds I really get annoyed how they will automatically place inside my builds as opposed to just the outside. This is connected to your point about autowallpapering too and how the game will autoplace wall paper without any regard to proper placement. The only point I disagree with you is I actually like the different wall heights but that is just a personal preference of mine. I like how simplified and easy to navigate the Sims 4 build/buy is compared to the Sims 3. I think for inexperienced players the Sims 3 build/buy mode might be intimidating however I think with enough knowledge of cheats I think the Sims 3 is better for more experienced builders. Overall I prefer the Sims 4 build/buy tool personally because of how easy it is compared to the Sims 3. While I think the Sims 3 does allow for more complicated builds I often feel it is a more time consuming process than building in the Sims 4. I think having features of the Sims 3 build/buy mixed in with the simplified format of the Sims 4 would be ideal in the Sims 5. I agree with most of your points but out of personal preference I do prefer the ease of building in the Sims 4 over the Sims 3.
This is a really good point as well. You can also build skyscraper shells in the Sims 3 with the constrainfloorelevation cheat but that capability is missing in the Sims 4.
I’ve spent a considerable amount of time in Sims 3 CAW and re-building entire neighborhoods. I love open world.
Yet, I find building actual structures in Sims 4 far more enjoyable. This is coming from someone who builds a huge amount.
There are 2 things that bother me a lot in The Sims 4 building tool and perhaps very few people seem to notice or care about these:
Create a style being slow to load is engine limitation by not caching the pattern, if you unlock your framerate to at least above 60fps they are all load pretty fast, for some reasons the pattern loading time is tied to one's current frame rates.
Hoping they will introduce this feature again in the future as swatches options is very limiting.
I actually rarely creating my own lot eventhough sims 4 is easier, and I like making my own in Sims 3.
I must be the only person who hated create a style in TS3. You could change pattern easily but there were no fine details and not possible to change the alpha texture on the same object, you had to make a new one. I also hated the fact that it made it easy to go down the OCD route and make everything match, bedsheets, wallpaper, carpets, curtains. It was insane. Also, you had to wait for the textures to load whenever you moved the camera. It felt like a laggy online game.
I too use the TS3 camera mode and I see the ceiling every time I play, I also always play with walls up when I play because I didn't spend a huge amount of time decorating my sims rooms and walls just to have the walls down and never see the decorations I placed.
So, not having the ability to paint the ceilings is a huge thing to me, that ugly white ceiling in every house is ridiculous, also the fact that the ceiling is also the underneath side to "porch roofs" ... so even if you could deal with white ceilings inside, but the outside of your structure is dark colored, the porch ceiling is still white and sticks out like a sore thumb!
And the color/intensity not being able to be adjust in build mode is serious pet peeve of mine too!