Forum Announcement, Click Here to Read More From EA_Cade.
I really dislike the cellphone and how much time and idles it has in Sims 4
SilentKitty
Posts: 4,665 Member
I am currently playing Coral Island, it is a new farming game on Steam and I really like it.
My little character can grow crops, dive and go into caves. There are fun characters to romance and have a friendship with. Okay, it is pretty lowkey but this game has caught me when Stardew Valley failed. It works for me.
Modern tech, Love for all and not a cellphone in sight.
The game is not devoid of representations of technology. They have npc's setting up Kickstarter campaigns, I remember seeing a flatscreen computers. There is a nice little robot that follows you around when you are out on adventures underwater. There are male and female npc's that can romance any player, they are not divided into straight or gay. There are single mom's and I it looks like you can have pets in the future as well.
The only thing missing is the cellphone, absolute bliss!!
I want to go out on adventure, not watch my sim watch a cellphone. I want to water plants, not watch my sim watch a cellphone. I want to invite my sim's friends over. Not watch my sim watching their friends watching a cellphone.
How will cellphones work in Sims 5?
I can mod Sims 4 into whatever I want it to be when it will no longer be updated but I wonder what Sims 5 will be like. How you will approach technology. It is possible to make a game set in the present day without cellphone and I like playing that version a good deal more. Or please make it possible to just leave the phone in the pocket, backpack, handbag, something. It is distracting and not fun, it doesn't add anything enjoyable to me.
My little character can grow crops, dive and go into caves. There are fun characters to romance and have a friendship with. Okay, it is pretty lowkey but this game has caught me when Stardew Valley failed. It works for me.
Modern tech, Love for all and not a cellphone in sight.
The game is not devoid of representations of technology. They have npc's setting up Kickstarter campaigns, I remember seeing a flatscreen computers. There is a nice little robot that follows you around when you are out on adventures underwater. There are male and female npc's that can romance any player, they are not divided into straight or gay. There are single mom's and I it looks like you can have pets in the future as well.
The only thing missing is the cellphone, absolute bliss!!
I want to go out on adventure, not watch my sim watch a cellphone. I want to water plants, not watch my sim watch a cellphone. I want to invite my sim's friends over. Not watch my sim watching their friends watching a cellphone.
How will cellphones work in Sims 5?
I can mod Sims 4 into whatever I want it to be when it will no longer be updated but I wonder what Sims 5 will be like. How you will approach technology. It is possible to make a game set in the present day without cellphone and I like playing that version a good deal more. Or please make it possible to just leave the phone in the pocket, backpack, handbag, something. It is distracting and not fun, it doesn't add anything enjoyable to me.
8
Comments
in fact i am typing this on phone
I just wish i could sometimes turn my sims phone off or something so i wouldn't have notifications n stuff for time being
"but it isn't realistic" actually it is as battery life of these gadgets is nonexistent irl and my phone is turned off 60% of day anyway why can't my sims turn off their phones too?
🏡 Gallery 📖 Stories 🌍 World Project 🥔 MOD/CC Free
Why don't our sims need to charge their phone or they won't be able to use it? That would be a super simple fix for those that don't want the cell phone usage.
Phone dies ..... never charge it
Need to travel? Plug cell in for a few minutes (enough to get a charge to make that call for the uber) then let it die again
You don't know how many little little children I see sitting together on their tablets and phones without even acknowledging eachother's presense. It feels very cold and robot like. My parents never allowed anyone in the house to own cellphones or computers and I'm actually grateful for it. I feel like it played a big part in me and my siblings growing such a close relationship. We had nothing but eachother, our creativity and our imagination and it truly shaped some of my fondest memories of all the things we invented and did😊
Those are the feelings players want in sims. It makes you smile and it's much more fun to watch.
Although I've never played it I think ts2 came the closest from what I seen.
When we had the stuff pack vote I remember technology coming in last lol
Random memory: I remember years ago before I was allowed interne I first saw a picture of mickey mouse, and disney world in relation to the internet. And for years after that I dreamed of having the internet because Iegit thought it = Disney world. 😆 Fast forward to when my uncle brought my first computer and I got internet, the anticipation was so high and then all of my dreams were crusheed. All I saw were web browsers and I'm like what happened to mickey mouse? What happened to Disney world?🥺 what I'm I supposed to do with this search bar? 🥺
Then I got the idea to search mickey mouse and disney world but it was just pictures and links 😒 Don't ask me what I thought I was going to find 😂
Idle animations are good for making sims seem less "robot-like" (otherwise they would just stand still) but they should probably not have so many phone animations as idle animations, idle animations play whenever the game thinks it has time to play them so it makes sims look obsessed with their phones, especially on a game that runs a bit slower.
For the next sims game phone interactions should probably be user controlled somehow, so that it feels that our sims have a choice to use the phone or not.
Therefor if you want that constant phone checking for your sim, just get the reward trait that gives a fun buff whenever they check their phone
And while they are at it, make phones purchasable.
You don't get annoyed by it until you buy one.They don't get annoyed until they drop and break it.
The Sims 2 got it right.
I've been saying for years now that the tech gameplay isn't fun, partly because it's not optional. This is still a game and it needs to be engaging. Watching my Sims stand there looking at their phones indefinitely is anything but engaging. Some things in life, when simulated, just aren't interesting. And the constant spam calls from random townies don't even make sense half the time, I really wish I could block all of them.
And I wholeheartedly agree that Sims 2 did it right, in making the player have to actually go out and buy your Sim a phone to use it. Man, do I miss that. I could give it to the few Sims I'd want to have it, and all of my Occults, retro Sims and oddballs could be blissfully phone free, as intended.
There must be a way to toggle off the phones. Toddlers don't use them, right? C'mon devs, give us a break. I'd really like to be able to update my game again one day and buy a new pack. 😖
Jupp. I'm on the werewolf-patch before the phone-madness. No way no how am I going to introduce that into my game without an option to turn it off. It would be so much easier to update the game if there was a way to toggle the phone off.
Oh I 100% agree.
At this point I'm running out of ideas on how to express my feelings of utter resentment towards these phones.
Let me try with pizza.
For what it's worth, I currently have THIS MOD installed to disable autonomous phone use, which is great for the time being, but I'd appreciate it if team Maxis could find a solution for all simmers.
I want to keep my game up to date but I don't want to keep updating mods for this kind of friggin' immersion breaking stuff. It's putting many players at a disadvantage I'm sure. Updating "fix" mods is time consuming - time that should really be spend on doing more enjoyable things, such as......playing games?
I also play off-the grid a lot and the majority of my sims don't use modern technology at all (or umbrellers for that matter 🤬. I'd dump 'em all into the Sulani volcano if I could. Oh believe me, I'd watch it all melt to blobsies - with the widest and wickedest grin on me face. )
Some people says it has been toned down. Others that it remains an annoying menace. I'm afraid to start playing and find out. It just feels like an intrusion. But if the intent was to remind us that no matter what Sims we create, they're not ours, and EA can change them as they pleases, then A+ on a job well done. All my Sims, even the no-technology using, living of the land Sim was transformed into cellphone obsessive beings. I get enough of that irl.
Doubt EA would ever get rid of something they implemented unless enough people raise their vocies, but I'd support anything that gets rid of the cellphone idle animations and even the cellphone. Heck, a button on the panel that allows your Sim to get rid of or buy a new cellphone. And introduce the old landline phones.
I really wish I had done like some wiser souls, and stayed at the Werewolf update. But the gender preferences snared me.
To think such a small thing like animations (granted, they popped up everywhere) could ruin the enjoyment of a game for me.
We want: Faeries, with a good ability tree, hopefully before summer 2024.
What do we want to get rid of: The holiday bug, the constant showering and the weed glitch.
My Sims take every opportunity to use a phone as soon as they get a spare moment. It is causing problems with getting them to do tasks and ruining fun animated moments because of the having to pause and send a text. Why?!
I disagree that mobile phone use makes the game more 'realistic'. My definition of how real a game or story feels is to do with how one would expect the characters/Sims to act within the setting of their universe.
It does not feel like a realistically existing world when my werewolf on a feral rampage suddenly regains enough self control to handle a mobile device and send a text! (Although this was quite amusing to watch)
It does not feel like a realistically existing world when my merman, who lives alone on a remote island and has grown up in a more or less technology-less environment (and also doesn't like socialising much), keeps getting his phone out to send texts and check social media. (This is not amusing, this is just an annoying interruption).
I agree with @SilentKitty in that I like to play the game to have little adventures with my characters and do lots of fun things. The obsessive phone use by Sims is spoiling this. And even if it is supposed to make the game seem more like 'the real world', is this the sort of real world EA really wants to promote? People not being able to function without checking their phone every few seconds? People interrupting quality time with a friend or family member to look at their phones instead? This is 'real life'?!
Magicomedies:https://forums.thesims.com/en_US/discussion/1006334/magicomedies#latest
Sims in TS4 have always been obsessed with their phones. I hate the idle time they spend on it, and I have Mods which have stopped all phone use for all ages, which I have used for years. The current one is (No Auto Play on Phones by MSQSIMS on TSR) - But. With High School Years, I added a Mod that ONLY lets Teens be obsessed with their phones. (Phone Animation Teens Only by MissyHissy) - I think they do go a little bit overboard with their phones, as they literally walk into walls at school while they're on it... but with Social Bunny, I guess that is to be expected. XD
I think that's because the phones also serves as an gameplay (starting events, traveling, chatting with someone because you refused to hang out with them but don't want to lose friends, finding jobs, ext.), and from what I've heard people really hate waiting for ubers in the older games. It's still a video game and it shouldn't be too realistic, but I agree that Sims looking at their phone are annoying, the only time they don't really do it is in the Off-The-Grid lot, which I haven't played with much.
Linking the phone addiction to a trait would actually be a good idea. It would give the players the choice.
It's not at all interesting when we're watching them use the phone.
Phones jolt me out of any kind of historical saves, or when you take all your carefully hoarded Dragon Age Inquisition CC on your sim and strand them all on the Island in Windenburg only to see all of them happily texting away.
For me it feels like a constant reminder that my way of playing the sims is wrong. I liked to make a silly challenge for myself and see how it plays out. I made a survival sim that was stranded on a strange planet and had to survive and build and gather resources before accessing new tech and getting more people. Standard civilization-style. Now my stranded sim would text and chat and it would not jive with the story. Because that is not what the developers had in mind with the sims. It is now, today, current time now that I am supposed to play. Whatever I had imagined is not the way to go.
I am not trying to make myself in the sims. I am trying different times, lives, histories, worlds. It is more difficult now unfortunately.
Yes! Exactly this!
Why railroad the players into modern tech at all times, with no opt out, when the game could offer so much more if it were flexible? It even contradicts its own features. Why make Eco Lifestyle or Off the Grid lot traits or Occults at all if you're just going to ruin everything with forced modern tech? I dread checking Batuu and Strangerville to see what those places look like now.
Once I'm forced to update in a couple of days when I switch to the EA app, I'm not sure if I'll play much anymore unless I can find some really reliable mods that shut that nonsense down. Otherwise it really just isn't fun for me.
This is often the way I play too. The phone makes it so much harder.
I kind of understand that videogame developers use it as a way to access some kind of menu, without loosing the flow/ mood of the game. However, in the other games I have played a character would often only access the phone if the player told them to do so.
But even so, the Sims developers could have made it so that you can decide for yourself if you buy a phone or not, because they did it before in Sims 1 and 2 (I do not know about 3 because I never played it). I think there is nothing wrong with having just a landline for certain services.
And if it is about traveling and socializing, there are different solutions for that. E.g. like they did in the Sims Castaway. Or by making the mailbox having more functions then receiving bills.
No life consequences or challenges and no retro lifestyles. There are many people whose lives have not been a safe space with the luxuries of modern tech. Why is it treated as forbidden for those people to have representation too? Sometimes life is just hard.
I am very sad to share that I have seen and experience that in the last decade or so, there is a lot of (peer) pressure to have certain electronic devices and to participate in certain (not so) social media groups.
On some of these occasions I witnessed children sharing ways of getting those electronic divices or getting a newer model from their parents, who could not afford this for various reasons.
I would like to share that I am talking about a country, that is considered a safe space, with governmental support. But there are still people that can not afford those devices, because of their circumstances. So, they are closer than you think. Even though you are living in a wealthy and safe country.