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I feel that the open workplace expansions are the antithesis of what the Sims is supposed to be
Thetford
Posts: 429 Member
By open workplace, I'm primarily referring to expansions such as Get to Work, Get Famous and High School Years in Sims 4 and Ambitions in the Sims 3. And hope they don't include them going forward in The Sims 4, or in the Sims 5.
I'm not sure if I'm wording this right or explaining myself correctly, but I just feel they go against the spirit and gameplay of the Sims. They essentially take away control from you, the player, as you are given a list of tasks that you have to do, with very little room for deviation outside of today's checklist. In addition, there is often, very little variety in the gameplay, your missions vary very little from the low level positions than from the high level ones, let alone between two days at the same position. They get tedious very quickly.
Ultimately, I feel these packs take you out of the sandbox and put you in a more on the rails experience that doesn't interact with the rest of the game. It doesn't matter how many other expansions you own, your experience in that career will be exactly the same each time. It takes a huge chunk out of your sim's day that is exactly the same, every day, and doesn't really interact with the rest of the game.
With pretty much all other type of expansion gameplay, you can come and go as you please, you can add it into your sims' lifestyles and daily activities to how much of an extent that you want to. Your sims life and experience is added to with each expansion as they get more hobbies and activities to do in their daily life.
Other guided experiences I will also include in this include World Adventures, Jungle Adventures, StrangerVille and Journey to Batuu, even the university packs are heading towards this as University Life and Discover University have increasingly focused on academic work, and less on campus life and living like the original University pack did. Often with these career and guided experience packs, if you don't interact with that career or experience, it adds very little other gameplay to your other sims' experience and existence. And is just wasted gameplay and dev time that you played once but never again, like Lisa's lemon tree in that episode of the Simpsons.
However, I do think Superstar from the Sims 1 and Open for Business from the Sims 2 do work:
In Superstar, while it is an open career, you are under no obligation to do tasks, in fact your only obligation is to show up in Studio Town once every two days. You can still decide to be a film star, or a music star, or a model once you are at an appropriate level, but you work on your own schedule and each of the activities you do to earn fame don't take up your entire day.
Open for business works because it is your business, in addition, it interacts and is expanded by the other expansions, and not even in a direct way. In OFB you are given three crafts (flowers, robots, toys), but you can also sell crafts from seasons (fish and produce), Freetime (pottery and sewing projects), and Apartment Life (magical ingredients). But you control how your sim directs their time in pursuing their business, you could even run one from home.
I hope I made my point clear.
I'm not sure if I'm wording this right or explaining myself correctly, but I just feel they go against the spirit and gameplay of the Sims. They essentially take away control from you, the player, as you are given a list of tasks that you have to do, with very little room for deviation outside of today's checklist. In addition, there is often, very little variety in the gameplay, your missions vary very little from the low level positions than from the high level ones, let alone between two days at the same position. They get tedious very quickly.
Ultimately, I feel these packs take you out of the sandbox and put you in a more on the rails experience that doesn't interact with the rest of the game. It doesn't matter how many other expansions you own, your experience in that career will be exactly the same each time. It takes a huge chunk out of your sim's day that is exactly the same, every day, and doesn't really interact with the rest of the game.
With pretty much all other type of expansion gameplay, you can come and go as you please, you can add it into your sims' lifestyles and daily activities to how much of an extent that you want to. Your sims life and experience is added to with each expansion as they get more hobbies and activities to do in their daily life.
Other guided experiences I will also include in this include World Adventures, Jungle Adventures, StrangerVille and Journey to Batuu, even the university packs are heading towards this as University Life and Discover University have increasingly focused on academic work, and less on campus life and living like the original University pack did. Often with these career and guided experience packs, if you don't interact with that career or experience, it adds very little other gameplay to your other sims' experience and existence. And is just wasted gameplay and dev time that you played once but never again, like Lisa's lemon tree in that episode of the Simpsons.
However, I do think Superstar from the Sims 1 and Open for Business from the Sims 2 do work:
In Superstar, while it is an open career, you are under no obligation to do tasks, in fact your only obligation is to show up in Studio Town once every two days. You can still decide to be a film star, or a music star, or a model once you are at an appropriate level, but you work on your own schedule and each of the activities you do to earn fame don't take up your entire day.
Open for business works because it is your business, in addition, it interacts and is expanded by the other expansions, and not even in a direct way. In OFB you are given three crafts (flowers, robots, toys), but you can also sell crafts from seasons (fish and produce), Freetime (pottery and sewing projects), and Apartment Life (magical ingredients). But you control how your sim directs their time in pursuing their business, you could even run one from home.
I hope I made my point clear.
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Comments
I think a lot of that is just essentially putting lipstick on a pig, when the problem is the core gameplay loop that quickly becomes repetitive checklist of the same tasks.
Being able to visit the police station to do any of the things you suggested wouldn't change anything in any material way (because let's face it, all it is going to be is talk to the receptionist then talk to an officer) and doesn't address the entire concept of an open work pack. Not to mention, isn't really meaningful gameplay we want to go back to repeatedly (how many people take their pets to the vet every time instead of just buying a bunch of wellness treats from the vending machine?).
You still essentially lose your control to a checklist that tells you what to do and by when, and that you can only progress by doing so.
Even when you get promoted, you are still doing 90% the same exact tasks. Arguably there isn't that much meaningful difference between level 1 in the career to level 10. And it is still taking up most of your Sim's waking hours every single day, especially if you are playing a household with multiple sims.
And since all the gameplay is tied to that career, if you aren't in that career, it just becomes a waste.
I think it comes down to playstyle. Some people want more of a sandbox. Some people want more in the way of rails.
Anytime something in the game arises that might provide limits or challenges to what sims can do, you see people respond in both directions. The more sandbox-y players don't like to have too many limits on what's possible for them to do in the game. The more rails-y players hate it when too many challenges get "nerfed" away.
Scenarios are an example of gameplay that adds rails to the game.
So are things like legacy challenges that people choose to take on.
I don't think there's anything illegitimate, or "not in the spirit of the game," about either playstyle. I do think it's nice to be able to adjust the game a bit in one's own preferred direction, within reason. Like choosing one's own DLC. Or playing scenarios, or not. Or choosing what parts of the game to use more and what parts to use less.
If you are more of a sandbox player, then maybe you might be happier not playing active careers at all.
Or you could modify the career lots and give your characters other things to do besides just tick off the tasks on the list over and over again. After all, unless they are super-driven career-track-minded people who want promotions all the time, they probably aren't 100% focused on their job tasks the whole time they're at work. The performance meter is forgiving enough that you have room to ignore some tasks and do other things, and you'll still get promoted now and then even if you only get Silver instead of Gold at work for example. I tend to play my active high school students this way.
Or, you can delve more into retail ownership gameplay, or alien gameplay, which are both terrific sandbox-oriented things that came with GTW.
The issue with the vet is that the pets get sick way too often. A once a year visit for vaccine or check-up should be enough and then maybe more often visits for grooming maybe. We need a pet grooming station. But I agree with you that repetitive gameplay is repetitive and if it is avoided then it becomes redundant. But I still maintain my opinion that more integration would help a lot simply because you are going to use that gameplay more often even if you are not playing those careers. Wouldn't it be nice if every once in a while you could see a cop walking by in the neighbourhood, making sure sims behaved themselves, and if not they would issue fines or make arrests? Even a couple of cops showing up to buy donuts from your cafe would be fun at this point. Maybe we could train dogs to be police dogs or do tricks for entertainment and have a show or do a movie together. Maybe famous sims could ask for a restraining order against a crazy fan or hire a retired cop as bodyguard. I think there are lots of possibilities for more pack integration so that if you don't enjoy a certain aspect of gameplay you could still use it in your game in other ways.
For example the things we could craft in the Scientist career, the research and debate skill and the robotics skill in Discover University. As long as we have things like that I think playing sims at a workplace still works.
But when we can't do more than some simple tasks and we are not able to change things around (like not allowing us to build) or when the new game features doesn't change the way we can play the game then things get repetitive very fast.
In rotational play the GTW careers great strength is being able to watch all your sims mingle (what was a big want of players back before community lots existed in Sims 1). I don't bother with those careers in single household saves, because in that playstyle their whole charm is nonexistent.
(And that was my point already, the rest of this post is anecdotal only.)
Science isn't very immersive even in rotational play, because it is harder to make the exact sims you want as co-workers spawn, the player is confined to the laboratory lot and the tasks are extremely restrictive to the point of telling you which co-worker to talk to and even what topic to choose. When playing my scientists, I see the issue with guided gameplay clearly.
Detective in comparison takes the sim all over the place and involves existing sims in the investigation. I once had a sim "protest" in front of the station, because she had been chosen by the game to file a complaint and afterwards took her guitar out on the steps.
Since detectives are pushed by their rolestate to socialize, couples will be found flirting from time to time and sims with grudges will argue.
Another plus is that "police station", "crime scene", "patrol" and "arrest scene" each load their own task lists that all contribute to the task meter. Don't like the police station assignments? Just go on patrol and get a new task list. That leaves players free to play their sim as either a beat cop, or a detective, regardless of actual rank. I therefore view Detective as a step into the right direction compared to the more railroady Scientist, Vet, Restaurant owner and Batuu fetch boy.
I can't say much about the hospital. The one time I played it recently, a sim that originally spawned as a suspect in the detective career was working as a nurse and brought a (now retired) detective with a bad rash his food. That was pretty touching, but probably a lucky catch. I also noticed that "wash hands" and "buy snack" are work tasks, regardless of the sim's motive bars, so overall hospital gameplay might be closer to Science than to Detective?
Jungle Adventures, although railroady, too, has the needs management going for it, so I will give this a pass.
Strangerville only has a single skill gate (to get the scanner, and even then you have five or so options), everything else boils down to diligence and the tasks can get tackled whenever the player wants. My first Strangerville playthrough with three rival teams took seven ingame weeks, subsequent runs never below three weeks. The whole GP is very easy to put into sandbox mode, so I don't think the ciriticsm of active careers being restrictive and repetitive applys to Strangerville.
Of course, that depends entirely on which individual player you ask, and what exactly The Sims is to them. To me, it is a simplified, slightly exaggerated and somewhat supernatural life simulation. And going to work where you sometimes have to do things you don't want or like, because someone or something tells you to do them, is part of life, just like eating, sleeping and going to the bathroom. The latter are things you always have to do one way or another, so even at home, sims have checklists to work through, they're just not as obviously presented as such.
Being able to follow your sims to work, school or university at least lets you have some control over what they're doing (which I very much appreciate, being quite the control freak when it comes to my sims). And you can always choose not to fulfil whatever tasks you are presented with, and live with the consequences. The alternative is sending them to a rabbithole and not seeing them at all for 6-10 sim hours. There's even less control in that.
Something wicked this way comes!
I don't use MCCC.
I agree with you that eventually things become repetitive no matter what the sims' career is. That's why I think it's important that the career and general gameplay allow for enough flexibility where you can chose to do something else that seems more fun to you as a player and in doing so you can avoid feeling the grind. With active careers you could sneak in other activities that are not career related but you want your sim to pursue. You need to come up with interesting and varied storylines for your sims, give them hobbies and likes that make sense and give them a unique something that makes them different from your other sims. If you play two doctors, give them different hobbies and lifestyles, if you play two gardeners, give them different garden plants.
As a doc for example, why does it matter that we check the eyes or the ears first, but that only one of the two gives work performance meter bonus?
I say, past level 4, everything you do to cure your patients should count all the same way they would if we follow their guidelines, but we should be able to do them in whichever order we please. At the end of the day, we're here to cure them, right?
And proms... 80% of the time, I can't finish their tasks, but 100% of the time I'm so focused on these that I don't have time to enjoy the event whatsoever. So I don't go anymore.
On the other hand I don't think it's a bad thing to have these types of check list careers or events. Different people like to play different ways and I actually like the strangerville check list story. The only downfall in my opinion is not giving us the option to use the features in a more sandbox way as well.
The whole idea of active careers and school is 100 times more fun then a rabbit hole though.
Love the highschool.