Here is why I don't agree: I cheated my adult sims a couple of character values to see it in action and add more dimention to my family. The female sim threw a freaking tantrum in the bathroom when she went onto labor then started to shout curse words. My male sim who has bad mannera cheered at her. He's also constantly being inappropriate with belching and fartig due to it.
My toddler is fussy and cries/bites/is defiant and her parents autonomously correct that behavior. My child sim asks for advice/writes in her journal all by herself. She got grounded and sneaked to watch the tv anyway without my doing.
My adult sim with bad manners can insult interests by mistake, critique physique or unintentionally crush his childs dreams. And i don't even have a teenager. And i played for tops 6 hours.
Im sitting here like how? How can anyone say this doesn't add anything? Before I could breeze with a family of 8 sims and now I barely keep up with 4. I truly don't understand what exactly about this game pack is not sufficient.
So I'm curious what OP meant and would also ask anyone else to comment: is this to say the traits you get as Young Adults are pretty much moot and meaningless with rather inconsequential gameplay??
I haven't purchased, I've only watched some brief snippets of Let's Plays. I do recall however how one Sim had Argumentative and had a social interaction..."Unintentionally Provoke." I thought that was very odd because the player had to intentionally select unintentionally provoke, so it was "unintentional" in name only. It left me wondering which of the following was true:
1) The traits and new gameplay are weaksauce and basically do absolutely nothing unless you MAKE them do something, thereby defeating the point. I mean we all complain the current traits are bad and a big part of that is that Mean and Evil Sims for example will still gain positive relationships if left unattended, so YOU have to often lead them to being mean and Evil. If Argumentative is something Sims rarely act on unless ordered to, it suffers from the exact same problem.
2) The traits still often pop up and show themselves via random gameplay and via Sim AI. That the dialog option exists is merely to provide players with storytelling options if they so prefer to manually select the choices themselves.
I find OP's first post a tad cryptic in how it was written so I'm unsure if he's criticizing just teens or the collective package including the value traits, though it seems like he means the traits are weak too. I'd love to hear commentary about them either explaining strengths or problems with them.
I and a lot of others have noticed traits affecting more. I don't have a YA, but I had two sims, the son was angelic as a toddler, and the daughter was fussy and now she's hot headed.
The son has nothing negative, meanwhile the daughter has horrible responsibility and conflict resolution.
She used to have horrible emotional control, but her mother's been working on her with that.
But her conflict resolution sucks because she likes to autonomously fight and argue, but she has high empathy because she loves her doctors set and gets along with her mother.
Oh and another thing. My adult sim with good manners can politely introduce herself, assess correctness and i dont even know what else cause despite of playing for hours I still have no clue how many interactions there actually are.
Just to test things, I tested a household with two parents, one teen, one child and one toddler. Gave the mom all the good character traits....neat, family-oriented and outgoing traits....big happy family aspiration...and put her parenting at level 8. Gave dad all bad character traits.....lazy, slob and hot-headed....mischief aspiration...and put his parenting skill at level 1. Gave the teen traits of mean and gloomy...the public enemy aspiration...and gave her 60 out of 100 on the negative scale for all character traits. Gave the child the cheerful trait and the rambunctious scamp aspiration...and gave her 30 out of 100 on the positive scale for all character traits. Gave the toddler the fussy trait...and gave her 20 out of 100 on the negative scale for all character traits.
I set everyone on full autonomy and just let the game play without any interference from me.
By the end of day 1, the super mom doled out several loving hugs to her children, had encouraged her child at the activity table, played with her child at the dollhouse on multiple occasions, left notes and drawings for the family at the bulletin board, play wrestled with the toddler, grilled up hot dogs for everyone, taught the toddler on the blocks, and cleaned all the empty dishes and garbage in the house. She even cleaned a desk a few times that didn't need to be cleaned...just because she's a neat freak. Both the teen and the child came to the mom a few times for advice...they never bothered asking lazy bad dad for anything. Meanwhile, lazy bad dad spent 90% of the day trolling on the forums. He never cleaned anything, not even his own dish. He checked on the toddler a couple of times....he also farted a few times. First thing the next morning, he went into the teen's room to troll the forums again and cut one loose while he was seated at the computer...it must have been a bad one because it woke the teen up...was she mad? Of course not, she has bad manners so she laughed about it.
As for the kids, the teen was constantly insulting her parents and her little sister. When she wasn't doing that, the teen was cursing up a storm or trolling the forums (like father, like daughter) or smashing the dollhouse. She spent so much time aggravating her little sister, who is a "cheerful" sim, that the child got into a very angry mood and started insulting her big sister back and even tried to angrily convince her that monsters are real...when that didn't work, the child had to go over to poor Blarffy and start calling him names and yelling at him to let off some steam. When she wasn't being antagonized by her older sister, the child was in a good mood and entertaining herself at the drawing/activity table and having pleasant chats with her mom and hugging the toddler. The fussy toddler had a meltdown because she got tired of playing blocks...had a meltdown because she was hungry...and just decided to throw some fits for no particular reason. She tried to smash the dollhouse once but the teen beat her to it.
And this was just one day....so please tell me again how traits don't impact anything.
I had two child after this pack, the girl is a perfect child, she is very responsible, she was an angelic toddler, so she never gave her parents any trouble, the only problem is that she doesn't have emotional control, so sometimes she gets mad when having a conversation. As for the other kid, he is still a toddler, he is energetic and with only one day, he loves to make some mess autonomously.
I agree that sometimes I wish traits were more dominant, and it is really difficult for me to make some kids yell or say bad words, I tend to make my sims perfect, but I'm trying to add some dynamic to my legacy, making some kids behave like kids, when they have a red bar because they want to sleep, rather than sending them straight to bed, I'm trying to make them yell with anger because kids sometimes behave like this, so I'm enjoying the pack because I can make some situations feel more realistic.
Just to test things, I tested a household with two parents, one teen, one child and one toddler. Gave the mom all the good character traits....neat, family-oriented and outgoing traits....big happy family aspiration...and put her parenting at level 8. Gave dad all bad character traits.....lazy, slob and hot-headed....mischief aspiration...and put his parenting skill at level 1. Gave the teen traits of mean and gloomy...the public enemy aspiration...and gave her 60 out of 100 on the negative scale for all character traits. Gave the child the cheerful trait and the rambunctious scamp aspiration...and gave her 30 out of 100 on the positive scale for all character traits. Gave the toddler the fussy trait...and gave her 20 out of 100 on the negative scale for all character traits.
I set everyone on full autonomy and just let the game play without any interference from me.
By the end of day 1, the super mom doled out several loving hugs to her children, had encouraged her child at the activity table, played with her child at the dollhouse on multiple occasions, left notes and drawings for the family at the bulletin board, play wrestled with the toddler, grilled up hot dogs for everyone, taught the toddler on the blocks, and cleaned all the empty dishes and garbage in the house. She even cleaned a desk a few times that didn't need to be cleaned...just because she's a neat freak. Both the teen and the child came to the mom a few times for advice...they never bothered asking lazy bad dad for anything. Meanwhile, lazy bad dad spent 90% of the day trolling on the forums. He never cleaned anything, not even his own dish. He checked on the toddler a couple of times....he also farted a few times. First thing the next morning, he went into the teen's room to troll the forums again and cut one loose while he was seated at the computer...it must have been a bad one because it woke the teen up...was she mad? Of course not, she has bad manners so she laughed about it.
As for the kids, the teen was constantly insulting her parents and her little sister. When she wasn't doing that, the teen was cursing up a storm or trolling the forums (like father, like daughter) or smashing the dollhouse. She spent so much time aggravating her little sister, who is a "cheerful" sim, that the child got into a very angry mood and started insulting her big sister back and even tried to angrily convince her that monsters are real...when that didn't work, the child had to go over to poor Blarffy and start calling him names and yelling at him to let off some steam. When she wasn't being antagonized by her older sister, the child was in a good mood and entertaining herself at the drawing/activity table and having pleasant chats with her mom and hugging the toddler. The fussy toddler had a meltdown because she got tired of playing blocks...had a meltdown because she was hungry...and just decided to throw some fits for no particular reason. She tried to smash the dollhouse once but the teen beat her to it.
And this was just one day....so please tell me again how traits don't impact anything.
Omg yes! Sounds so wonderfully fun , just like the parenthood pack
Just to test things, I tested a household with two parents, one teen, one child and one toddler. Gave the mom all the good character traits....neat, family-oriented and outgoing traits....big happy family aspiration...and put her parenting at level 8. Gave dad all bad character traits.....lazy, slob and hot-headed....mischief aspiration...and put his parenting skill at level 1. Gave the teen traits of mean and gloomy...the public enemy aspiration...and gave her 60 out of 100 on the negative scale for all character traits. Gave the child the cheerful trait and the rambunctious scamp aspiration...and gave her 30 out of 100 on the positive scale for all character traits. Gave the toddler the fussy trait...and gave her 20 out of 100 on the negative scale for all character traits.
I set everyone on full autonomy and just let the game play without any interference from me.
By the end of day 1, the super mom doled out several loving hugs to her children, had encouraged her child at the activity table, played with her child at the dollhouse on multiple occasions, left notes and drawings for the family at the bulletin board, play wrestled with the toddler, grilled up hot dogs for everyone, taught the toddler on the blocks, and cleaned all the empty dishes and garbage in the house. She even cleaned a desk a few times that didn't need to be cleaned...just because she's a neat freak. Both the teen and the child came to the mom a few times for advice...they never bothered asking lazy bad dad for anything. Meanwhile, lazy bad dad spent 90% of the day trolling on the forums. He never cleaned anything, not even his own dish. He checked on the toddler a couple of times....he also farted a few times. First thing the next morning, he went into the teen's room to troll the forums again and cut one loose while he was seated at the computer...it must have been a bad one because it woke the teen up...was she mad? Of course not, she has bad manners so she laughed about it.
As for the kids, the teen was constantly insulting her parents and her little sister. When she wasn't doing that, the teen was cursing up a storm or trolling the forums (like father, like daughter) or smashing the dollhouse. She spent so much time aggravating her little sister, who is a "cheerful" sim, that the child got into a very angry mood and started insulting her big sister back and even tried to angrily convince her that monsters are real...when that didn't work, the child had to go over to poor Blarffy and start calling him names and yelling at him to let off some steam. When she wasn't being antagonized by her older sister, the child was in a good mood and entertaining herself at the drawing/activity table and having pleasant chats with her mom and hugging the toddler. The fussy toddler had a meltdown because she got tired of playing blocks...had a meltdown because she was hungry...and just decided to throw some fits for no particular reason. She tried to smash the dollhouse once but the teen beat her to it.
And this was just one day....so please tell me again how traits don't impact anything.
This is a good idea as a way to test, but I think it could use some tweaking.
Two problems that jump out at me are Family Orientated and Mean. Family-Orientated Sims have always obsessed over hugging their children in my experience and I would not be surprised to see a lot of AI tacked on to this one to encourage them to teach values or the like, and we all know Mean sims have mean interactions from time to time. Who is to say that these interactions were the result of behavioral values and not the result of specific pre-existing traits...?
I think the issue with your little experiment is you haven't controlled for existing traits. The idea is great, but I think what might be better is if you provided both the parents and kids with varying value settings, THEN purposefully try and assign all Sims in the household the most inconsequential traits possible. Yknow, stuff like Loves the Outdoors, Clumsy, Unflirty, Vegetarian and Kleptomaniac. (or Noncommital if it's possible to keep mom and dad jobless and unmarried without interfering with something) Such traits couldn't possibly interfere with the day-to-day of family life and thus it would give a nice look into how much Sim AI is affected by the character values themselves, or how much certain traits like Argumentative pop up on their own via AI interactions.
I'm so confused. How are some people so quickly claiming this pack is empty and that "nothing matters"? I mean, I saw a couple threads only hours after the pack released with people already saying the pack's boring and that they feel they've seen everything, and I'm over here playing all day yesterday and have barely made a dent in the amount of content I have yet to see.
I haven't seen the values traits at work for YAs yet, but I can visibly see how this pack is influencing my sims and challenging my gameplay. All three children in my current household are maxed on responsibility and they consistently complete their homework autonomously and choose to begin working on school projects without prodding from their parents. They're also making progress with manners and they're already cleaning up after themselves autonomously, which is something I always had to direct them to do before this pack. The amount of interactions family members, spouses, and teens have alone is incredible. I mentioned it in another thread, but I'm also fairly certain that these interactions are intuitive to a sim's emotional state and actions they've completed recently. I didn't even know siblings could tease each other until my sim's brother started teasing her about her face, which was covered in makeup from the vanity table. She was then able to tease him about his grades, which appeared not long after he had been praised for his grades by their mother. Furthermore, she could tease him about his bravery, which made total sense considering he was Very Confident at the time. The emotions, mood swings, phases, and actions of the sims now matter since installation of this pack. The siblings have so many interactions now, and yes, more interactions appear when they're in different moods, such as Angry. Anyone's certainly free to disagree, but I find this pack to be a breath of fresh air and I'm loving every second of it.
If you're a player who directs every action and doesn't rely much on autonomy, I'd imagine that may be why some take issue with the way the traits are influencing older age groups. If you don't allow the sims to make their own decisions or allow the value traits to direct their autonomous actions, of course you're not going to see the consequences their upbringing has had on them. Everyone's 100% entitled to their opinion and I'll always listen to opposing views, but from what I've seen, this pack is far from empty or lacking depth. Parenthood is everything I've been wanting in TS4. There's depth, there are consequences, there are challenges; it gets an A in my book any day. I think people need to give it a second chance and play out all age groups more thoroughly before jumping to the conclusion that it's insufficient, but that's just my opinion.
To be quite honest, I haven't played the game much, only for 5 or 6 hours or so, but so far I'm loving it. The families seem a lot more realistic than before and with Full Autonomy I become the witness of many hilarious situations. One of my male Sims has got the Slob Trait and he keeps farting and belching all the time, ESPECIALLY when he is around his children, I mean proper manners anyone? Hehe. His wife, the female Sim I created from scratch, has got these Traits: Family-Oriented, Neat, Ambitious and the Domestic Trait for completing an older Family Aspiration. Now she's got the new one that came with this pack. The interactions between them are so funny! She keeps becoming frustrated by him, because he almost never checks on the Toddlers (now the older child, the daughter, is in the Child Life Stage though). She always takes care of her Toddlers' needs and keeps discipling them when they turn naughty.
I haven't played the Teen Stage with the new GP yet, so I don't know about the Teen interactions, but so far I don't think this GP provides us with "empty" gameplay. For me, the families have become much more vibrant and nothing seems too perfect and vanilla now, if you understand what I mean. One of the Toddlers even began hitting a stuffed animal when he got angry because his energy bar was low and his mother rushed in the room to firmly put him to his place, it was so cool to see! As a family Simmer myself, I'm pleased with this GP. Yes, it could have been more than what it already is, but we could say the same thing for all previous GPs and EPs. And, yes, the Traits don't play a huge role on all aspects of a Sim's life, but this GP focuses on the parenting experience, not on the wider spectrum of the YA and Adult Sim Life Stages. At least, the Maxis team listened to a big portion of its fans and delivered a relatively solid GP. I don't know... I really hope something better will come along for these Simmers who weren't satisfied with this GP!
Happy Simming to you all, friends! Stay smiley and optimistic!
Here is why I don't agree: I cheated my adult sims a couple of character values to see it in action and add more dimention to my family. The female sim threw a freaking tantrum in the bathroom when she went onto labor then started to shout curse words. My male sim who has bad mannera cheered at her.
Oh and another thing. My adult sim with good manners can politely introduce herself, assess correctness and i dont even know what else cause despite of playing for hours I still have no clue how many interactions there actually are.
Another great point.....the character traits open up interaction options that other sims don't have if they don't have that trait.
Wow,OP, you must have played through the night! I'm not that far. Of course, I do play on Long, but that's beside the point. So far, I'm enjoying having my Sim parents be more than mere figureheads. I think this was one thing the game (Sims, in general) was lacking. Everybody is always expecting some huge payoff at the end. I take things as they come. At first, I didn't think that having the child do well in school meant anything, either. But, it was borne out that if the teen does well, it DOES effect what level they start out, (what rung on the 'ladder') in their job choice.
I'm guessing, too, that the Sims reared during Parenthood, may make better parents than those without it. Or maybe I'm just blowing smoke … You enjoy your immersion, I'll enjoy mine. I'm liking the game play.
Even without gaining the character traits, I've noticed a few changes in adult Sims' behavior. Before Parenthood, I had a bunch of Sims living in Partihaus with the "Mean Vibe" lot trait. Eva Capriccio has the hot-headed trait, which meant that once in a while she'd yell at the kids' stuffed animal or kick over the garbage can. Ho-hum. Now she's sticking thumbs in her ears and waggling her fingers while teasing someone.
The Sim I control owns a retail store. Don Lothario and Dina Caliente came in and got into a fight into the store. My Sim had the option to "Repair bad relationship" (new) so she had Don apologize to Dina. After which, they got into a fight again. I've had a retail store off and on since Get to Work came out and have seen, at most, 1 fight in the store.
Incidentally, I'm playing an ISBI-type challenge in which most of the time, I can control only one Sim, the torch-holder. Parenthood makes that a little easier in that my Sim can now put her children to bed at a reasonable time and get them to do homework, but it also brings more than a few challenges -- my Sim is the go-to person for meals, repairs, cleaning, and now parenting too, although her husband is moving up slowly on his own.
I'm so confused. How are some people so quickly claiming this pack is empty and that "nothing matters"? I mean, I saw a couple threads only hours after the pack released with people already saying the pack's boring and that they feel they've seen everything, and I'm over here playing all day yesterday and have barely made a dent in the amount of content I have yet to see.
I haven't seen the values traits at work for YAs yet, but I can visibly see how this pack is influencing my sims and challenging my gameplay. All three children in my current household are maxed on responsibility and they consistently complete their homework autonomously and choose to begin working on school projects without prodding from their parents. They're also making progress with manners and they're already cleaning up after themselves autonomously, which is something I always had to direct them to do before this pack. The amount of interactions family members, spouses, and teens have alone is incredible. I mentioned it in another thread, but I'm also fairly certain that these interactions are intuitive to a sim's emotional state and actions they've completed recently. I didn't even know siblings could tease each other until my sim's brother started teasing her about her face, which was covered in makeup from the vanity table. She was then able to tease him about his grades, which appeared not long after he had been praised for his grades by their mother. Furthermore, she could tease him about his bravery, which made total sense considering he was Very Confident at the time. The emotions, mood swings, phases, and actions of the sims now matter since installation of this pack. The siblings have so many interactions now, and yes, more interactions appear when they're in different moods, such as Angry. Anyone's certainly free to disagree, but I find this pack to be a breath of fresh air and I'm loving every second of it.
If you're a player who directs every action and doesn't rely much on autonomy, I'd imagine that may be why some take issue with the way the traits are influencing older age groups. If you don't allow the sims to make their own decisions or allow the value traits to direct their autonomous actions, of course you're not going to see the consequences their upbringing has had on them. Everyone's 100% entitled to their opinion and I'll always listen to opposing views, but from what I've seen, this pack is far from empty or lacking depth. Parenthood is everything I've been wanting in TS4. There's depth, there are consequences, there are challenges; it gets an A in my book any day. I think people need to give it a second chance and play out all age groups more thoroughly before jumping to the conclusion that it's insufficient, but that's just my opinion.
You know how it goes. Some people have the ability to know what a games is all about after playing for a few minutes, they know everything, without giving it a chance. I wouldn't be surprised if some of them havent actually even played it. It take more than a few hours to get into this game pack.This one has a lot of immediate new features but many that have to be discovered as you go along. You don't just play Parenthood on release day and write a slam piece, like this. The title alone is an attention-grabbing slam piece and I find it sad. But...oh well.
So I'm curious what OP meant and would also ask anyone else to comment: is this to say the traits you get as Young Adults are pretty much moot and meaningless with rather inconsequential gameplay??
I haven't purchased, I've only watched some brief snippets of Let's Plays. I do recall however how one Sim had Argumentative and had a social interaction..."Unintentionally Provoke." I thought that was very odd because the player had to intentionally select unintentionally provoke, so it was "unintentional" in name only. It left me wondering which of the following was true:
1) The traits and new gameplay are weaksauce and basically do absolutely nothing unless you MAKE them do something, thereby defeating the point. I mean we all complain the current traits are bad and a big part of that is that Mean and Evil Sims for example will still gain positive relationships if left unattended, so YOU have to often lead them to being mean and Evil. If Argumentative is something Sims rarely act on unless ordered to, it suffers from the exact same problem.
2) The traits still often pop up and show themselves via random gameplay and via Sim AI. That the dialog option exists is merely to provide players with storytelling options if they so prefer to manually select the choices themselves.
I find OP's first post a tad cryptic in how it was written so I'm unsure if he's criticizing just teens or the collective package including the value traits, though it seems like he means the traits are weak too. I'd love to hear commentary about them either explaining strengths or problems with them.
I and a lot of others have noticed traits affecting more. I don't have a YA, but I had two sims, the son was angelic as a toddler, and the daughter was fussy and now she's hot headed.
The son has nothing negative, meanwhile the daughter has horrible responsibility and conflict resolution.
She used to have horrible emotional control, but her mother's been working on her with that.
But her conflict resolution plum because she likes to autonomously fight and argue, but she has high empathy because she loves her doctors set and gets along with her mother.
No but that's my point: you just said she's hot headed.
We all know the Scientific Method, right? You control for all variables, except one, that one being the one you wanna test. In your case, she's Hot-Headed. Hot-Headed is likely the culprit behind her running around starting fights. Because she has it, we can't be sure how much of her fighting is due to Hot-Headed and how much is due to low Conflict Resolution.
If we want a definitive feel for how much something like a lower-score Conflict Resolution influences their AI, then the best way to test that is by providing a kid with a rather neutral trait like Clumsy, then get their Conflict Resolution somewhat low, then see if they start picking fights on their own.
So I'm curious what OP meant and would also ask anyone else to comment: is this to say the traits you get as Young Adults are pretty much moot and meaningless with rather inconsequential gameplay??
I haven't purchased, I've only watched some brief snippets of Let's Plays. I do recall however how one Sim had Argumentative and had a social interaction..."Unintentionally Provoke." I thought that was very odd because the player had to intentionally select unintentionally provoke, so it was "unintentional" in name only. It left me wondering which of the following was true:
1) The traits and new gameplay are weaksauce and basically do absolutely nothing unless you MAKE them do something, thereby defeating the point. I mean we all complain the current traits are bad and a big part of that is that Mean and Evil Sims for example will still gain positive relationships if left unattended, so YOU have to often lead them to being mean and Evil. If Argumentative is something Sims rarely act on unless ordered to, it suffers from the exact same problem.
2) The traits still often pop up and show themselves via random gameplay and via Sim AI. That the dialog option exists is merely to provide players with storytelling options if they so prefer to manually select the choices themselves.
I find OP's first post a tad cryptic in how it was written so I'm unsure if he's criticizing just teens or the collective package including the value traits, though it seems like he means the traits are weak too. I'd love to hear commentary about them either explaining strengths or problems with them.
I and a lot of others have noticed traits affecting more. I don't have a YA, but I had two sims, the son was angelic as a toddler, and the daughter was fussy and now she's hot headed.
The son has nothing negative, meanwhile the daughter has horrible responsibility and conflict resolution.
She used to have horrible emotional control, but her mother's been working on her with that.
But her conflict resolution plum because she likes to autonomously fight and argue, but she has high empathy because she loves her doctors set and gets along with her mother.
No but that's my point: you just said she's hot headed.
We all know the Scientific Method, right? You control for all variables, except one, that one being the one you wanna test. In your case, she's Hot-Headed. Hot-Headed is likely the culprit behind her running around starting fights. Because she has it, we can't be sure how much of her fighting is due to Hot-Headed and how much is due to low Conflict Resolution.
If we want a definitive feel for how much something like a lower-score Conflict Resolution influences their AI, then the best way to test that is by providing a kid with a rather neutral trait like Clumsy, then get their Conflict Resolution somewhat low, then see if they start picking fights on their own.
Ahhh, except one thing -- hot headed sims weren't starting fights before the pack on a regular basis. I use a mod to strip away idle chatter so I see a lot more of that behavior, but apparently mean sims not having friendly chats with everyone is new.
Edit: As people play more, there will soon be all sorts of sites explaining on how to manipulate everything about this pack to get the sims you want. I just think anything that causes more spontaneous drama is a good thing -- and I'm glad something changed to enable that.
So I'm curious what OP meant and would also ask anyone else to comment: is this to say the traits you get as Young Adults are pretty much moot and meaningless with rather inconsequential gameplay??
I haven't purchased, I've only watched some brief snippets of Let's Plays. I do recall however how one Sim had Argumentative and had a social interaction..."Unintentionally Provoke." I thought that was very odd because the player had to intentionally select unintentionally provoke, so it was "unintentional" in name only. It left me wondering which of the following was true:
1) The traits and new gameplay are weaksauce and basically do absolutely nothing unless you MAKE them do something, thereby defeating the point. I mean we all complain the current traits are bad and a big part of that is that Mean and Evil Sims for example will still gain positive relationships if left unattended, so YOU have to often lead them to being mean and Evil. If Argumentative is something Sims rarely act on unless ordered to, it suffers from the exact same problem.
2) The traits still often pop up and show themselves via random gameplay and via Sim AI. That the dialog option exists is merely to provide players with storytelling options if they so prefer to manually select the choices themselves.
I find OP's first post a tad cryptic in how it was written so I'm unsure if he's criticizing just teens or the collective package including the value traits, though it seems like he means the traits are weak too. I'd love to hear commentary about them either explaining strengths or problems with them.
I and a lot of others have noticed traits affecting more. I don't have a YA, but I had two sims, the son was angelic as a toddler, and the daughter was fussy and now she's hot headed.
The son has nothing negative, meanwhile the daughter has horrible responsibility and conflict resolution.
She used to have horrible emotional control, but her mother's been working on her with that.
But her conflict resolution plum because she likes to autonomously fight and argue, but she has high empathy because she loves her doctors set and gets along with her mother.
No but that's my point: you just said she's hot headed.
We all know the Scientific Method, right? You control for all variables, except one, that one being the one you wanna test. In your case, she's Hot-Headed. Hot-Headed is likely the culprit behind her running around starting fights. Because she has it, we can't be sure how much of her fighting is due to Hot-Headed and how much is due to low Conflict Resolution.
If we want a definitive feel for how much something like a lower-score Conflict Resolution influences their AI, then the best way to test that is by providing a kid with a rather neutral trait like Clumsy, then get their Conflict Resolution somewhat low, then see if they start picking fights on their own.
Ahhh, except one thing -- hot headed sims weren't starting fights before the pack on a regular basis. I use a mod to strip away idle chatter so I see a lot more of that behavior, but apparently mean sims not having friendly chats with everyone is new.
Edit: As people play more, there will soon be all sorts of sites explaining on how to manipulate everything about this pack to get the sims you want. I just think anything that causes more spontaneous drama is a good thing -- and I'm glad something changed to enable that.
Exactly. Not only are sims responding to their traits, Im noticing that they are impulsive and performing the actions based on their mood and previous interactions as well
I have two sims I had made long ago just for the purpose of testing out incompatible traits.
They got along as well as two sims with compatible traits. This would not be the case in The Sims 2 or The Sims 3.
I gave the same two sims opposing values and there is a difference now.
One sim has a tool box of interactions that would get on the other sims nerves, but I am still not seeing any autonomous actions. I still have to make it happen. I do need to play longer to see under what conditions something interesting might occur, but at least these two feel like The Odd Couple now.
I've come to a conclusion about The Sims 4 - this version of the Sims franchise requires alot of imagination and pretend playing. Every new pack comes with hope - but it still feels empty. And this will be the case until the end.
It's a good job I'm very inteerested in just creating and building, as for me personally, the "cool" stuff is all the packs are good for most of the time
The Bristol Simmer||Find my builds and legacy updates on the gallery! Have a happy day!
If you are the type of player that write stories for your sims on how you want your children to grow up as young adults to fit the outcome for your next generation then I am sure this GP is an excellent choice...For Example:{ this will be a typical quick situation of a household}
--->Sally and Billy are now the proud parents of twins John and Joseph and you want john to be the good twin and Joseph to be the bad twin {knowing that already before the children become toddlers} you would have each child act accordingly to how you want them to turn out later in life
John never breaks curfew keep good grades in school and always clean his room and obey mom ... where as Joseph will do the opposite and basically always giving mom and dad a hard time from a toddler until his EVEN WORSE days as a teen ....
This is how the game pack brings this particular story to life we can NOW see and take pictures or video of how mom tried so hard to teach Toddler Joseph to say please and thank you growing up but Joseph showed signs early on that he was a "bad seed" how he would trash the house continuing to make messes and never learning his lesson or any lesson for that matter ...how child Joseph read his mom diary and telling dad that mom is cheating on him with the mailman and he's not the real dad but the mailman really is... how teen Joseph love to cause conflict within the family breaking curfews, cheats and disrespectful in his dating life , use profanity non stop, fighting and teasing his twin brother John and so on and so on...we NOW in S4 can visually see all the bad things as they unfold.
When they become young adults we would then add the "regular / old" traits that fits them for how we wanted them to be....
so for me when I play this game pack it's NOT for "will the parenting skills change how they will be as a Young adult?? but more as "I know how i want them to be as a young adult so this pack is showing the path of how they became who they are"
we will all see the pack and play it to suit our own needs however this is just a sample of how i play it and it works well for me so far and i hope to see this pack expand more with other game-play added in later on down the line and maybe shape it up more to how we act as a teen WILL have consequences automatically without having to manually add the traits we want them to have.
I've come to a conclusion about The Sims 4 - this version of the Sims franchise requires alot of imagination and pretend playing. Every new pack comes with hope - but it still feels empty. And this will be the case until the end.
It's a good job I'm very inteerested in just creating and building, as for me personally, the "cool" stuff is all the packs are good for most of the time
To each their own. I don't understand the "pretend play" comment at all . The pack shows parents teaching their children manners and guiding them, also show the children either acting out , or learning manners, bonding with siblings or having rivalries. Im not sure what you think is having to be faked. I personally enjoy sims 4 much more than the previous iteration, but also, this pack has a lot of new dimensions . Are you basing this opinion off of personally having tried this pack? @TheBristolSimmer
I'm so confused. How are some people so quickly claiming this pack is empty and that "nothing matters"? I mean, I saw a couple threads only hours after the pack released with people already saying the pack's boring and that they feel they've seen everything, and I'm over here playing all day yesterday and have barely made a dent in the amount of content I have yet to see.
I haven't seen the values traits at work for YAs yet, but I can visibly see how this pack is influencing my sims and challenging my gameplay. All three children in my current household are maxed on responsibility and they consistently complete their homework autonomously and choose to begin working on school projects without prodding from their parents. They're also making progress with manners and they're already cleaning up after themselves autonomously, which is something I always had to direct them to do before this pack. The amount of interactions family members, spouses, and teens have alone is incredible. I mentioned it in another thread, but I'm also fairly certain that these interactions are intuitive to a sim's emotional state and actions they've completed recently. I didn't even know siblings could tease each other until my sim's brother started teasing her about her face, which was covered in makeup from the vanity table. She was then able to tease him about his grades, which appeared not long after he had been praised for his grades by their mother. Furthermore, she could tease him about his bravery, which made total sense considering he was Very Confident at the time. The emotions, mood swings, phases, and actions of the sims now matter since installation of this pack. The siblings have so many interactions now, and yes, more interactions appear when they're in different moods, such as Angry. Anyone's certainly free to disagree, but I find this pack to be a breath of fresh air and I'm loving every second of it.
If you're a player who directs every action and doesn't rely much on autonomy, I'd imagine that may be why some take issue with the way the traits are influencing older age groups. If you don't allow the sims to make their own decisions or allow the value traits to direct their autonomous actions, of course you're not going to see the consequences their upbringing has had on them. Everyone's 100% entitled to their opinion and I'll always listen to opposing views, but from what I've seen, this pack is far from empty or lacking depth. Parenthood is everything I've been wanting in TS4. There's depth, there are consequences, there are challenges; it gets an A in my book any day. I think people need to give it a second chance and play out all age groups more thoroughly before jumping to the conclusion that it's insufficient, but that's just my opinion.
yeah my kids do nothing atonosmly except maybe go to get food and sleep.
I have two sims I had made long ago just for the purpose of testing out incompatible traits.
They got along as well as two sims with compatible traits. This would not be the case in The Sims 2 or The Sims 3.
I gave the same two sims opposing values and there is a difference now.
One sim has a tool box of interactions that would get on the other sims nerves, but I am still not seeing any autonomous actions. I still have to make it happen. I do need to play longer to see under what conditions something interesting might occur, but at least these two feel like The Odd Couple now.
Imo, Sims 3 traits were the same as sims 4. Some were good like dramatic etc, but most traits were nothing but skill boosts.
Sims 2 Sims had serious personality though, and it showed.
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My toddler is fussy and cries/bites/is defiant and her parents autonomously correct that behavior. My child sim asks for advice/writes in her journal all by herself. She got grounded and sneaked to watch the tv anyway without my doing.
My adult sim with bad manners can insult interests by mistake, critique physique or unintentionally crush his childs dreams. And i don't even have a teenager. And i played for tops 6 hours.
Im sitting here like how? How can anyone say this doesn't add anything? Before I could breeze with a family of 8 sims and now I barely keep up with 4. I truly don't understand what exactly about this game pack is not sufficient.
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I and a lot of others have noticed traits affecting more. I don't have a YA, but I had two sims, the son was angelic as a toddler, and the daughter was fussy and now she's hot headed.
The son has nothing negative, meanwhile the daughter has horrible responsibility and conflict resolution.
She used to have horrible emotional control, but her mother's been working on her with that.
But her conflict resolution sucks because she likes to autonomously fight and argue, but she has high empathy because she loves her doctors set and gets along with her mother.
My tumblr - A world of clutter and color
I can't wait to spend more hours with this pack, if only work didn't get in the way
Gosh great testing, thanks for that.
I agree that sometimes I wish traits were more dominant, and it is really difficult for me to make some kids yell or say bad words, I tend to make my sims perfect, but I'm trying to add some dynamic to my legacy, making some kids behave like kids, when they have a red bar because they want to sleep, rather than sending them straight to bed, I'm trying to make them yell with anger because kids sometimes behave like this, so I'm enjoying the pack because I can make some situations feel more realistic.
Omg yes! Sounds so wonderfully fun , just like the parenthood pack
This is a good idea as a way to test, but I think it could use some tweaking.
Two problems that jump out at me are Family Orientated and Mean. Family-Orientated Sims have always obsessed over hugging their children in my experience and I would not be surprised to see a lot of AI tacked on to this one to encourage them to teach values or the like, and we all know Mean sims have mean interactions from time to time. Who is to say that these interactions were the result of behavioral values and not the result of specific pre-existing traits...?
I think the issue with your little experiment is you haven't controlled for existing traits. The idea is great, but I think what might be better is if you provided both the parents and kids with varying value settings, THEN purposefully try and assign all Sims in the household the most inconsequential traits possible. Yknow, stuff like Loves the Outdoors, Clumsy, Unflirty, Vegetarian and Kleptomaniac. (or Noncommital if it's possible to keep mom and dad jobless and unmarried without interfering with something) Such traits couldn't possibly interfere with the day-to-day of family life and thus it would give a nice look into how much Sim AI is affected by the character values themselves, or how much certain traits like Argumentative pop up on their own via AI interactions.
I haven't seen the values traits at work for YAs yet, but I can visibly see how this pack is influencing my sims and challenging my gameplay. All three children in my current household are maxed on responsibility and they consistently complete their homework autonomously and choose to begin working on school projects without prodding from their parents. They're also making progress with manners and they're already cleaning up after themselves autonomously, which is something I always had to direct them to do before this pack. The amount of interactions family members, spouses, and teens have alone is incredible. I mentioned it in another thread, but I'm also fairly certain that these interactions are intuitive to a sim's emotional state and actions they've completed recently. I didn't even know siblings could tease each other until my sim's brother started teasing her about her face, which was covered in makeup from the vanity table. She was then able to tease him about his grades, which appeared not long after he had been praised for his grades by their mother. Furthermore, she could tease him about his bravery, which made total sense considering he was Very Confident at the time. The emotions, mood swings, phases, and actions of the sims now matter since installation of this pack. The siblings have so many interactions now, and yes, more interactions appear when they're in different moods, such as Angry. Anyone's certainly free to disagree, but I find this pack to be a breath of fresh air and I'm loving every second of it.
If you're a player who directs every action and doesn't rely much on autonomy, I'd imagine that may be why some take issue with the way the traits are influencing older age groups. If you don't allow the sims to make their own decisions or allow the value traits to direct their autonomous actions, of course you're not going to see the consequences their upbringing has had on them. Everyone's 100% entitled to their opinion and I'll always listen to opposing views, but from what I've seen, this pack is far from empty or lacking depth. Parenthood is everything I've been wanting in TS4. There's depth, there are consequences, there are challenges; it gets an A in my book any day. I think people need to give it a second chance and play out all age groups more thoroughly before jumping to the conclusion that it's insufficient, but that's just my opinion.
I haven't played the Teen Stage with the new GP yet, so I don't know about the Teen interactions, but so far I don't think this GP provides us with "empty" gameplay. For me, the families have become much more vibrant and nothing seems too perfect and vanilla now, if you understand what I mean. One of the Toddlers even began hitting a stuffed animal when he got angry because his energy bar was low and his mother rushed in the room to firmly put him to his place, it was so cool to see! As a family Simmer myself, I'm pleased with this GP. Yes, it could have been more than what it already is, but we could say the same thing for all previous GPs and EPs. And, yes, the Traits don't play a huge role on all aspects of a Sim's life, but this GP focuses on the parenting experience, not on the wider spectrum of the YA and Adult Sim Life Stages. At least, the Maxis team listened to a big portion of its fans and delivered a relatively solid GP. I don't know... I really hope something better will come along for these Simmers who weren't satisfied with this GP!
Happy Simming to you all, friends! Stay smiley and optimistic!
Really!? Oh wow, that's so funny!
Another great point.....the character traits open up interaction options that other sims don't have if they don't have that trait.
I'm guessing, too, that the Sims reared during Parenthood, may make better parents than those without it. Or maybe I'm just blowing smoke … You enjoy your immersion, I'll enjoy mine. I'm liking the game play.
http://www.getfreeebooks.com/star-trek-original-series-fan-fiction-trilogy/
The Sim I control owns a retail store. Don Lothario and Dina Caliente came in and got into a fight into the store. My Sim had the option to "Repair bad relationship" (new) so she had Don apologize to Dina. After which, they got into a fight again. I've had a retail store off and on since Get to Work came out and have seen, at most, 1 fight in the store.
Incidentally, I'm playing an ISBI-type challenge in which most of the time, I can control only one Sim, the torch-holder. Parenthood makes that a little easier in that my Sim can now put her children to bed at a reasonable time and get them to do homework, but it also brings more than a few challenges -- my Sim is the go-to person for meals, repairs, cleaning, and now parenting too, although her husband is moving up slowly on his own.
You know how it goes. Some people have the ability to know what a games is all about after playing for a few minutes, they know everything, without giving it a chance. I wouldn't be surprised if some of them havent actually even played it. It take more than a few hours to get into this game pack.This one has a lot of immediate new features but many that have to be discovered as you go along. You don't just play Parenthood on release day and write a slam piece, like this. The title alone is an attention-grabbing slam piece and I find it sad. But...oh well.
No but that's my point: you just said she's hot headed.
We all know the Scientific Method, right? You control for all variables, except one, that one being the one you wanna test. In your case, she's Hot-Headed. Hot-Headed is likely the culprit behind her running around starting fights. Because she has it, we can't be sure how much of her fighting is due to Hot-Headed and how much is due to low Conflict Resolution.
If we want a definitive feel for how much something like a lower-score Conflict Resolution influences their AI, then the best way to test that is by providing a kid with a rather neutral trait like Clumsy, then get their Conflict Resolution somewhat low, then see if they start picking fights on their own.
Ahhh, except one thing -- hot headed sims weren't starting fights before the pack on a regular basis. I use a mod to strip away idle chatter so I see a lot more of that behavior, but apparently mean sims not having friendly chats with everyone is new.
Edit: As people play more, there will soon be all sorts of sites explaining on how to manipulate everything about this pack to get the sims you want. I just think anything that causes more spontaneous drama is a good thing -- and I'm glad something changed to enable that.
Exactly. Not only are sims responding to their traits, Im noticing that they are impulsive and performing the actions based on their mood and previous interactions as well
They got along as well as two sims with compatible traits. This would not be the case in The Sims 2 or The Sims 3.
I gave the same two sims opposing values and there is a difference now.
One sim has a tool box of interactions that would get on the other sims nerves, but I am still not seeing any autonomous actions. I still have to make it happen. I do need to play longer to see under what conditions something interesting might occur, but at least these two feel like The Odd Couple now.
It's a good job I'm very inteerested in just creating and building, as for me personally, the "cool" stuff is all the packs are good for most of the time
If you are the type of player that write stories for your sims on how you want your children to grow up as young adults to fit the outcome for your next generation then I am sure this GP is an excellent choice...For Example:{ this will be a typical quick situation of a household}
--->Sally and Billy are now the proud parents of twins John and Joseph and you want john to be the good twin and Joseph to be the bad twin {knowing that already before the children become toddlers} you would have each child act accordingly to how you want them to turn out later in life
John never breaks curfew keep good grades in school and always clean his room and obey mom ... where as Joseph will do the opposite and basically always giving mom and dad a hard time from a toddler until his EVEN WORSE days as a teen ....
This is how the game pack brings this particular story to life we can NOW see and take pictures or video of how mom tried so hard to teach Toddler Joseph to say please and thank you growing up but Joseph showed signs early on that he was a "bad seed" how he would trash the house continuing to make messes and never learning his lesson or any lesson for that matter ...how child Joseph read his mom diary and telling dad that mom is cheating on him with the mailman and he's not the real dad but the mailman really is... how teen Joseph love to cause conflict within the family breaking curfews, cheats and disrespectful in his dating life , use profanity non stop, fighting and teasing his twin brother John and so on and so on...we NOW in S4 can visually see all the bad things as they unfold.
When they become young adults we would then add the "regular / old" traits that fits them for how we wanted them to be....
so for me when I play this game pack it's NOT for "will the parenting skills change how they will be as a Young adult?? but more as
"I know how i want them to be as a young adult so this pack is showing the path of how they became who they are"
we will all see the pack and play it to suit our own needs however this is just a sample of how i play it and it works well for me so far and i hope to see this pack expand more with other game-play added in later on down the line and maybe shape it up more to how we act as a teen WILL have consequences automatically without having to manually add the traits we want them to have.
To each their own. I don't understand the "pretend play" comment at all . The pack shows parents teaching their children manners and guiding them, also show the children either acting out , or learning manners, bonding with siblings or having rivalries. Im not sure what you think is having to be faked. I personally enjoy sims 4 much more than the previous iteration, but also, this pack has a lot of new dimensions . Are you basing this opinion off of personally having tried this pack? @TheBristolSimmer
yeah my kids do nothing atonosmly except maybe go to get food and sleep.
Imo, Sims 3 traits were the same as sims 4. Some were good like dramatic etc, but most traits were nothing but skill boosts.
Sims 2 Sims had serious personality though, and it showed.