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What I Like About Sims 4
cyncie
Posts: 4,641 Member
Hey all. Just scrolling through the front page a day or so ago I thought, with all of the negative topics, why was anyone even playing this game? Of course I know that we come here for answers to our frustrations, which skews topics toward apparent dissatisfaction. I know we’ve done this before, but maybe it’s time to do it again. So this is another positivity thread to share what we appreciate about the game, and maybe give new simmers insight into why we play.
So, tell us what you like about Sims 4, and no qualifiers (I like this, but…)
I’ll start with my top three…
World Art style: S4 has beautiful worlds with amazing details. With my new computer on high graphics, I can spend all day just going around taking pictures.
CAS: In S4 CAS I can finally create Sims that look like the people I have in my head, and I’m actually glad they aren’t hyper real. It’s harder to feed them to Cow Plants when they are 😀. I can also give them traits and aspirations that aren’t motivated by money, romance or power.
Open Ended Gameplay: I like that the basic gameplay doesn’t have to be task oriented unless you want it to be. Nothing will make me abandon a game more quickly than if it becomes about grinding for Simoleons, points, or status (I’m looking at you, Sims FreePlay). Don’t want your Sim stuck in a career? Motherload! Want to play out a story at your own leisurely pace? Aging off! With in game controls/ cheats and a few mods, my S4 game is closer to my ideal than any version I have ever played.
Your turn…
So, tell us what you like about Sims 4, and no qualifiers (I like this, but…)
I’ll start with my top three…
World Art style: S4 has beautiful worlds with amazing details. With my new computer on high graphics, I can spend all day just going around taking pictures.
CAS: In S4 CAS I can finally create Sims that look like the people I have in my head, and I’m actually glad they aren’t hyper real. It’s harder to feed them to Cow Plants when they are 😀. I can also give them traits and aspirations that aren’t motivated by money, romance or power.
Open Ended Gameplay: I like that the basic gameplay doesn’t have to be task oriented unless you want it to be. Nothing will make me abandon a game more quickly than if it becomes about grinding for Simoleons, points, or status (I’m looking at you, Sims FreePlay). Don’t want your Sim stuck in a career? Motherload! Want to play out a story at your own leisurely pace? Aging off! With in game controls/ cheats and a few mods, my S4 game is closer to my ideal than any version I have ever played.
Your turn…
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Comments
I use mods and that has opened a whole new game for me. I loved having a singer Sim and missed that so much. Then we got Get Famous, and a modder created the Road to Fame mod, Professional Singer Career, which has been further upgraded as time went on. My Teen Sim is now a Global Superstar, has won three Best Song Starlight Accolades and summer vacation isn't even over yet. One more week of high school and it's off to Uni with him.
Like the OP, if this was goal-oriented I'd be bored out of my mind. I love being able to direct my own 'show' so to speak. I play on Long and set aging off when the YAs go off to Uni. Sandbox suits me very well. I do hope it can stay this way.
With the changes to the neighborhood, Llamas, cows and chickens in the game I'm very excited for the future of Sims 4.
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I love the micro expressions that the team has programmed in most of all. The idle animations for pregnant sims are so sweet and protective they melt my heart. That's just one of many. The person/people who thought of all those tiny details is a genius and MUST study real people often.
I love the tongue-in-cheek sense of humor that colors everything in the game/franchise from day one. The bear suits for children. I chuckle every time I see one of my kids dawn the bear suits. They're so cute and frustrating! The teen angst walk makes me laugh so hard. I know it takes them forever to go anywhere or do anything with it but isn't that how slow we all do things when we're feeling angsty about things? We don't want to do it so we take our time and act out when we are kiddos.
Multitasking! I know this is old hat by now and everyone's like, "Been there done that" but its wonderful. Each time my sim takes his dinner plate to the toilet I laugh and cringe! I love that I can spam socials while my sims do homework, work from home, eat dinner, workouts.... so many things.
Build/buy. There are things I hope for to be added someday, but it is by far, the best build/buy we have ever had for any sims game in my opinion. I LOVE that I can pick up entire rooms and move them, shape and reshape, and mold them to fit my whims. I still want the ability to create split level homes. The platforms are nice but not as helpful as I'd hoped for split leveling. I can't wait to see what new things the team(s) bring to build/buy in the future!
Unpopular opinion but: the lack of color wheel/spectral layer They were wonderful, but I find it so relaxing and so much easier to create my own sims fashion looks without needing to know all the technical steps to editing spectral layers. I love the ability to fashion things the way I want them.
The sense of humor is one of my favorite things, as well. Just reading descriptions of buy items can be a world of entertainment. I also love little animation details. I go “awww” every time my sim cries at the puppy movie, and just LOL at the eager expression a cow plant makes when you turn on the music.
Yes. Not having to wait for each individual action makes things much less tedious. And, the weird combinations don’t bother me. I just figure Sims have their own quirks. I also like having more worlds to play in at a time. Hope your headache is better soon.
Yes! My own play! I’m looking forward to seeing what’s next, as well
Tales From The Myst
The Blue Moon Jukebox
Because I can't; I keep all sigs turned off.
Ahh that cowplant needs a muzzle haha, I love my Sims so much now I can't let them die, I put a protection fence around the cow plant
I love this game. Every time I play I discover something new in it to like. It would be pretty hard to pick some favourites but I will try.
Beauty. My Sims are so beautiful. What can I say. They are gorgeous. Even their nails are painted now.
IQ Brain Power. I've been playing since Sims 1, so I love how much smarter they got in Sims 4, like they can get out of pools without ladders, stop what they are doing and run to the bathroom, put out fires with hand held extinguishers, check on their toddlers, eat an apple right out of their inventory, run away from thunderstorms. I usually play on autonomy off and notice their base survival instincts all the time and I love it so much. If I forget about them while playing another Sim they don't just die tragically on the front lawn anymore.
Weather. The seasons look beautiful. I love any kind of weather event that happens in the game. I like how they are sensitive to hot and cold temperatures. I like how the trees move in the wind and rain, it's so nice.
Cooking. One of my favourite parts of the game. I love all the recipes and the new Simple Living trait and new ingredients. Canning! One of my favourite hobbies from earlier games I begged for just came back and I love it so much. I like making jars of jams and preserves and selling or gifting them.
Fitness. There is so much more you can do now. I absolutely love the rock climbing. Also jogging, jogging with a dog, tv aerobics routines, yoga, I like all the fitness activities.
Knitting. I like all the hobbies but this needs a category of it's own because I love it so much. I like that you can knit onesies for babies, new clothes, a cosey for the mailbox, etc! and also sell them on Plopsy.
Gardening. All my Sims have gardens. I love this part of the game. I like how now you can cook with the ingredients. There are so much more gardening options now.
Festivals. I love all the festivals, food stalls, vending machines, activities etc.
Quests/Help Tasks. I like the new Aspirations that are more like quests like in Strangerville and Star Wars packs and the Help Tasks like in Cottage Living. I love interactive gameplay like that.
Mechanic Upgrades. One of my favourite things about Sims 4. I am obsessed with this. I upgrade everything. I want everything to be upgradeable, the doors, the windows, the lights, other Sims..
Toddlers. I like family gameplay and the toddlers are adorable in Sims 4.
Interactive Careers. I like all the new careers where you can go to the career lots. When this first came out it was like a decades long dream come true! I like the new stay at home work options. I wish every career had these options.
Interactive Inventory Objects. I like all the many interactive objects you can keep in inventory now like guitars, violins, light sabres and magic wands, bicycles, soccer balls, vacuum cleaners. I even really like the fireworks sparklers.
Robots. There are so many cute robots you can make now. I really love my new Star Wars robots the most.
Sims Nostalgia. I really like how they are feeding my nostalgia from Sims 1 and 2. Like I begged for the original table from Sims 1 and apparently it got added in the Eco Living dumpster as a salvaged item and I have been digging for it every since lol, when I find it will be my most treasured kitchen table.
Premades. Am I the only one who plays with all the premades? Every time they make a new premade I add them to my game. I have to play on unlimited now. They are all like little collectible Sims to me that come with the game. Maybe it's like being a kid and wanting every doll that came with the doll house .. but I really enjoy getting new premade Sims.
Pets. I love the pets in the game the puppies and kittens are so cute. I love how you can take them to the vet.
Humor. The other day the interrogation tactics I discovered in the police career got me laughing.
Sentimental Moments. Usually see something that makes a sentimental "awww" moment. My recent favourite is the puppies crawling to hide under the sofa.
Chickens. I love having farm animals in my game especially a little flock of chickens. I love hearing the roosters crow and the little chirps and seeing them walk around it's so cute.
Whatever those blue plumbobs were that they were leaking before launch had to be why the base game is what it was and why we are slowly back to a game that we can enjoy now. I've complained aplenty about things, but now the list of things I like is getting longer while the things I don't is getting shorter.
What I like most is how they brought this game back from the brink of whatever that was.
I liked build mode from the start, and they made it better. Toddlers, likes and dislikes, ect, there is a long list of stuff.
My most recent appreciation is something that is really minor, but I love it.
Bring out the sun and the light give the leaves a translucent effect.
The ever changing play of light and shadows in this space helps the game go that extra mile toward feeling more alive.
Another thing, the extra furniture type options you can specify to create different layouts.
And oh my god, I just discovered something I did not know.
I know we can scale objects, and I love doing that for plants. I like making tiny Dogwood trees.
But what I just found out is when I scale a plant, or at least this Delphinium, the grid size also reduces.
It's early spring so the plants are dull, but that's another thing I love as we get into late spring everything comes alive with color.
See you can go on and on about what you like about this game.
I guess I love things that a lot of people don't like, for example closed worlds. I don't need or want an open world, Sims 4 worlds work the best for me the way they are.
I love the option to live/travel to any world, cartoonish style, multitasking and the silly humor; pee walk and awkward first kisses are more than okay to me. I love the premades & random townies and their sometimes weird fashion style, I even love the infamous eyeball ring. I love toddlers, cats & dogs and other animals and yes, I also love Journey to Batuu and My First Pet stuff.
Sims 4 can keep me entertained for hours. If only my eyes would tolerate longer game sessions...
But what makes the game playable for me is TOOL, BBB, and a lot of mods from LittleMsSam.
I agree with all these things also.
Art style- Unlike in previous tittles I have downloaded hardly any CC for I find the vanilla look of the sims so pleasing.
CaS options/flexibility - I like how you can wear any outfit for any category for any gender. It also lets you pick their walk style, decide whether the sim can get pregnant and so on. About time all these options were opened up. I also absolutely love how you can have unique body shapes instead of it lamely being restricted to "thin or fat". People irl come in all kinds of shapes which (regardless of how much media likes to misrepresent it) don't fit into some predetermined molds.
Trait/leveling system for Vampires and Celebs - I absolutely love how you pick strengths and weaknesses for vampires. It introduces new ways to play, adds some much needed challenge and encourages roleplay. I specifically pick weaknesses which I think fit the character in question instead of meta gaming it by picking the "best" options. I feel like it adds a nice dose of individuality. Celebs are also way more engaging than ever before and the quirk system interesting. I like it how it's a little chaotic for while you can influence it you don't have direct control over it.
Mod friendliness - As someone who uses a lot of mods for Skyrim, it basically feels like I can breath easy with TS4. In this game you can pretty much install/uninstall mods whenever you feel like it whereas in a game like Skyrim you can not delete script mods mid-save. It will leave records and can mess your save so in order to keep playing the same character you need to revert to a save you made before installing that mod. I always do keep multiple saves in TS4 as well, out of habit and because it's just wise with any game, but still... modding is so stress free in this game. Yes, constant updates can be a bit annoying but the main thing for me is that just because some script mod becomes outdated it doesn't mean I'm then stuck with it and can kiss my save goodbye.
Control over households - I love the fact that you can flag households as played/unplayed and then seperately control their auto aging. This was something TS3's story progression desperately needed but had to be solved with mods. I also really like how you can manage households easily and even delete the ones the game generates or move them in as a playable family if you wish.
The CAS is fantastic. I can do so much more to create a unique look than we could do in Sims 1 & 2.
The worlds. Some of them are breathtakingly beautiful. I like that we have a variety of worlds to choose from.
Seasons is - well... The change of seasons add a lot of beauty, but I'm still getting used to it.
Little things make it so fun. I like flirty animations, gloomy sims moping around, and cheerful sims.
Knitting pack. One of my favorite packs, this one is a must have. Not only is Plopsy great for sales, the knitting animations are darling. I really love watching one sim teach another sim to knit. The hesitancy of the new knitter, their body language and expressions as they show their work, and the encouraging nods of the teacher - I never tire of watching. I just want to give them both hugs.
Vampires - I like that they have so many steps and so many ways to have each one unique. I like that we have different fangs, facial markings, etc.
It is so much easier to build in Sims 4, and we have a lot of ways to build and styles to choose, even for those of us who play vanilla.
The Gallery. I can download a sim or a build and make any changes I want to make it my own. This is so helpful, especially for build styles I am not familiar with.
Sandbox. Oh, please, never take away my sandbox! I must be able to build and play according to my own taste.
This game can be such a boost to my imagination. I love it for that, most of all.
The out-of-the-box sims in Sims 4 are potentially much more attractive, with more detailed clothing and hair. I do not feel the need for CC skin, eyes, hair etc. It took me a while to figure out how to manipulate CAS, but after numerous redos of townies and new CAS sims, I have it figured out enough to get the look I want. It took me much longer to master CAS in previous sim games. And because I bought the game late in development, CAS has a plethora of clothing/hair styles. More than enough to make every sim unique.
But the real strength of Sims 4 is building. Truly amazing what can be achieved, with very little effort. The ability to move houses on the lot after they have been built, to move individual rooms, to change the height of walls, to change foundation heights at any time, to place windows and doors incrementally instead of just to grid, to size objects up and down, to make a transparent roof - it is a builder's dream! I have never enjoyed building as much as I do in this game.
Another reason I decided to try Sims 4 at this late date was the truly excellent UI type mods that allow me to play Sims 4 almost the same way I played Sims 3, and the fact that the mods are more "supported" than they were in Sims 3 is a bonus. Also I like the truly excellent smaller mods that tweak game play to remove annoyances, and how nicely they play with the bigger mods. Sims 4 is a more stable game, especially concerning how it interacts with mods, and I greatly appreciate that stability.
I really like that I can delete townies and NPCs or easily replace them through CAS, seemingly without any negative ramifications. Trying to do that was a game breaker halfway through Sims 3, and I did not enjoy having to live in almost unchanged EA Sims 3 worlds. So the ability to adjust the sims in my many Sims 4 worlds is a welcome freedom.
Sims 4 is less of a strain on my eyes. I notice when I switch games that I can play longer without discomfort in Sims 4 compared to Sims 3. Reduced eye strain is always beneficial.
I am very happy that I can play Sims 4 on my Mac, without it being worse game play than on a PC. Sims 3 plays best on my old PC, no question - it never did play well on a Mac. I did not want to get a new PC that might not play Sims 3 as well as on my old one, just to be able to play Sims 4. Knowing that I could easily play Sims 4 on my 2020 iMac was a deciding factor in purchasing Sims 4. I sincerely hope EA fully supports the new non-Intel iMacs and all new Mac OS as well. I want to play Sims 4 on my Mac for years to come.
I like that Sims 4 has been more responsive to fixing bugs. Oh, I know that some things have not been fixed for a very long time. But in Sims 3 we had hardly ANY bugs fixed, and the game became more and more unstable because of it, with some major features completely broken in later expansions. I am glad to see that Sims 4 is still stable and relatively bug free in comparison, considering the game's age and number of add-ons.
I really like that EA recently made more wood tone swatches for older objects. I hope that trend continues. If we had the same wood tone swatches through all the different objects, then I would not miss the color wheel from Sims 3 nearly so much. I just want matching wood tones throughout each house, and the more swatches I have that match, the more items I can use in any given build. (For instance, I would LOVE the rocking chairs to have matching wood swatches. I use them in every build, and it would help so much to have them match the other furniture.)
And I agree, as others have said, that the best part of any sims game, Sims 4 included, is the Sandbox. Never take the Sandbox away. And never take away our ability to play offline whenever and however we choose. As far as I am concerned, those two things ARE the franchise.
Like many of you, I enjoy the art style of TS4 very much. The Sims are realistic without being "uncanny valley" realistic. I enjoy being able to create an almost unlimited variety of characters and bring them into my game. I do use a few CC hairstyles and some CC clothing, but it's all Maxis Match, because I like the game's out-of-the-box aesthetic.
I'm not a good builder, but I love browsing through the Gallery, looking for lots I can use. Lately, I've been playing in a Simworld that was entirely created by @SweetieWright_84. I have other saves that take place in other settings, and I can choose any of these stages on which to play the game.
I mod my games very gently, and I'm glad TS4 supports modding so well.
And, finally, I can create a world where things usually turn out just fine. Right now, I enjoy escaping for a while into a place where I can focus on the good in people, a place where the only chaos and upheaval is comic in nature. I tend to create a lot of kind, happy Sims, and when I add some "villains" to the story, I can make sure the good Sims win in the end.
I know that's not how the world really is, and I know some of you prefer worlds that have a more realistic feel...but that's what I like best about TS4. We can create the kinds of worlds we want, and enjoy having our Sims live in them.
Exie hay, cavero, mabza meeah vendarzo.
Yevsas mairzeemo!
And remember this above all. Our Roman gods are watching. Make sure they are not ashamed!
My NBA site, Pace and Space
- the flexibility in CAS with filters, tags, push pull, the general art style. I remember having a mod in sims 2 to make some everyday clothes available for cold weather wear and such, I am really happy we don't need that anymore. I also like to be able to create occult sims in CAS. All I am missing is the fantasy haircolours for younger sims.
- the build mode based on rooms in combination with a push-pull system. Perhaps a bit unpopular but I like the premade rooms as well and use them as an inspiration board
- the flexibility we have in clubs and holidays. These are two of the best best things sims 4 added to the franchise.
- many careers with the option to work from home
- the fact that all worlds are connected. It would be nice if townies would only appear as walk by in their own world but I don't mind if this allows my sims to travel to any world
- occults with perks like spellcasters and vampires. I hope there will be more to come.
- the absence of story progression well this one is no longer valid I'm afraid. All I can hope now is for good working options to turn it off
I play the game in Ultra. Highest settings. All effects on and all weather permitted!
What makes The Sims 4 Xtra special for me:
Edit: I forgot to add something else that I really like in The Sims 4:
Lot traits, Lot Types and Lot challenges! Sometimes my builds have more character than my sims! 😂
I love everything already mentioned.
The fact that this game is open-ended, so could in theory be played forever, and that it allows so many different types of gameplay is just awesome. It is so huge that I don't think I am ever going to discover all aspects of the game or be able to use all build and buy mode items.
There are many, many things they have improved upon since previous versions and I appreciate them very much. Simple things like being able to wear anything during pregnancy, wearing hats with any hair, multitasking, the more natural movements of the sims themselves and the wonderful environments they live in. I do love this game
- animals: they are soo cute, especially when they are sleeping!
- the humor, weirdness and quirkyness (chatting up the Grim Reaper, different ways to die, ufos and male pregnancies, kids in bear costumes, cowplants etc.)
- cooking: there's so much different things you can cook and bake, I love making different things for different holidays and occasions
- the different holidays and festivals you can celebrate and go to
- gardening: I just love that you can grow so many different things in your own backyard and then use them for cooking, making flower arrangements, selling, gifting others...
- the collections: I'm a collector type and I love that there's so many categories that you can collect (fish, gardening, frogs, trophies etc.) and aim to find everything
- the views: I think there's so many beautiful views all around the neighborhoods, especially in different seasons, but also while the sun is rising
- toddlers and their outfits are very cute
- I can play a very "normal" family life with kids, jobs and household chores and then next play with a vampire who's breaking hearts everywhere and making enemies out of neighbors
- the ability to play rotationally and I get to control all of my sims across all neighborhoods