Look, personally I don't care all that much as far is how I play, but it's insulting that the team makes these very limiting decisions for players. Sure there are plenty of people who like those decisions, but it's stifling to creativity. They had a year to make this work. I'm unimpressed and disappointed.
They keep forcing a narrative for the players and it's really pathetic.
I'm so glad that it is done this way. I didn't enjoy pets in sims 3 because, I didn't like controlling them and my sims at the same time. It wasn't fun for me.
Look, personally I don't care all that much as far is how I play, but it's insulting that the team makes these very limiting decisions for players. Sure there are plenty of people who like those decisions, but it's stifling to creativity. They had a year to make this work. I'm unimpressed and disappointed.
They keep forcing a narrative for the players and it's really pathetic.
They create the game so they literally make every decision for you. They pick the theme, the styles, the location, etc. You get to play the game the way they designed it. You can give your input in these forums but the final decision is theirs, as are all the decisions. You may not like those decisions but that's life. Find parts of it you like and play or don't buy it and wait for the next pack to be released. We've known about the pet codes for quite a while now, did you ever make suggestions about what you would like to see in a pets pack? Did you give your feedback or thoughts or are you just now realizing that the time to do that has passed and you missed out on giving your opinions?
I thought I would be mad but I'm not. The more I think about it makes more sense, and I like the idea of them being independent and doing their own thing. The sims are already a lot of work and I'm glad I don't have to control pets too. As long as I can take them walking, jogging, play with them, etc, that's already a plum load of gameplay. Me personally I'll take the interactive vet career over controlling an animal any day.
I'm with you on both!! The dogs and cats seems like they'll be better than even sims 2!
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same
I just kind of feel like.. where's the fun in making my own dog destroy the couch or command my cat to scratch up the door?
Exactly this. Isn't it much more fun if it's up to your sim to teach them not to do that?
Yeah it would be fun to teach them through the sims, however They could have used the system in Parenthood to raise and teach your pet Obedience, and all that other stuff, and still make them playable, and spontaneous.
I would have liked to be simulated as a cat or dog, play as a Stray even, without an owner. but now I can't.
All I can say is, traits better have a good weight... As far as spontaneous goes. I enjoy surprises, here and there, the only thing I would control is big moments birth, to how my sims die. I don't want the game to decide that. what happens during their life is whatever, but their death is my call.
As others have said having the OPTION to control your pet doesn't affect those of you who DON'T want to control it. It hinders gameplay for those that do. Pets have freewill and if you don't like controlling it all you had to do was not control it, its not like by having a controllable pet like in Sims 3 you HAVE to control it. It is bizarre they took that feature away and their reasoning, as others have stated, make no sense. Saying things like "its more realistic and gives them soul" makes no sense......you control sims and they still are realistic and have "soul"......Having the option does NOT affect those that don't like controlling pets, thats why its an option. Not having the option is a HUGE step backward and hinders those of us that want to control our pets for story lines and to build relationships with other pets.
The sims 4 has always been criticized for taking decisions AWAY from the player and it looks like they are continuing that trend which is just baffling........
Couldn't have said it better myself. Thanks Schantal.
Look, personally I don't care all that much as far is how I play, but it's insulting that the team makes these very limiting decisions for players. Sure there are plenty of people who like those decisions, but it's stifling to creativity. They had a year to make this work. I'm unimpressed and disappointed.
They keep forcing a narrative for the players and it's really pathetic.
I disagree with this entirely. It is not stifling creativity, on the contrary it encourages it. I will find creative ways to work my pets autonomous antics into my sims stories for sure.
I didn't get TS3 pets for a long time because I had no interest in playing as a cat or dog. I am very interested in this pack because they can't be played. Plus the new world and vet career. Ithe as probably a trade off and I'd pick the career if given the choice
I don't even mind them taking a slot in the household because I don't like large households anyway and the game has a nasty habit of giving me twins or triplets when I already have 2 children and just want a third child for a well rounded family
Yeah, I much prefer having unplayable pets in the sims. I guess in sims 3 you had the option of just not controlling the pets at all, but I felt the ai wasn't that great and they just didn't feel as much like real pets like they did in sims 2. It's like how even if you leave autonomy on full and choose not to directly control certain sims in your household, for me they tend to just be really boring and not do much. I'm hoping the ai will be decent this time around since they should be building it knowing that the pets need to feel like... pets without player intervention. In sims 3 they they probably skimped quite a bit in that regard since they were building the pack around the idea of playing as the pets and so it wasn't as important to have natural autonomy.
I also hope the pets needs aren't completely crazy. In sims 3 I remember feeling like pets were really tedious because their social need would drop so quickly, and it would take kind of a long time to raise it which made it feel like your sim barely had time to do anything else in a day but give attention to the pet.
For people saying "just make them playable and if you don't want to play them, don't", it doesn't work that way. If the pets were playable, the developers would focus on the playable pets. Meaning that if you chose to not play the pet, it wouldn't be as good as pets made to be unplayable. Think about autonomy in Sims 4: Sims don't do a lot on their own. Sure, they may get up and get a water, maybe go on the computer, read a book, but a lot of the time they just spend standing. Now, if pets were made playable, the playability would be the focus. The developers wouldn't focus on the enjoyment of not playing. So, the developers would probably make the autonomy similar; most of the time the pets would be sitting around, sometimes play with a toy, etc. People who don't want to play with pets want their pets to do more than just sit around and sometimes play with a toy. They want their pets to scratch the furniture, play with other pets, pee on the carpet, etc. They wouldn't be like that probably if the focus was on playable pets. And sure, you could just MAKE your pet do that, but it isn't as interesting and unexpected as a cat or dog randomly attacking another pet or just randomly peeing on the floor.
That's cool! We can like different things, I can appreciate that. Personally, I like a hint of spontaneousness in my simming life, stuff like autonomous hugging between my sims gets me all warm and fuzzy inside, so I get why simmers might want maybe a little surprise and unpredictability when caring for their pets, what with the whole 'not controllable' thing - much like real life, I suppose? I'm kinda bummed out over the news bc I'm pretty sure being the control freak that I am, that one corpse bride song would be the anthem to my life... "And that's why everything, every last little thing, every single tiny microscopic little thing must gooooo... Acccooorddddiiing tooo plaaann.." But no, this could still be cool for me, I love the look of the pets so much, I do also play super big households and I like to be able to queue up a care routine for my pets so I don't end up neglecting them bc of the sheer amount of sims in the household, but hopefully maybe there will be a cheat for controlling pets? I'm happy for those that wanted this pet play style though!
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I thought I would be mad but I'm not. The more I think about it makes more sense, and I like the idea of them being independent and doing their own thing. The sims are already a lot of work and I'm glad I don't have to control pets too. As long as I can take them walking, jogging, play with them, etc, that's already a plum load of gameplay. Me personally I'll take the interactive vet career over controlling an animal any day.
I'm with you on both!! The dogs and cats seems like they'll be better than even sims 2!
I hope you're right! If the relationship between a Sim and their Pet is deeper, then I don't think I will mind not directly controlling the pet. I really hope they are the best pets yet. It will make up for not having direct control. And the vet career is a HUGE PLUS!
I also hope the pets needs aren't completely crazy. In sims 3 I remember feeling like pets were really tedious because their social need would drop so quickly, and it would take kind of a long time to raise it which made it feel like your sim barely had time to do anything else in a day but give attention to the pet.
Yeah, I remember the first time I played with pets in Sims 3 I had a household with just one cat, and her social need was always low. Her owner was constantly occupied filling it. Luckily adopting another cat solved the problem because they would autonomously socialize with each other constantly, so I just learned to always have at least two pets around.
While I would have liked pets to be playable, I think I could live without. I never really bothered to play as the pets in Sims 3, just left them to their own devices most of the time and occasionally had my sims interact with them. It could get to be a problem depending on the AI though. I was just playing a family in Sims 2 with a dog and he kept letting his hunger get extremely low. He had a bowl with food on the bottom floor, but he was on the top and refused to go down the stairs and eat, instead just licking a puddle constantly. I ended up putting another bowl on that floor just in case. Later on he played with a chew toy for a long time while his hunger was getting dangerously low. And having his owner call him to eat didn't seem to work. At least there you could use a cheat to take control of the pet if you really needed to, but in Sims 4 this apparently won't be an option.
I cannot understand how this is a game where actual human beings will do whatever you want whenever you tell them to with no exceptions (including rambunctious toddlers and bloodthristy vampires), yet we suddenly draw the line at animals for the sake of "realism" and "spontaneity" .
Well for one thing, I don't think it's "suddenly." From what I've read, they debated this decision extensively.
But as for how it relates to realism, I think the general argument would be that in real life, you can control human beings (ex: yourself). But you can never control a pet, truly. Were this the only argument, I think it'd be kind of flimsy, but I think it also relates to the idea that because of this, transferring over the experience of what makes having a pet magical for so many people in RL means taking into account what it's like having a pet in RL, including the fact that you can never truly control them.
In other words, if you want to capture a feeling, you have to take into account what creates that feeling. So there's an argument in that concept that the spontaneity and lack of control is a fundamental part of what makes pets unique as compared to other parts of a household. For example, in RL, you may not be able to control toddlers exactly, but you can communicate with them to a certain extent and they do grow more robust in their communication and understanding over time, too. Whereas with pets, you may be able to sort of communicate nonverbally, but they're always going to have a certain level of autonomy that is beyond your influence and understanding.
I think this is why concepts like the movie Cats and Dogs, or the movie The Secret Life of Pets, fascinate people in the first place. Because we can't quite get inside the mind of a pet, truly.
In short: I would say it's more about creating a distinctive experience than it is about drawing some arbitrary line.
I believe that after the success with Toddlers (making them spontaneous, fun, complexly quirky and not a quick fix & easy to handle) the devs probably realised that a lot of simmers would be satisfied with making cats/dogs non-playable and it would balance out the backlash of the sims 3 reiteration expectation in the end. To me, they put back in a bit of the difficulty in the sims 4 by not making everything easily accessible and easily done. Part of what made sims 2 so successful and good was the limitations that we didn't even realise was there. It made it challenging to play yet fun and oddly satisfying when you succeeded in accomplishing something. Sims 2 was good because there were always quirky moments, everything you did took effort and planning yet the difficulty was never too hard or out of reach and there was always funny stuff along the way. Whilst I had mixed feelings at first when I heard cats/dogs were non-playable, the more I think about it now the more I believe they made a step in the right direction. It will allow us more enjoyment if we didn't take part in every decision/playable moment of a pet's life. Sometimes it gets tedious & takes the fun out of certain things when you choose an action and wait for something spectacular to happen. You get used to it or expecting the expected makes things more chore-like and less 'fun'. For instance, if you baked yourself a birthday cake expecting to feel happy and enjoy your cake it's a different feeling from someone surprising you and giving you a birthday cake for you to enjoy. In one, half the joy is already gone because you know that you are making a cake for yourself as opposed to the other where it is a pleasant treat because you yourself were unaware of the good fortune about to happen. I support the devs decision to continue making sims 4 a different yet similarly fun game as its precursors. To the persons that don't agree with this feature, don't be too harsh or critical. Think about the new possibilities. Change is not easy to accept but it doesn't mean it won't have any positive results. Who knows? This could open up a new way of thinking that we would have never even considered before. By sticking to only what we know and are used to, whilst it might be safe (for a while) it would only lead to stagnation and I believe that in this day and age sims 4 needs to constantly step into new unchartered territories to keep up to date and relevant even at the cost of upset consumers. There is no game I know of whose iterations stay the same 15 years down the line. In order for sims to survive (despite being unique in the market), it needs to constantly grow and change and whilst not all decisions will be the best one, we as simmers can rest assured that future in sims will definitely be full of possibilities.
As I said before I have enough to control in game with the hard headed Sims who keep going even after cancelled actions, but again there should have at least been a cheat. Who creates sandbox and doesn't give players cheats? It's Not a MMORPG.
"Games Are Not The Place To Tell Stories, Games Are Meant To Let People Tell Their Own Stories"...Will Wright.
Comments
They keep forcing a narrative for the players and it's really pathetic.
They create the game so they literally make every decision for you. They pick the theme, the styles, the location, etc. You get to play the game the way they designed it. You can give your input in these forums but the final decision is theirs, as are all the decisions. You may not like those decisions but that's life. Find parts of it you like and play or don't buy it and wait for the next pack to be released. We've known about the pet codes for quite a while now, did you ever make suggestions about what you would like to see in a pets pack? Did you give your feedback or thoughts or are you just now realizing that the time to do that has passed and you missed out on giving your opinions?
I'm with you on both!! The dogs and cats seems like they'll be better than even sims 2!
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Yeah it would be fun to teach them through the sims, however They could have used the system in Parenthood to raise and teach your pet Obedience, and all that other stuff, and still make them playable, and spontaneous.
I would have liked to be simulated as a cat or dog, play as a Stray even, without an owner. but now I can't.
All I can say is, traits better have a good weight... As far as spontaneous goes. I enjoy surprises, here and there, the only thing I would control is big moments birth, to how my sims die. I don't want the game to decide that. what happens during their life is whatever, but their death is my call.
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Couldn't have said it better myself. Thanks Schantal.
I disagree with this entirely. It is not stifling creativity, on the contrary it encourages it. I will find creative ways to work my pets autonomous antics into my sims stories for sure.
Squeak Squeak! Delivery for @BabySquare uhhh I mean his dogs. Yes that's it for his dogs!
lol, cheers mate.
Cheers
I also hope the pets needs aren't completely crazy. In sims 3 I remember feeling like pets were really tedious because their social need would drop so quickly, and it would take kind of a long time to raise it which made it feel like your sim barely had time to do anything else in a day but give attention to the pet.
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My sims 4 studio with poses for download and stuff: click
I hope you're right! If the relationship between a Sim and their Pet is deeper, then I don't think I will mind not directly controlling the pet. I really hope they are the best pets yet. It will make up for not having direct control. And the vet career is a HUGE PLUS!
Yeah, I remember the first time I played with pets in Sims 3 I had a household with just one cat, and her social need was always low. Her owner was constantly occupied filling it. Luckily adopting another cat solved the problem because they would autonomously socialize with each other constantly, so I just learned to always have at least two pets around.
While I would have liked pets to be playable, I think I could live without. I never really bothered to play as the pets in Sims 3, just left them to their own devices most of the time and occasionally had my sims interact with them. It could get to be a problem depending on the AI though. I was just playing a family in Sims 2 with a dog and he kept letting his hunger get extremely low. He had a bowl with food on the bottom floor, but he was on the top and refused to go down the stairs and eat, instead just licking a puddle constantly. I ended up putting another bowl on that floor just in case. Later on he played with a chew toy for a long time while his hunger was getting dangerously low. And having his owner call him to eat didn't seem to work. At least there you could use a cheat to take control of the pet if you really needed to, but in Sims 4 this apparently won't be an option.
But as for how it relates to realism, I think the general argument would be that in real life, you can control human beings (ex: yourself). But you can never control a pet, truly. Were this the only argument, I think it'd be kind of flimsy, but I think it also relates to the idea that because of this, transferring over the experience of what makes having a pet magical for so many people in RL means taking into account what it's like having a pet in RL, including the fact that you can never truly control them.
In other words, if you want to capture a feeling, you have to take into account what creates that feeling. So there's an argument in that concept that the spontaneity and lack of control is a fundamental part of what makes pets unique as compared to other parts of a household. For example, in RL, you may not be able to control toddlers exactly, but you can communicate with them to a certain extent and they do grow more robust in their communication and understanding over time, too. Whereas with pets, you may be able to sort of communicate nonverbally, but they're always going to have a certain level of autonomy that is beyond your influence and understanding.
I think this is why concepts like the movie Cats and Dogs, or the movie The Secret Life of Pets, fascinate people in the first place. Because we can't quite get inside the mind of a pet, truly.
In short: I would say it's more about creating a distinctive experience than it is about drawing some arbitrary line.