This video from Carl's Sims 4 guides explains the topic very well.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zk06dk_G8bI
It is very true that there isn't really much to do with your money besides build a mega mansion. I'm planning on working around the real estate thing by having my richest sims own many retail and restaurant lots, but there are only so many that I can build before it gets repetitive for the particular save. I really like the idea of sims essentially buying an entire town by owning "normal" community lots. I did dabble with buying real estate in TS3, but I never managed to buy more than two since it was so expensive. I wanted to buy more, but it was clear that I'd have to work harder and for more generations to accomplish that. What does that create?
Incentive to keep playing the family.
I posted a previous discussion talking about how TS4 doesn't give you incentive to keep playing with the same family, since there is no real reward. Infants to teenagers (except toddlers) are boring so raising kids isn't nearly as satisfying as it should be, and sims "expire" after YA-hood since older life stages provide no specialness or satisfaction from playing. The only time that matters in a sim's life is YA-hood, essentially making you want to skip through childhood and then stop playing once it goes downhill afterwards.
Story progression is essential in keeping us motivated to continue playing, since it makes the world
less static. Seeing how premades have kids, their kids have kids, create friends and enemies etc is satisfying and drives you to be curious about what will happen to them as well. After two or three generations in TS4, all the premades are dead and have been replaced by randomized townies with no backstory, only for them to remain static until they die and get replaced by other randomized sims.
How does story progression and raising legacies tie in with long-term goals? It keeps you playing for a longer time, thus prompting you to create new goals each time you would have otherwise put the game down. Currently, the legacy challenge is a popular player-created challenge, but how many times have you actually played multiple generations unprompted, enjoying it without an elaborate plan beforehand to keep your interest?
TS3 often threw small goals at me through
opportunities, and often those small goals turned into bigger goals.
My favourite example of this is how my TS3 sim was working part-time at a bookstore, wanting to become a journalist but unsure how to start. She was working on her writing skill in her free time, scared that she might struggle if she plunged into journalism without experience. Then she got a request to write a biography. Let me tell you, she was too poor to afford a PC so she pulled many all-nighters in the library to complete that book, going so far as almost having her cat taken away (she loved him very much so this was a tough time of prioritizing). But when she finished that, it felt to me like everything had fallen into place. I had her quit the bookstore and start her journalism career.
Just from this example alone, many of what the video explained can be seen. Struggle to remain financially afloat, difficult prioritizing decisions that ultimately are worth it, the world giving you subtle guidance without shouting every detail of the game at you etc. Now TS4 doesn't even have whims by default.
My sim eventually also struggled to find love, which was both exasperating and
challenging in a good way. She actually went through a similar dilemma as me at the time with a romantic interest hiding the fact that they were in a relationship, so that made me cry a bit and relate to her even more. Yet another thing that TS4 proclaims to be avoiding, PTSD, is honestly bizarre imo. People having meltdowns if a pixelated burglar breaks into their house is awful and I hope they get better soon, but other people could have the same reaction to their sims getting fat bc of a traumatic bullying experience they had in school. Should sims no longer be able to get fat? The point is that, in order to eliminate the possibility of PTSD, TS4 would have to be dumbed-down to an actual children's game. It was never meant to be a children's game. If the devs want people with PTSD regarding certain occurrences in the game to be able to avoid the occurrences, they should add toggles. (Toggles solve so many problems in TS4. It is beyond me why they don't add more). Players care more about their sims when they are struggling. Even though my sim's romantic misadventure struck a nerve, in many ways it was a positive experience, prompting me to speak about it with my mom (I had kept quiet about it for a few days, pretending I was fine when I was not).
The whole premise of literally any game is
overcoming challenges. How fun would Mario be if the game held your hand through every level, giving you multiple warnings before a bad guy appears and then telling you "don't worry, we made the bad guy inflict less damage bc we want you to enjoy the experience of winning," then looks over you, applauding obnoxiously, as you cross the finishing line with confusion (the game thought jumping on a pole is too dangerous). Would winning feel earned?
This made me realize why I like vampires so much in TS4: I actually do find it challenging to rank up. My current main sim has an almost maxed-out vampire lore skill, but I'm not sure how to completely max it out. She's exhausted all the tomes of information, sparred, meditated etc but nothing helps significantly. I've been trying quite a few things, since I really want her to have a specific power, but I can't figure out how to get her more points. But I like that. It feels like I'm working towards something.
Aspirations in TS4 are also ridiculously shallow. They are advertised as allowing a single sim to complete many instead of it being one ultimate goal in your sim's life, but honestly that once again makes sims more shallow. You know who is able to complete every aspiration, master every skill etc but ultimately has no true goal in life?
Mary Sue. TS4 is full of Mary Sues. They're all perfectly blank, allowing you to self-insert all your passing whims onto them. They have no mind of their own. Yet, even people who like self-inserts eventually get bored with them if there is no true end goal. One can only spend so long staring at a perpetually smiling blank-eyed sim before you feel hollow. Bc TS4 is, in many ways, hollow. It perfectly captures how obsessed many people these days are with instant gratification. "I have to work for this thing? Nah, I want it now!" And zap, you have played through an entire GP in one hour. Nothing new to explore, nothing to build onto. So you start a new save and repeat the cycle.
TS3
Lifetime Goals were amazing. It was not simply a playthrough of a pack, or to master a single skill - it was the combination of different skills, careers, relationships etc to create interesting ways of playing that one might not have thought about before. They utilized the entire game to make a meaningful, challenging goal for sims to work towards. I think of "Golden Tongue, Golden Fingers" as a top-of-my-head example of skills I wouldn't have associated together. Sure, mastering the guitar is cool. But being a smooth, charismatic master of the guitar who befriends the world into attending their concerts? That sets off other ideas: what if they are also an undercover player, luring sims into a friendly drink that turns steamy, only to pretend that nothing happened the day after? In TS4, you have to think out these stories for yourself. Your aspiration is to be a painter. OK. Either all my painter sims are clones or I have to come up with an elaborate storyline. With complex TS3 lifetime goals, each playthrough of exactly the same goal could have vastly different outcomes, even if you essentially made the same choices. TS4 is static, so every playthrough is basically the same, and to make it even worse TS4 has step-by-step instruction milestones that force all sims to arrive at the aspiration in the same way. If TS4 is so intent on being in-your-face about all the content in the game, why don't they do this by making meaningful aspirations that show new ways of
combining gameplay aspects? I have never really played with the voodoo doll since it is such a random thing that doesn't tie in with much else, but if there was an aspiration to be a ghost communicator herbalist voodoo man, I'd be much more inclined to play with it out of curiosity. If I had not sit down and tried to figure out how to use the voodoo doll right now, I would have never thought of playing this save file. There's a difference between gently guiding a player with ideas and opportunities vs shouting at them that this DLC has one new mechanic and you have to follow it exactly without different interpretations.
An earned sense of progression over a sim's lifetime - an accumulation of achievements and events - vs starting all over again with a different aspiration, and it having no real impact on a sim's life. That is the difference between previous iterations and TS4 goals.
What do you think?
Comments
People who are active here because they love the whole franchise tend to be more objective but Sims 4-only fans could be biased and ignore criticism fully!
However I am going to have to agree with you. I have played every Sims game, Sims spin-off, console version, you name it since 2000 and I think one of the biggest issues with The Sims 4 is that it's great at first when you make your house and create Sims. Even playing them for a few hours can be fun, but once you stick around longer you will realize nothing's happening.
There are no unexpected scenarios, no interesting life-goal to pursuit, no actual personality, no long-term consequences, no chemistry between certain Sims, no neighbourhood relations that could affect everyday life in them, Sims actions don't even influence their environment and sometimes not even other Sims that live in the same house!
The Sims 4 is like playing the same day over and over and over again.
GroundSim Day.
Anyway, TS4 is by design instant gratification. It's not that they forgot to add deep gameplay in the game, they probably decided it wasn't the direction they wanted to take the game in, with the audience they were trying to attract. It's a YA simulator and they don't try to hide it.
I'll never forgive the career nerf.
I like the sims 4 but I binge play it for about a 100 hrs before going to one of my other games or back to sims 3. There's just not enough sustenance to make me want to play longer. Yes kids play this game but the game is actually geared towards Teens and up, hence the game rating... So why the simplicity?
Sims 4 has no jealousy, chemistry, attraction. I find these vital to building a romantic relationship in my game. The Sim I play in each neighborhood is in a romantic relationship in some of the neighborhoods I have in my game. It's this variety I really enjoy.
I also miss the Memories feature. I like going back and looking at how long it took a Sim to develop friendships and relationships.
The 3 different University choices are another reason I keep going back to the Sims 2. I thoroughly enjoy the gameplay there too.
I enjoy the hobbies in the game too.
There is a lot more I could add to this post but I will stop here. I just wish that Sims 4 had this long term gameplay that I could actually enjoy for hours.
All of this has resulted in a game where a save will be exciting early on, but has you feeling like "Well, now what?" rather quickly because everything falls into place too easy and the things you unlock do little to enhance gameplay long-term. Want to play an evil magic user who uses their power to cause direct harm to others? Not in TS4. Best you can do is go over to their house and set their stuff on fire in the hopes that you can indirectly kill them in the blaze. Burning or freezing or electrocuting someone to death? Nope. No soup for you. You get the ability to break into other sims' homes on the first level of vampire powers, but the fun runs out when you realize that it's not much use for anything beyond feeding on sims who are up in the middle of the night when you break in anyway and some minor mischief which doesn't even make the news channel or pop up in a notification when your sim goes to brows the internet.
They've added some mechanics where you can alter the physical world, which is cute. However, this game still doesn't have any mechanics that impact the social world meaningfully aside from the celebrity system. Heck, even clubs, a feature that I think is actually useful, don't move the social world much beyond the Infamous and Popular perks affecting starting relationship levels with newly-met sims. There are no grudges, having a bad relationship or being enemies with another sim doesn't affect autonomous interactions at all, good relationships aren't made difficult to maintain in the slightest unless you have a mean or evil sim who randomly insults and yells at their friends at weird moments in a conversation. Relationships are flavorless and have little development on a mechanical level, whether initiated by the player or automatic, and that definitely stifles the longevity of the game.
The game is in the state it’s in for a few reasons. First and foremost the people working on this game don’t want to make the type of game that Sims traditionally is. As inappropriate as that sounds they have been very open about this and frequently pit players against their own property (Sims 3) to reinforce this idea. Secondly, the game has been corporatized for the non-gamer. The Sims player base that was passionate enough to make every other Sims game a financial success was not enough. They insisted on getting new players, and they made that priority 1. One could argue they needed new players to cover the loss of people not buying Sims 4 after all the bad stuff was out there, but I don’t argue that because Maxis lied to those players telling them they messed up and they were determined to make this game the best one ever. They really delivered on the mouth service front years ago, but at this point in time none of those words mean anything because so little has materialized. I get that there’s been some significant additions to the base game, but taking 3 years (just tossing a number out there) to add in content that was promised for launch is not my idea of good project management. It’s not like they were busy improving the huge flaws in the game while they pushed out over $100 worth of DLC in the games first year, let alone the cost for the first 3 years.
Even if the relationship system wasn't much different in previous games I wish they had gone slightly further with The Sims 4 since it is the fourth game in the franchise. They need to step it up a bit.
It’s a Game of Smoke and Mirrors.
TS4 is primarily about Young Adults, for Young adults ( but, hey let’s be honest, it’s mostly for teens and below even if the rating does not officially support the latter). The game Is being loaded with different themes and concepts and objects and it all looks snazzy and jazzy and fun, but what’s really happening is that all the fireworks are used as a distraction, so that the player does not immediately recognize the almost lack of Intelligent game play including long term goals. Why? Because the target audience may simply not have the attention span to get into intelligent gameplay and finish long term goals in games. They want to move on to the next level or the next theme or concept as quickly as possible. By keeping the game engine simple, it can support a lot more fireworks at a relatively quick turn around than if it was a complex core engine trying to deal with more demanding ai systems. That’s why we’re only being TOLD that the sims are smart and intelligent, but not SHOWN.
It’s a sign of the times. I’m involved with a lot of YA’s and younger folks and man, I’m not that old myself but I certainly feel I come from a different place in time...Short Attention Span is a serious thing...
What saddens me is that many main stream movies, ads, shows and games actually stimulate and cultivate this kind of disposable amusement, like a quick fix. Im not blaming one or the other. However, the appreciation for something simple but meaningful seems no longer encouraged.
I actually notice this with my niece and I agree. Me and my sister when we were kids,would stick to a game for months, reading the guide, learning and figuring out how to play it, plotting strategies etc etc. And we were like that with everything.
My niece does not have the attention span and many younger people don't these days. She cannot stick with a game for long, gets frustrated easily and constantly jumps from one thing to another. She's fascinated by the flashy quick fixes then gets bored and moves on.
I personally blame parents who put smart phones in their kids' hands to distract them and keep them quiet before they can even talk, and fail to expose them to intellectually stimulating media like kids' documentary programs, physical books, and tough old 8 bit and 16 bit games because they had kids for the aesthetic or the experience or because they felt social pressure to, then didn't want to actually interact with them outside of feeding them and enjoying all the cute parts. In short, a whole generation of parents that treated their kids like pets did this.
I felt like the game was autonomously trying to balance things out.
The Sims have no real personalities, so they get along with everyone, will do everything, and don't care about anything.
You can set an aspiration for the Sim, completely ignore it, and they won't care at all. In The Sims 2, if I ignore my sim's wants and aspiration, or if they have their worst fears come true, they'll end up a depressed little pixel person having a mental breakdown on the floor. And that is AWESOME.
But in The Sims 4, they don't actually want anything. They don't fear anything. There's nothing to really motivate you to explore the Sims and their personalities. The traits are often one-dimensional, the aspirations are super linear. I actually really dislike having all of the tiered, small goals - I'd rather have a fortune Sim who wants to be super rich, and then I can get them there in a number of different ways... not by placing x amounts of columns in their house.
It is a simulation game - the characters should therefore be simulated. You set it up, press play, and see what happens. Not constantly try to make things happen with little to no input from the characters themselves.
We have the emotions system... okay, but, what fun is that if every sim has basically the same emotional response to events that happen in the game? And why is Nancy Landgraab diving in dumpsters? The game makes no sense, the characters have no depth, they are constantly performing actions that make no sense for their "character".
Yes, story progression would help. But I truly believe that the lack of individual personality, wants, fears, interests and consequences is the core issue of the game.
Exactly. This.
Absolutely. Very little resources have been used to explore and create deeper personalities and true character for the sims in the 4th title, even if they were advertised and sold that way. Ultimately they have no more character than any of the sims in The Sims Mobile or The Sims Free Play.
Aside from an Open World, the catalogue of TS4's Build/Buy options, World Choice and Game Play Objects is perhaps bigger and fancier than its predecessors. Yes, there are objects and life states missing that previous titles do have, but none of that bling helps to actually define the true character depth of the sims. The little people end up doing and 'feeling' exactly the same. That's why the community constantly begs for another theme pack and game play objects to make-believe that their sims somehow has a unique personality:
"Maybe this object or system will somehow make my sim feel unique without me having to imagine it all, or pretend not to see my sim actually doesn't care about a. darn. thing. whatsoever." The sims community is incredibly loyal and hopeful.
I do hope its a learning curve for the studio. There's no way I believe the creative developers don't care. Life simulation is a very tricky thing as there are innumerable aspects to keep in mind, especially with technology AND society changing at the same time. What worked in the Sims 2 or 3 long ago, may not work in current times. I wish it was simpler than that, but alas.
I very much hope more emphasis will be put on the character depth of sims in the future. It will make all the difference.
Learning curve? They built the tech for this game in-house. They are the ones who SHOULD know how to work with it, it’s not like they leased out a game engine from some other developer. They also have previous games to examine and see how they function, because they have all the source code available to them since they designed those too. Too many excuses! It’s been 6 years
These are excuses based on poor decisions made at the start of development though. Some things can't be fixed after 6 years because they weren't implemented at the beginning, where it should have been. TS4 was to have a huge online feature and the engine was built for that and in such a way that low spec machines could even run it, without having to sacrifice too much of the graphics aspect of the game.
All the focus has been put into building tech that can run an aesthetically pleasing game. Sims 3 couldn't release any more EPs because the game engine that supported the open world system was burning up the player's machines. Open world was scrapped and sacrificed in order to run TS4 on pretty much any machine. On top of that, the online feature was also scrapped because they quickly learned it had failed with SimCity, so TS4 got a quick overhaul and all there was left was a half single player game that would look really pretty on any machine.
I think the fact that TS4 wasn't built for beefier computers is part of the problem. Of course they did not want to lose an already established player base. Eventually the game got an upgrade to work on 64bit machines only, but this has nothing to do with building a system for better in-depth gameplay. The 64bit support is only there so that TS4 can add more aesthetically pleasing content while another title is in development.
I don't believe TS4 will get any more extensive game play systems. It will get variations on what it currently has, but nothing beyond that. The core engine is already in a fixed state.
So yes, I hope they're learning as they go, when moving onto production of a successor. And that focus is not on aesthetics and online game play only. I know there is a huge chance that the next iteration will support VR as well. But if true immersion is being overlooked -unique personalities and behaviour for sims and anything that did work better in previous games- then it's going to be the same thing all over, just maybe in a slightly prettier dress.
I agree with you, I don't foresee the core systems of the games being changed or upgraded to the kind of game I want to play. That's why I'm keeping my eyes open for news on Paralives and maybe the Sims 5, although it honestly would not surprise me at this point if the Sims 5 is online, or, even more shallow and cut back than TS4 is.
I think they've done a decent-ish job turning TS4 into the game that it is - since release it has definitely improved, but the style of the game is linear and it always feels curiously empty to me when I play. The Sims feel empty (empty-headed!!) and you're correct, that is why expansion packs continue to sell like wildfire - because people are desperate to make it feel fuller, and they go "ooh, pretty! 🤩" to basically anything these days aha. Is sad. Luckily, I still have the older games to play.
TS5 won't downgrade to anywhere less than a minimum system requirement of 64bit. If there's going to be open world or world creation at all, the required GPU will need to be a bit chunkier than the current requirement, if game aesthetics similar to TS4 have to be maintained.
In an article, EA's CEO Andrew Wilson has 'hinted' towards a combination of single player and multiplayer content. I assume the latter to be online. I also doubt it will be online only. I think there will be a lot of discontent among the sims community if that were to happen.
For anyone interested in the article:
https://www.devdiscourse.com/article/entertainment/890611-the-sims-5-update-eas-ceo-andrew-wilson-on-single-player-multiplayer-components