Sims 411 - Forum Feedback, May 6th

My biggest concern is how content is often shallow in comparison to how they were in the past, and it's likely that content will never be updated to meet expectations because it came in a pack. We've been told how it would be a waste of money to because only a fraction of people would buy a given pack, and updates to the base game reach everyone. But now we're left with very flawed packs that will likely never be fixed.

• Diving is still a rabbit hole. We're pretty much stuck with that forever now.
  
• Past worlds haven't been updated to handle swimming. I know it must be difficult, but it's been two years since Island Living and we haven't even gotten a single on it.
  
• Potions are poorly-priced. Being able to make a living selling potions was a feature touted during a RoM livestream. First we couldn't even do it because the feature was broken, and when it was fixed, potions were worth less than the ingredients made to create them.
  
• Familiars are just glorified drones; magic is already too easy, and protecting sims from death is pointless because it's ridiculously hard die from magic overload - or any death, for that matter. Instead of having something wonderful and Torch-like, we just have these things.
  
• A lack of inter-pack support. No weather-altering magic if you had Seasons, even though mermaids could control weather if you had Seasons. Occults don't interact with each other.
  
• You missed your chance to add small pets into the pet pack. Now if we want small pets, we're likely going to have to pay for them separately ala MFPS (and after the negative reaction to MFPS, I doubt we're going to get more small pet packs anyway), or hope that you'll randomly decide to include them in the base game nearly four+ after we should have gotten them.
  
• We were told we'd get a cheat to change or reset Sulani's cleanliness state. Two years later and we still don't have anything.
  
• Get to Work doesn't let you have home businesses, and the perk system is inferior to customer satisfaction system from Sims 2.
  
• University is too much like real life, where you're basically too busy with work to enjoy campus life - such as it is. You also need to take three weeks worth of classes to get that diploma and high-paying job, but it's easier, more cost-effective, and less time-consuming to tackle jobs the regular way. I only use University as a way to limit my sims for challenges.
  

It's demoralizing to see certain gameplay being handled poorly, because odds are, we're basically stuck with it since you guys never go back and fix these. Any fixes and updates we have are so rare and unexpected, we can't reasonably hope to see or expect them.

I appreciate the fixes to African-American hairs, baby hairs aside. I also appreciate you adding more black hairstyles and I've been making good use of them. However, I feel like they clash with a lot of the basegame hairs now, and those hairs also need an update. They aged horribly and many of them really need an overhaul, as well.

Also, it would be nice to see more black hairstyles that aren't based on curly hair, braids or dreads. I'd love more of those too, but I'd also like to see some straight and wavy looks that are made with black sims in mind.

Also please stop using baby hairs so much, or at least provide alternative versions of hair that don't use them. They look like Alpha cc and clash with the rest of the hairstyles.

Why have occults taken such a backseat? I know they're relatively niche, but we went from getting them in nearly every pack in past games, to getting one or two every couple of years. I know the idea of wanting quantity over quality, but waiting two years for a chance at one occult if awful. Even worse when they're handled poorly, because they'll likely never be updated.

• Witch spells and potions are mostly just cheats for everyday life (and largely recycled from other gameplay.) Very few of them are whimsical and strange. The Magic Realm is also one just lot, three stalls, some open space for duels, and a bunch of non-interactable scenery.
  
• Plantsims are a temporary lifestate and basically amount to a palette swap for your sims. They don't asexually reproduce, they don't make plants grow any faster, they don't have any notable challenges that other sims don't have.
  
• Servos require way too much effort to get. I appreciate trying to add a challenge, but it's so tedious to have everything align. Servos are also not really that impressive, but I can't get into why without comparing them to other games' robots, so.
  
• Aliens don't do much, and their world is just a single lot.
  
• Mermaids suffer from diving being a rabbit hole. They also don't do much besides swim and sing.
  
• Vampires are perfect, though.
  

Moving forward, it would be nice to see at least one occult life state per year - still a massive downgrade from what we used to have, but a major step up for occult fans.

Also, I want to say thanks for Paranormal Stuff. We rarely get packs that give our occult sims hobbies or careers that relate to their world - they just have to spend their lives, doing only what regular sims do. Not very mythical or interesting. But Paranormal Stuff was a godsend and really improved the depth of my occult sims' lives.

Traits are fundamentally flawed. Three isn't enough to give our sims a rounded, realistic feel compared to Sims 3. And because we're so limited, why would you waste them on meaningless, niche stuff like Dog Lover? We were told that they were limited in order to keep them from influencing emotions too much and make them unique, but personality should be way more important. The recent trait update and its positive reception shows just how much autonomy, personality and actions trump emotions.

There's also a severe lack of traits in the game. Considering this is out main (only?) course of personality in the game, we should have a wide variety to choose from. Yet despite this, we have about 54~ traits, released across packs and updates across over 6 years. By this time, Sims 3 had 63 traits in its base game, and they let you have five traits.

Then we have purchasable traits, but these don't add to your sim's personality and depth - they're just cheats to make things easier.

I also feel like diversity and inclusion get too much attention. I'm bisexual, mixed race and neuro divergent - I get how good it feels to be represented, and I appreciate being able to have different ideas and content in the game. The Sims is the perfect place to explore these things, and I'm looking forward to seeing more.

But it feels like diversity and inclusion are more important to the game than actual gameplay. Legit criticism, ideas and suggestions are rarely addressed, unless it's about inclusion. I remember when EA released that commercial players enjoying Sims 4, and they were all about how they are tragic sexual/racial minorities and need the game to express themselves. Diversity and inclusion are good, but the way it's gone about, it makes it seem like it's the biggest thing in a game, rather than gameplay.

I'd also like to complain about how this inclusion has been added. I know you're limited by time, budget, and EA - inclusion is clearly important to you guys, but you can't include everything and everyone with the snap of your fingers. But at the same time, it feels weird that we usually get these inclusive updates based on whatever's culturally relevant now (a Hispanic update of primarily LatAm culture during Hispanic Heritage month, skin tone updates after the backlash, Asian eye presets during the height of #StopAsianHate), or when it's to be sold. (Japanese culture in Snowy Escape, Hawaiian and Polynesian culture in Island Living.) We've had almost no Native content in the franchise. We haven't had a lot of European culture explored beyond building aesthetics and locations. We need more dragon content. But we did get the Muslim and Caribbean updates for seemingly no other reason to have them, which was great. So what I'm saying is, it would be nice to see updates come without some cultural prompt behind them, because proactive updates feel more genuine. I don't want to wait for a movement to motivate the addition of Native content.

Now I want to highlight where diversity has been handled well, and what I'd like to see continue on vs what could be handled better.

Selvadorada was handled well, because we got a fairly solid take on (generic) LatAm culture. It was nice being able to explore the country's food, architecture, mythology music, artifacts, clothing, etc. The culture skill was great. Going to Selvadorada was like visiting my family, except without my grandma trying to hit people with her slippers. Our sims had a reason to immerse themselves in a culture, and teaching the skill meant that sims could share this culture with others. We can not only experience a culture, but actively learn about it on a deeper level, all while still keeping the feel and tone of The Sims. I really hope to get more like that, especially Culture Skills. I'd say JA's biggest flaw is that Selvadorada is not a good place to vacation unless you're actively exploring Archaeology, because there aren't a lot of places for tourists to visit outside of the marketplace.

I know culture wasn't a big theme for Get Together, as it was for Jungle Adventure and Island Living. But it was kind of discouraging that you were playing with (a take on) Germany without really exploring its unique cultures. At least we had the ruins, but those just existed for... modern-day dance parties. It was a regular Sims world, just with a different coat of paint.

Island Living was the same way. We had a great-looking region, with great clothes and architecture. But culture itself felt generic and shallow. The fire dancing was recycled from another pack. The festivals are extremely generic and don't offer much. Kava parties are just regular parties. The neighbors are "friendlier," which just amounts to them coming in uninvited or putting out fires. We have cultural artifacts, but they're just buried in the sand and we don't know anything about Sulani's history. You can't explore the world's history like you could with Jungle Adventure, you can't educate other sims about the culture. We didn't get a Sims-like take on the culture and history like we did in Jungle Adventure. And while I get that the packs had different goals (archaeology and tomb-exploration vs sitting on a towel), it would have been great to have Sulani and its people fleshed out more. It's disappointing that a Game Pack offered more gameplay, lore and detail than an Expansion Pack.

Snowy Escape, too. There were some good aspects, like taking shoes off indoors, spoofing Japanese corporate culture, Tanabata-inspired elements and those wish block thingies. A problem with mixing it with a winter vacation area is how the winter stuff eclipsed the cultural aspect. We didn't have a lot of traditional clothes. The festivals were interesting in theory, but generic and empty in concept. We're missing a lot of traditional items and activities, while Mt. Komorebi is too removed from modern Japan's urban areas to explore that aspect. This goes back to old themes being done poorly and then not being touched upon; we probably won't get more Japanese stuff in the future, so we're stuck with the untapped potential. And if we DO get something, we'll have to pay for it, and it'll only work alongside with Snowy Escape, rather than directly enhancing it.

Also, sims being from different countries/worlds should feel different from regular sims. Aside from having clothes that reflect their culture, they should also eat different foods, not be seen exploring regular neighborhoods (Nalani, why are you in Willow Creek?), and act different. The Culture Skill helped in this area because it allowed sims from other countries to perform interactions related to their culture, and they could teach others about it.

tl;dr: Just copy Jungle Adventure.

Not about the game in itself, but I feel like I should throw my 2 cents in. It feels like Twitter is more important to the Gurus. We rarely see gurus on the forum, unless it's to promote a pack or to address major drama. I understand you want to reach a larger audience of fans, but it's discouraging and it feels like we're less important.

We were told about open communication, and we've been getting it. Sometimes. Other times, it's lacking. As an example, we weren't notified about when we were getting the April patch until the day of, instead of the usual week in advance. Letting people know in advance lets them get excited, prep their games for a patch (or to avoid patching) and helps us determine if we should download mods or CC at this time.

Or how about Sims 411? Looking at Twitter and the forums, many people were confused as to what we could even talk about. What we couldn't talk about was clearer. But I noticed that you removed the rule about not talking about past games, which was a pretty difficult rule that limited how we communicated our concerns, so thank you for that.

There's also the feeling that certain sets of fans are more important than others, and I'm not talking about target demographics vs periphery demographics. Fans, including Japanese and Korean fans, were ignored when we had criticisms over how the shrine controversy was handled. While many sides had good points, those set of fans didn't get a word of explanation or acknowledgement. The devs just responded to the first argument and never even addressed the valid complaints others had. (On the forums, we were told you would look into it and discuss it, but we never saw the results of that.) And this was especially distressing because you promised to communicate more not a month before. While I'm sure this was more due to your hands being tied and trying to be sensitive to the concerns of others, it gave off the impression that you only cared about one side of the audience.

The skintone has been an issue for years, but it only got addressed after much backlash. Generally, it seems our wants are only acknowledged if there's a lot of backlash or drama. I understand that talking about future updates and products is a no-go, you can't make too many promises and you want to handle things tactfully. But it honestly feels like we're talking to a brick wall sometimes, and we only get heard when we're practically rioting.

That said, I also want to point out that there have been a lot of improvements. We've been given blogs that discuss the insights and ideas behind the pack-designing process, and that's great. You gave us sneak-peaks to future patches, and that's wonderful. The skin tone update was difficult, but we got multiple updates on its progress & the difficulties it caused, and that's exactly what I'd like to see. There have been some efforts to make things more transparent, and while there's still a lot of ways to go, opening up about these aspects of the game have been really helpful. Thank you for that/

This has been a hot topic amongst the community. Things are way too easy and clean in the game. There's very little drama, sims patch things up very easily, there's very little struggling to find your footing in the game, and there are almost no long-term consequences.

As an example, your sim could have an affair. Right in front of their partner. Multiple times in a row. Yet their partner will just get a bad moodlet and you'll lose some (not a lot) of your relationship points with them. You can tell them a couple of jokes to calm them down, and then flirt with them a few times until they're completely over being betrayed by the person they loved most. In The Sims 2, you had the fury system, and their feelings toward you would become so low, you'd have to spend a long time actually trying to make it up your partner to earn back their love and forgiveness.

Sentiments were a step towards addressing this, but they're just short-term memories that give you moodlets. They tell us more about the relationship, but don't go about delving into them.

If a sim just abused a townie, physically attacked them and became their enemy, they'll still be receptive to most friendly interactions and get along well with your sim.

Your witch goes around and sets things on fire, so what? Some people get annoyed and you might lose Reputation if you have Get Famous installed. (Which is easy to get back up anyway, so.) Heck, aside from moodlets that get easily overpowered, no one cares that they discovered an occult sim exists, much less that they're wreaking havoc on the town.

As I said, negative moodlets are easily overpowered by positive ones. Bad moods are meaningless because sims can become happy at the drop of a hat.