It's nice that you are doing this! :)
And thanks for the haircolours update we will be getting. Like many I have asked for dark blonde hair in these forums, and it is good to see that now it is really happening!
I feel like there are some features already in the game, that could be polished or expanded for a more enjoyable gameplay.
- The keyboard controls (arrow keys) to rotate the camera: When you press ctrl/cmnd you get to rotate the angle of the camera, but only vertically, it would be great if this worked horizontally as well. As a mouseless laptop player this is vital. The way it currently works you have to use a different set of keys to completely rotate the camera. It feels so illogical to have the function only work for the up/down keys, but not for the right/left.
- Genetics: specially with City Living installed the generated townies are very culturally diverse, which is great! But the genetics seem completely random. I think it would be a nice improvement if skin, eye and hair color (and names) were generated in more realistic combinations more often.
- Also I think it would be very helpful if each hairstyle got a texture tag, so afro hair, wavy hair and straight hair can be filtered (both for the realistic genetics in townie generation, as in CAS). Rather than filtering by hair length, filtering by hair texture would be much more meaningful to me. Afro textured hairstyles are already super under-represented, at least make it easier to find them by giving them a filter.
- More subcategories in buy mode/ decorations section. There are so many different decorations and many items could actually be found in multiple different categories (clutter/statues and other), that it gets really hard to find stuff and I think a lot of lovely objects are overlooked because of this. It would be great if certain types of items would be grouped together better. Like parasols, fountains, room dividers etc.
And I think it would be great if there was a section for decorative/non-functional cabinets and shelves in the surfaces section.
And then there is the issue of random outfits. Wether they are newly spawned townies, unnecessary situation outfits, or premade sims' hot & cold weather outfits, the randomly generated outfits are simply awful. The results are so weird, and you see them so often, that it completely ruins the feeling that the sims walking around in them are people with personalities. It is extremely immersion breaking.
I've given up on the idea that random outfits as a whole will be fixed. So what would be the next best thing is to actually make it easier for us to edit them in CAS. Honestly sometimes I spend so much time editing townies, it feels like I'm hardly getting to the actual game, it feels like a drag. These are my thoughts of fixing that:
- Predesigned outfits are a great feature to help give townies quick makeovers. But there aren't enough outfits in there for so many townies, so a way to add more outfits would be great. It would be wonderful if there was a way to save and share those outfits.
- Actually it would be great if the townie outfits were selected from the predesigned styled outfits automatically, so they don't look so random anymore.
- Another improvement would be if glasses, makeup and piercings could be assigned and removed for every outfit at once. If a sim is wearing regular glasses in one outfit, it is very likely you'll want them to wear them in the other outfits too.
- Additionally, but this might be a personal preference, I would love all the CAS accessory categories to be accessible from the clothing/body section of the menu instead of the face part. I think it's like that when you let a sim plan new outfits. With all the randomly generated townie outfits you often have to remove completely out of place piercings and hats, and the constant zooming in and out, switching between head/body is just another thing that makes editing sims in CAS extra unpleasant. Specially if you're on your 20th townie edit of the day.
- filter cas parts on the likeliness of them being used. For example at the moment all the alien and other crazy eyeshadows are located at the top of the makeup section. But 90% of the time you'll be wanting to use the more standard type of make up, and you have to scroll past the crazy stuff all the time. Just not a smooth workflow. (same for piercings in the earrings section)
- Isn't it possible that those style tags that are used the CAS filtering system can be applied when new sims are generated, so a townie only wears clothes from one tag? And it would be great to expand on that. Link certain character traits to clothing styles.
Lastly I think packs should be integrated better together. For example cats and dogs should be walking around in every neighborhood. And plants should grow automatically in the Outdoor Retreat world, herbalism became useless since the Seasons update.
And old packs deserve more attention to be fixed. I am not talking about bugs. I am talking about features that impact storytelling, that actually work the way they are meant to, but that just don't make sense.
For example eco lifestyle:
It is such a let down that bad eco footprints are basically impossible to occur. It takes away so much meaning from the pack, that in practice, the game will have a neutral or healthy eco footprint whatever you do. Then what is any of the content of the pack even for?
And there's many things like this. Like when I want my sim to go dumpster diving, but the dumpster is always already in use by some random rich sim who lives in a giant mansion. That sim would not even be seen around the dumpster, let alone search through it! Why are there any sims in those abandoned community places at all? They are usually so crowded that I can't even do what I came there to do.
It seems to me that more attention needs to be given to looking at what message these kinds of details create. It is so important for storytelling and the believability of the game, which should be top focus for a life simulator. They make my sims life feel like a computer generated mess rather than a story. The random townies are the same. How can the player believe the Sims world is a little world of its own, if they are constantly faced with the obvious computer generated randomness? It's just such a shame that these little loose ends have such a big impact on the quality of the gameplay experience.
I hope I wrote this in an understandable way, if not I am happy to explain. :)
Thank you for listening to us!
EA Staff (Retired)