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SLCSteph's avatar
5 years ago

Fantastical things

Hello...so I've been playing The Sims for 20 years which is amazing when I think about it...I love the premise of intelligent sims which have much more awareness of each other, so I've enjoyed sims4 alright....but I am pretty bored with the content they come out with. It lacks the whimsy, humor, surprises, etc that came with the older versions...I don't know if it's a generational thing or what...I was playing since age 15 so I'm on the young end of gen X, old end of millennials...this all seems very millennial, sterile, too down to earth, and not really why I played the sims... But, years of loyalty and a desire for newer graphics and gameplay has so far kept me with it...In short...I wish packs and expansions were not all about what we experience in real life...like knitting...I don't think anyone would have voted for a knitting stuff pack out of all potential stuff packs a decade ago, but here we are. I'd like more fantasy, more SURPRISE for my sims such as sometimes things go right and sometimes things just get goofy. I got used to the open world of sims3 and now it's separated again, but with less surprise and out of the box scenarios like sims 2 had...
Less real life please, more wild fun please. My two cents.

2 Replies

  • i totally agree, i really enjoyed the supernatural, future exploration, fun and exciting careers and experiences were the essence of sims 3 ! like i always took the careers and wanted to be the top of them, but theres nothing tangible of being on the top of a career in the sims 4
  • Same here. My first game in the series was TS2 when I was 20, and I really enjoyed all of the crazy things that could happen in TS2. Being an experienced gamer already by that time (mainly platformers, JRPG's, and fighting games), I also took to reading guides to learn the game's mechanics and know what to watch out for and what things I should probably save the game before letting my sims attempt (like cooking or trying to repair electronic devices at low skill levels), and brought with me skills from other games that had served me well such as save scumming, money management, and character building. But, it's the whimsical stuff and hidden secrets in the game that kept me coming back for more (that, and BodyShop, because I loved making custom eyes, hair, and clothes...TS4 really should have had its own official CC creation tool, by the way, instead of having to download a third party tool to do it. I mean, if players were going to get less in-game customization options than TS2 had, then...You know?).

    Maybe it's just because we live in an age where the internet will find all the hidden secrets 2 days after launch and have them all in a YouTube video before the week is out, or maybe it's just an assumption that younger gamers these days are just to lazy to try and hunt for Easter eggs in their games, but I feel like TS4 doesn't have as many hidden surprises as TS2 did. A sim who ends their life with all aspirations (or a certain number of aspirations) achieved doesn't get a special send-off like a fully fullfilled sim in TS2 would. There's no small, random chance of getting smashed by a satellite if your sim is stargazing or cloudwatching (and, in fact, these activities are one of the fastest ways to speed up friendship growth between two sims without cheats). Ghosts are a given, show up in public as much as they did when they were alive, and cause mild household annoyances instead of being a rarity that could pop up and scare your sim to death if you weren't careful. There's no such thing as death by flies, since dirty dishes and trash just kind of hang out and generate green stink smoke...and not much else. Your enemies don't even come over and kick over to mess with you anymore. I mean, it would be nice if they would send you a nasty text or mail you a stink bomb or something every once in a while, "just to show they care." Heck, I wish some sims had a hidden trait called "Powerful Enemy" that would make them a real pain to deal with if you declare them your enemy. I mean, it would work wonderfully with sims like Nancy Landgrabb or Vald Straud. But, no, we just get that "Weirdo" hidden trait that has random neighbors go into your apartment and mess around. -_-;

    Some people may not like the crazy surprises, but those little emergent gameplay quirks are what always made TS2 fun and challenging. I saw a post from one person on another thread saying that they're glad that sims' personalities are less impactful on gameplay, because that means they don't have to deal with their sim's personality getting in the way of what they want the sim to do. That makes me really sad, because I kind of liked that little push-back when you were trying to get a sim to do something that didn't fit their personality or when your sim had a hard time looking for love because they could never seem to find someone who was their type. I liked sims getting abducted by aliens from spending too much time at the telescope (I even gave a few of them the perk that increases their abduction chance). I liked that some random, insane thing could happen to your sim even doing the most mundane things. I liked random witches showing up on community lots and vampires at the club and magical wolves roaming the streets at night. Sure, it's not "realistic," but the stories I like to tell aren't "realistic" either. To see features that have strong potential to enhance my kind of play and stories, like ghost hunting or arcades, be beaten out in polls for things like knitting and laundry is actually pretty frustrating. Knowing that the devs will probably toss out a farming pack, an active high school pack, a "mow the lawn" pack, and toteable Babies before they ever touch werewolves or finally add unnatural hair color swatches for Children and Toddlers really gets me down. The base game at launch and GTW showed real potential for some fun, outlandish antics...but then they kind of dialed it back and toned it down for the people who just want a down-to-earth "playing house" simulator. It's kind of a bummer.

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