More Creative Occult Types
Ever feel like you are buying the same content all over again. That's basically what Sims 4 has been for me. Without mods I'd have no interest in playing the game at all. I started off with Sims 1 as an elementary school student and I was in love with it. By Sims 3 the content started to feel repeated but they kept it interesting enough. Now, I'm basically just collected stuff so I have a complete game.
We’ve been seeing the same occults over and over: werewolves, vampires and witches. There have been a few new additions like mermaids, fairies, genies, ect. Nothing new has been created for the Sims 4. Though there are still a few creative options left. This is purely just my idea for a new occult type, but I'd like to elected superhuman sims for this. It's a fairly reasonable path to include superpowers. Like all occults this won’t be for all players, but I think it could be something hugely entertaining. Let me dig a little bit deeper into my ideas for such occults.
Deciding which superpowers to include becomes a very complicated process. We need to decide what the ‘core’ superpowers could be. So, let’s go with the top five superhero powers that have been around forever: flight, invisibility, shapeshifting, healing, super speed, super strength, elemental control, telekinesis, and mind control. Now, some of these are in a game in a way. Vampires have super speed and super strength so no problems there. There is that secret power that can be involved if you get struck by lightning, which is honestly amazing, so elemental control is possible but could be limiting as some aspect would require Seasons to work. Telekinesis that could get tricky with coding, but I know nothing about it so I can’t say much about hat aspect. We’ve seen flight with brooms in the past so that’s not a far stretch. Sims 4 already has mind control in some problems. The complicated one would be shapeshifting. This would be extremely tricky to code. You need limitations: like perhaps only other sims, or animals. A good limitation would be either to have them create the forms in CAS or they must copy existing sims/animals. These are just nine of them I could think of that are ‘core’ superpowers in my option.
A good inspiration for this kind of expansion, because these is way too big of a job to be a game pack, would be the Incredibles. I love this kind of movie for inspiration for the Sims for a lot of reasons. The movie features proper developmental stages of children. Where Jack-Jack is under the age of five so his powers can change and unpredictable. You have Violet and Dash who’s powers are more developed but still growing. Violet at the highest age of develop is exploring the full potential of her power. That’s about the best representation of adoslence in a nutshell. This is one aspect the Sims fails. Toddlers show no indication of their occult abilities and developmentally that makes no sense at all. What I would want to see is that toddlers’ powers could be anything and would randomly change with a pop-up notification. The parents could try to ‘influence’ the power the toddler would later develop into one of theirs or a combination of both parents. But parents could also allow them to ‘grow to be whoever they are’ and it would be random. Children’s powers are set in stone but still cannot be used fully and they malfunction if they try to use them. While a teenager’s powers are fully developed, but you can discover more minor abilities via a skills menu.
Now after that rant about the lack of understanding of child development in a gaming company let’s go into possible lore. I think borrowing ideas from the Incredibles would be a good fit for the Sims. Superpower sims were/are part of a government program that altered their DNA, so they have superhuman powers. This is a fantastic opportunity to allow people to change regular sims into superhuman ones. This would open new careers: superhero and supervillain. I would love to see teenagers being able to be sidekicks too. That would be honestly rather awesome to have because teenagers really don’t have that many activities or jobs.
This is 100% my opinion and rather unrelated to superpowers. What kind of world would work for this kind of expansion? This is one I think would be suited to have a unique world. This may be a bit of nostalgia on my end thinking back to the glory days of comic books and the setting for the Incredibles. But having it be a more vintage type of world would be amazing. By vintage I’ll be talking a world loosely set between the 1950s to 1970s. This would suit many players to be honest and with the growing game settings you could even turn off occults. Having a world without modern transportation or background would be a game changer for historical simmers. I love the Decades challenge, but the setting of the Sims ruins it for me. It would be neat if you could change the look for the cellphones, so they look like a landline phone instead. I would just like more customization when it comes to the phone and how we can travel. It’s so immersion breaking having to use a cellphone to travel in a Decades Challenge.
This allows for a vast range of CAS and Build & Buy. Some would be connected to superhumans alone like supersuits, a secret lair, and other out there type of things that more eccentric players enjoys. But also vintage style Build & Buy, which we have some but not enough to create a diverse vintage community. We have some vintage CAS but that could always use expanding: especial for teenagers, kids and toddlers. Teenagers are okay in most cases, but also don’t feel like teenagers to me.
How would you all feel about superhuman Sims? What other new occults would you add to the game?
We’ve been seeing the same occults over and over: werewolves, vampires and witches. There have been a few new additions like mermaids, fairies, genies, ect. Nothing new has been created for the Sims 4. Though there are still a few creative options left. This is purely just my idea for a new occult type, but I'd like to elected superhuman sims for this. It's a fairly reasonable path to include superpowers. Like all occults this won’t be for all players, but I think it could be something hugely entertaining. Let me dig a little bit deeper into my ideas for such occults.
Deciding which superpowers to include becomes a very complicated process. We need to decide what the ‘core’ superpowers could be. So, let’s go with the top five superhero powers that have been around forever: flight, invisibility, shapeshifting, healing, super speed, super strength, elemental control, telekinesis, and mind control. Now, some of these are in a game in a way. Vampires have super speed and super strength so no problems there. There is that secret power that can be involved if you get struck by lightning, which is honestly amazing, so elemental control is possible but could be limiting as some aspect would require Seasons to work. Telekinesis that could get tricky with coding, but I know nothing about it so I can’t say much about hat aspect. We’ve seen flight with brooms in the past so that’s not a far stretch. Sims 4 already has mind control in some problems. The complicated one would be shapeshifting. This would be extremely tricky to code. You need limitations: like perhaps only other sims, or animals. A good limitation would be either to have them create the forms in CAS or they must copy existing sims/animals. These are just nine of them I could think of that are ‘core’ superpowers in my option.
A good inspiration for this kind of expansion, because these is way too big of a job to be a game pack, would be the Incredibles. I love this kind of movie for inspiration for the Sims for a lot of reasons. The movie features proper developmental stages of children. Where Jack-Jack is under the age of five so his powers can change and unpredictable. You have Violet and Dash who’s powers are more developed but still growing. Violet at the highest age of develop is exploring the full potential of her power. That’s about the best representation of adoslence in a nutshell. This is one aspect the Sims fails. Toddlers show no indication of their occult abilities and developmentally that makes no sense at all. What I would want to see is that toddlers’ powers could be anything and would randomly change with a pop-up notification. The parents could try to ‘influence’ the power the toddler would later develop into one of theirs or a combination of both parents. But parents could also allow them to ‘grow to be whoever they are’ and it would be random. Children’s powers are set in stone but still cannot be used fully and they malfunction if they try to use them. While a teenager’s powers are fully developed, but you can discover more minor abilities via a skills menu.
Now after that rant about the lack of understanding of child development in a gaming company let’s go into possible lore. I think borrowing ideas from the Incredibles would be a good fit for the Sims. Superpower sims were/are part of a government program that altered their DNA, so they have superhuman powers. This is a fantastic opportunity to allow people to change regular sims into superhuman ones. This would open new careers: superhero and supervillain. I would love to see teenagers being able to be sidekicks too. That would be honestly rather awesome to have because teenagers really don’t have that many activities or jobs.
This is 100% my opinion and rather unrelated to superpowers. What kind of world would work for this kind of expansion? This is one I think would be suited to have a unique world. This may be a bit of nostalgia on my end thinking back to the glory days of comic books and the setting for the Incredibles. But having it be a more vintage type of world would be amazing. By vintage I’ll be talking a world loosely set between the 1950s to 1970s. This would suit many players to be honest and with the growing game settings you could even turn off occults. Having a world without modern transportation or background would be a game changer for historical simmers. I love the Decades challenge, but the setting of the Sims ruins it for me. It would be neat if you could change the look for the cellphones, so they look like a landline phone instead. I would just like more customization when it comes to the phone and how we can travel. It’s so immersion breaking having to use a cellphone to travel in a Decades Challenge.
This allows for a vast range of CAS and Build & Buy. Some would be connected to superhumans alone like supersuits, a secret lair, and other out there type of things that more eccentric players enjoys. But also vintage style Build & Buy, which we have some but not enough to create a diverse vintage community. We have some vintage CAS but that could always use expanding: especial for teenagers, kids and toddlers. Teenagers are okay in most cases, but also don’t feel like teenagers to me.
How would you all feel about superhuman Sims? What other new occults would you add to the game?
