Bring Whims back please
Wants and fears are not gonna be ok for me. I was so used to whims! Turning them off wouldn't be right for me, I just am connected to whims. Maybe make an option button to enable and disable whims an...
Forum Discussion
Yesterday I found fears for the first time. Other players have terrible experiences with fears overwhelming sims. I have no idea why they are essentially non-existant in my game. But I saw fears next to my whims for the first time. At first I didnt know what it was until I read the tooltip. I had to complete a whim to talk about fears. What a pointless limitation.
I would be ok with fears as they add something to the character but in its current form, besides the bugs, its useless and detrimental to our gaming experience.
@Zasz_Zerg there are only a handful of fears in the base game. The main ones being Fear of Death, Fear of unfulfilled dreams, and Fear of Dead end job.
Fear of Death seem to only trigger when you have aging on and it randomly shows up as time passes. I have a game were I do all aging manually with cakes and I have NEVER gotten this fear in this save.
Fear of unfulfilled dreams seem to trigger when you have not completed an asperation goal or want for a few in game days. If you constantly take care of wants this fear seem to be non existent.
Fear of Dead end job is actually super easy to avoid. Just quit. No seriously I have a sim who makes all his money of painting and licensed music and he never gets this fear.
I think this whole system is paper thin. I doesn't seem like much effort was put in to this revamp at all. At that point they simply undid any work or improvements they made to whims over the years.
And today the unfulfilled dreams fear is annoying me. Three sims have it and they only get whims they cant fullfill. We used to be able to dismiss whims and get new ones. And there used to be three instead of just two. Now my sims are stuck with that fear and the only way to adress it is blocked.
For example I need to talk about fears but to enable to conversation option my sim needs to either plant something or live in a dirty environment. Dirty stuff isnt a thing on this lot so planting something is an option. I dont want another plant because there already is a big garden. I planted four oversized crops and none counted for the whim.
'facepalms'
Just get rid of fears, reinstall the old system until someone invents a system that makes sense and is actually fun. This currently isnt.
I think today will be my last day playing for a while. In one of my main households I got Fear of Dead end job every day between three sims. Then Fear or unfulfilled goals started to jump in and like I said earlier you can only conquer one at a time. My return how routine now consists of wasting several hours cheering my sim up just to attempt regain passion. After todays play session I am more tired then relaxed. The worst part of this is I don't even see anything to suggest that this super borked up system is even on Maxis radar. After the Growing Pains fix there social media went back to business as usual trying to push the new expansion on people.
When you load a lot go to gameplay settings and disable wants & fears. It will re-enable itself after traveling but at least for awhile you dont have to suffer with this crap.
The 'fear of death' is applicable only when 'aging is turned on' or elderly as others have mentioned, isn't true for me. I've received this for two different YA sims. The first received it when aging was turned on and set to 'normal,' and the second received it when it was turned off for active households. (two different sims both times, and the second wasn't in the household until aging was turned off).
The unfulfilled dreams thing is easy to avoid if you do a few wants occasionally, but it's frequent enough that it can impede a storied-gameplay. Sometimes I don't want my sims friends with someone or to call someone or to keep listening to two to six different music stations. I've actually been telling my sims to dislike stations because having more than one music 'like' means you get a bunch of 'listen to ____' wants. The fact 'Listen to' only lets you select the currently played station makes this more frustrating. There shouldn't be a 3-click to accomplish this (change station to->[music genre], click stereo again, listen to->[playing music genre]), when a 2-click could work (click stereo->listen to [music genre]) it's bad UX.
Fear of dead-end job isn't easy to avoid. It occurs in situations and on a frequency that doesn't make any sense. Freelance careers should be exempt, as well as sims who have reached the 'max promotion' (I realize you can get raises, but you're already at the top. focus on something else - if this were real life, I'd switch companies but the sims only has 'one company'). Quitting doesn't seem to be a great option, especially if it goes against the story you have for your sims. Plus the issue of the 'wants and fears' not turning off, as other users have mentioned and I've commented on in other threads.
Additionally, I think all of this could be less annoying if the interactions weren't sometimes buried so deep that it made them difficult to find. Interactions relevant to wants and/or holidays, aspirations, or whatever currently relevant situation, should be the first thing in the pie menu. The fact wedding stories makes all the wedding interactions the first thing in the pie menu adds another layer of frustration to this broken system, in particular when you already have an officiant, etc., and they remain persistent.
I'm not sure what is up with the UX, but I dare say, give that team more funding/support to do their best job. This is what creates animosity between users and software. Bugs are bad, they can be fixed, but poorly implemented features kill. It just wastes developer time, your time, and our time.
