Suggestion - Sims 4 - Sims with Disabilities
I honestly believe Sims 4 is the perfect environment to represent people with disabilities. There are very few major games which do so. Elements that could be put in include: Wheelchair Bound Sim...
Forum Discussion
Can I suggest an idea for an expansion packs?
I used to be a nanny for a child with special needs. We still remain in contact. I was showing her Sims 4 and she took a huge interest in it. One of the questions she asked me about the Sims 4 is..."Is it wheelchair accessible?"
The answer is decidedly, no, it really isn’t.
Here is a list of ideas in which could be used in such an expansion pack.
Ramps (as an alternative to stairs)
Wheelchairs (fitness points go to a sim who uses a manual wheelchair)
Walkers and gait trainers
AAC Devices (Alternative Augmented Communication devices. These come in various forms, tablets that have speaking by tapping on the right words. Or computers that can sit on tables, desks, floors or be mounted to a wheelchair and can be controlled by eye movement (aka Eyegaze)
Sims could have various physical disabilities such as Cerebral palsy which could have various symptoms, unable to walk (without assistance, thus the various walkers, gait trainers and wheelchairs) unable to speak (thus the AAC Devices)
This would be a great opportunity to tie in the Cats and Dogs pack. Pets could be upgraded to service animals with special training. And then they can assist the sim whether they are at work, university, on a date, or on the town.
This could also introduce animals with disabilities and we could have dogs and cats with little wheelchairs for paralyzed back legs.
There could be public buildings set up for sims to have occupational and physical therapy.
Sims with wheelchairs can join in playing basket ball, or riding their wheelchairs in skate parks.
Another condition could be that the sim is blind. I certainly think that this would make things very interesting. I used to play the game Spore and sometimes for my creatures I would not give them eyes and so I would play them that way. It certainly was interesting.
Gameplay for a blind sim would be very different. Everything could be blacked out except for a ring of light around the sim which would show immediate objects or people.
Going into build mode would be just as normal as you design the house and objects and things inside. But in live mode everything is limited until the sim nears it. Perhaps after a certain amount of time being in that area, maybe after a few days in the same area that circle of light or visibility widens as the sim gets more familiar.
Other sims around the blind sim will get more clear the more times they meet or the stronger the friendship becomes, or if they are enemies and really hate each other.
The blind sim could have a service dog that provides more visibility to the sim as well.
The service animals in both scenarios can do much more on command then with the pets. Such as bringing things to the sim, like food, or leading them through the park, city festivals, museums, to the right university building, or sniffing out caves to explore in outdoor retreat.
Anyway that was my idea. Even if none of this comes to fruition I would very much like ramps, at least, to be added to sims 4.
@ChristianOtaku As @Bluebellflora pointed out you give great feedback and as much as I would like to see more inclusion options in The Basegame I doubt if all disabilities would have a place in The Sims.
The disability and illnesses inclusion is an ongoing debat in this forum and I would like to also point you at another thread in which it is discussed: https://answers.ea.com/t5/General-Discussion-Feedback/Inclusion-Ideas-for-Sims-4/m-p/8777390/highlight/true#M23724
If there would be an Extension Pack as @SheriGR suggested I am not sure if i would buy it. It would definitely depend on a lot of factors. Wheelchairs may be yes, but other disabilities, I am not so sure I would like to play with these type of Sims.
I fully agree with the remarks that @jpkarlsen and @PugLove888 made about the rabbit holes and difficulties developers would have to incorporate such an accessibility into the game. So i wont repeat that line.
I like to play The Sims to escape from reality. So I like the fantasy lines like PugLove888 does. I can also understand fully why inclusion of all situations would help the younger players in their needs to really 'Play with Life'.
On the other hand I would also like to point out that the Sims is by no means a game about real life as we experience it. It is still a game and therefor 100% fantasy. Take for instance the interactions between 'normal' Sims and the Grim Reaper, Mermaids, Magicians, Aliens and Vampires. So all in all I doubt if such a gameplay would be feasible.
I assume this thread was aimed at the Feedback aspect of this section, perhaps in the hopes that The Sims Team would notice; but since you did get a couple of answer anyway from players, I just wanted to say that I would like such features myself in the game, whether they'd be added or not. I am guessing prosthetics in CAS wouldn't be that resource demanding for instance.
It is a bit confusing that this section of the forum are both for 'General Discussion' and 'Feedback'; since it creates some borderline threads, with initial feedback - to the developers - but with players from the forum posting and discussing. I am actually not sure if AHQ CM's have thought about what conflicts stir because of that. I'm hoping they would separate these two categories into their own sections. Then again, the reason they haven't could be of course that it isn't wrong by players to discuss the ideas of feedback.
This particular thread caused some commotion in crinrict's Gaming World, with a heated discussion, that you sadly did not get to take part of. I'm unsure if you wanted the thread to become a discussion, or to be discussed yourself.
I guess I just wanted to say that it was a good initiative, but perhaps this forum isn't organized and handled in a way for it to be recognized. I have many times seen The Sims Team, the developers responsible for different DLC packs for The Sims 4; post in discussion threads at The Sims Official Forum. So perhaps that would be a better place for you to be heard, and perhaps for more players to dare to chime in. Perhaps I will as well. 🙂@ChristianOtaku I've been doing some surveying of the various Sims worlds (for the ones I own at least- which is all of the large worlds and all of the smaller worlds except for StrangerVille) and there might be a way to make almost all of the game wheelchair accessible without EA having to completely redesign everything. Many of the common areas already have ramps for varying terrain levels rather than stairs. The more I looked the more I realized how scarce stairs are in these common areas. Like the Uptown and Fashion Districts in San Myshuno, and the Myshuno Meadows park, the Lykke Centre and Olde Platz in Windenburg, or Starlight Boulevard in Del Sol Valley, they all feature ramps in the common areas. Of course many neighborhoods in the various worlds are flat so no ramps or stairs were ever required in the first place. The only neighborhood I've seen so far that would be a problem is the UBrite campus in Britechester. The Foxbury campus had many stairs as well but if you look carefully it appears that there are alternate routing options for all of the buildings using ramps.
So that leaves the residential and commercial lots as the biggest problem. All of the public buildings like the libraries and museums currently only have stairs and no ramps at all. As an alternative to EA having to redesign every one of these lots in all of the worlds, maybe they could simply give up wheelchair-access ramps in Build/Buy and let players redesign the lots ourselves. All of the libraries and museums I checked had the stairways as part of the editable lot, meaning if we had the ramps in Build/Buy we could replace them. It might even make some fun game-play challenges on how to incorporate the ramps in the best & most functional way. It would not take long for players to upload Gallery creations for players who would like to have these features without doing all of that building. I don't think the existing elevators in San Myshuno would be a problem leaving them as they are now. If they work fine for Sims who can walk then they should be fine for wheelchairs as well. The wheelchairs themselves would still need to be added but seeing as Sims 4 already has other alternate modes of transportation, like bicycles, creating functional wheelchairs shouldn't be too much of a technical challenge. Maybe a few new door options would be nice too.
Anyhow, that's just how I look at all of this. I'm sure there are a million things I overlooked but I've been trying to be careful. I'd love to see this added to the game & I'd certainly be willing to pay for it if it was an option in a Stuff Pack.
Good luck, I hope all of this works out for you :D
