3 years ago

New infant update rant

Hi all! I thought I'd share my thoughts on the patch and it's gonna be a fairly emotional rant, so if you don't like this, just move along please! 🙂

First things first, I've been playing with these infants for 3 hours now and that was more than enough to cover all the new features, consideing there's little to no of them.

1. No changing tables. Diapers are all over the floor and with broken routing, it takes my sims forever to clean them up. The tables I've seen and that are gonna be in New dlc are literally using old base game texture, so paywalling them makes absolutely no sense apart from milking the players.

2. No skills. You can't teach an infant anything at all. They're just gonna crawl around and * you off with their uselessness.

3. Childhood is now too long. All childhood stages combined are now 48 days long (normal life span) and ya and adult stages make just 57 days. This means that your sims will have to start having babies almost right away, if you want them to see their kids get married and have children of their own before they die. It was already hard to play generational households but now it's gonna be almost impossible. And even though I'm a huge family player, I can't say I'm happy with all that.

4. This sinister money making move is simply infuriating. I'm sure I'm not the only who can't or simply won't buy the new dlc, and so we're now stuck with an absolutely pointless life stage that doesn't make the game fun and is actually more of a nuisance.

5. All infant clothes are just toddlers' clothes. Hairstyles are even more laughable.

Basically, without buying a pack you're forced to play with this less independent version of a toddler, which has absolutely no new gameplay value. I don't know about anyone else but I'll now have to either skip the newborn or infant stage, cause I fail to see reason to play all three early childhood stages through. Honestly, at this point EA should've just put this life stage in a new dlc altogether and not give us these insulting scraps.

Thanks to those, who made it till the end and sorry if it was a bit too heated!

P.S. I'm sure some people will say that I could've just not updated but unfortunately it's not an option on Steam, even though I turnt off auto updates everywhere. It won't let you play unless the game is updated first and it won't launch the game with no internet connection (no idea why).

Edit: typos, grammar, spelling etc

gameplay issue

22 Replies

PipMenace
Hero
3 years ago
~~Hmm... that math means they're certainly unlikely to see teenage grandchildren, doesn't it? And both they and their kids will have to hurry to see any grandkids.~~
Don't forget college is at least 3 weeks - the way I play it, usually 4. So if you enroll as soon as you start the game, go all in at 4 classes per semester, and get pregnant the same day as your college graduation...21 days of college + 3 days pregnancy and you have a baby on your birthday to become an adult. Your teen still has 13 days left as a teen when you become an elder; elder life stage is apparently around 14 days, so you'll probably see your first kid become an adult but no guarantee.
Edit: Or is this not updated yet? I though it was since they had the infants in the chart, but it looks like the note about expanded life stages is still from high school. I'm going to hope it's just not updated yet and that 57 days as young adult and adult are from the pre-infant numbers.
~~https://sims.fandom.com/wiki/Life_stage~~
It wasn't updated.
Edit 2: The new math
2 days as a baby + 5 as infant + 7 as toddler + 14 as child + 21 as teen = 49 days
28 as young adult + 42 as adult = 70 days
~15 as elder
So now, if you can have 21 days of college, wait 3 days to find a partner/settle, 3 days pregnancy and your first child is still born before you age up.
Then that child will still have 6 days left as a teen when the first Sim becomes an elder, and you'll probably see them become an adult. So you can't have your Sim go to college AND their child go to college and still see grandkids while the first Sim is alive, but at least there's a little more wiggle room. Plenty of time if you don't play with college... or turn aging off while they're in college which I should probably just start doing.
Leaving college out - let's say you play a Sim week before having a kid. Then 3 days pregnancy, then baby, infant, toddler, child... you become an adult 4 days into the child stage... teen, young adult. Your Sim still has 11 days left before becoming an elder. Even if the kid also waits a week before deciding to have a baby, the first grand kid would be born the day before they become an elder. You may not see them become a child though.
Focusing on family gameplay and having young adults get pregnant within a few days of becoming young adult? Grandparent will see their first grandkid become a teen.
pingvinskin
3 years ago
~~In normal lifespan, it's the kids, who have 13 days but teens have a whole *ss 21... Plus 3 early childhood stages, so yeah ☹️. It's like in the link you sent.~~ Sorry, got it that you meant that teens are left with those days at a certain point of a parent's aging!
I haven't heard about any plans on updating the life stages tbh. And I don't understand why we can't just get an age slide bar like in ts3.
mightyspritesims
Legend
3 years ago
Can infants not be aged up to toddler early with the cake?
pingvinskin
3 years ago
Yes, they can be, which I said I will have to do from now on. It's just I'm sick and tired of thinking of workarounds to make the game enjoyable.
frogcandles
Rising Vanguard
3 years ago
100% agree.
I do plan on getting the expansion, because I'm a legacy player, but if I wasn't I honestly don't see how infants would differ from the ~~objects~~ babies in game aside from having more customization and the ability to be picked up. I didn't expect everything from the pack to be in base game, nor should it, but the fact that base game doesn't even get something as basic as a changing table is absurd.
PipMenace
Hero
3 years ago
@pingvinskin I could have sworn I saw it in the patch notes, though I can’t find it now. But found the updated lengths! Thankfully we can redo our math.
https://simscommunity.info/2023/03/15/the-sims-4-life-span-update-sim-age/
pingvinskin
3 years ago
@PipMenace That's great they're adding a few more days to adult life stage but like you said in an earlier comment, we'll have to focus on family right away 😬.
PugLove888
Hero (Retired)
3 years ago
@pingvinskin in regards to diapers and baby bottles left on the floor, just use the cursor which converts to a hand tool , and take care of them yourself! 😀 This is honestly one of my favorite features from The Sims 4, and is something we greatly needed in Sims 1, Sims2, and Sims 3!
( In Sims 2 there were always bottle of milk (and special Smart Milk) everywhere, and it was impossible for the player to take care of it! We would have given anything to have this feature then! 😅 )
PipMenace
Hero
3 years ago
@pingvinskin But they added 13 days to adult life stages and only 5 to childhood life stages. So they’ve actually improved the ratio.
pingvinskin
3 years ago
I know I can do that but I like my sims doing their stuff on their own 🙂. I rarely use that function, unless I'm completely overwhelmed. The routing still needs to be fixed cause it isn't just with cleaning up diapers that it makes it longer, but also with washing up, washing their hands etc