Traits Alone Can Never Represent Personality
Let's start with a hypothetical. You make a sim with the Geek, Cat Lover, and Ambitious traits. Supposedly, this is designing their personality in the Sims 4. ...Okay, but what's this sim's actual p...
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This probably can’t be added in the Sims 4 base game, so it’s an important consideration for the next generations
@Anonymous , I certainly agree that this is an important topic to consider for Sims 5 (if there is ever going to be a Sims5) and onward! I hope they take what is good from all versions of the Sims and find a way to make it work, while avoiding what didn't work for each version!
I love The Sims 4 , but I think one of its biggest negatives is how shallow the personalities are, especially in children! 😢 But even in adults the personalities can be shallow and similar.
For example, I enjoy families in my game, so I often want to give my Sims one of the Aspirations that go along with that, and I often want to give them the Family Oriented trait to go along with that. Then I might give one of the parents the neat trait (for obvious reasons) and I might give them the creative trait to make some extra income from home by painting as they take care of infants and toddlers. But then I can't give them a more fun trait to distinguish themselves like clumsy, vegetarian, good, jealous, goofball, etc. And then almost all my families end up having this kind of Sim that is Family Oriented, Neat, & Creative. I can change it up and give them other personality traits, but the ones I mentioned make for a good stay-at-home parent . This is just one example, but I find cases like this with other Sims I make. A couple other favorite traits of mine are Loves the Outdoors and Genius, but I find myself using those way too much. Certain traits I just like more than others, so I tend to use them more, but with only 3 slots, that doesn't give us a lot of choice, and I find myself having to use traits I don't like very much just for some variety. While I sometimes choose these less likable traits for stories I create, I don't always play with a story in mind, so I only like using traits like Evil when I'm making a story. When I'm just playing to relax or try out new gameplay elements, I don't like making evil Sims.
And to be honest, I found that even the 5 personality trait slots in The Sims 3 would not be enough if I was making Sims based on real people or fictional characters!😅 So only 3 traits is much more frustrating! 😓
Hoping they give us more choices or the old personality sliders for the Sims 5!@PugLove888Exactly! You stated the problems with a traits-only system. While the Sims 3's traits had more depth than those in the Sims 4, I found they were still not fundamental enough. The slider/points-system in the Sims 1 and 2 acted as a consistent rubric from which every Sim's behavior and personality were graded. Super important that the Sims 5 has this.
Traits are still important, but they should be more specific and provide extra diversity on top of what the fundamental points/sliders core personality provides.
I really hope this feedback makes its way to the Sims 5 development team.@Anonymous , yes!😀 We want Sims that have differing personalities and Sims that autonomously behave as their wants and aspirations indicate they should behave as! If in the next Sims game there is a Cooking/Foodie aspiration or trait, they should be more likely to cook , but less so for those Sims who don't have this aspiration or trait, and even less so for Sims with the Lazy trait, unless they are really hungry! The Foodie trait would be one of those specialty traits for fun and uniqueness , like the Sims 3 and Sims 4 traits, but Lazy should be on a sliding scale like in Sims 1 and Sims 2!
Aspirations also drove our Sims in TS2! I think they affected behavior in TS3, but I could be wrong.🤔 But in TS4 the Aspirations don't seem to matter as much as personality traits, as far as I can tell. I especially see this in children... If I give a child the Creative Aspiration, but not the trait, they seemed to be less likely to have gotten whims to do creative things than the children who had any of the other aspirations but had the Creative trait.😓 I haven't tested long enough with the new Wants/Fears system yet to have noticed if it is any different. I keep forgetting to test it! 😅Like you said, I hope the next rendition of the Sims takes all of this in account! 🤞
