Do you find the Sims 4 challenging?

"Stormkeep;c-16931245" wrote:
Entertaining and fun...absolutely, but challenging...not even remotely.

TS2 could be quite challenging, but in TS4 it is actually difficult to not be filthy rich before the end of even generation 1and everything that can kill your sims gives you the opportunity to avoid or counter it relatively easily (particularly in comparison to past sims games). Random "bad stuff" is also nearly non-existent in TS4 and where it does exist is, again, relatively easy to either avoid or counter.

I honestly cannot recall the last time there was any occurrence in my TS4 game that felt even a tiny bit challenging, which is why I voted never. The closest would probably be when my household had 3 toddlers and a baby at the same time...but that wasn't really challenging...just sometimes frantic. lol
The lack of built-in challenge is just a compelling reason to play following any of the many challenge rule-sets though. Choosing to follow a challenge rule set adds challenge to the game that doesn't exist by default.

I think perhaps, this is a good thing though. Sims players play for a variety of reasons and there's a whole cross-section of the community that doesn't particularly want the game to be challenging. They want to tell their own stories, not have the game block their attempts by inserting challenge that doesn't fit the stories they are trying to tell. For players who do want inherent challenge, challenge-rulesets can be used to provide what they want.

I'd like more challenging play, but with game play so that Sims can prevent or mitigate incidents by their actions. For example, if we ever got natural disasters in the game (floods, power outages and such) there should be a way to minimize them; an upgraded pump in the basement to keep flooding to a minimum, or backup batteries (especially if we get solar or wind power) to lessen the impact of power outages (maybe not enough power to run the computer or TV, but enough to keep the lights and refrigerator running). In Sims 3 we had the meteor strikes but there was enough warning to get your Sim under cover if need be, and Sims could make a lot of Simoleons afterward when cleaning up the pieces especially the giant meteor.