Downsides of The Sims 4 Building
The Sims 4 is commonly touted by players to have the best building tools - easy and intuitive design, relatively fast game performance, etc. However, I have discovered that The Sims 4 Buy/Build Mode has its own drawbacks compared to previous Sims titles.
Foundation Tool. Some people love the new foundation tool that comes with The Sims 4, because you can now raise/lower the foundation easily, even after you have all the rooms and furniture in place. Personally, I am perfectly happy with The Sims 3's foundation tool. Sure, you do have to plan ahead before you build your own house, but the result is, I can achieve the same effect - different foundation heights. Even more so, I can carve out a foundation-based basement. The Sims 3 is the only game in the franchise to allow the ability to have 2 different kinds of basements - one kind is very similar to TS2-style foundation-basements and the other kind (the tomb-basement kind) is carried over to TS4's basement tool. You may argue that TS3 is less convenient to use, but I'd say it's more versatile because in TS3 and TS2, you can build walk-out basements and cliffside homes much more easily.
Auto Wallpapering. Some people love the automatic wallpapering on TS4 walls. It's very convenient, I get it. The Sims 3 also has this function, but even more so, you can place the walls individually. This can come in handy if you want siding on the exterior walls with the little vertical border wherever you want it, whereas the Sims 4 automatically assigns the vertical border, giving you no options to customize the placement of the vertical border even if you place the siding wall pattern individually.
Terrain Textures. If you have ever played TS2 on high graphics settings or TS3 on Advanced Rendering, then you can see very detailed and realistic terrain textures. Though, TS2 looks gorgeous even on medium settings because the high-resolution terrain textures will just blur to create a more smooth look, while TS3 without any advanced rendering looks hideous and unrealistic. The Sims 4 Terrain Textures look too smooth, hand-painted and unrealistic. But, I suppose this is just a personal preference kind of thing.
All Walls Of One Story Will Be The Same Height. The Sims 4 does offer a convenient way to change the wall height, but all the walls of one story will be the same height. Sometimes, I just want one building on the lot to have a different wall height than another building. I can do that with The Sims 2 and 3's constrainFloorElevation tool.
No Create-A-Style. Some people may complain that The Sims 3's Create-A-Style takes a long time to load up all the patterns, but that doesn't seem to affect my game that much probably because (1) I only own 5 expansion packs and 1 stuff pack (Seasons, Pets, World Adventures, Generations, Late Night, High-End Loft Stuff) and (2) there are online tutorials aimed at improving game performance in The Sims 3 and I followed that and that just seemed to help with dragging the new Create-A-Style pattern onto some other article of clothing or object. When I decorate a house, I want all the woods to match up. There are a lot of matching woods in The Sims 2, because that game tends to have light wood, medium wood and dark wood as common wood textures. The Sims 3 explodes in the number of wood textures.
Fixed Neighborhood Screen. In The Sims 2, you have to place the lot near the road and make sure that it snaps. This is a base game feature, and the base game was published in 2004. In The Sims 3, you can align the lot to the road if you want or you can make the lot in the middle of the woods and away from society. Have a misanthrope in your The Sims 3 game? Well, just place a lot far away from town, and live off the land! You can arrange the lots however you want in the world, and on top of that, EA has released Create-A-World so you can design your own custom world that is compatible for your game because you can't download others due to compatibility issues.
No Pond Tool. You can use the pool tool to create pools and disguise them to look like ponds, but then you can't fish out of them. You can use the debug fishing pond, but then you can't swim out of them. In The Sims 3, you can create a pond that is deep enough for both fishing and swimming!
No CAS Bypass. In The Sims 2, you can create a brand-new empty neighborhood and just build your lots. To stop the Pleasantview Townies from generating, you have to disable the N001 file by adding .bak extension to it. You can also remove the secret subneighborhood folders and place them in a different location on your computer to stop the subneighborhood Townies from generating. In The Sims 3, you can create a new save file and just go to Edit Town immediately, before selecting or creating a family. Create-A-World also has a mini or light version of the Sims 3 game in which you can just build your own world. In The Sims 4, you have to go through the whole CAS page, create a family, delete that family and then start building. It makes sense if you are trying to make The Sims 4 an online social game, but as a personal stand-alone game, it's extremely annoying for people who just want to build and create their own worlds.
All in all, The Sims 4 has made great improvements to building houses, but there are also some drawbacks with the way The Sims 4 is set up.
In my opinion, I think The Sims 3 is a super upgrade to The Sims 2, giving players so many options - options that The Sims 4 can never do - neighborhood-wide customization, advanced lot placement, no CAS screen every time you create a new save file, the pond tool for fishing and swimming and more versatile foundations. But then, the Sims 4 has a lot of good clutter objects for detailing and furnishing.
I disagree with the sentiment that The Sims 4 is absolutely better/superior in building than earlier Sims games. It is better in some aspects, but it is also worse in others.
Foundation Tool. Some people love the new foundation tool that comes with The Sims 4, because you can now raise/lower the foundation easily, even after you have all the rooms and furniture in place. Personally, I am perfectly happy with The Sims 3's foundation tool. Sure, you do have to plan ahead before you build your own house, but the result is, I can achieve the same effect - different foundation heights. Even more so, I can carve out a foundation-based basement. The Sims 3 is the only game in the franchise to allow the ability to have 2 different kinds of basements - one kind is very similar to TS2-style foundation-basements and the other kind (the tomb-basement kind) is carried over to TS4's basement tool. You may argue that TS3 is less convenient to use, but I'd say it's more versatile because in TS3 and TS2, you can build walk-out basements and cliffside homes much more easily.
Auto Wallpapering. Some people love the automatic wallpapering on TS4 walls. It's very convenient, I get it. The Sims 3 also has this function, but even more so, you can place the walls individually. This can come in handy if you want siding on the exterior walls with the little vertical border wherever you want it, whereas the Sims 4 automatically assigns the vertical border, giving you no options to customize the placement of the vertical border even if you place the siding wall pattern individually.
Terrain Textures. If you have ever played TS2 on high graphics settings or TS3 on Advanced Rendering, then you can see very detailed and realistic terrain textures. Though, TS2 looks gorgeous even on medium settings because the high-resolution terrain textures will just blur to create a more smooth look, while TS3 without any advanced rendering looks hideous and unrealistic. The Sims 4 Terrain Textures look too smooth, hand-painted and unrealistic. But, I suppose this is just a personal preference kind of thing.
All Walls Of One Story Will Be The Same Height. The Sims 4 does offer a convenient way to change the wall height, but all the walls of one story will be the same height. Sometimes, I just want one building on the lot to have a different wall height than another building. I can do that with The Sims 2 and 3's constrainFloorElevation tool.
No Create-A-Style. Some people may complain that The Sims 3's Create-A-Style takes a long time to load up all the patterns, but that doesn't seem to affect my game that much probably because (1) I only own 5 expansion packs and 1 stuff pack (Seasons, Pets, World Adventures, Generations, Late Night, High-End Loft Stuff) and (2) there are online tutorials aimed at improving game performance in The Sims 3 and I followed that and that just seemed to help with dragging the new Create-A-Style pattern onto some other article of clothing or object. When I decorate a house, I want all the woods to match up. There are a lot of matching woods in The Sims 2, because that game tends to have light wood, medium wood and dark wood as common wood textures. The Sims 3 explodes in the number of wood textures.
Fixed Neighborhood Screen. In The Sims 2, you have to place the lot near the road and make sure that it snaps. This is a base game feature, and the base game was published in 2004. In The Sims 3, you can align the lot to the road if you want or you can make the lot in the middle of the woods and away from society. Have a misanthrope in your The Sims 3 game? Well, just place a lot far away from town, and live off the land! You can arrange the lots however you want in the world, and on top of that, EA has released Create-A-World so you can design your own custom world that is compatible for your game because you can't download others due to compatibility issues.
No Pond Tool. You can use the pool tool to create pools and disguise them to look like ponds, but then you can't fish out of them. You can use the debug fishing pond, but then you can't swim out of them. In The Sims 3, you can create a pond that is deep enough for both fishing and swimming!
No CAS Bypass. In The Sims 2, you can create a brand-new empty neighborhood and just build your lots. To stop the Pleasantview Townies from generating, you have to disable the N001 file by adding .bak extension to it. You can also remove the secret subneighborhood folders and place them in a different location on your computer to stop the subneighborhood Townies from generating. In The Sims 3, you can create a new save file and just go to Edit Town immediately, before selecting or creating a family. Create-A-World also has a mini or light version of the Sims 3 game in which you can just build your own world. In The Sims 4, you have to go through the whole CAS page, create a family, delete that family and then start building. It makes sense if you are trying to make The Sims 4 an online social game, but as a personal stand-alone game, it's extremely annoying for people who just want to build and create their own worlds.
All in all, The Sims 4 has made great improvements to building houses, but there are also some drawbacks with the way The Sims 4 is set up.
In my opinion, I think The Sims 3 is a super upgrade to The Sims 2, giving players so many options - options that The Sims 4 can never do - neighborhood-wide customization, advanced lot placement, no CAS screen every time you create a new save file, the pond tool for fishing and swimming and more versatile foundations. But then, the Sims 4 has a lot of good clutter objects for detailing and furnishing.
I disagree with the sentiment that The Sims 4 is absolutely better/superior in building than earlier Sims games. It is better in some aspects, but it is also worse in others.
