"JimG72;c-15808096" wrote:
"Zeldaboy180;c-15808059" wrote:
The traits are fine, I don't know what a couple few people are going on about, here's some backstory.
I agree. I did some testing with cheated traits and setting a family on full autonomy to see what would happen and I think the "traits don't do anything" line is nonsense too. There will always be a few complainers in every game, no matter what.
Without the full details of how someone plays the game though, it's hard to tell too much. For example, if someone is claiming traits are pointless, what are your autonomy settings? (You aren't going to see much trait impact unless you've got some level of autonomy turned on). How many people are in your household? What are their main traits and character traits? How long have you played them to come to your conclusions? Do your sims often travel to lots or mainly just stay in their house? Frankly, I've seen little more than some blanket, generic, anecdotal type statements like "The traits don't really do anything...I don't notice any difference." That is hardly the type of evidence that's going to sway anyone's opinion.
Household size of four, about three days of explicitly testing to see if the Insensitive trait would play a role, and it did occur to me to send the family to a bar (and other public lots) because I knew in the past that oftentimes when I did this, two of the siblings with low empathy would pick fights. The YA who aged up ceased to pick fights as much as before, whereas the other sibling still did so. The trait is a downgrade from the character values.
It's also not something that always needs to be tested. Some traits are forgettable by design, such as the Emotional Control and Conflict Resolution traits. They're far too niche to be used often. The only time I can picture Emotion Control's mattering is if someone in the family died and slapped all Sims with a +5 Sad moodlet for 3 days. All other instances I can just overwhelm the negative moodlets with easily acquired happiness ones until they wear off.
And in the case of Conflict resolution, a rather unfortunate problem is that culling downplays it's importance. If I have a fight with a Sim and want to repair the relationship, I can just play another household for a while and watch as culling kills their relationship while maintaining their relationship with the ghost of a bartender my Sim ordered a drink from 475 days ago. (thanks culling) I don't need this trait. Even if culling weren't a problem, options such as "Find Common Ground" are already very effective at repairing relationships. Only vampires seem to build negative relationships fast enough that they might benefit from such a thing.
The traits simply could've been better. Some do too little in terms of AI, and others do too little period based on their rather limited concepts. I mean look, I really like Vampires, but I'd be the first to confess about ~10 of those powers are very weak and meaningless. 10 out of 25 of those powers are meaningless; that's only a 60% success rate. Luckily, the 15 we do have and the 11 weaknesses are all meaningful enough that even though the system could've been better, I walk away satisfied. 15 powers and 11 weaknesses is a decent number of meaningful traits, so I'm quicker to forgive the flawed ones. Here though, we have 5 different character values, and 2 of those are heavily flawed due to being too niche. Additionally, some of the remaining traits of the other 3 groups could've been handled better. By the time you weed through all the problems, only a small fraction of the total traits are meaningful to your gameplay, and that's really disappointing to see.
The character values for children were handled wonderfully. It's just a shame most of the same improvements don't really seem to maintain themselves once you hit adulthood. Manners do fine, Responsibility is hit-and-miss, Empathy could be better, and Emotional Control/Conflict Resolution are nothing short of forgettable.
