Features that needs depth and ways to improve
As much I like this game, there are still rooms for improvement, especially with the features that they had in the base game. If the features in the base game doesn't have depth, it will be ignored or...
Forum Discussion
"drake_mccarty;c-16031840" wrote:"agustd;c-16031066" wrote:"drake_mccarty;c-16030398" wrote:
Focusing on the 'apartment gameplay' was probably the worst decision they made for CL. After years of players asking for proper apartments they came out with something that doesn't really deliver for anyone.
Bottom line apartments should not be locked away from the player. We should be able to build them freely in any world without the insane restrictions. Most of the apartment gameplay isn't exclusive to apartments either which IMO makes the whole setup feel totally forced and unusable. This is The Sims 4 there is no excuse for failure to deliver on themes that have been done before and have been done much better.
What do you mean by "years of asking for proper apartments" ? Does that include the TS2 era as well or just from TS3 onwards?
Apartments were introduced in the final EP for The Sims 2, and regardless of what some people say today it was a real game changer for that game.
Naturally people were wanting something similar to make it's way into Sims 3, but the closest thing we got was the building shells with room markers that turned doors into 'NPC doors'. Pretty much the high rise buildings contained 1 apartment, or penthouse, but there was no functionality added that matched or exceeded what was available from 2. It was actually pretty similar to Sims 4 without the building restrictions.
So naturally Sims 4 comes along they have a minimum of ~ 5 years feedback pertaining to apartments. Sims 2 apartments were always the clear winner, and what we got in Sims 4 is so far from being even remotely similar. The ones in 4 offer the least in every aspect compared to Sims 2 and even compared to Sims 3 are missing some basic level functionality like free build. The ones in 4 are so heavily themed with exaggerated interactions and environments that are ultimately forced on the player and cannot be changed in any meaningful way.
IMO the biggest appeal to apartments (TS2) was how useful they were. I loved being able to plop 4 families into an apartment complex and see how their lives would intersect (visiting individual residences was not possible in Sims 2 except for apartment neighbors). I didn't care for them in Sims 3 because they weren't incredibly useful (only 1 unit per lot regardless of how many NPC doors you create) and were pretty much there to decorate the world. The apartments in 4 are not useful at all. There's zero control over their shape/size, some have locked in lot traits, there is only 1 'unit' per apartment as the one 'next door' is a completely different lot. The whole apartment building is limited to usually one floor, (two buildings have two floors) the max being 3 (only one building has 3 floors) and every apartment is restricted to it's assigned place in one world because they are just there to decorate the world. No thought was realistically put into their development.
When it comes to apartments, I think they can do the same thing that they did with The Sims 2. The problem now is they focused on creating High-Rise apartment rather than Townhouse apartment like the ones in The Sims 2. The only game that got High Rises apartment is The Sims 3. Since the theme is "Living in the City" they decided to go to an high-rise apartment like they did with The Sims 3 to give us a more city feel. So they had to follow the feedback from The Sims 3 apartments as they built the apartments, they probably do the same thing they did with sims 3 such as using shells. Based on the feedback they got from those apartments, people wanted npc with apartments. Since these is an high-rise apartment with a possibly similar technology like they had with the sims 3, they had to sacrifice game play over building. In my opinion, if the gameplay of these apartments had turned out to be better than sims 2, then I say its fine, but sadly its not.
Still I don't think its fair to compare High-Rise apartments with Townhouse Apartments since they both have different technologies when they are created. Especially high-rises appears to have more restriction as shown in 2 games. They are both apartments, but the way the function, created, and deliver gameplay will be going to be different in my point of view. :)
