"netney52;c-17852607" wrote:
Ok I’ll bite i’m so fed up with these thread of how ❤️❤️❤️❤️ certain simmers find the game. How do you earn $100,000 in 2 days in sims 4 as I’ve never been able to achieve it? Please tell me how easy this is to achieve as the game is so boring and easy I must be missing something. The arguments are getting boring to listen to now.
Perhaps the OP could come back and explain what they mean. As I said I also think the game is too easy, I’ll try to quickly explain to you what I mean when I say it’s unbalanced and too easy.
To me, Emotions are not an adequate enough representation of negative Consequences in the game, and from my perspective that is how the devs intended them to be (as the primary source of an in-game negative Consequence mechanic). When I say Consequences I mean the in-game mechanic that pushes back at the player during their game experience for certain actions taken (beyond one Sim cheating and another Sim being upset and divorcing them, for example).
TS2 had a system in place that offered ongoing negative Consequences. This was tied directly into Personality — the Aspiration system. The Aspiration system was directly tied into Wants/Fears. The Aspiration system was like an ongoing push and pull wherein players would see positive and negative Consequences for actions taken. This system worked on top of the fact that Sims also experienced emotions (there just was no emotion moodlets to display on the screen).
In TS4, Aspirations are semi-tied to Personality in that Sims all have to pick an Aspiration, but the Aspiration is not tied to any Wants/Fears and instead is a checklist that the player can see and complete. Sims in TS4 have no in-game mechanics that are indicating that they are aware of this Aspiration choice and thus don’t have an in-game motivating system on this level. They are motivated by the player only. Without this in-game motivator, there is no push and pull system that offers both positive and negative Consequences. For example, I have a Sim who has the Freelance Botanist Aspiration. Because there is no in-game mechanic tying her Aspiration directing to her Personality through some form of Wants/Fears system, she never shows any indication that she is aware that this is what she wants out of life. The game does not punish me if I choose not to complete any of the tiers for the Aspiration. My Sim could theoretically die a happy Sim having not fulfilled any of the goals for her supposed Lifetime Want. There are no negative Consequences for her having not fulfilled this major goal or all of the little goals along the way. There is only Neutral - not fulfilling, and Positive - fulfilling (and receiving the Perks that come along with that).
So for me, reaching happiness (an internal state of fulfillment, not a Happy moodlet) is easy because the game is not trying to offer a state of lack of fulfillment. As the player, the game is not pushing back at me.
And just to go back up to a previous idea I mentioned, I don’t view Emotions as an adequate system for Consequences because while Sims can gain negative Emotions, they’re all fleeting, as Emotions tend to be. A lack of lasting Consequences, positive or negative, means that everything is very in the moment and so as the player I don’t have to worry about one action beyond how long the gained Emotion for it will last. Maybe my Sim gets fired from their job, and they’re sad about it for a day. But there was never a mechanic in place that meant that that event will have a lasting impact on my Sim (this is also to do with a lack of Memories which is mostly beyond the scope of this explanation but does add to the overall issue).
And granted in TS2, if a Sim were to Fear being fired and then it happened, and there Aspiration meter plummeted, they could slowly make it rise again by fulfilling Wants. So this too is not long lasting depending on how a player treats the situation. But the meter itself is permanent and constantly fluctuating (and in reality you’re really playing a game of tug of war against the meter) and at the end of a Sim’s life, that meter proves that the Sim lived, and lets you know if they were fulfilled or unfulfilled. It’s not that I want to make my Sim have a miserable life. I love making my Sims happy, and that’s why the push and pull of the Aspiration meter is so fun for me. The game is working against me to make my Sims miserable, and I the player have to fight to make sure that doesn’t happen. I feel like I’m actually playing with a Simulator.
In TS4, that’s just not possible (see above regarding Aspirations tied to Personality).
Tie this into the fact that yes there are undeniably so many avenues for earning money and not enough things to spend all the money on. I personally feel like the game is unbalanced in a way that makes my Sims lives easier.
Hope this makes sense.
