How are you feeling about the sims 4 and its current state ?

Overall, I'm pretty bored with it. Once I realized that all sims basically have the same personality and act the same, it took most of the fun out of it for me. The enhancements they have tried to add to the game have not been enough--this isn't something they can fix with an update (such as likes/preferences, whims, etc), this is code deeply written into the base game itself that they would have to overhaul. They're not going to do that.

EA needs to hit pause on releasing new packs (I think CAS kits are fine as they are just glorified CC) and spend a year integrating cross pack functionality and expanding on some the packs features that they have forgotten about.

Clubs are one of the most used feature and EA has abandoned it. I have to use a mod to expand club activities to use the other packs.
Wants & Fears need to be pulled from all packs.
Lifestyles need to be expanded.
Fame needs to be looked at in terms of the other careers. My All Star athlete should be as famous as the actress sim, but he's not.
Simstagram and Social Bunny need to be linked like how Instagram and Facebook are linked.
Social Bunny needs expansion with more posts/emotions. Why can't we post about pets??
More afterschool activities based on the packs ie. Research and Debate Club, Robotics Club (granted this can be remedied using the club system, but you need a mod to expand the activities).
Please for the love of ***** can we copy and paste makeup between outfits!
This is all I can think of at the top of my head but there's just so much more!

They also need to fix bugs. I avoid restaurants because they don't work well.

The amount of bugs in the patch are the most I've ever seen with the sims. Saying that, out of the blue, after this patch my game performance shot up. I have one lot in particular that is very crowded and spinning the camera used to cause the framerate to drop, that's not happening now ... which I'm very pleased with. Mixed feelings, the bugs are horrible, but I love whatever they did the settle down the frame rate on crowded lots.

I’m hoping that my main save isn’t broken, and I have so much anxiety waiting for a chance to check on my merfolk.

I’ve been enjoying the game, but I desperately need a major update for my merfolk. When I saw merfolk, I was so hopeful for underwater activities and a lot of similar content to the sims 3 merfolk. I got so little for my mermen and mermaids with Island Living and refuse to buy a sequel because of how they didn’t deliver on the minimum I expected.

I don’t think a new game will reassure me or improve my opinion about the franchise.

If they leave the Sims 4 in its current bugged and unfinished state, how do I know they won’t do the same thing in a Sims 5?

Regardless of what anyone says, Island Living is an unfinished pack as long merfolk content remains as is. I will not. I repeat, will not, buy a Sims 5 and will be very upset with the franchise if Island Living never gets a refresh that improves merfolk gameplay before a sequel.

That’s my criticism thus far. The initial update did not break my save, but the patches that came later clearly did break my save.

For merfolk, I want to see the moon affect them more because the moon is literally one of the most important things to the ocean.

We literally wouldn’t have tides without it and marine life have behaviors that revolve around the moon. The moon and ocean are extremely interconnected.

Occult players AND realism players should want to see the moon play a bigger role in Island Living. It’s that significant to the ocean.

I want merfolk to have a power system similar to vampires and spellcasters.

There is some division between people in the mermaiding community about sirens and merfolk, but I don’t think of merfolk as equivalents to Sirens. In fact the show about mermaids called Sirens is black listed as a show I will never watch because of poor title choice that demonstrates a massive of lack of merfolk mythology research, in my opinion.

As far as I’m concerned, sirens are half-bird in mythology, not half-fish… It’s clear that the siren lullaby is the Sims playing on pop culture mythology and displays significant ignorance.

Merfolk shouldn’t be objects of romance, but without seasons and the emphasis on sirens, the merfolk from Island Living are just that, romantic objects.

The songs Sirens sing in mythology, regardless of how they look, is a song that emphasizes on one’s deepest desires… That’s what they thought of merfolk in Island Living… they are like romantic objects, or objects of desire, that sing to the listener their deepest desire to lure them into the sea for a non-lethal attempt at drowning humans… They sing SIREN lullabies… Have the mermaid’s KISS that raises romance without fail…

The only two abilities that aren’t siren related and might actually be true merfolk abilities are the Summon Ocean Threat and Aquatic Lure. Changing the Weather is gated behind the Seasons expansion pack, but that would also be a true merfolk power.

Not saying I don’t want merfolk to have siren abilities either. True Sirens and True Merfolk are closely connected, and merfolk do have the natural talent with singing and music in mythology to perfectly mimic the siren song… Just, please, please recognize that SIRENS and MERFOLK are not the same mythical creatures.

They call the gender neutral plural merFOLK occult, female exclusively merMAIDS, in CAS which is a gendered mistake that completely ignores the existence of the male exclusively merMEN.

That’s my criticism so far.

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What I Would Like to See

I want to see an ability system for merfolk that focuses on the innate musical and singing talent of merfolk, changing the weather, changing emotions, interactions with marine life…

I want merfolk to have an interaction with dive buoys in shallow water. Just saying snorkeling is a taboo subject is a cheap excuse for not creating a unique interaction. Please let merfolk do something with those buoys without joining the marine biologist career…

Diving into deep water shouldn’t be a rabbit hole… I want to go underwater with my merfolk.

I want my merfolk to be able to live underwater… I want underwater residential lots similar to how Spellcasters, Vampires, and Werewolves have their own Worlds with lots they can live on.

I want to see what my sims see in the beach cave…

I want more activities my merfolk can do without leaving the water. I want them to be able to do more as merfolk, mermen and mermaids. Please make it so my merfolk can choose to spend less time in their human form. And give me, the player, more to do with them in their merfolk forms.

I want merfolk children to have a merman or mermaid form.

I want time to speed up when merfolk sleep in the water.

I want more socials about merfolk.

I want merfolk to have their own bassinet.

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What I Enjoy

I do enjoy playing with merfolk. I love the ability to change the weather and enjoy the small details from other packs… Like a cat’s reaction to a merman or mermaid.

I love that they don’t die from dehydration.

I love how merfolk seem to always know where they can swim and routinely seek those places out.

I love when merfolk sink underwater while sleeping in the water.

I love the interactions with dolphins.

I love the socials like “ask if mermaid” and “Share Mermaid Discovery”

I love the odd job that involves looking for proof of merfolk.

I love the Island Festivals.

I love the Sea Turtles.

I love the dolphins.

I love the quirks involving Children of the Ocean and fish.

I love how merfolk can talk to fish.

I love how merfolk have face masks from the spa day refresh, and I love how the full moon decreases the rate merfolk lose hydration.

I do think they are making progress with improving merfolk gameplay.

I love playing my merfolk more than I hate anything I’m upset with… I’m sure I’ll be up all night thinking about new things I love about merfolk gameplay.

I just feel like they didn’t quite figure out occults until Vampires and Spellcasters… they should have revisited merfolk and aliens a long time ago.

I've been playing offline since the pre-HSY patch.

I'm feeling very disappointed right now, having been quite excited for wants & fears and making aspec sims and then it the patch was so notoriously bugged. I can't tell if it's still broken or if people are, shall we say, complaining about things that I wouldn't.

"mightysprite;c-18164913" wrote:

"Simmerville;c-18164902" wrote:

Examples might be "NPC (who you actually never met) is doing push ups in your hood while being in a bad mood, should she dislike exercising?".

This one was a bug that was fixed a couple of months after it started happening
You can fix it by updating your game unless there is something else going on.

It went away but then came back. I don't mind though, because I actually like it.

"Logisitcs;c-18165386" wrote:
Clubs are one of the most used feature and EA has abandoned it. I have to use a mod to expand club activities to use the other packs.

What do you mean? I don't have GT but I've seen people's videos where Cheer and Football are activities and boba/thrift is a venue option and stuff.

Just reinstalled after a break, so far so good. I haven't bought any new packs, but will as soon as the build a bundle works for me. Looking forward to playing Werewolves and High School Years.

I'm just strangely tired as of late

like I be excited to open the game with all these ideas but then i play like 30 min and feel like aight nap time :sleepy:

well partly cause i haven't been taking good care of my flesh prison this summer and sitting in one place makes me lethargic

but also kinda feels like the constant simming is catching up on my poor brain running out of memory space like ive got too many tabs open and they're all playing HD full volume on top of each other

times i wish there was such thing as brain reset

also the bugginess and lagginess and broken things in the game doesn't exactly make me more excited to play ya know

I'm really disappointed and the whole mess has been quite detrimental for my mental health to be honest. I miss my game as a means to relax and now I'm constantly reading the forums and bug reports instead...

My main save is still not playable due to aging issues (short lifespan backup, but the ages are just calculated totally wrong...) I'm currently waiting in the hope that there will be a fix, but I fear that there won't.

I hate that the lifespans have been changed and I hate even more that noboby really explains why. Especially why the heck they shorten short lifespan, wtf?!

I was actually excited for HSY but since I can't even play my old legacy right now and HSY is still full of bugs and won't be able to get in anytime soon.

And I'm quite disappointed that the Neighborhood Stories feature takes so long to grow. I actually like it but it does not make sense that Sims still can't get married and form families of their own. So it basically only works for two generations, but afterwards all kids will remain in the same household and grow old together without families of their own, so this kinda sucks...

I create mods and I normally I enjoy doing that, but right now I do not feel a lot of motivation. It feels super stupid to test mods in a totally buggy game and care for quality while EA apparently doesn't and to give my work away for free while people still spend loads of money for bugs... :(

I admit I took a little break from the game. I intended to start again a short while back, but after reading about how broken the game is currently, I'm afraid to start up my game, which I unwisely updated. What's this about overuse use of phones, as if we already do not have enough to deal with sims and their obsessions with certain objects. Why was this not limited to the new pack, and limited to teens only? What about a patch that moderates all these obsessions? Though I haven't seen wants and fears for myself, I worry it will just be another thing I'd want to keep turned off, the way I already had for lifestyles. Features that presume to tell me who my sims should be, but ultimately it just leads to my sims having to deal with more negative moodlets. It seems to be a recurrent issue that new features, which should be enhancing the game, become a hindrance and an annoyance instead. I really hope every new thing that is added now come with the ability to toggle off. So far I've managed to play with autonomy on and without mods. But if I keep getting bombarded with unwanted changes, I might just have to.

@flauschtrud I sympathize. I play a game on my Laptop called Stellaris. I can’t play that game without mods, and I’ve been there with an unplayable game when it gets updated. I know what it feels like to have broken mods in a game you love.

However,

I will say that there are mods for merfolk in the Sims 4 that I would absolutely use, but I also know that it’s not possible for me to use any mods in the sims.

I do not play the sims on the pc. I play it on the PlayStation 4.

In spite of all the chaos on the forums, my game never bugged after this update. It started bugging after they patched the update.

I think it’s great you create mods, and I understand the desire to create quality works. However, I don’t think it’s wrong for EA to make available to Console Players things that are exclusive to people who mod their game.

I think EA does care about quality, and I think this update did not have as many bugs as it appears in the forums.

Again, I play on the console and can’t use mods even if I want to. I did not have my sims experience the auto-aging bug. I haven’t had incest wants. I had a very good initial experience with the update.

The only inappropriate romances I’ve had came from my inability to change the relationships between existing sims after forgetting to set those relationships up when I started a new save. Not because of an update that came from EA…

But, romance between certain family members on a family tree has always been possible. The game doesn’t recognize cousins once removed and great-grand parents as family. Even if I can easily trace their lineage and confirm that they are closely related, I can have certain cousins perform romance interactions with each other.

This problem starts once you reach the 3rd generation. I’ll have to share a family tree later for clarity.

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The bugs I’ve encountered so far after the patch include extreme Lag and getting sent to the Main Menu when I save the game.

My current main save has lasted the longest so far. I’ve had it survive more updates than players that use mods.

Again, I play a different game that is heavily reliant on mods. It will probably take a little while for mods to get updated, but that’s just the harsh reality of using mods… You have to wait for mod updates too.