How intelligent do you want Sims to be?

I don´t know what they were talking about "smarter sims", but the sims in sims 4 are incredibly dumb. It´s a miracle they survive taking a shower as it requires doing two things at once, breathing and showering.

Ideally, I want sims to surprise me with their behavior. But not surprise me only because they did something that was bizarre or silly. I'd like them to surprise me in the kind of way that real people surprise me. That I'm not quite sure what they're going to do, but I might have some idea based on their personality and history. The sims as they are in this game are, imo, too predictable and narrow in their behavior, and there's little to no illusion of intelligence to speak of. I guess that's probably why I prefer to play with autonomy off on the selected household sim. When I play with it on, I feel like I'm constantly trying to herd them away from doing things that are mindless or silly.

But maybe more importantly, I just want sims actions to feel like they are leading somewhere. Nobody has a visible "Fulfillment" need, for example, which makes them like hollow creatures. They know to Sleep, but they don't have any need to yearn, to imagine, to help others, to be a part of something, etc. Apart from the extremely general Social and Fun, all the non-physical needs are nowhere to be found, or might be found in some capacity in mood buffs that don't lead much of anywhere. As a reflection of real life, this makes it hard to relate to them as characters and learn and feel from the stories that result.

Some will disagree, I know. Some find other ways to get story out of this and I have tried the "projecting onto sims" thing. It's interesting, but I don't have much creative energy for it by the time I'm opening up a game to play.

And I will say, to the credit of the sims team, there are clearly some on it who have listened to various problems about this and have tried to do something about it over the years, and it shows. I'm just not sure the core of the game is where it needs to be and that makes it difficult for surface improvements to be very noticeable overall.

I think I hit yes by mistake.

It depends on what you mean by smarter. If you mean smarter as in adding new skills for sims to learn, No. As it is, I would love to stop my sims from learning comedy and mischief skills. All of my sims maxing out almost all skills is boring and unrealistic. I want my sims to be individuals and I would like to be able to choose what skills they learn and when.

If you mean smarter as in more autonomous, No. what's the point in the game if the sims do everything themselves.

If you mean Smarter as in having the common sense to not stand in a fire, tamper with electronics, or cook without appropriate skills, Yes.

It all depends on what you mean by smarter.

Little bit smarter....Just not more intelligent than me.
They're getting real close though, because I'm beginning to find it incredibly hard to understand them these days... :#

My sims... Are only partially able to meet their needs reliably? On one hand, I understand them going into the red sometimes. It happens and has always happened. That is not my problem.

My problem is that they nap on their assigned bed until I tell them to sleep properly, they drink water and grab quick meals when they are hungry and someone else is cooking, sims with no skill randomly make bar drinks, they constantly flock to certain kitchen appliances (coffee maker, ice cream maker, popcorn popper, etc.), for some reason I cannot keep them from bringing the Murphy bed down even if they do not plan to nap on it (it doubles as a sofa in front of a TV, but they never sit there unless told for some reason), no one autonomously likes to feed the small pets from my experience, they wash dishes in the bathroom (I have sort of accepted this, but still), I have had some really odd pathing issues with cooking and eating if you have multiple kitchens, they do not have a system to move laundry/dishes/trash/anything into their inventory and out to navigate ladders with them (it makes ladders barely viable in my builds), and the list goes on.

This is not even including lackluster personalities (traits, turn ons, preferences, interests, you name it), missing emotions, and an almost irrelevant whim and aspiration system. Even if we get more aspirations, they barely affect whims and we rarely get new aspiration rewards to buy with satisfaction.

I dare say the smarter than ever sims claim flopped.

Dear little vegetarian Sims,

This is meat. This is not meat. Do not eat the meat!

Whoops, wrong topic.

"Calico45;c-17732997" wrote:
they do not have a system to move laundry/dishes/trash/anything into their inventory and out to navigate ladders with them (it makes ladders barely viable in my builds)

Sims 3 sims were way smarter than this and they do not need to put anything in their inventory as they climb the ladder with one hand and the other holding trash bag, plate of food or even cats, It seems that Maxis developed sims in Sims 4 to be a total opposite of the word "Smarter Sims" as they heavily advertised back then.

https://www.mediafire.com/convkey/170d/0u4yvwrjaho4pn7zg.jpg

As long as those braindead creatures...

- walk all the way to the downstairs bathroom to prepare food on the counter there instead of using the perfectly good one in the kitchen,
- stop on the way to the toilet to complain about how seriously they need to pee, dropping the solution to their problem out of their queue in the process,
- are vegetarians, but autonomously decide to get meaty leftovers when vegetarian alternatives are available,
- are vampires burning in the sun, but ignore your direct order to run inside in favour of finishing their current idle animation,
- claim they can't use the fridge because another sim is currently taking something out, despite being far enough away from it that the other sim will be done by the time they get there,
- claim they can't go somewhere despite absolutely nothing being the way,
- casually chat with someone they just had a physical fight with (although the new sentiments system might correct that behaviour somewhat),
- don't react to anything around them that doesn't specifically affect them,

... and do some other insanely stupid things on a regular basis that just won't come to my mind right now, I'm not sure why the other two poll options are even there. The "smarter sims" claim didn't just flop, it was the biggest lie in the history of The Sims.

"izecson;c-17733010" wrote:

"Calico45;c-17732997" wrote:
they do not have a system to move laundry/dishes/trash/anything into their inventory and out to navigate ladders with them (it makes ladders barely viable in my builds)

Sims 3 sims were way smarter than this and they do not need to put anything in their inventory as they climb the ladder with one hand and the other holding trash bag, plate of food or even cats, It seems that Maxis developed sims in Sims 4 to be a total opposite of the word "Smarter Sims" as they heavily advertised back then.

https://www.mediafire.com/convkey/170d/0u4yvwrjaho4pn7zg.jpg

That is what upsets me so much about it. The autonomy worked in Sims 3 and they could still randomly die and do a million other things. What happened? (I do appreciate the less restricted furniture placement and things like double beds still being usable for two sims against the wall, not that I trust it to try and use it, but just the last few patches broke some of my stairs in EA builds like the Ward Den.)

I never realized how bad the problem was until I played TS2. TS2 Sims have great AI. It seems that every update/patch we get, the dumber my Sims get as well.

The AI Sims have needs to be massively overhauled. I hate the graphics, quite basic Sims, and time anomalies of TS2, but in every other regard, it is miles better.