Forum Discussion

EnkiSchmidt's avatar
4 years ago

Inconsistencies

I enjoy playing Sims 4, but something that irritates me are inconsistencies that sometimes leave me wondering whether something I encounter is a bug or by design.

Example 1: There are four (I think) public showers in the game, two from OR, one from University and one from Snowy Escape. Sims use them regardless of other sims being in the room.
However, if the same showers are placed on an off grid lot, they are no longer No Privacy. If sims have enough water to use the standard showering options, the showers function as public showers. But if the sims use the "Take quick and lukewarm" off grid shower option, then they will shoo other sims out of the room and refuse to take their shower. (All sims in th off grid scenario were adults, neither babies nor minors were present on the lot.)
I think this is a simple oversight, but I'm not 100% sure.

Example 2: My new spellcaster cast Deliriate on a bouncer, the bouncer started walking around aimlessly and my sim was able to pass through the VIP door despite not being a celeb. The second time he tried that, on the same door, but a different bouncer, the spell succeeded again, the bouncer walked around, but this time my sim wasn't able to pass through the door.
So one of these two states is apparently a glitch, but I have no idea which one.

A third example I had in mind was my university student who had to attend a three lectures for his aspiration. I went to Foxbury with him, shoved him into the building and then switched control back to his family back home. This resulted in my sim canceling his guest lecture. So for the next few days the whole family had to accompany their dad to uni. I built the kids (two toddlers) a play corner in Foxbury commons and the other dad got a bowling alley, and I also got some cute "Let's greet papa, look, there he comes!" screenshots out of the situation, so the whole episode was actually quite adorable in-story. But it wasn't ideal from a time management perspective.

The same student also never went to uni when I was playing his husband at the police station. Normally spouses employed in rabbit hole careers go to work just fine in such a scenario, but uni apparently doesn't work the same.

Once you know how things work, you can adapt, but the first time is often baffling and once again I have no idea if I was pushing the game too far by combining an active career spouse with a study-from-home spouse so that it glitched out, or if they made this intentionally for whatever reason.

So, is anybody else slightly (or majorly) peeved by inconsistencies?
  • Depends on the inconsistency, but yes. They break immersion and flow of gameplay, raise the questions you ask, and strengthen the idea that EA doesn't bother to adequately test the product before shoving it out the door. I would hate to attempt to drive a car that is as poorly engineered, built, and tested as this game is.
  • I hear you! Their idea of playtesting seems to be to check whether the main feature works as intended when the player goes through the expected motions of the most common playstyles. Whereas a proper playtester should try the strangest combinations of interactions and try his best to break the game. (Of course that appraoch requires a properly paid playtester with enough time, so there we are).
  • The ECO lifestyle vertical garden planters do not allow my Sims to complete the plant and watering levels of the Freelance Botanist Aspirations. The packs should be able to interact with each other - City living - Sims living in apartments who want to garden would use these planters, etc.