Is The Sims too childish now? Teen & Adult players have been forgotten

I do see some features aimed towards younger simmers, but mostly they can be used in various ways. I play the game in my way, and I don't need the stuff I don't fancy, but there is still lots of features that I DO fancy. And, I always added a great deal of imagination anyway, so I can fill in the gaps quite easily. I still think TS4 is a good game, and it felt more childish with just the base game, I think.

There's nothing stopping you from putting a "secret child" in the game, or make up those story lines. I would not have used such features, because I prefer my own versions of those ;) I have lots of "secrets" in my game, which is rather silly as I am the only one who will ever know, lol.

I'm over 50 and Sims 4 is my favorite game. I've never thought that it's targeted towards children.
Oh well, I guess I'm childish, then. I suddenly feel very young. B)

If you want your game to appear less "childish", you can get some R18 mods that will allow your sims to live out some pretty messed up storylines. They're free to install if you're interested.

I have two children who play the game so I want it to remain broadly family friendly. Whether you want to make it more about affairs and teen angst is up to the way people want to play it. I don't want the game to exclude younger players. Also, bear in mind that ever since Sims 1 it has had a fairly wide age appeal.

I'm 40, my daughter is 13, neither of us feels it's too childish a game. It's a matter of personal taste, I guess. The game is 12+/Teen, which means it needs to stay relatively clean to fit the rating. But I will never understand why clean should equal childish.
The emotion system could do with an overhaul and have more consequences but that's a whole different conversation.

Kids will always convince their parents to buy the game no matter the rating anyway.

This is a bad argument for anything.

We wouldn't be having this conversation if EA didn't disagree with my suggestion for flamethrowers.

To be fair, they haven't put in much of any story line in, drama or happy.

There's a bit of something there going on with Johnny Zest and the Landgraabs (secret adult child?) and the Pancakes have some issues and weirdness going on with them. It's not as much or as clear cut as past games, but they've included a tiny bit. I can't remember the name of the family, but I think there's one that came with Get Together that has a suspicious death tied to it.

I agree with OP.

I don't think that "for children" means "childish" though. If we remember TS1, it had strippers. It was easier to die, you had more control, the needs were harder to maintain and there was higher risk of a fire, higher risk of drowning, of being electrocuted, etc etc. TS4 is very much an utopia sort of simulator where everyone's happy all the time, there is no drama, there are no scancalds, there is barely any lore, sims don't have deep background stories. That's what I think of when I think of "for children". Everything is easier and the game lacks depth, because children (and I'm generalizing now) don't care about reading up on backstories or investigating scandals and hidden secrets of families.

It also ties into details, because details means more work. TS2 had personality points, horoscopes and turn-offs and turn-ons. TS3 had favorites (favorite food, color, music). These are the things that would make TS4 feel more "adult" for me, because there are more details and more things for the player to control. It's the simplification of gameplay and game mechanics that makes TS4 seem more "for children".

When I say I'd prefer it to be a bit more "adult" I don't mean that I want to install 18+ mods with violence and s*xual content. I just mean I want more depth. Bring me some actual challenge, I don't want a life simulator to be "perfect" where everyone gets what they want and I have to actively make an effort to create and pretend that my sims have drama in their lives, because that's not an actual life simulator. TS4 is an utopia simulator with no challenge, no risks, no drama, no mess, no hardships, and you barely have to put in any effort to succeed.

That's my personal opinion and argument of why TS4 is "for children" rather "for adults".

There are a ton of plot hooks if you bother to look. Yes, it may be up to the player to actually do anything with them (and a lot of the families don't have the right relationship levels indicated by their writeups, but that's not a ratings issue) but they are there.

There's also a bit of lore in the descriptions of several items in the Buy catalog. Maybe not as much as previous games, but it is there.

I mean, I personally think they could get a bit darker without violating their rating code, but I understand why they don't. And honestly it's easier to take the game darker than intended than take a dark game and lighten it up without going to parody levels of melodrama.

I'm 51 years old and I have found sims 4 to be catering for the 'woke' younger people and does not cater for us older ones who just want to play a game without PC being rammed down our throats.
I have not played it for about three/four weeks now and do not miss it as I got bored with it.
There is no fun in the game anymore if you just like to play normally and not get too into it.
It's supposed to be a fun game but I don't see the fun in it anymore. It needs more to be a little more adult if it really cares for it's players who have played sims since sims 1 but it's all about money so I doubt us oldies are even considered now.