Lack of Long-term gameplay in TS4

"@Cinebar;c-17559725" wrote:

"CAPTAIN_NXR7;c-17559721" wrote:

"@Cinebar;c-17559713" wrote:

"CAPTAIN_NXR7;c-17559707" wrote:

"@Cinebar;c-17559703" wrote:
I'm a rotational player and always have been. I can tell anyone all these Sims are the very same. It doesn't matter if they added ten more trait slots they would still all react, think and be the same. I'm not one to finish nor complete aspirations anymore, did that in TS2 for a time but then decided no, I play my way, they will dance to my tune and the beat of my drum. I don't need a long time aspiration goal what I need is differences and diversity in reactions, consequences, nuances, conversations, memories, depth to their personalities, reasons why they care or don't care. Then it would be worth it to build ten different Sims and play them in a world and rotate between them. But if they are all going to like the stereo, all like the TV, all like the pc, all like basketball, all like whatever, or all get uncomfortable no matter the circumstances and or all want to hug somebody then there is no point in me playing at all. The problems to me is the Sim personality. Do they ever get nervous? Scared? hate anyone? remember anyone? remember Summer Holiday just insulted them yesterday? No, they know nothing. Know they are married? No they will flirt with anyone. Just pixels people dress up and scream oh look, I'm so diverse.

Exactly. There is Aesthetic Diversity. No Personality Diversity.

This game doesn't even have a proper graveyard. It is so shallow I have no idea why people keep buying it when they have three other games that meet the life simulation definitions. This one is the DLC game, more for less content, and look over here at the new shiny....and then throw it down and demand more DLC.

I never understood the absence of cemeteries from the moment ghosts where Introduced. It’s a basegame element that should have been there from the start.
If there are baby bassinets, there should be mausoleums.

Sims should START someplace and END UP someplace.

As a player I want to know where the urn of the deceased sims went. Keep all the ectoplasms organized.

It is probably too late for most players to realise this game isn't a life simulator. We all keep hoping it will be one, one day, but if you look at it we see the devs don't even claim it is one. They say it's a story teller, and so if someone wants to delete a Sim or grab one from the gallery and plop it into a household they can...that isn't a life simulator, it's a story teller. Probably why there aren't any lots to bury the dead since we can just add and subtract with a click. Even as a story teller game where you would just pose and use an object to create a scene (Anyone remember the game, Movies?) and or cause a reaction so you can take a screen shot, it is a poor one since the social worker isn't even a Sim.

I could go on forever, but I have said all this for six years, hoping they get the point and go back to building life simulators. What kind of life simulator doesn't even have cars, what world of reality is that? Or graveyards, or a representation of a person as a Social worker, or consequences for the choices, or death from illness and or diseases, and or choices people make in real life as which gender they will date and marry, or where there is no crime that results in jail time, or where evilSim is good and goodSim is evil, it's a Utopia, that doesn't exist and TS4 doesn't even do that very well, either.

The sims as a storytelling tool is great, but to sacrifice the (life) Simulator aspect for it is -in my opinion- poor design.
I Personally don’t think simulation has to be über realistic. The Sims is famous for its quirkiness. But at the moment it does simulate very little, except for basic human movement, eating, sleeping, using the Jax, weather, school, hobby and career options.

The Sim’s emotions are caricatures of that emotion, too dramatic for my taste, and they ultimately have no meaningful consequences.

These poor sims really, really, really have no clue. I actually feel sorry for them.

I was looking at some of the game mechanics today and I was reminded about the fact that, outside of the set rules of a particular mechanism, the interaction between two sims is utterly nonsensical:

My sim sits in his room. He rings his friend. As he is talking to the friend, she happens to spawn at his door.
There is no phone in her hand. She is not talking to him. She knocks on his door (give us a proper doorbell please) and stands there idle until he finishes the phone call with HER. I clearly heard a voice at the other end of the line, even if the girl at his door has her mouth shut during that conversation. She just looks around in that confused manner as if she just spawned into existence. Oh I forgot. She did.

He invites her in. When he meets her she reacts in a way as if they didn’t even have a phone conversation. Her manner is indifferent, she then turns on the tv and breaks the damn thing.

The interaction between them that HE experienced did in no way exist to HER, even if they were both at the same location!

This is where I really have a problem with TS4. My immersion is constantly shattered to bits because of these flaws.

As far as I can remember, in TS3 this problem did not occur. When two sims had a phone conversation in two separate locations, I could move my camera back and forth and see both of them with a phone in their hand, chatting to one another. If my sim rang another sim, I could move my camera to that sim and HEAR the phone ring. They would usually pick up the phone to engage in the conversation.
Someone correct me if I’m wrong. I recall being quite impressed by this.

The reason it doesn’t work that way In TS4 is because the World mechanics do not support this behavior.

Location means nothing to sims.
Sims mean nothing to sims.