Let's Find Those Trait Improvements

"mightysprite;c-17843291" wrote:
This is so interesting you guys. We had traits before that affected less on their own, leaving more to the imagination. So some of us imagined our goofballs like sweet clowns, while others imagined them more like pranksters or something else. (My first Sims 4 sim was a goofball because he wanted to be a professional comedian-- I imagined the "goof" like "always has to make a joke out of everything.")

For my sims there's some overlap, and the Mean/Goofball combination are definitely the pranksters in the bunch!

"mightysprite;c-17843291" wrote:
Some of us imagined our neat sims like calm tidiers who gently remove whatever does not bring them joy, while others imagined them more obsessive.

Then the traits get overhauled, or just tweaked, and the gameplay got more detailed, and less is up to our imagination. For some of us, the detail matched what was in our imagination already. For others, it went against how we imagined those characters.

I don't have a "good" or "bad" judgment to make here. I just think it shows the tension between gameplay driven by game mechanics, and gameplay driven by imagination in a sandbox. There's a balance between the two in this game and we really notice when the balance changes.

For my part, I don't like that sims have absolutely no situational awareness. My goofball detective sure loves telling inappropriate jokes, but he should have more brains than to autonomously tell his superior fake bad news. Or the Renegades at college, they can only so often prank their professors, there's a limit to what their patron can smooth over with money. That's not imagination, that's just common sense. If a sim slips once, okay, we aren't perfect, and them get in trouble is exactly storyhook one wants when selecting these traits. The increased autonomy for mean / mischief interactions, however, seems to make the sims look like caricatures (haven't patched, so can only judge from hearsay).

That's why I wish we could turn off autonomy from conversations, too. Players who like their sims act independant could thus enjoy it to the fullest, while those of us who are more concerned over our babies staying in-character could have that, too.