Make-yourself-simulator vs dollhouse simulator

"Magnezone;c-17452726" wrote:

"LiELF;c-17452709" wrote:
Of course they can. It's called personal preference. It's entirely in the perspective of the player and their gameplay needs. It's like arguing which is better... Coke or Pepsi, PC or Mac, McDonald's or Burger King... no one is "right".

I also like the Sims 4 worlds much better than Sims 3's and even Sims 2, which is my favorite iteration. I'd prefer some of them weren't as small, but I definitely like having a large variety of environments to choose from and the freedom to jump easily between them. And aesthetically I like them a whole lot more than the others.

As for functionality, they do fall flat where lots cannot be changed or moved and there is no environmental tool. I want nothing more than to bulldoze all of the playgrounds and cookout sites. So that was a very bad design choice, in my opinion. But even so, I still like Sims 4 worlds better in general.

Functionality is what he's arguing though. He's arguing the worlds function better, not that they're prettier. They are - I agree. But they don't function better by any given metric, even if you call it a "preference".

Edit: also, im not talking about the base worlds. I.e. strangetown vs sunset valley vs oasis springs. I'm talking about worlds as a concept, as a function.

I see where you're coming from, but preference is still a very big factor and functionality remains debatable. If someone isn't a builder and doesn't care at all about that aspect of the game, then moving lots and changing the world environment isn't going to mean anything to them. So it does actually come down to what the player wants from the world and from the game.

Without mods, Sims 3's worlds kind of lock the player into them. You can't move a household to another world without losing something or having consequences. There are worlds that can be visited, sure, but if you're the kind of player who likes to change environments, move Sims around, or colonize and have Sims living in different regions or settings, it can actually feel very limiting, no matter the size.

When I played Sims 2, I had Sims living in various worlds yet they were able to still meet and interact on community lots and I could switch what cities and towns they lived in. Community lots were always thriving, the same in Sims 4. When I played Sims 3, my nightclub had hardly any Sims in it, which defeated the purpose of using it. Community lots were very sparse (when they weren't rabbit hole buildings, which I can't stand.) The large world was also very cumbersome and twitchy to me and it was harder for me to do things quickly or keep track of locations and Sims in the world. The world mechanics didn't seem very streamlined to me at all. Sims 3 worlds are also known for routing problems and crashing.

I think Sims 3 had potential to have better worlds, but the execution turned out poor and some functions were taken away from Sims 2 in exchange for others. Just as Sims 4 sacrificed functions from Sims 3 for its own function.

And therein lies the real problem: Maxis removed features from previous games in order to offer new ones; rather than working on a system that only expanded on what we had. The series should never have had anything removed to begin with or people wouldn't need to be debating which features are better (or more functional) in what game.