New Sims 4 Feedback Survey (Another Survey Surfaces 8/12)

Lately, we've had quite a few surveys so I really hope our feedback is being taken into account. When it comes to in-game representation, it's tricky. On one hand, it's impossible to represent everyone perfectly, but on the other, there has to be a thoughtful balance between realism and fiction. I'm personally not a fan of celebrating real-world holidays in the game, but something like SDX drops for occasions like Women's Day or Mother's Day could be a nice touch. And of course, new CAS and Build/Buy content is always welcome! That said, I believe even simple recolors of existing items could make a big difference. For example, the current range of hair colors is quite limited, and many neutral and cool skin tones just don’t look good. The masculine CAS options are also very restricted.  Build/Buy swatches often don’t match each other. I’ve noticed EA trying to incorporate versatile meshes to represent different regions, which is a great but honestly, I think more universal, basic items with a wide variety of swatches might do a better job at fulfilling representation needs. There are plenty of hairstyles that could work well across different looks and cultures, but they’re missing the color variety. 

This is a really in-depth survey with room to tackle a lot of things. I like it!

I put in my requests for more culture-based gameplay. CAS and BB are nice, but I'm more interested in having my sim actively express cultures. Jungle Adventure is the gold standard, and that was just a gamepack vacation world you rarely visit. They did culture so well there.

I also put a lot of my tokens into the masculine clothing option for question 15, which was hard because I really want more textured hair (especially ones without baby hairs attached), medical wearables and birthmarks. But I'm glad we got the option later to show that we still want some of these things. 

Do we have to retake the survey if we forgot to add something to the section asking what we would like to see in a free base game update? Like getting the option to create blank worlds. 

This is an interesting survey. It asked several good questions. I hope the sims team actually listens to the feedback. 

I am a bit disappointed that only 5 languages are welcome. What about the rest of the simmers and their opinions? Thankfully I can speak more than one language.  

Hey all,

I've had to remove several comments on this thread, this is just a reminder of the forum rules:

• Sensitive Topics: ...like sex, politics, and religion, etc. If you're not sure if a topic might be offensive or controversial, it probably is! Err on the side of caution.

Thanks!

It's too late now but it came to my mind that instead of premade events we can have a new venue that allows us to use stalls with cultural food and stuff without manual hiring the vendors. Like that everyone can make their own, custom cultural zone.

Wow.. that's... an interesting updated survey, I do hope that they take the feedback into consideration.

I was able to share why I took a break from the game or are not playing it as much anymore. There was a lot of reasons I could pick and I was able to enter details why and give suggestions what the team could do to improve it. I feel that I was able to give a pretty good detailed explanation as to why, mostly it's because the gameplay loop has become too repetitive, there have been too many rabbit hole solutions and randomized solutions. For example High School Years which had no active classes or active after school activities, or For Rent which randomized secrets that your neighbors had which I saw absolutely no point with. I feel that I am often stuck in this loop where I wake up, take care of needs, go to work or do something else on the lot, we need more group activities and gameplay.

But I could also enter more detailed explanations what I was missing when it came to content that I wanted. Cars, being able to build what I want and the frustration I have felt with the smaller lots in some worlds that we have gotten recently, how am I supposed to build a business lot on a 20x20 lot? Or an apartment on a 20x15? (the solution is to build upwards and I am terrible at doing that) and I could also rank how important I valued these things. Being able to represent myself and my community also requires larger lots and larger neighborhoods, I'm from scandinavia and we got a scandinavian world with Business & Hobbies but it's focused on either expensive business lots or harbor buildings, I really would have liked to see a neighborhood where I could have built classic nordic houses for families.

I appreciate being able to share this feedback sims team, I hope that it's taken into consideration for planning future content and games. 

This is what I put.

Why have you stopped playing, or taken a break from, The Sims 4?  

I am a new player as of this year (since L&D) and I took a several month break already and came back just before the release of EbN which really peaked my interest to return/stay. I felt the game has some flawed aspects that eventually frustrate or overshadow the rest of the game, causing me to need a break:

-Autonomy not reflecting my Sims traits and likes/dislikes. Sims constantly doing things they are suppose to dislike either by trait or by dislikes.
-Some older base game traits really do not give my Sims much character or uniqueness, making them feel boring or all the same after a while.
-Not enough toggles/customization game/pack options. Being forced to use features I'd rather skip in a gameplay can be very annoying.
-Some mods that help these aspects only help so far. As an amateur modder I can tweak/fix some aspects or use other mods but they are not official so there are issues like causing the game/households to be identified as CC or in one case I use a skill lock mod to prevent my Sims from learning certain skills I don't want them to learn, but the notices still spam that they have learned the skill when they have not. It just be better if it was official feature(s) so it work better.
-The simology UI needs a clean up, after enough packs it is just a cluttered mess, balance/luck constantly fluctuates, so simology always blinking and it is annoying.
-Being burnt out by annoyances can be exasperated by feeling ignored on the Sims 4 community forums. More transparency, less patronizing way to report bugs (when moved to feedback is very patronizing and makes one want to give up on the game for a while) and more detailed plans on what is being worked on/fixed and how long we'd have to wait would at least give a time frame instead of just taking a break and seeing if it is fixed by the time we get back.
-Also being disheartened when I see I have missed out on LE items, and knowing I can never get them. At least with Sims 3 you could just buy the gold edition for the exclusive items.

I ticked off following for the updated survey:

✅ My hardware / technical situation changed

This has probably been the biggest issue to deal with
I just feel like I'm on unstable ground constantly
as the game becomes more and more demanding of my system,
and often out of nowhere too like some packs just demand more performance than I feel they really should 😅

Sometimes I do dream of building super computer just for playing The Sims
but I have not been blessed with funds of supervillain for that 😅

✅ I do not have the time to play

Time is often eaten by my excessive perfectionism about my sim universe
and also by constant new features that require big set up like the new TOTO system or likes and dislikes or whatever
Due to which I have to go manually update all the sims in my save before I play
as I can't deal with all these auto incorrect personalities and whatnot being set on them at loading the save 😅

same goes for like having to delete the randomized sims everytime I load into my save
cause there is no turning off that constant save bloat,
just eats tiny bit of time everytime that could be used for something more fun. like fighting with Greg.

✅ I was frustrated by the number of DLCs

This kind of ties into that previous point, but also I just feel like the DLC is too frequent at times
where its like yay I finally got this new EP set up! Oh, new EP next week hope thats not tedious to set up 😅
just, yeah. as much as I love new features, wish there was less of that set up overload coming with them.

✅ I played too much and needed a break

Well, sometimes I do simply just play too much, and the limited time events kind of make it worse
cause you can't really choose to have like proper no screen month on a whim cause fomo 😅
often I just feel like I'd be so much more excited to play and would play much more
if we got like proper breaks and things were not so limited time all the time.

✅ I had too many issues with game performance / bugs / technical functions

Everytime there is save corruption
or any sort of bug thing destroying our precious saves like sims changing faces and whatnot... 
No playing for Simmingals 😅 I do not want uncontrollable sim apocalypse in my precious old save.

I took the survey.. Did they ask us more then one question about the crashing, the many bugs that often make the game unplayable? NO! It was all Diversity! The game is plenty diversified and too immoral already! I don't even play my favorite families often for fear of the game screwing them up or crashing or losing things, characters, animals... There is almost always a very long list of problems with game play, esp after updates or purchases! What does that say about your true concerns with this franchise? GREED! Profit over quality! Shame shame shame!