I have no idea where to put this thread, so if you feel it belongs in the General Discussion section, please let me know. Thanks.What is your opinion on the emotions of The Sims 4? Do you like them? Hate them? Halike them? (Like and hate them.)

I'm have mixed feelings on them, though as they are in the game now I have a mostly negative opinion on them. Basically I think they have potential and even some minor tweaking could help, but right now I think they're too fake feeling and don't add much meaningful - imo. I do like some of the subtle animation/tone changes they have in a certain emotion however.Happy is a bit too prevalent, and it boosts other positive emotions. Because of that if your sim has a negative emotion it can be easily buried under a slew of superficial happy moodlets, like nicely decorated. This also causes them to switch emotions far too fast, like jumping from sad to happy to playful in under a minute.Tying into that, emotions are influenced too easily by decor. If your sim is angry from an annoying conversation or sad about witnessing death, they shouldn't suddenly be peachy because the room they're in has a painting and a flower vase. I don't think decor should influence emotions at all unless you choose to make them do so, like items with an emotional aura. I also don't like how currently many emotions don't affect your sim enough and are instead mostly used to make building a certain skill faster, or how you're encouraged to manipulate their emotions like getting them in a required mood for work, doing an action for X amount of time while in a certain mood, etc.

Believe it or not I've never played sims 1-3 before and am only starting with sim 4 and freeplay so I might not be in the position so say anything. However I watch a lot of lps from previous games and have a general idea of what's going on. To me emotions in sims 4 is just an additional feature to the game, one of the "gimmicks" to add varieties to the gameplay. I like it, it makes the characters more intimate and the characters are what I care about most in sims games.It does sometimes get in the way when your focus in the game is more on other aspects. You don't want to add one more possible way of dying bc of extreme emotions, you don't want them to be too tense/uncomfortable to not do sth you're trying to make them do, you don't want certain interactions to not appear when your sim is "not in the mood".If you come from a sims 1-3 background I understand that those additional "inconvenience" would draw your attention more than the "good" aspects do, cuz getting used to sth. new is always hard (I personally never try to lol). But to me as a new simmer, I'm okay with it and I kinda like it since I'm not entirely bored with the game yet. XDDDDDD

I hate them. They don't even feel like real emotions, but a MMO buff system. Emotions are so unbalanced to being so happy all the time and traits don't really have an effect on them. If anything, the Sims 4 feels the most robotic to me in that all the Sims feel like the Sims 3 Into the Future Plumbot life states. Reactions being a hit and miss don't help matters too. Makes it hard to get emotionally attached to this generation of Sims. Sims act like they have short and long term memory loss. It is really depressing to watch sometimes.

I think manipulating emotions was supposed to be the replacement for meeting a sims' need bars. Not always, but many times they will take care of their own needs (remember the "smarter sims" line?), so the challenge to the player was to manipulate their emotions in order to 'level up' and unlock content. So IMO they certainly ARE a buff system and personally I am not the least bit interested in trying to put them in various emotional states for some kind of "gamey" purpose. That's not what the sims were ever about, IMO. The last time I tried to play, several months ago, the sims were doing their own thing, chatting, cooking, skilling, etc. I felt like an observer just watching their (un-amusing) chat, chat, chatting, and I really felt nothing for those sims.

I don’t think they’re done properly. I agree they do feel like buffs to reach certain goals easier, and they make all the sims clones. I already mentioned it in some threads, and plenty of people also did, but when two sims are experiencing the same emotion they’re basically clones – they have the same animations, the same whims, the same autonomous actions, the same expressions, the same everything. Emotions shouldn’t be so shallow and override traits, they should be filtered through them – a loner shouldn’t want to meet someone new or hug someone when happy; however, if they were in a happy relationship they could want to hug that particular sim. Energised shouldn’t be tied to exercising, for example an ambitious sim could want to raise a skill level; flirty shouldn’t make all sims want to perform romantic interactions with random sims unless they have such an aspiration.Also I actually believe than emotions don’t seem a revolutionising feature – as far as I’m concerned, they seem to be doable as an EP for TS3 – they’re basically categorised moodlets, where each category has its own unique animations, buffs, and interactions. TS3 also has moodlets – so they would just need categorising and adding those things, and it’d be no different to the TS4 system. TS2 sims seemed more emotional due to the memory system – they could get sad or angry even after a few days later. Sims in TS4 completely forget that something happened after the moodlet related to it disappears, and some seem to be a pure decoration – in TS3 sims sometimes performed a certain animation while having a moodlet, in TS4 it’s all depending on which emotion is active at a certain moment – e.g. if they have an inspired and angry moodlets and the value of inspired is higher, they don’t seem angry even a little bit. In TS3 I saw a townie crying because someone broke his heart, and that surely wasn’t the only moodlet they had (it’s actually not that easy to have just one moodlet in TS3, lots of things make them appear).And I think that happy shouldn’t be the default mood – it basically is, because there are to many things that can cause it – if a sim is a loner that loves outdoors, they have two happy moodlets when they’re alone outside, which means a wide smile from ear to ear almost all the time. That is not realistic. Happy should be a special emotion caused by exceptional events, like maxing out a skill, reaching a milestone in an aspiration, finding love and so on. Those examples I mentioned should give fine moodlets, so then it’s harder to make a sim feel bad, but then they would be... just fine. Not grinning all the time, but feeling fine. I’m a loner and I’m alone at this moment – and I don’t have an extremely wide smile, I just feel fine and much more comfortable than in a crowd.

Opinions on emotions? | EA Forums

Gruffsman
9 years ago
The emotions are ok ... but they need tweaking.

We need more negative emotions, more of a balance.
lapatronne
9 years ago
I do sincerely hope they add more emotions through a patch. I'm ok with the emotions but a lot of the time I ignore them, because for the most part I can get what I need to get done regardless of the mood. It does take away some realism in my opinion because as mentioned above, multiple times, sims wind up all having the same emotion and/or whims due to that emotion, when I really wish emotions were triggered less frequently and more due to their traits, and less so by their environment. Of course, if a sim dies, or ends a relationship, that should trigger emotions no doubt (which strangely....does not seem to happen all the time, in these cases) But, if the sim was heartless (evil, mean spirited, maybe noncommittal) it would affect them less. Bottom line I think they need more tweaking, and the ground states (fine vs. uncomfortable) should be present more often and emotions saved for more particular/special cases.
GabbyGirlJ
9 years ago
I think they're just a gimmicky thing and as a whole I don't care for them. I found them rather shallow, they change at the drop of a hat, and then you have those big obnoxious words telling you how your sims are "feeling," the annoying musical mood stingers (I know you can disable them, but I still think they were more of an annoyance than anything) and then there are the wacky overdone animations to go with them that make all of the sims look like a bunch of hammy silent movie actors. Added to that is the fact that there aren't many negative emotions and that the silliest things make them emotional. (Emotional over your decor? Seriously?) It's one of the things that has actually turned me off of this iteration. I always thought emotions were handled fine in previous games. I know my sim is sad, I don't need big letters telling me "SAD" next to his/her picture.

Then again, I'm not a terribly emotional person in real life. So, to have the entire focus of this game be something that I don't really care much about even in daily life is a bit of a turn-off.
runamoksims
9 years ago
Since I play a lot of homeless or rags to riches stories when I read about emotions I was truly excited. It bothered me a bit in TS3 that Sims didn't seem to show appropriate emotions for their surroundings. They reacted to living in a shack or a mansion in the same way.

I thought...finally...these guys are going to feel sad sometimes for living in a hovel......I couldn't have been more wrong. I honestly didn't expect what we got.

I really don't like so much of my screen "real estate" being taken up to tell me what my Sim is feeling. In the past all I had to do was watch my Sim's face and their thought bubbles and I knew exactly what was going on with my Sims. That other piece of real estate is that conversation panel at the top of the screen. Again if I watch my Sim I know what's going on. Did the devs think I needed this because all these years I've been clueless as to what was going on?

The emotions don't always seem appropriate to the situation and they change much too quickly. They have tweaked and added a bit to them since release but if they were going to use emotions as the main selling point why not actually use them? They didn't even add fear....but then again what is there in the game for them to be afraid of?

And death by emotions?......I can't talk about that because in over a year and a half I still haven't had one.
astridentanja
9 years ago
"PHOEBESMOM601;14863724" wrote:
Since I play a lot of homeless or rags to riches stories when I read about emotions I was truly excited. It bothered me a bit in TS3 that Sims didn't seem to show appropriate emotions for their surroundings. They reacted to living in a shack or a mansion in the same way.

I thought...finally...these guys are going to feel sad sometimes for living in a hovel......I couldn't have been more wrong. I honestly didn't expect what we got.

I really don't like so much of my screen "real estate" being taken up to tell me what my Sim is feeling. In the past all I had to do was watch my Sim's face and their thought bubbles and I knew exactly what was going on with my Sims. That other piece of real estate is that conversation panel at the top of the screen. Again if I watch my Sim I know what's going on. Did the devs think I needed this because all these years I've been clueless as to what was going on?

The emotions don't always seem appropriate to the situation and they change much too quickly. They have tweaked and added a bit to them since release but if they were going to use emotions as the main selling point why not actually use them? They didn't even add fear....but then again what is there in the game for them to be afraid of?

And death by emotions?......I can't talk about that because in over a year and a half I still haven't had one.

I prefer them to form emotions based on other things than their environment to be honest. Because people can be totally happy living in a trailer or a shack and totally unhappy living in a mansion.
Meka3211
Rising Newcomer
9 years ago
"NZsimm3r;14856613" wrote:
I enjoy the emotions but think they need a few changes.
The most pressing ones being a stack of happy moodlets over-riding a sudden death of a loved one. The grief/sad moodlet should always over-ride a stack of happy positive moodlets.... always, even if only for 4 hours. It's different if after the death the player directs the grieving sim to do specific things to reduce the sad moodlet but watching your sim smile while standing over the urn of their just-dead soul mate is wrong.
I also think a flirty sim should not flirt with just anyone if they are married and they should not get a whim to woohoo with 'someone'. The whim should have the spouses name on it.

I like the different ways sim will do things depending on their current emotions, such as eating. The sad eating animation is actually pretty cute. The stressed/tense sim that slams the fridge door always makes me jump, but that's good. I like it when my sims 'act up'.

I also like how certain emotions will give quite substantial skill boosts. A 40% skill boost for being very happy while chatting to yourself in the mirror to raise charisma skill... yep, I'll take that! Good thing is I can also ignore the moods/skills boost of I want to play a different way.

I totally agree with your post. Some tweaks are definitely needed. I'd like to see some of the other emotions such as tense, sad, angry....stick instead of being over-riden by the stack of happy moodlets. I'd also like to see my Sims react more to death and jealousy, cheating etc. If you're close enough they react, but it's still not what you'd expect for an 'emotion' driven game.
rucolasheep
9 years ago
i would like to see many things changed about emotions, the list is long
but i'll write only one thing about the inspirational mood which vexes me every time i play such sims

* inspirational emotion should be split clearly about whims
cooks shouldn't wish for gardening, writing, painting & playing instruments
painters shouldn't wish for gardening, cooking, painting & playing instruments
musicians shouldn't wish for gardening, cooking, painting & writing
writers shouldn't wish for gardening, cooking, painting & playing instruments

* gardening should be moved from inspirational to happy mood
gardeners should wish for gardening related activities
KevWalker
9 years ago
The trouble is it's all too happy, our sims live in a world where nothing bad lasts too long, there are too many "happy"buffs. My sim comes home from work angry (a rarity) but after going to the toilet everything's peachy again because of the buffs from the upgraded toilet and sink! All the little +1 buffs for basic everyday stuff should go, instead there should be negatives for not having washed or brushed teeth (except slobs) and a myriad other things that basically make the world too "happy happy" instead of having a more challenging environment. Our sims emotions should be affected by the people around them and what happens in their lives, not by looking at a painting or switching on a buff item.
Voeille
9 years ago
Our sims having happy and full lives should be a goal, not a default set-up.
valerie1795
9 years ago
I feel like they need to come up with an Emotions EP to add new emotions like jealous and afraid/scared, as well as expand on already existing emotions to make them more prominent and believable in this game. And name it Get Emotional haha
Seriously, tho