Personality should be the main focus of this game.
Why not make it the priority? CAS & Build in TS4 is the greatest its been in the series (imo). I love other unique features like the gallery and first person view. However, what is a life simulat...
Personalities is my biggest complaint and has been for y e a r s . I've been asking for a Serious/No Sense of Humor trait for so long...I just want a sim that is more stoic. Doesn't autonomously dance or play games on their phone or do funny interactions (or at least do it seldom).
1. I feel like Favorites are simple. It can just be a buff. If they hear their favorite music or eat their favorite food, they get happy.
2. I do believe Attraction/Chemistry would work. It doesn't have to be as in-depth as mods make it, it can be simple.
3. Linzlu made an amazing concept for an Arts & Crafts game pack a few years ago and I really like their way of integrating Interests. (Please check it out!)
4. Of course, the whims need an overhaul. I don't think they took whims seriously, just literally fleeting thoughts that pop into your Sims' head. And now they're hidden by default and haven't added any new ones for years. But just tailor them to traits and less wanting to buy a 1x1 pool or bee house. There's a mod that fixes this, so the team can too if they just spend some time on it.
5. Emotions...I feel like some emotions should be blocked, or at least take more powerful buffs to get them, by certain traits. Yes, there are reward traits that can do this, but I think some traits should do it by default. Also add a Fear Emotion.
6. Animations~! I know, it's like a meme now with the lack of diverse animations in this game. But seriously! In TS2, personality was reflected through animations! Sims would talk differently, walk differently, sit differently! We can choose walkstyles in CAS and Emotions affect animations as well, so this may be a lost hope. But it would help!
7. Okay, seriously though, Traits! The fact that we can only have 3 is pretty sad, ngl. And teens get 2. And children get 1!? So what's the personality of my Dog-Loving child? We have 4 trait categories and only 3 slots. It was once said that they start to overlap and cause issues, but clearly (since you can have many reward traits and character value traits and career traits) this isn't true. Also, I play with mods that allow you to add more traits and I don't see that as a problem. The core of the trait needs to be reworked. Compare TS3 Bookworm with TS4 Bookworm, for example. Again, yes, there are reward traits that award the same effect, but those are addons. Maybe block them from sims with conflicting traits because it's already included in their trait!
Also, Lifestyles was supposed to be a big personality game changer, wasn't it? I don't have Snowy Escape yet, but I hear nothing about this anymore. People were losing interest the more we learned about them. Do they not work like people thought?
