Please do something with The Sims

"mcorral;d-935146" wrote:
Hi,

I’ve been playing The Sims for a long time since The Sims 2. I think it is the game I’ve played the longest time. I love, The Sims, but I’m sad watching the game getting into the direction it is taking. It’s not improving, but getting worse.

I don’t post in these forums much, I really don’t know about the sales of the company. I just chat with friends who like playing The Sims and I think that I’m not alone with this kind of frustration with The Sims.

I will not make a vent post. No. I’m a positive person and I’ll try to give my humble opinion and try to give EA feedback and some things I would change.

Each version of the game had something unique that made it special in its way. TS2 had lots of actions and depth in each activity that made you discover something new each day. TS3 had an open world where you felt like part of a whole. Everything was alive in the world, every sim was progressing or doing things by themselves throughout the world. You could sit in your couch and think: “where is my friend now? What is he/she doing?”. I could take my bike and have a ride to the mountains, watching the scenery, have a sandwich in a park, fish in the pond, run across a friend on the street and go with him/her to a coffee and chat. You could recolour and place different patterns on every object. You could have generations and generations of your family, everything was connected in some way. Everything was alive in that very instant.

TS4 has good graphics and runs smoother. Just that. I don’t feel part of anything. It’s just me inside my lot. I can go to another lot and it’s me again in another lot with the same people showing up but I go to another lot and again it’s me with different people. Everything is lot-driven. There is nothing outside, just the lot. Nothing is connected. I don’t feel part of anything, it’s just me in a lot. I play a story in that lot and when I get out of it it’s gone, erased. It’s like it never happened.

Loading screens is not the problem for me. It’s ok to have loading screens if that makes the game runs better. The problem is that everything outside the lot you are in is dead and does not exist until you go somewhere else. There is no continuity in your actions.

I think EA also keeps doing the wrong choices about Expansions, packs and stuff. It is good to have different activities like going to a Jungle Adventure, for example, but once you’ve done that, you will probably won’t do that again. People keep asking over and over and over for a sandbox game, not a goal-driven game, or one-adventure game. We need more daily things to do.

I need more reactions to some situations, more specific personalities that define my sim behavior, not just some cosmetic traits that do not affect the sim much. I would like that traits were much more important in my sim life. I would like that my sim behaved differently according to the situation and other sims. For example: the way I speak to my boss should be different that the way I speak to my father.

I want to do some cooking and discover that I don’t have some ingredient and have to go to the grocery to buy it, not magically get it by opening the fridge. I would like to go to a store and buy the clothes I will wear, not just have them free. When I want to go to a lot, I need my sim at least go to the door of my house so I think: he’s leaving the house to go to the lot, not just see my sim in the couch and then in the gym. It’s not realistic, it’s just something weird which breaks continuity. If I had an argument with a friend or with my partner, I would like to have a feeling about that, not just go home and smile like nothing happened.

Nightclubs. I love nightclubs, but these are boring. I miss a mirrorball, some other effects like fog. I miss different kind of Nightclubs: posh places with disco music, old garages or warehouses with techno music, etc., each of them having different actions, styles, activities, music. I would like to be able to create new styles of music and feed them with my own music. That’s a sandbox.

Killing a NPC sim has become, at least for me, almost impossible. I tried to play an evil vampire who invited people into his castle and kill them. I tried to kill six different sims and after a sim-week they were still alive even with no food. No robberies, no evil jobs, no sarcasm in some actions. Everything is so pure and perfect that, in my opinion, is so childish. Sometimes I like to play a real life, with the good and the bad things a real life has to offer: getting robbed, be cheated by my partner, get insulted, fell on the floor, have an accident, or whatever. That’s life, not just a child tale in a Walt Disney cartoon.

Decorations are not my type as well. ¿Pink trees? ¿Trees with no leaves but some kind of green big ball up? It’s like a Walt Disney cartoon or a fantasy world. What about the city? That’s not a city.

Customization is very limited. People like me who are control freak and like to have control of everything and customize everything, don’t have the chance to change many things. Everything is so driven by the codification, so fixed, so stiff. Some worlds are so small that it’s impossible to customize to your liking because there is no room to make changes. You can’t even change trees, roads, the orientation of a lot, not even the size of the lot. Why not letting people change some aspects of the world with some prefixed patterns? Playing the game is very frustrating for me: I can’t do this because it is not allowed, I can’t do that because of the coding, I can’t place this here because there is a restriction, I can’t… I can’t…. This is not an open game. This is not a sandbox game.

Some of these changes are possible because modders are doing incredible things improving the game. Why EA doesn’t do anything at all? Shame on you!

Then, there is the empty packs and the poor base game problem. I know that the base game can’t have all we want. Companies should make money. Ok. I think the solution is, as always, a mid approach. We can get a base game with a little bit of everything, just a little bit, and then an EP taking that little bit and developing it for a whole and complete experience. For example, a base game with some kind of weather: rain, wind, snow, etc., but without much implications. After that EA could release a Seasons EP developing in more depth all the features and aspects of that, illnesses, control over the temperature and seasons, activities depending on the weather, etc. The same with Pets. We could have two different pets in the base game (cats and dogs) and in an EP we could see a complete experience with much more activities with pets, more different pets, vet job and vet clinic, and everything we can imagine. EA could make a better EP because they would have more time to develop the ideas and make the experience more complete because part of the work had already done in the base game.

I know it is almost impossible to release something that everyone would like. There will always be someone who does not like this and that, but what people is asking, demanding and shouting desperately is a sandbox game. And instead of that, EA is going to the opposite direction. Why?

I bought all the EP and many of the packs hoping the game would get better, but it is not. I love The Sims, and I really, really hate to see this game getting into this direction. I’m trying to like it, really, trying hard, but there are so many things that I don’t like that the game is not appealing much to me anymore.

This is a desperate call to EA. Please, do something about it. You can’t leave The Sims like this.

Thank you for reading me.

PD: Sorry for my mistakes. English is not my first language.

WOW a great post and HMMMM I'm thinking a lot about what you said. I do empathize with what you are saying in general, there are some things I would like to comment on.

Quote "TS3 had an open world where you felt like part of a whole. Everything was alive in the world, every sim was progressing or doing things by themselves throughout the world. You could sit in your couch and think: “where is my friend now? What is he/she doing?”. I could take my bike and have a ride to the mountains, watching the scenery, have a sandwich in a park, fish in the pond, run across a friend on the street and go with him/her to a coffee and chat. You could recolour and place different patterns on every object."

I did love the open World of the Sims 3 but for me being an older person and having issues with dizziness I found all the zooming in and out necessary to move my Sim around in the Sims 3 tiresome and effected me so much I could not play for very long. I know those who are young will probably not find this problem so I understand why many liked the Sims 3 so much and it wasn't that I didnt like it I just found it hard to play on my health. I loved all the design that the Sims 3 brought the customization it was a wonderful thing. I loved all that the fishing and gardening brought to the Sims 3. I loved the bikes the vehicles and being able to jog all the way to town or anywhere.

Quote "TS4 has good graphics and runs smoother. Just that. I don’t feel part of anything. It’s just me inside my lot. I can go to another lot and it’s me again in another lot with the same people showing up but I go to another lot and again it’s me with different people. Everything is lot-driven. There is nothing outside, just the lot. Nothing is connected. I don’t feel part of anything, it’s just me in a lot. I play a story in that lot and when I get out of it it’s gone, erased. It’s like it never happened."

I am not sure what you mean by everything is lot driven. I find loads to do on community lots and with all the interactions and new things I find plenty to boost my Sims aspirations and gain skills. It is not easy to make friends in the Sims 4 but going to community lots and getting skills like "mentor" is a big boost to finding friendships.

Quote "I need more reactions to some situations, more specific personalities that define my sim behavior, not just some cosmetic traits that do not affect the sim much." "If I had an argument with a friend or with my partner, I would like to have a feeling about that, not just go home and smile like nothing happened.

I have to agree that mood of Sims in the Sims 4 is controlled much by what they do so even if they get angry it may not register if they have other good moodlets to put it behind those good ones. So you may not see the effects of that particular moodlet.

Quote "I want to do some cooking and discover that I don’t have some ingredient and have to go to the grocery to buy it, not magically get it by opening the fridge"

I am not sure what you mean by this but personally I like the challenge of finding an ingredient for a recipe but for those who don't want to going to a shop to buy it is an alternative. But I think some things need to be a challenge in a game. Not everything but we need goals to make it interesting.

Quote "Killing a NPC sim has become, at least for me, almost impossible"

Oh wow, I like to preserve the life of my Sims and although I know many want to kill of some of them that is not my kind of game but I do understand. I am sure that death in the Sims 4 is quite possible I have seen so many fires now but not wanting my Sims to die have done things to put out the fire. I have never tried to kill off an NPC not in any of my previous Sims 1 2 or 3!

Quote "Nightclubs. I love nightclubs, but these are boring"

Personally I find the dancing fun at nightclubs. Admittedly there isn't much more to do there except make friends and have a drink at the but what more do you expect from a nightclub? Am I missing something here? There are plenty of fun things like dart boards etc to add more interest if you want it.

Quote "Decorations are not my type as well. ¿Pink trees? ¿Trees with no leaves but some kind of green big ball up? It’s like a Walt Disney cartoon or a fantasy world. What about the city? That’s not a city."

We had money trees in the Sims 3 they were very colourful! The Sims is not suppose to be real life, it is a game. And although it is a life simulation I am sure many play it to fulfill fantasies that perhaps real life doesn't bring. Isn't that why we play games to escape from the pressures of real life? If this game was to become real life I wouldn't want to play it. I like the fact there are things in the game that we would not find in real life! Personally I like the look of the Sims in the Sims 4, more so than in the Sims 3. City Living was one of my favourite EP's it gave us so much in content, and I don't think you can fault the game on it's looks. Maybe on the amount of content given overall; but most of us being players of previous Sim games we have become critics and sometimes much too critical; and when the game has improved so much I feel that credit needs to be given where it is due.

Personally I think with all the packs that are being brought out the Sims 4 it has got much better. That is not saying I like everything that has been done, but I don't think the game is as bad as you make it sound. I didn't like it much when it first came out (base game), but I have come back after a very long break installed new packs and having fun again. I guess a game is what you make it and how you play it and what you want from it.

I am looking forward to the new Jungle Adventure and for you to say that quote "once you’ve done that, you will probably won’t do that again" I cannot understand you here, isn't that what the Sims is? Does your Sim household's not continue to get skills over and over, do they not get friends over and over, do they not play the same careers over and over. It is a game that is repetitive but its charm is that you play it to achieve different things in the game. That is the nature of the Sims, you play every household to do the similar things over and over to achieve their goal, make a story or whatever you are trying to achieve in the game.

I am sorry you are disappointed with the Sims 4 and I am in some respects but I am trying my best to continue and support the Sims and have some fun with it. Maybe it's the way I play and not putting too many expectations on the game and just enjoying it for what it is.