Please do something with The Sims

"Erpe;c-16335372" wrote:

"DragonCat159;c-16335318" wrote:
@Erpe though I think it's pretty reasonable to believe that lack of sandbox also took as a factor for having veteran players putting the game back on the shelf or never to play, and it still is a popular complaint up to now. Frustration happens when you realize what customization you loved doing isn't possible: to change/add/remove the layout of lots, to build or change apartments/skyrises. It's one of the reasons, along with what I agree on you: lack of challenges is what driven the game to be and remain shittier.

I don’t even really know what people mean when they say “lack of sandbox” because to me “sandbox” just means “without goals or challenges”? I can understand that this is what simmers maybe want if they mainly just want to build, decorate and dress up sims and just want them to act on their own a little before they make the next house and a family for that house too. But it is just not at all what I need myself!

Sandbox is a metaphor, from I understand, to sculpting and building castles to however your heart contents. In other ways to put it: Your imagination is the only limit. I don't see as a contradiction to challenges, but it's not necessarily strictly tied with a restriction to complete goals. A sandbox doesn't deliberately exclude challenges, and it actually can hold weight with challenges in it. I don't see how challenges stop it from being defined a sandbox.

Minecraft is a great example of a sandbox, yet it still has challenges If and whenever a player chooses to play survival mode rather creative, which adds the character the player is controlling with a health/hp bar and hostile mobs (also know as monsters) to defend themselves from what the objective to mode lives up implies: to survive. It even proves that a game can carry both aspects well simultaneously without each other conflicting: You have a game (regarding the survival mode only) that carries challenges, and yet it still is open-ended game without any explicit goal, so it's up to player to make up and create their own goal, equivalently to how a simmer after creating a sim can bring any story, any house home, a town, a career, a family for their pixelate person that they're aren't limited to what the game directs them to do. Sure there are boses, but the game doesn't stressed on defeating that big monster so you can ignore that objective all together or just continue doing whatever the player want after defeating the dragon/wither. You can build, create, destroy, change anything, but of course you have to work for those things to obtain necessary tools and equipment (which is what I call a challenge), but that doesn't mean it makes it no longer a sandbox. It's the technical and restrictions that crosses out the sandbox term from the list. If the player had their sim work out through grinding or any other obstacles to gain the ability to build skyscrapers from the very ground off from the very scratch, now that's a different and I would without arguing consider being a sandbox aspect.

However, The Sims 4 fails to provide any of that. It isn't a challenging game, nor a sandbox. There are little intentionally implement risk (not talking about buggy gameplay that brings forth overstacking happy fatal moodlets) for your sims to die from, there are no in-depth/expanded/dynamic tools for builders that are begging for those to build with and word creating tools are absent.

To keep it short:
* When simmers are asking for challenges, I think they are referring to the difficulty and trials their sims have to face through their lifes.
* When simmers are asking for sandbox, I think they are referring to tools themselves wish to be handed to, from the developers, to be able to manipulate the lifes of their sims in versatile means and/or build complex and more unique buildings/houses/facilities/etc.

P.S. Sorry for my bad english.