"Beardedgeek;c-17669403" wrote:
The absolute biggest problems to me are not the technical limitations self-imposed by the developers when they picked a sub-optimal engine (again, I absolutely believe them when they say many things we want are very very hard to fix or do, but it is their FAULT because they chose an engine not suitable to create Sims in). The biggest problems are not the bugs, or the musical chairs or whatever.
The biggest problem is the absolute paper thin personality system. The perks are basically pointless, the emotions are as fickle as a leaf in the wind and there are nothing but the perks to actually define a personality.
"This sim is unflirty and a loner. That means it takes a whole day to go from 0 relationship points to marriage instead of half a day like other Sims". Seriously, there are NO meaningful traits, period. Exept maybe Vegetarian because it can actually force your Sim to throw up. So that's actually the trait with the most jarring consequences.
Combined with the absolute lack of challenge (Seriously, how long does it take to get rich in Sims 4? An IRL afternoon?) it makes the game boring. I remember reading that according to collected data most Simmers don't want a challenge, they just want to tell their story. At least that was the explanation back in 2014 why virtually all challenge is removed and also why the Sims don't have a personality; you are expected to make up their personality in your head, the Sim is at all points a blank canvas without any real purpose other than to wait for your orders.
Makes me think of an issue I ran into when playing yesterday. I was trying to flirt with some sim, or planning to, and then one of my invited party guests, who was a vampire, died in the sun because my home was some windenburg weirdly positioned lot that I didn't know was a mess and the spawn point is like a century away from where you put the house itself (I basically had to herd some of the guests to the house by talking to them and then using "chat here" because they couldn't figure out how to get to it). So anyway, somebody dies as a result of general silliness in design, which I just kinda thought was funny in the moment, but then my sim gets a big, overwhelming sad mood and it ruins any ability to flirt for the next 2 sim days.
This could have presented some kind of interesting challenge. Maybe it's harder to flirt, but the available options are still doable (instead of the 2 sad flirt options that basically never work). Or maybe I gotta address the sad in some interesting way. What I ended up doing was queuing up Sadness Hotline over and over until the mood was gone prematurely and then my sim was completely normal again.
In the end, I was mildly inconvenienced by something I didn't expect, nor want, and ultimately got rid of it. I'm fine with the idea of the game sending me down a different path than what I was planning to do, but the problem as I see it is, getting a big sad mood presented no different path other than inconvenience. The path was be big sad and watch my sim mope around for 2 sim days, or try to get rid of it.
