"Sk8rblaze;c-16899205" wrote:
It really feels as if the developers do not play the game themselves. It is a bold statement to make, sure, but as someone who does still play TS4 now and then, so much of its design leaves me in disbelief.
How is getting a text pop-up notification a million times for every little event ("Heard you became friends with x! She's a cool bean!"), with no way to disable it or dismiss it until you hit the x, any fun?
How are city festivals any fun when you've visited them the first time? They are all so predictable; nothing is spontaneous or new in each one (just like visiting ANY lot in itself), and none really offer any kind of meaningful gameplay advantage.
Speaking of gameplay..
Where is the fun in making Sim personalities if emotions just override them entirely? A developer once responded the traits you unlock are more meaningful, but they only provide a gameplay advantage to a game that is already dead easy to play. They do not make one Sim different from the next.
Where is the fun in building legacies with there being no inheritance? You can tell they did not think this through, as there were no family trees in the game at launch, and the game still can block various sections of your family tree, if it's long enough. Other passing down the "genes" of your Sim, building long lineages does not feel any special.
Where is the fun in having a Sim wake up at 8:00AM, but not actually get to the fun part of their day until their needs are met, which takes until 1-2:00PM? How is dining fun, when it might've took 2 in-game hours in TS2, but now takes half a day or more in TS4?
I really want to list so many other examples, but I don't want this post to become nothing but a wall of text. The point is, there are so many instances where the game feels like it is not fun after you have done it the first time, and there are a plethora of other instances where it feels like the gameplay design is just poorly thought out, especially compared to the predecessors. As of now, I can't stay in the game too long without boring my brains out, and then I find myself still playing a game that is more than a decade old (TS2).
This. A million times this. I do agree with the OP too. The game being linear is killing the franchise.
