Repetition and Irritation: A reflection on some of TS4's more obnoxious bits

"Triplis;c-16903022" wrote:

"JoAnne65;c-16902418" wrote:
I realize this is personal but for me it absolutely works that way. It’s why the club system isn’t appealing to me. If I invite a bunch of sims over, there is no fun for me if they all start to cook. I love it that they will do whatever they feel like doing, using all the stuff I placed in the room and when I close the game in the middle of the party without saving and restart the game (I’ve done that in Sims 3 for testing reasons), entirely different things happen. Same save, same sims but a totally different scenario. Though always loyal to how those sims feel about each other (are they lovers, are they friends, are they enemies, what are their traits).

@JoAnne65 Insightful to know. I mean, I know the sims in Sims 4 do this to some degree (I recall recently playing around with a particular household for some testing reasons and they certainly had some variation on the two different times I played them from the beginning).

But I wonder how your experience compares as far as how varied the behavior seems by comparison?

I do wonder about the fact that some skills are sort of locked in autonomy until the player directs the sim to do them past a certain point (I think usually level 2 or something). Like I recall the sim from that household I did a couple different times, he had the computer whiz aspiration, but he never once chose to attempt programming on his own; this didn't surprise me as I'm pretty sure programming doesn't trigger autonomously until the player directs it to past level 2 or so. But it is an example of how a sim's behavior could end up being more restricted in terms of object usage because of rules like that. Possibly intended originally as a way to avoid sims becoming good at every skill, but it may contribute to the "obsession with TV/computer/games" phenomenon.

Then again, I know certain types of behavior don't trigger autonomously at all, no matter skill level, and it might be more interesting if they did. I don't think writing a book or writing music does. (I was gonna say hacking doesn't, but it looks like it does if programming skill is high enough, there's just not much to push the sim to do it.) Activating many of these as possible autonomy and/or increasing how strong the autonomy pull is may create more of an effect like what you're describing with Sims 3. But then, it might also just create the exact issue as described in the OP of this thread. :tongue: I think the key would be whether there's enough potential variety and if each is tuned evenly enough, for it to start looking more varied and random.

I might fiddle around with it in modding on a slow day and see if there's any noticeable impact to doing so.

Here is the video I made, doing the testing (it’s Sims 3 up till 1:44). For some reason several of my videos were borked, which is why I had to restart the game several times to return to the party and record it again. At first they were all dancing, after that they did all other kind of stuff. I controlled no-one, not even the one active sim in there (the rest were invited inactive sims). I pressed recording and sat back. Some things sims won’t do autonomously (like indeed writing a book) but I don’t mind about that. It’s a game, not a film, we’re supposed to control them. But to some extent autonomous behaviour is important to paint a surprising, interesting and realistic setting and trigger our imagination. In my opinion Sims 3 does that better (on a high end computer I should add, apparently the processor matters). The fact they are ‘all over the place’, unpredictable yet loyal to their traits and feelings about other sims (specific sims, not just in a bad mood hating everyone or fancying everyone) is important.

The first part, the dancing, is the most boring for me. When I restarted the game and they turned out to do all kind of other stuff is when it became interesting. I deliberately influenced their social bars, so some like each other, others don’t. Which means you see some quarreling, some friendly socializing and even some flirting. They use the juice kegger, the pool table and my highly skilled mixologist even headed to the bar to start mixing drinks (which tbh even surprised me). It’s not in the footage (because that video again appeared to be broken) but all his drinks were consumed by the guests later.



We’re more than 4 years in and all this time I’ve been trying to pinpoint why Sims 3 has always been (and still is) so addictive to me - I never even intended to start playing the game, that was an ‘accident’ caused by my daughter who talked me into trying - while Sims 4 at times definitely is enjoyable, but never addictive. Again, to me. What you describe in your OP might very well come very close to the reason (or at least one of the reasons).
I’m a very controlling player, meaning that I like to instruct my sims, guide them, tell their story. But at the same time I also love being guided by the game. Led in directions I never planned or even thought of. I think it’s that interaction that I miss in Sims 4. I think Sims 2 did that even better by the way but I’m not familiar enough with that iteration to tell. Sims 3 is running through my veins ;)