Sims 4: A Disappointment?

"SmakitDaSailor;c-17939740" wrote:
For me, Sims 4 feels utterly mediocre in most areas. I do like some things, like building can be a lot of fun. But they seemed to have made a lot of (in my opinion, of course) bonehead moves with the game.

The reason I play it? There is no real competition. We've had what, like maybe half a dozen 'sims-like' games released over the years, and all have been pretty poorly done. So you can either stick with an older version of the Sims or play this one despite its flaws.

And I'm not trying to put words in anyone's mouth. I know plenty of people LOVE the game! And that's really cool. I just find that it feels with every pack or expansion they are close to excellence, but they just end up making them too simplistic or repetitive. The game tries to focus a lot on moods, for instance, but how many 'mood altering' items, powers, objects, do we really need? And just why does everything have to be a rabbit hole? And, as beautiful as some of the neighborhoods are, why aren't they adding more lots? It's one of the whole selling points on loading small zones, because loading is fast and you can deal with having more lots.

Not to mention of course the silliness of how long it took to get our aging progressions of the sims right, pools, and the like to come around, and various bugs that persisted for so long (like the gardening issues with plants reverting) :dizzy:

Things like that, they just constantly pile up. But, again, not really much of a choice in games of this style, and there still is certainly a lot to love and charm to the game. It's not all bad! Maybe one day someone will come around to challenge them and they will be allowed to focus more on making a much greater experience, but I'm not holding my breath. So in the mean time I live with it, because I still do enjoy the experience at its core. I'm just disappointed because it could be so much more.

That sounds like you were writing my own thoughts! I play because it's the newest and it's super fast to get into, but there are a lot more irritating things about this iteration than there were in the previous games (at least to me and how I play).

I can honestly say that if there was ever a company who created a life simulation game that incorporated all of the best things that past sims games and TS4 has combined, I would immediately jump ship and never, ever look back.

My biggest gripes (besides no colorwheel, CASt ability, editable worlds, and the ability to create our own apartments), is just the skimpy amount of content in the packs. It's so hard to not compare TS4's amount of content vs TS3. I try not to because it just gets on my nerves and makes me not want to play. But it's always there in the back of my head.

The focus on physical appearance (hairs & clothing ... and it being mainly female YA clothing), buy mode objects, and large beautiful worlds that are nothing but dead space set dressing with a teeny, tiny amount of lots in the packs instead of engrossing, new and exciting game play, things to do, activities for our sims to get to experience is another reason I'm so dissatisfied by TS4. And the moodlets, I want to "see" my sims mood thru animations, I don't want to be "told" how they're feeling, I want to actually watch my sim and be like "Yikes! They're upset about this or that". I want autonomy to actually be done according to that unique sims traits and not be a clone of the sim next to them.

But, this is just how it is and dwelling on it and complaining about, isn't going to change how things are done. So, I just accept TS4 as a very limited version with some improvements of what The Sims games used to be like, and try and enjoy the few things that I do like about it.