Sims 4 game balance is a joke

"texxx78;c-17857903" wrote:

"NationalPokedex;c-17857835" wrote:

"texxx78;c-17857732" wrote:
When i said that sims 4 gives better control, i don't mean the day by day... the autonomy issues, the unnecessary idle chat... i agree all of that is disruptive. I mean the ability to make your sims whatever you want, to play your story... We were talking about how easy it is to skill up in sims 4. I think this is an advantage for what sims 4 is or does better: easily molding the characters to what people want in their stories. Even the fact that sims have less personality is an advantage. Characters that don't acknowlodge their environments, that don't develop from their actions, will be easilIy moldable into what we want. Sims that don't fight back. Sims 4 did this well, but the game is very bugged right now. Very bugged, very unbalanced (hello BtD) and the autonomy is crazy...

EtA that i prefer the game aspect that sims 3 throws at the player, better than the control aspect in sims 4. Anyway, i think sims 4 do well what it does, and it has it's audience, people that love it for what it is (me included).

If all Sims don't acknowledge their environments then you can never have a Sim that does acknowledge their environment, and what if you want that? If Sims don't change based on your actions, then what is the point of doing them? I guess here would be a good place for you to give examples of what you mean, because I might be misunderstanding you. If Sims don't do anything, then how can they be anything?

You are misunderstanding me :) i'm saying that sims will be more moldable to what the player has in his head for his story because it is easy to make them this or that (easy skill building) and it is easy to make them relate to anyone (sims forget their fights, get attracted to anyone you want...).

If Sims don't do anything, then how can they be anything?
Sims do what the players want them to do, so they are what thr player wants them to be.

Does it make the game funnier? It depends on what the person is looking for. I personally prefer the sims to have personality and acknowledge their environment. But others prefer this way.

Like i said before, sims 4 used to do what i think it was designed to do, before it being so buggy and the autonony being all over the place...

Thanks for explaining. I understand better now.

I'm going to try to explain my thought, and hope that it's not too confusing....I think if I'm playing a game where I am given the opportunity, actually required to (either by careful selection or randomization) input some semblance of personality into the game itself using some form of personality builder, then I don't want to have to do so much imagining on my own. Some imagining is fine. But, I do expect the game to understand the character I'm playing because the game had me build a personality, so the systems in the game should work with that personality to make the gaming experience unique to that personality. If the game never gives me the opportunity to build a personality using a system, then I'm all for imagining my character's personality.

For example, in Skyrim, I use my imagination a lot for my character build, and it impacts the choices I make for my character. It's all in my head. I never got to input into a system how good or evil or smart or deceptive my character is, so I had no expectation for the game to somehow showcase my character's personality because I built my character over time in my mind as I played them.

On the other hand, in Crusader Kings 3, the characters all operate under a fairly complex personality system, and this in turn affects a multitude of things in the game, like how a character reacts to a certain event, how a character interacts with other people, etc. As the player, I make the choices for my character on what they do, but the game basically says that "based on your character's personality, if you do this_____, this is the consequence (good or bad)." And this is for not just my character, but the AI characters as well (I'm not making choices for them, but they will do things according to their personality).

Now obviously, Skyrim is not a simulation and Crusader Kings 3 is, right. We can see why these two games would be set up differently. Even a game like Animal Crossing which falls more in line with life simulation doesn't require any sort of personality builder, which means that I'm free to imagine up any kind of character outside of the game's system. And I don't expect the game to know who my character is beyond the actual actions of running around fishing and catching bugs, etc. I don't have the expectation that the game knows who my character is because the game never asked.

But, TS4 is supposed to be a simulation. EA calls it a life simulation game. TS4 makes you build a character, or play with a character that has been built by the game itself. By having a personality builder in the game, TS4 is telling me that your character's personality matters at a system level. The game wants to/needs to know who your character is. From there, I have an expectation that the game should be taking into account player input, and then throwing back at me results/consequences based on how I built my character. Now, I will say that the game does do this with Emotions. But, Emotions are a simple response to events, other Sims, decor, and sometimes absolutely nothing at all. They fall short because there’s nothing else to operate as a lasting consequence. That's not nearly enough, in my opinion. If the characters can be molded to what players want to do solely because the game doesn't have any response back, or it doesn't put up a fight, that tells me that the game is not a simulation.

So many players say that they are creating the idea of the characters all in their imagination. I shouldn't have to imagine who my Sim is because the game asked me who they are and I told it. (And this gets into the entire argument about how there's not even enough systems in place to make a full personality at the game level, which speaks to why it's easier for people to imagine personalities that aren't there).

And I'm not trying to attack anyone's style of gameplay, but it is hard to accept TS4 by its definition of a life simulation game when I have seen a life simulation game done as a simulation game in TS2.

Anyways, I didn't mean to get so off track from what the OP was saying. But I do think ultimately the game's imbalance....part of it comes from this lack of actual simulation. From my perspective, some players feel like they have more control and some feel like they have less control because the game isn't doing its job.

(All of this is my interpretation and my expectations, and obviously people have opposing views about expectations for the game).