Sims 4 game balance is a joke

My favourite unbalanced thing are the Influence points.

So to enact a NAP, it costs about 10 Influence for a vote, and you'll want probably 4 votes. For a 2 Sim household, that's 20 Influence each. Or you could wing it like I did in the test run I'm playing right now: over the course of a weekend, most NAPs got 1-2 votes, only one got 3, and the NAP I voted for received an additional 2 votes, bringing it up to a total of 4 votes.

So you do the interactions, and get about 2 Influence per interaction. That's 10 interactions to reach 20. That's easy.
Odds are, over the course of a week you'll receive way more than 20 Influence points.

Let's use "Foodies Unite" as an example. 2 Influence per meal prepared. 3 meals a day, 7 days in a week.
2x3 gives us 6 Influence per day.
6x7 gives us 42 Influence per week.
That's enough for four votes! Just for one Sim! That all but guarantees your chosen NAP will be elected.

If you play it smart and vote twice with that one Sim and twice with another Sim making their own meals, each Sim will have 20 Influence leftover.
The week after that, they'll have 40.
And then 60.
Then 80.
Then 100.

Each week you'll have exponentially more Influence saved, and nothing to spend it on.
You could even ignore voting altogether and just reap the benefits of whichever NAP gets elected, and just constantly rack up more and more Influence points!

Week 1 you have 40 Influence, week 2 you've got 80. Then 120. Then 160. Then 200.

And what can you do with all that Influence? Spend it on NAPs. But the only benefit to doing that is gaining Influence, which you spend on Naps. Which provide Influence. Which. You. Spend. On. NAPS.

It's a feature that is already easy for a single-Sim household.
If you play with a family, it becomes trivial.

How is that engaging gameplay? It's an "I win" button. Every week you get exactly what you want, no questions asked.
That's not balanced gameplay. Not at all.

"ReclusiveEagle;d-988802" wrote:
Remember in TS3 when you had to work hard to get things? And TS2 and TS1 and all the console games like Urbs and My Sims ect?

Right, So. Started a new game. Had my Sim eat 3 times in 3 days when they were hungry.
They got fat (Like ???)... decided to go to the gym. Let me tell you what happened with the click of a single button.
Keep in mind they are a new Sim with only 1 level of cooking and Free Will is turned off so they can't do anything else.

I clicked "Workout", went to go make a coffee (Which took 3 minutes irl). Left the game on Speed 1 (3-4 hours passed in game), came back to:

4 and a half Levels of fitness

3 Levels of Comedy

3 Levels of Charisma

3 New "Good friends" that my Sim met and raised their relationship with to halfway.

1 New "Best Friend" (The trainer that walked up to my Sim).

A new potential romance from a random Sim that was in a flirty mood.


Like what is this?? In The Sims 3 even as a Vampire at night with frozen motives ONLY working out the entire day with "Push Limits"-
I still can't even get 4 levels in a Single day. Never mind if I actually wanted to make a friend the amount of struggled and effort I'd have to put in to become good or best friends with someone would mean spending 3-5 days with them spamming interactions.

TS4 is the definition of do nothing and get rewarded and if emotions, The "ReVoLuTioNaRy" core of the game
(That Maxis told us was the reason they didn't add pools, toddlers, basements, ghosts ect ect ect when the game first came out) - is an issue just enable the Aura on the $2 poster your Sim found on the street and completely disable all "negative" gameplay elements.

And by negative gameplay elements I mean things that slow down the game and make it take a while to progress, instead of instant gratification. It's just getting more frustrating as time goes by. And I know I'm not the only one frustrated. Like when World Adventures came out I put over 800 hours into that one expansion pack .. even before Ambitions (The 2nd pack) was released let alone after. I can't even get 80 hours of TS4 with almost all content owned. Its really, really boring, this "Click one button or better yet don't even click anything just watch" kind of gameplay.

What traits does your sim have. Some traits like athletic can have your sim gain athletic skills faster than a sim without the trait. Goofballs gain mischief and comedy faster. Romantic Sims gain romantic relationships faster and so on that was before traits were reworked and improved in the games.

If your romantic sim is flirty that increases their romantic gain quicker. If your goofball sim is playful they'll gain comedy quicker.

If your athletic sim is energized they'll gain athletic skill faster.

Traits help with gains. I use a lot of custom traits in the game. Custom traits are great to help with different trait gains at least in my experience.

If your sims fame level is higher they have quicker romance and friendship gains.

Traits to a point can speed up your skill gain to a point along with emotions can affect them wanting to tell jokes, watch comedy exercise, have romantic interactions with other sims etc.