What I liked
1.Multitasking
2.Group Conversations
3.Build Mode- In regards to enlarging or shortening rooms and pre-built rooms
4.Build Mode- Searching for items; TS3 I could never remember where the cake was located, LOL
5.How emotions can change how Sims interacts with other Sims or even doing everyday task
6.The separation of Cooking; Normal meals and Gourmet Meals
7.The overall look of the Game
8.The traveling between towns with ease
9.The Gallery
10.CAS (excluding clothing options)
11.The tasks or goals when going out on a date or having a wedding
12.The ability to add caterers, musician, and mixologists to your party
13.There are a lot of Sims in each world and at each location visited
14.The time table on the food you prepared- It would let you know how many days you had until it went bad
15.Pregnancy- I liked how Sims found out they were pregnant and the entire look of Pregnancy including the clothes (THANK YOU for getting rid of those terrible maternity clothes)
16.The overall look of the clothes (not the selection). No longer did my male Sims have to walk around with shirts, jackets and sweaters stopping all at waist height which let’s be honest looked totally weird
What I didn’t like
1.The camera controls- I HATE THEM. This literally took me hours and a lot of Googling (to see if other Simmers had issues and if someone had a solution) to figure out. TS3 in my opinion had the best camera controller.
2.I absolutely dislike the job selection. I will commend EA for the “outside the box” additional job choices but you have to put a few nostalgic jobs (ie. Medical, Law enforcement, Education, etc.) for us Simmers who like our games to reflect a little more normalcy.
3.No Family Tree- I like to see the relationships of my Sims; especially when I’m playing legacy (lineage is important to me).
4.The Teenager/ Young Adult/Adult/ Elder all look the same and it’s hard to tell them apart. At least in the TS3 the Teenagers were shorter and the elder were hunched over (even though I hated the fact that my elder women or man had to be all hunched over, lol).
5.The babies being attached to the house- An teen/adult must be present in the household at all times leaving your Sim pretty much stuck in the house if you have a baby and you live alone.
6.No toddlers- I will state that the toddlers stage in TS3 always seemed like a lot of work but going from baby to child is just weird. It doesn’t give Simmers a lot of options if they want a big family. I’m currently stuck with a lot of kids in the house because my babies aged up in like 3 days.
- If there will be no toddlers then the baby life span needs to be extended even though I’m not looking forward to being stuck in the house.
7.No babysitters (Please see baby comment no one likes to be stuck in the house)
8.No Repairman- I spent a lot of time repairing things in my household because I couldn’t afford to replace them. A repairman would’ve saved me a lot of time and potentially money.
9.There are a lot of Sims in the world HOWEVER for the Sims who don’t live in one of the lots (the NPC’s) it is impossible to go and visit them.
- Example- If you have a romantic relationship with a NPC and you produce offspring with said Sim you can’t go visit your offspring at (You can have your children come visit you once they are older).
10.You can no longer assign bed or doors. Some of the lots are really big and I would like to have multiple houses on that lot but the Sims all want to stay and sleep in the same few beds. I would like to assign a door and a bed to them so they know where their home is even if they live on the same lot.
11.No garbage disposals or dishwashers- I hate that I have to wash every single dish once finished with it.
12.Regarding the food placed in the refrigerator- once a Sim ate the last serving there would be a prompt that would say clean out spoiled food. The food was not spoiled; there just weren’t any remaining servings.
13.When throwing a party you have to have the party right then instead of setting a time so that you could allow your Sims to get ready for the party (i.e sleep, eat, shower)
14.I would’ve liked the option to throw my baby a birthday party but since they can’t (nor your adult Sim for that matter) move away from that bassinet then it’s pointless.
15.I like the fact that my Sims can finally take selfies…but where are they? I can’t view them or even put them up on my walls (like I loved to do in TS3).
16.Customization is limited- Regarding clothing, furniture, etc. It was very hard to pick out outfits for my Sim because I wanted to pair two things together but the color options wouldn’t allow me too. In the build/ buy mode I only had a handful of bed color choices to pick from so a lot of my rooms started looking the same; couldn’t really mix and match furniture styles.
- You are forcing people to add Mods to their game and I honestly try not to add Mods to my game because sometimes they mess the game up.
Suggestions
1. I would like to see more normal buildings (ie. Hospitals, Official Buildings (Police station, City Hall, etc.), Schools, restaurants, stadiums.
-Restaurants and Stadiums- This would allow my Sims who are going on dates to go somewhere other than the Bar or the Club if they want to go somewhere fun.
- Hospitals, Schools, Police Station- To bring some normalcy into the game
- City Hall- So that you can do simple things like name changes.
2.There needs to be the addition to the services menu to include Baby Sitters and Repairmen
-Baby Sitters- Since the babies are tied to the house there must be a Teen/Adult Sim present at all times. A babysitter would eliminate a Sim getting stuck in the house.
~Example- I have Sim A who lives with her sister and brother-in-law and has two children one of which is a baby marries Sim B. After the wedding and the merging of the households Sim A had to go home because the baby couldn’t be home alone.
-Repairmen- My Sim from the scenario above spent most of his time fixed stuff. I could either replace it (which at the rate in which stuff was breaking I couldn’t afford) or fix it which took a lot of the Sims time. I would much rather call someone to fix it.
3.The addition of normal everyday content (ie. Dishwashers, garbage disposals, etc.)
4.The world should be more open so that traveling within your own neighborhood doesn’t require a loading screen. (Simply traveling next door shouldn’t require a loading screen)
5.Bring back the ability to pull the pictures captured on your Sims cellphones and place them on around the house. Currently it seems pointless for my Sims to snap all these selfies if I can’t even view them.
6.Make the neighborhoods larger. 4 houses in a neighborhood seems a little small.
7.The ability to set a start time for your parties. Having an instant party is okay sometimes but I would like the option to select a later time so that I can get my Sims ready.
8.TS3 had the BEST life Span settings. I like having the option to extend the young adult life span and shorten the baby and toddler life span.
9.The ability to better distinguish between the Teenager, Adult and Elder stage of life
10.The ability to purchase cakes in the build/buy mode. I hate the fact that I have to make my own cake (which is only one layer by the way) for birthdays and weddings
-If this won’t be an added feature then at least make the wedding cake become 3 layers once the wedding topper is added. Hey if you can have Sims go from baby to child like magic I know you can make a cake go from 1 layer to 3 with the addition of a wedding topper.
11.Regarding customization - I would not go all the way back to the Create-A-Style in TS3 but I would at least add the color wheel so that if the color is not available you could at least change it based on the color wheel.
12.Add Family Tree- I like to see my family lineage
13.There needs to be more options for missing or not going to work.
-Instead of just skipping work have the option to call into work sick like in TS3
-Giving a new mom the options to either go back to work or take a 2 or 3 day maternity leave. Sometimes my Sim would have here baby in the middle of the night and would have to go to work the same day
14.Some type of Story progression. I don’t like the fact that I have to go into every household and make them have a baby just so their family name doesn’t die out. Also, I don't like the fact that the household I'm currently not playing doesn't earn any additional money while I'm playing another household. I didn't go through the trouble of getting them a job and increasing their skills for nothing. *Note that I can only do this with Sims that have lots if they are NPC’s I can’t control anything they do.
Overall thoughts
After spending some time playing the game I can say that I really enjoy the new features however they aren’t enough to overshadow the loss of a lot of basic features from past Sim games (and I’m not even referring to the pools, LOL). The Sims 4 base game is just that a base game; after a few days I feel like I’ve played it to its potential. There is nowhere really for my adult Sims to go to have a good time excluding the bar(s) and the club(s) and there isn’t really a lot for my young Sims to do excluding going to play at the park. To sum it up the game seems more like a blueprint for something that has the potential to be great once completed but at this point the concrete has been poured and the frame work and dry wall has gone up but that’s it.
EA Staff (Retired)
