The Sims 4 Feedback Thread - come share yours

I do not have the Sims 4 yet (pre-ordered it, but had a medical emergency that drained my finances, so have to wait till Oct. 3 to buy it), but I have the CAS Demo and have been watching all the Let's Play Sims 4 VIDEOS from the Gurus and other players.... So far I love the game... Love that the Sims can travel between worlds.

Only dislikes so far are: No color wheel, ability to create own worlds, not enough empty lots or space/ability to add empty lots & no family tree.

What I love is: The Gallery, the load screen, short wait time when load screen is active, the return of the Goths, Calientes and Don Lothario, also love the way Sims can multitask.

Thank you EA! I've been enjoying my experience thus far. I don't even miss toddlers as much as I thought I would. I find the play style engaging and entertaining. It's even got my hubby playing. I am not saying it's perfect, but I don't think I'll need to go back to TS3 any time soon. Maybe never if you hurry up and get the expansions rolling. They need a vacation expansion, and possible a dating expansion as I find just going to the juice bars unsatisfying. Great work on the pirate ship I love how the parents can interact with the kids while they are playing. I also love the cartoony look of the sims as I want to escape realism when I play not wallow in it. Thanks again and I will post again if needed for bugs.

Love the game, great work.. I do have a suggestion in regards to when your Sim goes to work. Could we have access to their needs, simology, inventory and all that other stuff.. Currently I don't see why the access has been taken away..

Also when Sims go jogging, to make it seem a little more real, they should jog off the lot, and if the player clicks on the Sim, they could spawn in a random neighbourhood jogging.. At the moment, it is a little weird that they just jog around the current neighbourhood, and go in circles.

Another one, could we please have the "Call to Meal" interaction changed so all Sims will eat at the table, instead of at random places in the house, as we already have the "Grab a Plate" interaction if they want too eat anywhere..

"MVOUGHT;12554674" wrote:
No cars, no pools, no basements! I can't belive I spent $70 and this game isint finished. I'm so sad. Basements and pools are necessary to my game play, and I love the cars. What to do now.

Basements weren't in the base game of the Sims 3, so why do they need to be in this one. Also just because features didn't make the Base Game, why does that mean it's not finished?

So, overall I do like the Sims 4, I am not unhappy about my purchase and feel that I will be getting my money out of it.

It's hard for me to compare to Sims 1 or 2 since it has been so long since I have played them, but Sims 3 I can since I've been very actively playing it since it was released and I own all the expansions. That said, I won't expect Sims 4 to contain EVERYTHING that Sims 3 had since it's unfair to compare the base game compared to a game with all the expansions.

I will try to keep my criticism constructive. If some things can be released as free patches because enough people want it - awesome, if other things have to come out as part of an expansion, also cool.

What I like, I'll stat with things I like about the game:

1. Obviously emotions, one of the big draws of the game is the emotions and I do like how they interact with the character. I'm still trying to understand everything about them, how I can get them and have a better way to control them.
2. Multi-tasking. Best thing ever! I love that the family can be dancing and talking with someone who is reading a book or working on their computer. Social interactions are super easy if you have at least one other person in the household.
3. Aspiration & Career changes - I like how there are stages to these - more than just have # friends and # score in a skill.
4. Create-a-sim - I like how we can modify their walk, voice and other factors of the character

I only have 3, I know - may not be like a lot but I know there may be other things that haven't jumped out at me yet.

So here are the things that I would like to see changed or updated int he future:
1. Create-A-Sim: For men I am missing body hair. I don't believe it was in base Sims 3, but I would love to see it return as soon as possible.
2. Create-A-Sim: For men, this may sound odd but I feel men need to have a little bit of a bulge/package. I'm not looking to be able to modify it in size or anything, and obviously only for young adult males and older, but it just seems so off putting that as realistic as we can make them, that one part of the body is made to be the most unrealistic part.
3. Speaking of underwear, men could use more underwear options - I miss having the options for boxers/boxer briefs.
Ok, enough of being a pervert I guess....
4. I'll admit the biggest disappointment for me is just how small the worlds feel. I'm ok with the map mode, but I wish the world was larger all within the same world.
5. It would also be great if the maps had the ability for us to move across without having to go into map to do so.
6. My very first sim died since when the fire alarm when off there was no firefighter to rescue him - I would like to see a return of the npcs like police, firefighters, and repairmen.
7. More venues - I would love to see a restaurant or coffee shop to take dates too. Something like a Sim-Bucks where you can bring a tablet or laptop and work on a book or play games while drinking a high priced coffee or tea.
8. Easier to distinguish between Adults and Teens - some type of indicator - maybe in the relationships window, knock them down a couple of inches so they are shorter - something. It would just be easier to know who you are dealing with.
9. Make friends at School/Work - in particular school, again, make it easier for children, in particular teens make friends.

Those are my big rocks that would make me happy. Everything else I can wait for expansions.

First of all, the game is great. I am very happy with the direction chosen for The Sims 4. This is my favorite Sims game (and I have played them all). The game is very well designed, and actually fun to play.

So, should I brake it down like everyone else does? Let's start with the good things (which are the most anyway).
-On the technical side, performance and stability are an all time high for a Sims game.
-The new Build mode and CAS are amazing. The new build mode is the primary reason I changed my mind and got this game despite the fact that even before TS4 was announced I had decided I am done with Sims after 3 (I didn't like that game to be honest). Needless to say I am not disappointed. Also, creating Sims is fun for me for the first time, it always left like a chore in previous games. Plus, sims themselves look good, and they all actually look different from each other, while they were basically pretty identical in previous games.
-The game seems more difficult than TS3 and this is an absolutely great thing. The Sims 3 was just too easy, and so too boring. Keeping sims happy was so ridiculously easy that the game lacked point and substance.
-The humor and all the cool stuff from Sims 2 and original are back. Career unlock rewards, stupid but fun things like the cowplant, these are things that make a Sims game a Sims game for me. TS3 was just bland for some reason.
- The emotions system is very nice (if not a little underused), and for the first time sims actually feel like having a character instead of just some pointless extra interaction (TS3) or just minor stats differences (TS2/1).
-Lack of story progression and open world and all this TS3 stuff. All TS3's "live worlds" and story progression and all this stuff did for me was cause headaches (and more headaches). I for one, I am glad they are gone. The Sims feels like The Sims again (another reason I decided to purchase this game).
- The gallery is a very good little addition, it is very nice to be able to share your creations with the world and even see those of others. Personally I especially like the ability to share single rooms as my primary interest in The Sims was always decoration. Although I should add that it would be nice if you could think of some more ways to improve discoverability in the gallery. The game has been barely released and browsing the community content in the gallery is already starting to feel a little like the App/Play Store, and that is not a nice thing.
-And finally no store (hope I am not speaking too prematurely in this). Seriously don't do that ever again. Release EPs and SPs and all these things but even monetization has too stop at some point. I would not have purchased TS4 if I had heard of a TS3-style store. Again, I hope I am not speaking too early. Against my better judgement I put faith in Electronic Arts/Maxis with this game, I hope I am not made to regret it.

And as so, I will list some other things I don't like.

- The lots. Only two empty per world, come on, that's just not right. Plus, yes, the game needs bigger ones. Let players decide if their computer can handle them, and anyway the game is amazingly light. I bought it as a gift for a friend with an old computer and was a little worried whether she could play it at a decent frame rate even in low-mid settings. I still can't believe she's running it on ultra (it lags of course but not anything unplayable). Point is, the game is light enough already so bigger plots shouldn't make it too heavy, even for mainstream market segment "casual" players. SimCity 2013 was ruined by this factor. Stop it with these decisions, it's seriously not cool. It's certainly not that bad in this game, but surely it is at least annoying.
-The careers. Too few and too, let's say, "eccentric". Including more "normal" careers would be nice, and anyway, the game needs more of them.
- And finally, the game could use more content with free updates, it is a little on the light side for the price tag, but this has been already said again and again, so I will not repeat. I am just saying I somewhat agree, although I do support your decision to do fewer things but do them right, it's certainly much better than the TS3 "everything and the kitchen sink" approach. You should just add more things with free updates as soon as you are ready.

So summarizing, I am very excited with this game. I feel like playing the Sims for the first time again since the TS2 days. I was cautiously optimistic when I decided to buy the game, but after all I am actually pretty impressed (and believe me, I don't say that often). I though I was done with The Sims, but you won me back. That in itself is an achievement in my book. Congratulations guys.

In fact I don't usually post on public forums but decided to brake my rule this time because of all the negativity that has taken over by a loud fraction of the userbase. I have said many negative things about Electronic Arts products and the company's management culture in the past, but this time I feel you guys did a great job. Again, congratulations.

I apologise if anything here has been covered...

Things I liked;
Animations. some of those are way too funny.
Gameplay. Good feel, concept and quite well thought out.
Party's are too cool.

Iffy things;
In 20 days I was still struggling to make 5 friends. Make a party award of friendship boost for everyone at the party... depending on badge merit.
Make individual age spans 40 days. A sim's mid-life is way too short to cram everything in... a game with no kids can be over in 48 hours!
Have just one book to unlock skills, use the same book to learn the skill at the slowest level, no matter the level...
Make some of the object radials menus more simple. Computer radials are too crammed.
Make sim's do things at a slower rate... sim's often auto-select before I've looked at the radial and decided...
Bring back the doorbell... it's difficult to tell when someone's at the door...
A life span is too short to have more than two children!

Bugs I've seen;
Holding an orange juice and taking a bath makes sim's sometimes bathe in their clothes!
Pregnant sim's with morning sickness can get stuck cleaning the toilet... for hours! (upgrade related?)
Same queued objects could be linked in the menu... (making chairs), (food and drink)
Making drinks for everyone at the bar takes so long that people have got up and left!!! Get the sim to fill a tray and wander around with it.

If your sim die's laughing, then the comedy (or whatever) you wanted to hand down to your kids is lost. Make a 'generational' skill book+ (it's a blank book that devours a skill book and becomes a diary that the sim can fill up.) You can leave the book on the book shelf for future generations. For every generation that uses it, the book gains an almost instant skill gain up to level 3, but needs a skill book to devour.

Imagine the family cook book (perfect hot fudge sauce), the memoirs of a 'leet' hacker or musicians 'book or rhymes'...

Help our skills to survive death, please?

First, thank you for making this post for us fans to express our thoughts about the game! I have been playing the Sims since the original Sims came out back in 2000 (and other Maxis games - like Sim Town, and Sim City - before that), and one of the things I truly appreciate about EA and Maxis is your openness to feedback from the fans.

I recently purchased the Sims 4 via Origin and have had the game open on my laptop for a few days playing in between my work hours. So far, I've enjoyed playing. Here is some more specific feedback:

What I liked:

1) The short loading time, even after hours of game play. When I played previous Sims games, I would always eventually find myself frustrated because the longer I played, the more lag and lengthy loading screens I experienced. I'm very happy that I barely experience any lag after playing for hours with this new installment.

2) The improved graphics. The graphics with the latest installment have quite honestly wowed me. It all seems so much more realistic, and I really love that. I especially love the way buildings look, as my favorite part about playing the Sims has always been building homes.

3) CAS. I really love how easy it is to manipulate a sim's look in CAS. I was always impressed with players who could use the functions on previous Sims games to create near-look-alikes with celebrities. I've always wanted to create sims who look more like those people I know in real life, but I always found it quite difficult to do with previous games. This time around, however, it was so easy! Being able to simply click and drag on parts of the body that I wanted to change and the easy that I could manipulate them is so great.

4) Play-ability on lap tops. For a long time now, my only computer has been a lap top. With previous games, playing the full version of the Sims on my lap top slowed my computer down, and sometimes caused over-heating because the full games were simply not created with lap top users in mind. Although I don't think the Sims 4 is truly meant to be a lap top game, I haven't had the same problems I did with previous games, so I'm a very happy camper.

5) BUILD MODE!!!! Oh my gosh! I honestly can't have enough good things to say about build mode!! As I said a bit earlier, one of the main things I do when playing is building homes. And now creating interesting, unique, beautiful homes is so much easier!! I don't have to use cheats to create different foundation heights, and I can build those round rooms and porch edges. This leads to more realistic buildings and requires less adaptation of real-life house plans. I'm very happy about this, though I am wondering if - when cars come out - we'll be able to construct garages that are on a different foundation level, but attached to a house on a foundation, without the use of cheats.

6) Ability to save rooms and houses to the gallery. Really like the gallery feature because I can save the creations I've made and reuse them again later if I accidentally deleted the lot or destroyed the house. I remember doing this from time to time in the Sims 3 and then being frustrated because I then had to re-build the entire lot again from scratch. This new gallery function makes it so much easier to save my work!

7) Multitasking - I think most Simmers will agree that this is a great addition to the game.

8) Emotions. I like that the Sims have emotions and that these emotions can affect their wants. It's another aspect that makes the game more life-like.

9) Inter-connected worlds. I really like that I can have Sims living in other worlds and they can still be interacted with by Sims in another world - without the annoyance of "long-distance." It makes each world feel more like a different neighborhood within the same world rather than separate world. And I really like that.

What I didn't like:

1) Small worlds = limited building space. As a builder, I really, really, really hate the very limited number of lots available for building. I really hate having to delete lots once I've built them. But, with only a few lots at my disposal, this is what I have to do if I want to continue creating new homes and buildings. Yes, I can save this to the gallery, but not having the space in the first place is very frustrating. Perhaps a free Create-a-World, or more downloadable worlds could help alleviate this frustration.

2) An open world. When I first moved my Sim into the new world, I tried to get her to walk around the neighborhood - and very quickly discovered that I couldn't. Honestly, this was extremely disappointing to me. That was one of the features that I loved best about the Sims 3. Although I can understand that with the graphics of the Sims 4, having a seamless world may be difficult to keep the game speedy and non-glitchy, it is something that many long-standing fans of the Sims franchise are truly missing. It's truly sad to see this go.

3) Customization. The Sims is all about being to create your own world to play with. Each Simmers world is unique. That, to me, means that each Simmer should be able to customize base objects' colors, patterns, and designs. Right now, that ability is not there and it's a bit disappointing. I hope EA will come out with a free customization tool (like what came out with the Sims 2 for walls and floors) so that we can begin truly customizing our Sims, homes, and worlds.

4) Inability to watch at work/school Sims needs, wants, etc while they are at work. When I had a family of four who were all either employed or of school age, I was quite disappointed that I couldn't view their needs, wants, and emotions while they were at work. I was also disappointed that clicking on the different options for what the sim did while at work had little real impact on their real life -- except for "work hard," which brought promotions and good grades more easily. I am particularly disappointed that when students are at school and the "make friends" option is selected, nothing really happens besides increasing their social. It is much, much more difficult for sims to meet other sims outside of their home and make friends. Having the ability to create relationships at work and school was a cool feature of the Sims 3 - and one that made the game more realistic to boot! I think it would be nice for this to come back in some way.

5) Lack of traditional jobs. I was a bit confused when I opened up the job panel and didn't see the usual police, politics, military, etc. career tracks that have been with the Sims from the beginning. The new career tracks seem to be more based around skills, which is cool, but I miss the old careers a little bit. I hope additional expansions or downloadable content will bring back some of those old jobs.

Suggestions:

1) A few things that I think would improve CAS: Since I play on a lap top, in order to use the sliders easily I have to have a traditional mouse hooked up because using the mouse pad doesn't offer enough control. It would be nice to have to always carry a USB mouse around with me...

2) Camera mode.... It's really frustrating to move from a street view to a bird's eye view in the Sims 4. To do this, I have to enable Sims 3 controls. Why have the option to change the controls? Why not just use the same controls from the start? It would be nice to have some arrows or something to control the view rather having to first enable Sims 3 controls, and then use CTRL + Right click + drag to tilt the camera....

3) Emotions seem to change quite easily -- sometimes so quickly that it's hard to benefit from them. For instance, for my teenager to improve their grades, they have to attend school focused. Well, it takes a while to get my teen focused, but then the focus only lasts for a few hours, and is depleting even if that teen is doing an activity that is supposed to increase focus..... Whereas the "flirty" emotion sticks around for ages...... Some balance or at least if a Sim continually reads from a focusing book/plays chess/whatever helps to prolong the emotion would be a nice addition.

4) A way to enlarge worlds, or create more worlds - the more in-game this option is, the better. With such small worlds having a way for us to expand the worlds would be really great.... Or at least a tool that would allow us to create new worlds.

5) A customization tool to allow us to create our own colors and patterns for clothing, walls, floors, and objects.

6) Ways to make more use of the time Sims are at work or school - either by just being able to monitor a Sims mood and emotions, or by having more impact from the work options....

7) A few more jobs. Police, politics, education, business, and several other fields seem to be missing.... It's cool that sims can be astronauts, super spies, and famous painters, but some kids just want to grow up to be a teacher or a policeman/fireman. Let us have those options back.

Overall thoughts:
Clearly, there is a lot of new and exciting stuff in this game - and I really enjoy it. However, I think there is much room for improvement and expansion. No doubt much of this will come with later expansions and downloadable content, but I'd like to see some things sooner rather than later. I think that if EA/Maxis can provide us fans with a world builder and customization tools soon, then much of the community will be satisfied.

Been playing it fairly constantly since it became available

Things I like:
Rocket ships
The new job progression
Build and Buy being part of a single experience
Build itself
The new emotion system (Pee like a champion gets me every time!)
I also enjoy the new aspirations and the many new skills
multitasking

Things I don't like:
Load screens; While I don't mind the new method of getting around from region to region, having to essentially load screen from the gym to the bar or museum is vastly annoying
Lack of aspiration rewards
Spacing on some of the objects seems a bit to much. While the observatory is nice, I miss the regular telescope. Also in some cases, it feels like the object in quest is sitting right in the main path everyone has to walk through