TS4 needs a difficulty system.

"Sk8rblaze;c-17350125" wrote:

"JoAnne65;c-17347977" wrote:
I don't really play Sims to have a challenge in the difficulty field. For me there needs to be a good balance between the game aspect and the storytelling aspect. It must be a game for sure and I don't want things to become too easy or fast, but when it becomes too much of a time management thing, dictating what I really should do next or my sim will die or be miserable, that's when I lose interest. I like challenges but I have to be allowed to fulfill them any time I want to and as fast or slow as I want to. Or not at all and when I don't fulfill them, that should be fun too. Like, I've always regretted there is no actual gameplay attached to a sim that fails in school or university. No real consequences.

I agree with this as well, which is why I’m a huge fan of The Sims 2 over, say, The Sims 1 in terms of gameplay difficulty.

The Sims 1 is very hectic to someone who didn’t start with it. The Needs decay so fast that you can barely delve into the different features and interactive objects each pack offers. It feels more like the goal is to ensure your Sim exists, rather than thrives. Player story-telling is a very long, drawn out process which is constantly getting put on the back burner in favor of just making sure your Sim even lives.

Then The Sims 2 came around, and the survivability aspect of the game was tuned down in favor of new goals, consisting of much more defined successes ranging from their life aspirations, mental happiness, and so on. TS2 is really where story-telling in The Sims was almost born, and flourishing best with these new systems as well as fun gameplay features such as the awesome story builder tool. The difficulty level was manageable on all levels, but by no means a cakewalk like TS4 has become.

In all honestly, it feels like the franchise has become a retelling/respin of a story we’ve gotten already (The Sims 2). IMHO, it’s why each iteration after it, you have those people asking for the same expansions over and over again from the past. People compare them too often because, truly, the games don’t make enough effort to be as unique as the shift TS2 made from TS1 (although TS3 actually strived to be unique, compared to TS4). I think they’ll need to really delve into what makes a Sims game, and reinvent the wheel with The Sims 5.

With that said, spoiler alert EA, it’s not multiplayer or changing the genre of the game to some time management simulator. The Sims should remain a single player life simulator. Really hope you don’t screw this up again.

Very well said. In a way I think it’s logical people ask for some aspects in the game by the way, though I genuinely don’t quite understand why certain things aren’t basegame. Like weather for instance. The only reason not to add weather from the start (and I believe they actually had planned to make that a basegame feature for Sims 2 but something went wrong?) is because they want to make money out of it. That’s just a really bad reason from a player’s perspective though. Like it was totally silly it took expansions to flesh out life stages. The only reason we think that’s normal is because we don’t know any better anymore.

Must confess I lost faith though. Every time I see players stating they play the old games and then return to Sims 4 because it looks so much prettier and you can throw around rooms, I feel this is a lost case. Paralives is my only hope for the future.