TS4 needs a difficulty system.

"MMX;c-17339916" wrote:

"So_Money;c-17338475" wrote:

"Sk8rblaze;c-17338471" wrote:
The game should really throw more unexpected curveballs aside from the occasional career pop-up to make us think and plan ahead of how we would respond.

This. 100 times this. I’ve always said that this game is crying out for choice & consequence gameplay that extends beyond career performance boosts.

"Oldeseadogge;c-17339448" wrote:
Making it more like TS2 would be a good place to start, and include most of the ideas mentioned.

These. If you're wondering why people are criticising TS4 for being too monotonously easy, you should really look no further than these two posts. Why do you think people keep bringing up the TS4's predecessors in these kinds of discussions?

Nostalgia I think. The past was always better etc.

i fully disagree with the original post i find the sims4 perfect as it is

"Sk8rblaze;c-17341186" wrote:

"Nindigo;c-17340154" wrote:
I think people need to get creative with the game as it is, or seek their challenges elsewhere. That's my opinion.

I think having an option to increase the difficulty of the various game wouldn't harm you in the slightest, the same way we can adjust age lengths through optional settings.

Seems strange to tell others to seek challenges elsewhere when the predecessors of the same game had the level of challenge many liked.

I don't understand it either.

"ForkySporky;c-17342195" wrote:

This is how I feel. I loved that I had to try. I loved that sometimes everything went wrong and I had to help.

I get that people like sandbox mode, but I don't feel like I should have to be imposing rules on myself. I shouldn't have to be making a game for the game. Just give me a game. A challenging or at least interesting game. I shouldn't have to be using cheats constantly so I'm not able to afford things.

I want furnishings and homes to degrade in price like they used to. I want conversations and friendship and seduction to be difficult like it used to be. I want to have to try!

And I want a quick toggle back to sandbox mode for the people who don't. You can put it right next to the "vampire", "alien", and "strangerville storyline" toggles that I also want XD.

I guess my point is that I want difficulty levels as suggested by OP.

Sandbox is far from easy. Sims 4 tends to impose rules onto people so it is far distant than being a sandbox game. In order for a game to be sandbox, there is literally no rules or very few and game is meant to be easy or as hard as you want. Why Minecraft does so well and the storymode version is going away. Rules don't stick, but creativity does. Anyway in order for there to be a sandbox toggle, sandbox style would have to be developed into the game and let Simmers be gods in their own games again instead of all the rules constricting game play. Anyway quite interesting how much the Sims has strayed from the "Challenge everything" slogan. I think it is a trend in game I have noticed about people complaining games being too hard and sadly it has hit the Sims franchise too. Sims 1 was hard and still remains the most challenging iteration. Games I grew up with were harder. But yeah I don't know why games are getting dumber over time. Thankfully there are still options for sandbox games thanks to Paradox with Planet Coaster and Planet Zoo which are drawing many life simulation players towards those. I need to rule a game for it to be sandbox. If I am given limited tools and restricted rules, a game becomes a sand bucket and shovel rather than a full fledged sandbox. I don't need my games dumbed downed and condensed smaller. I need them expanded especially since society already has survival of the fittest mentality which confines people into small sand buckets that only a small percentage of people focusing on the idea that brawn matters more than brains. You would think brawn would be able to lift a sandbox game over a sand bucket game, but such is the topsy-turvy society that is. Sadly Sims 4 is made for the light sand bucket both in design and game play. A leopard would have to change its spots for the Sims 4 to be even close to a sandbox game again especially compared to what is in the gaming market now for sandbox games.

"Sk8rblaze;c-17341186" wrote:

I think having an option to increase the difficulty of the various game wouldn't harm you in the slightest, the same way we can adjust age lengths through optional settings.

Seems strange to tell others to seek challenges elsewhere when the predecessors of the same game had the level of challenge many liked.

In my defense, I wrote 'I think..' which is definitely not "telling" people. I expressed my personal opinion. Understanding it is not a requirement, but please do not twist the meaning of my statement.

@sam123 I find it equally strange to state a thing like this thread's title does, as if it is a general truth. I actually find it offensive when people do that. It can be a personal opinion - never a general truth. The title cound instead be 'I feel this game needs a difficulty system..'.

I've been talking recently about something similar. I don't think the issue - from a storytelling perspective - is difficulty as much as it is stakes and nothing made this clearer to me than when I developed a story with a single mom raising four children. I knew the mom was going to die, but I still wanting to witness the story of her developing a relationship with her children first - helping them with their homework, celebrating every good decision they made - and it didn't take long before she was at 100% with all of them. But when she died, they all had a sad moodlet for 2 days - often shorter if they did something like jog or write in their journals! - and afterwards, *totally forgot about their own mother.* Death was rendered utterly inconsequental. It was impossible not to notice, too, that there was no option to tell someone you loved them. And in real life, seeing Angie erased from her children's minds kind of broke me.

So for everyone talking about how you want to play in a utopia, a world in which people forget you ever existed two days after you died is not a utopia. A world where you can make anyone you want love you by being in a good mood and flirting with them is not a utopia. That is an awful world where life has so little value to people that existence is merely the consequence of a series of whims based on spontaneous emotions, where love is dictated instead of earned.

If Sims 4 wants to create a utopia, it at least needs to create the illusion that the people in the world matter. That their existence has a lasting effect on others around them and that they have the ability to choose to love, remember, and do good or evil.

What Sims 4 needs is stakes, if just to make things a little more interesting. Unequal romance system so that we have to explore romantic relationships. Evolved grieving systems so that we understand death has a lingering impact on people (and should! Because people should matter!). An evolved sense of the evil trait where characters can actually hurt us so that we are encouraged to spend more time actually getting to know the sims around us and deducing their trustworthiness. Sure, there may never be a game to accurately represent Gentrification or homophobia or self-hate or etc., and so there has to be a natural limit to how far the game will go. But a game that *promotes* the idea that a utopian world is one where things always go your way with little effort and you can have whatever you want whenever you want and that people will always be whatever you want them to be is not a game that even sort-of encompasses the beauty of the human experience. That is not playing with dolls. It's playing with slaves.

I honestly think that difficulty settings should be composed of several individual components:

1. Career Difficulty: Hard (how the careers were set up at launch with the various specific requirements for each job level), Normal (the current set-up), and Easy (the current set-up, but with the daily tasks removed)

2. Aspiration Difficulty: Hard (launch difficulty), Normal (current difficulty), and Easy (one task per level for the little babies who think even the current difficulty is too hard).

3. Danger Level: High (very high chances of emotional deaths, easier to kill sims by drowning , electrocution, and other "accidents," said "accidents" are very likely to occur, so players who play on this setting have to be very careful or watch their simmies get crushed by satellites and burned to death from trying to cook mac and cheese with no flippin' cooking skill on a regular basis...well, play carefully and thoughtfully OR learn to save scum like an adult...), Moderate (emotional deaths and accidents still happen, but sim deaths from such random accidents are tamped down to, like, a 1 in 100 or 1 in 500 chance, something like that), Low (emotional deaths and accidents practically never happen, like, a 1 in 10,000,000 chance, and your sims can't starve or die of anything but old age or be taken away by social services...basically, life with all the sharp corners shaved off).

4. Social Difficulty: High (friendships and romantic relationships take several sim days to build up, with a hard cap on how many points of love or friendship you can gain with any one sim in one sim day, and when you tick off another sim by cheating on them or having a brawl with them or stealing from them, they hold a grudge for a set amount of time, during which they will not accept any friendly interactions and trying to interact with them in any way before they cool down will actually sour your relationship, enemies are easier to make than at current), Moderate (relationship building has the same pacing as at current, but with the grudge mechanic added to the mix), Low (no grudges, super-easy relationship building, nearly impossible to make enemies).

5. Relationship Decay: Off (no decay), Slow (relationships decay one point per sim day), Moderate (relationships decay at a pace of 3 points per sim day), Quick (relationships decay at a rate of 5 points per sim day).

6. Cost of Living: Low (about half the current rate), Moderate (the current billing rates), High (about double the current rate).

8. Dirt Build-Up: Sterile (surfaces and plumbing rarely get dirty), Normal (current rate of dirt build-up), Filthy (everything that can get dirty does get dirty practically every stinkin' day).

9. Skill Gain Speed: Quick (double the current pace), Moderate (the current pace), and Slow (half the current pace).

10. Skill Decay (basically, un-used or under-used skills losing levels over time): Off (skills don't decay), Slow (1 level every 4 weeks that a skill goes un-used), Moderate (1 level every 2 weeks a skill goes un-used), and Fast (1 level every week that a skill goes un-used).

And these are just a few of the difficulty settings that could exist. Basically, it would allow each individual player to set up their saves how THEY want them in terms of individual aspects of challenge and difficulty. Other things could include being able to choose whether Children, Toddlers, Teens, and Pets are player-controlled or 100% AI (each category individually, of course), a slider for alien abduction and vampire break-in frequency, being able to turn burglars on or off, and more! A great set of difficulty options would really enhance the game for every player.

@SimsLovinLycan That's a pretty cool system and I LOVE the skill-decay aspect! That's a great idea! It would force you to stay sharp on your skills!

"SimsLovinLycan;c-17347127" wrote:
I honestly think that difficulty settings should be composed of several individual components:

1. Career Difficulty: Hard (how the careers were set up at launch with the various specific requirements for each job level), Normal (the current set-up), and Easy (the current set-up, but with the daily tasks removed)

2. Aspiration Difficulty: Hard (launch difficulty), Normal (current difficulty), and Easy (one task per level for the little babies who think even the current difficulty is too hard).

3. Danger Level: High (very high chances of emotional deaths, easier to kill sims by drowning , electrocution, and other "accidents," said "accidents" are very likely to occur, so players who play on this setting have to be very careful or watch their simmies get crushed by satellites and burned to death from trying to cook mac and cheese with no flippin' cooking skill on a regular basis...well, play carefully and thoughtfully OR learn to save scum like an adult...), Moderate (emotional deaths and accidents still happen, but sim deaths from such random accidents are tamped down to, like, a 1 in 100 or 1 in 500 chance, something like that), Low (emotional deaths and accidents practically never happen, like, a 1 in 10,000,000 chance, and your sims can't starve or die of anything but old age or be taken away by social services...basically, life with all the sharp corners shaved off).

4. Social Difficulty: High (friendships and romantic relationships take several sim days to build up, with a hard cap on how many points of love or friendship you can gain with any one sim in one sim day, and when you tick off another sim by cheating on them or having a brawl with them or stealing from them, they hold a grudge for a set amount of time, during which they will not accept any friendly interactions and trying to interact with them in any way before they cool down will actually sour your relationship, enemies are easier to make than at current), Moderate (relationship building has the same pacing as at current, but with the grudge mechanic added to the mix), Low (no grudges, super-easy relationship building, nearly impossible to make enemies).

5. Relationship Decay: Off (no decay), Slow (relationships decay one point per sim day), Moderate (relationships decay at a pace of 3 points per sim day), Quick (relationships decay at a rate of 5 points per sim day).

6. Cost of Living: Low (about half the current rate), Moderate (the current billing rates), High (about double the current rate).

8. Dirt Build-Up: Sterile (surfaces and plumbing rarely get dirty), Normal (current rate of dirt build-up), Filthy (everything that can get dirty does get dirty practically every stinkin' day).

9. Skill Gain Speed: Quick (double the current pace), Moderate (the current pace), and Slow (half the current pace).

10. Skill Decay (basically, un-used or under-used skills losing levels over time): Off (skills don't decay), Slow (1 level every 4 weeks that a skill goes un-used), Moderate (1 level every 2 weeks a skill goes un-used), and Fast (1 level every week that a skill goes un-used).

And these are just a few of the difficulty settings that could exist. Basically, it would allow each individual player to set up their saves how THEY want them in terms of individual aspects of challenge and difficulty. Other things could include being able to choose whether Children, Toddlers, Teens, and Pets are player-controlled or 100% AI (each category individually, of course), a slider for alien abduction and vampire break-in frequency, being able to turn burglars on or off, and more! A great set of difficulty options would really enhance the game for every player.

Love this idea!!

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.