TS4 needs a difficulty system.

Honestly I rather have a failure system than a difficulty system. I would love for aspiration failures, wants and fears, and a social requirement for jobs to make the game more balanced. I would love for an overall of the whole emotion system too so Sims feel more different from each other and have more negative traits and lots traits in the game. The game is so over run by happy traits and buffs, it doesn't balance it with other emotions unless a potion or berry or supernatural power influences it. I also find work from home jobs more challenging than active careers. I get bored how easy and mundane the active careers are in the game.

While I prefer the game's difficulty level as is, I can understand why people want this. I'd be perfectly fine with it being added in, especially if it's something I can opt into or out of. I personally love aspirations as they are in S4. I really loved S2, but I ran into a fair amount of aspiration failure that didn't always jive with the story I was trying to tell. I am primarily a story teller with this game. What I love about it most is how open it is to me using my creativity to make things happen. I'm deeply connected to the sims in my main save, so I don't feel like the game is lacking in difficulty (for me personally) because I've got my own challenges to play out. From a gameplay perspective though, I totally get why people get bored easily. If you're looking for game mechanics to offer challenges, you won't find it in this iteration of the franchise. I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing, but it is an obvious thing.

"Nindigo;c-17340154" wrote:

"sam123;c-17339695" wrote:

I am speaking for myself and what I see when I read through the forums, comments on YT videos, and other media. I see many people stating that the game really is too easy. Have you seen many people complaining that the game is too hard? I have yet to see many of these types of comments... Having an OPTIONAL difficulty increase for players that want more challenge does not affect your game play at all. :)

Only a fraction of the total sum of Sims players can be found on these forums and social media. People who aren't complaining usually don't have a problem. How many are not complaining compared to how many are? You see "many" people stating the game is too easy? How many are we talking? Please don't pretend to be the voice of "many" unless you can back it up with solid fact. So many do this and it's so wrong.

I personally don't want a difficulty system of any kind. I think people need to get creative with the game as it is, or seek their challenges elsewhere. That's my opinion.

They don't need to "back it up with solid fact" because they are speaking from personal experience. Can you back up your own claim that "So many do this"? You have done the exact same thing. :D The truth is, no one needs "facts" to make a request or to express what they've seen. Not everyone uses the same media so it's going to be different for everyone. If you want evidence of people making the same criticism, just read some of the longer threads in the Feedback section and you'll find that two major complaints about Sims 4 over there come down to it being "too easy" and "too boring". This doesn't negate the part of the player base who have no issues with the game of course, but it does show representation is there for the OP's request.

The OP is asking for something optional that is not invasive to other people's games. If you don't want it, fair enough, but trying to silence someone by insisting they need facts to represent an opinion is rude.

I hope that if there's a Sims 5 in development, that the devs consider building difficulty and drama levels in the game. The earlier games most certainly had more challenge to them and more actual gameplay and obstacles. The Sims 4....doesn't. Because the player base of four iterations are now all mixed in, I feel that the best solution moving forward is to do something to implement an impact tool so players can select how much interference and challenge comes up in their games.

And I just want to say that yes, Will Wright did make a game to put players in charge. He made a God game so the player could decide the fate of the Sims, good or bad, rough or easy, success or failure. But the point is, he still made a game, with trials and tribulations, not a happiness simulator that people had to scrounge to make challenging. The challenges were already built in. People who want more difficulty or drama aren't asking for an MMO here. Some of us are just asking to have those choices back to be able to have bad relationships play out, to have to work for rewards, and to be able to choose to have negative results. It used to be that the cheats existed for those who wanted to bypass obstacles. But if you remove the obstacles from the game completely, there's no cheat for players to put them back in. This removes options. And I'm saying this as someone who used a lot of cheats when I played Sims 2 to override when difficulties got too out of hand and threw a monkey wrench into my intentions. But I never would have chosen to remove those difficulties completely.

I play stories, it is what I do in every single game I play.

SWTOR: When I was doing quests I would only pick up one or two quests at the time and only keep one companion or perhaps mix between two if I felt that the story would jive with a group of three. After handing in that quest I would go to a cantina or something similar and switch companions so that all my comps got to see every planet. The team had to update each other and hang out. All of them had top-gear. Ehh.... this was before the upgrade when they removed gear-stats. Started in BETA and I still haven’t had time to play all class-stories, I just get so wrapped up in my stories taking place inside the game, lol.

I play in order to do stories, it is wonderful.

Hmm... I love playing my sims who are just rolling along and living life. That works very well and if my kiddo has had 4 nights in a row with waking up every couple of hours it is pretty much therapy to take a sim fishing in Sulani.

I am just not having as much fun when I am trying to tell other stories. I feel like my sims sometimes skill too fast for my stories. I take time, see SWTOR above, all my sims have friends and family that they interact with. According to MCCC I am on week 15 in this save and 2:nd generation heir is almost halfway through the YA-stage. If I didn’t use mods the heir and his wife would have maxed cooking, handiness, singing, writing and fitness all in their YA-stage and that is not the story I am telling. They would be the power-couple of doom, I don’t want them to be so very good at everything.

For me it is not about wanting the game to go grim dark. I want to tell long stories with highs and lows, with happy moments and sad ones and I do get irritated with the game when I feel hampered. I have played challenges and that was a fun way to try the game but I would like to be able to get that sense of challenge in my stories and not by giving my sims challenges that doesn’t suit their story. I could give my heir and his wife 6 kids to raise but that would not fit their story and that is not where I want my legacy to go. I feel like I am at odds with the game when it comes to playing stories that have sadness or a trying to get a sense of animosity between sims. When I try to get just a little touch of adrenaline.

It’s like playing mario carts on the Nintendo switch, the AI can drag you around the course by itself. Sure you may hit a few cows on the way but it works. Move just a little bit left or right and you will be happy and head up to 2:nd place in no time. That can be fun at times. Me trying to get my creative side going and tell a story with some gray in it feels like trying to leave the track fighting the AI and pushing to the side as much as I can while the faithful AI happily drags me along the road.

I would like to see some optional ways of adding more challenges to my stories. Oki, one way to tackle it could perhaps be more traits. Debuffs that you could add as traits from the reward-store or lot-traits could be good way for me to have more variety in my households and letting the game have a different sense of difficulty depending on the players own choices. I really like the reward-traits from the Parenthood Game Pack and use them often.

Hypothetical reward-traits from the store:
Fitness-skill will go up slower
Restless sleep, this sim sometimes wakes up and find it difficult to fall asleep again

Hypothetical lot-traits:
Higher bills, this lot will have 15 % higher bills. (I would give it to all lots placed in nice areas.)

I have to disagree with difficulty levels *such as toggles, for The Sims. My problem with this iteration is there are way too many failsafes. Or whatever you want to call it. I enjoyed my Sims had to eat about every four or five hours in the past games. I understand others don't. But motives were what pushed players to care for their Sims and try to keep them safe. I understand some found TS1 extremely difficult to play but it's because some approached the game (per game console players and critiques) as if it was a win type game where you leveled up and won the game after you had completed some goal such as getting to the top of a career. But The Sims were not built to actually be played that way, but that was a side thing while they dealt with Life. Life happens. Getting hungry, dying, getting sick, dying, getting an illness, dying, accidents such as fires/dying,cheaters/betrayal/divorce/revenge etc. etc.

But not in TS4. I don't expect my Sim to pull out some imaginary food if I haven't supplied them with food. But that is exactly what they do or can do. I wonder why Maxis thinks that's ok and tries to protect a teenager or an adult from the harm that might happen to the Sim if they had no food. It would seem they want to protect the child that may be playing rather than a teenager who has dealt with far worse in raw rpgs that are more intense and harmful to a character. It's not that I want to spend all my time making sure the Sim is fed, but good grief, remove the baby failsafes. I expect difficulty to work the same way. If my Sim eats better food I expect them to stay healthier, live longer, or not gain weight, or get an illness etc. But if they don't, I would expect my Sims would keel over from my bad management of their life. I don't expect the game to save the Sim for me by supplying them with food they pull out of a pocket somewhere and won't die. I also don't expect every Sim in the world to be able to extinquish a fire without some sort of training and just pull out a fire extinquisher from nowhere. That to me is so babyfied. If I don't supply them with some sort of fire alarm etc I don't expec them to have a canister hidden in a pocket. This is the difference in TS4 and TS1 and the others. And in TS2 Sims may fail to put out a fire if they haven't studied how to do that. At least read the canister instructions.

Also, I expect Sims to have human behavior such as anger and resentment and wanting revenge if their partner cheats on them, I don't expect them to behave like they do in TS4 and start joking with the home wrecker and want to be friends and do lunch. People want reality but that's not reality, human behavior and emotions are just not that polite. Let's get real, TS4 is Utopia and that's it's whole problem. I don't need levers in the game to set difficulty, I just need the game to grow up.

"Cinebar;c-17341758" wrote:
I have to disagree with difficulty levels *such as toggles, for The Sims. My problem with this iteration is there are way too many failsafes. Or whatever you want to call it. I enjoyed my Sims had to eat about every four or five hours in the past games. I understand others don't. But motives were what pushed players to care for their Sims and try to keep them safe. I understand some found TS1 extremely difficult to play but it's because some approached the game (per game console players and critiques) as if it was a win type game where you leveled up and won the game after you had completed some goal such as getting to the top of a career. But The Sims were not built to actually be played that way, but that was a side thing while they dealt with Life. Life happens. Getting hungry, dying, getting sick, dying, getting an illness, dying, accidents such as fires/dying,cheaters/betrayal/divorce/revenge etc. etc.

But not in TS4. I don't expect my Sim to pull out some imaginary food if I haven't supplied them with food. But that is exactly what they do or can do. I wonder why Maxis thinks that's ok and tries to protect a teenager or an adult from the harm that might happen to the Sim if they had no food. It would seem they want to protect the child that may be playing rather than a teenager who has dealt with far worse in raw rpgs that are more intense and harmful to a character. It's not that I want to spend all my time making sure the Sim is fed, but good grief, remove the baby failsafes. I expect difficulty to work the same way. If my Sim eats better food I expect them to stay healthier, live longer, or not gain weight, or get an illness etc. But if they don't, I would expect my Sims would keel over from my bad management of their life. I don't expect the game to save the Sim for me by supplying them with food they pull out of a pocket somewhere and won't die. I also don't expect every Sim in the world to be able to extinquish a fire without some sort of training and just pull out a fire extinquisher from nowhere. That to me is so babyfied. If I don't supply them with some sort of fire alarm etc I don't expec them to have a canister hidden in a pocket. This is the difference in TS4 and TS1 and the others. And in TS2 Sims may fail to put out a fire if they haven't studied how to do that. At least read the canister instructions.

Also, I expect Sims to have human behavior such as anger and resentment and wanting revenge if their partner cheats on them, I don't expect them to behave like they do in TS4 and start joking with the home wrecker and want to be friends and do lunch. People want reality but that's not reality, human behavior and emotions are just not that polite. Let's get real, TS4 is Utopia and that's it's whole problem. I don't need levers in the game to set difficulty, I just need the game to grow up.

Absolutely. The fail-safes in the game cushion every possible surprise or obstacle that might influence a character. For example, in Jungle Adventures, which is supposed to be a dangerous endeavor, we get prevention options, which is great, but on top of that, the game gives us a gazillion warnings and like, two Sim days to avoid death by poisonings and then by the end of it, the Sim usually ends up safe anyway.

We really need some believable negative behaviors too, desperately. Consequences, man!

"LiELF;c-17341847" wrote:


Absolutely. The fail-safes in the game cushion every possible surprise or obstacle that might influence a character. For example, in Jungle Adventures, which is supposed to be a dangerous endeavor, we get prevention options, which is great, but on top of that, the game gives us a gazillion warnings and like, two Sim days to avoid death by poisonings and then by the end of it, the Sim usually ends up safe anyway.

We really need some believable negative behaviors too, desperately. Consequences, man!

I miss consequences too. Major factor of why the game was never called a life simulation game when it was released. It is so politically correct of the warped privileged views it makes me feel ill sometimes. If any game makes me feel like I'm trapped in a prison it is the Sims 4.

"LiELF;c-17338945" wrote:


This isn't quite correct. Will Wright's original intention for The Sims was to explore states of failure because it was more interesting and engaging than consistent success. The purpose of the actual gameplay was for the player to decide if they would allow Sim needs and aspirations to bottom out, resulting in Sims having breakdowns or dying, ...or if they would care for their needs and goals, resulting in happiness and fulfillment. It put the player in the position of a God. The entire premise was to put the fate of the Sims in the player's hands, and when you activated live mode, the game would creep towards failure without player intervention. And there were higher chances of random failure and disaster from unskilled Sims. The player creativity came mostly from build mode and the extra content, but the essence and the core of the actual gameplay was to simulate ultimate failure if left to its own devices. It was more about getting through life's obstacles and the struggle to succeed and meet fulfillment while confronting fears and failures, so when the player finally got their Sim to reach their end goal in their aspiration, there was a sense of accomplishment and reward. It was satisfying because it had challenge and purpose.

The game used to be a lot more than a simple virtual dollhouse of happiness. It used to be an actual game. The devolution of the series has led it to become more of the opposite of what it used to be; it's now a Utopia simulator with the option of failures that actually need to be more forced into happening, which is why people get bored all the time. The challenges and obstacles have been neutralized. It has completely lost its way from Will Wright's original design. And I'm not saying many people don't enjoy Sims 4 for what it is or are wrong for doing so, but it's definitely not the kind of game that Will Wright had intended.

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.

"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