What do players mean by "gameplay"?

"DeservedCriticism;c-16263253" wrote:
A long-term goal that changes how you play, something to do and to work for, a reward of sorts at the end or at milestones, and something that distinguishes the performance of various different Sims from one another.

Look back at Sims 1. The two main goals of that game were to get married and have kids or max your career. In both cases you have a long-term goal (marriage, a promotion), they're something to work towards (flirt and socialize with your spouse of choice, improve your skills), you get a reward for the milestone (another sim to play, new skills or paycheck that you benefit from daily), and something that distinguishes the performance of various Sims from one another. (This wasn't Sims 1's strongsuit, but their personalities helped set them apart from each other while some of the expansion jobs or tasks did set them apart, for example being a celebrity meant other Sims would react differently to you)


Now look at Sims 4. Let's grab the last three expansion packs as examples. All three of them had a skill that existed "just because" and had weak to no rewards whatsoever. Get Together had DJing, which was just a copy-pasting instrument skill with no unique reward and no motivation to actually bother with it. The only reason to bother with it is because if you want your Sims to be a DJ, but actually being a DJ doesn't make him unique or give him unique abilities or qualifications. The skill just exists as something to do if you're exceedingly bored and that's it.

City Living did the exact same. Singing skill again had zero long-term goal and again it was a copy-pasted instrument skill that was more or less functionally identical to the other four. Singing afforded you no special qualifications for jobs and no special abilities. It was just a copy-pasted skill with no goal or purpose. Again your only motivation for using it is if you want your sim to be a singer, but what you earn is little more than an absolutely meaningless title of "singer" with no practical effects on how they perform in day-to-day life. Yes, some animations and audio files improve, but this achieves absolutely nothing in terms of the game.

Pets? The Pet training skill. What does this do? Again it's just....there. You don't get anything for it, there's no special benefits for mastering it. It's just there and the best-case-scenario is shinier interactions. I don't own the pack, but it seems to me that pets themselves - in their entirety - are completely devoid of goals or gameplay. They just sit there, poop on your couch and the new "gameplay" is you get to clean it up. Wow, real exciting.

Let's look at vampires as a comparison, since it's probably the most praised pack in terms of gameplay. Does it have a long-term goal that changes how you play? I don't know about super long term, but the aspirations do help personify your vampires a bit and give them a personalized goal, not to mention maxing your vampire powers is of course a standard goal. Does it have something to do and to work for? Yes, again there's three aspirations and tons of powers to work towards. Does it have a reward at the end or at milestones? Yep, the vampire powers themselves. Does it have something that distinguishes the performance of various different Sims from one another? Yep, the vampire powers and even the vampire lifestate itself do this.

Vampires is so praised because it gives Sims more personality and variety than the base game traits do. That's ridiculous, and it speaks volumes about how bad the traits are. What's more, it attaches this personality and variety towards something to work towards and a goal. You don't just get the personality of being an all-powerful vampire handed to you on a silver platter; you have to earn it. This keeps you busy and keeps you invested in your game, and this is a good thing.


Unfortunately, Sims 4 repeatedly lacks this. It spams stuff packs at us with absolutely zero gameplay involved, it throws out lackluster expansion packs that - until now - have only offered skills that seem to copy-paste the designs of other pre-existing skills (baking copying cooking, DJ and singing copying any other instrument, Vet copying the Scientist and Doctor careers rather than another skill) and only one seemed to have any semblance of goal-orientated gameplay. (Get to Work) Even the Game Packs often get overpraised, because thusfar only Vampires and Parenthood have succeeded in providing gameplay. (Spa Day had practically zero, Outdoor Retreat's was waaaaaaaay too niche, barebones and repetitive to be interesting, Dine Out completely lacked meaningful rewards for any work provided)

That's why you hear outcries for gameplay. Because astonishingly, the Sims team seems to have forgotten that games require gameplay.

I agree with this in parts and I don't disagree I think I just view it slightly differently. To the me sims 1 is a true sandbox. I don't have any goals forced on me set by the game and the game is what I make it. There's no end. It's only limited by my imagination.

The sims 4 on the other hand is not a sand box. The player has goals in everything. Life time aspiration? Here's a checklist of mini goals to achieve it. Throw a party? Here's another checklist if you want the reward. Ditto dates. Join an active career and its checklist city. Check you can't even build a community lot without completing some darn check list.

For the smaller skills like dog training I agree there's not much point in training them. House training your dog and they will still wait at the back door any way instead of going out on their own.

Singing skills just gets you more genres of songs to sing. I suppose the reward is and I use that term loosely is you get to see your sims murder more songs. Ditto instruments the reward is they learn more songs. You want your mean sim to become a mischievous sim you need to spam the mischief interactions hard to get to the more "interesting ones" ((What is the point of the mischief skill? Surely that's the one skill that shouldn't be hidden behind an unlock chart?)

I've realised that so much of the game play in this game is grinding as means to an end. I don't get this vibe or feeling or need when I play the previous games. Sure my sims skill up be it naturally or me telling them too but it feels natural. I don't fee like I'm spamming my game to get a desired result. Whereas with Parenthood I spam I interactions to achieve a certain character value because certain ones don't seem to move on their own. Particularly if you want a negative character value. My slob sims are all well mannered for example with no input from me.

I want game play. I want my sims to care about what's going on in their lives. I want my sim to care that her kid is flunking school but she doesn't. I want my sim to want to say max a certain skill but I never see that. There's no reward in pushing them a certain way if the sim themselves doesn't care one way or another. And this for me is a problem if the game is so goal centred which it seems to be why don't the sims care? I have a sim who has the romance aspiration? She's never made it past the first checklist of having x kisses with so many sims. Does she care? Nope. My sims 2 romance sim has been whining for weeks because I made him get married and he hasn't seen any of his girlfriends or had any new romantic interactions. Keeping him happy is a challenge.

I don't mind goals if they make sense and are not repetitive. I don't play as vampires although I own the pack so I can't comment. But generally speaking I wish EA would stop forcing goals in the game. For something like vampires I can see how that would be useful but to me goals aren't game play. I wouldn't mind but none of the goals in game the sims care about.