What do players mean by "gameplay"?

For me gameplay is what my Sims can do in the game, plus the interactions available, either queued up by me, or autonomous. Gameplay is toddlers being able to climb up and down the stairs, for instance. For parent Sims to be able to discipline their unruly Sim children. For a Sim to be able to sing and build a career off of that talent. For my Sim Detective to solve a case and then later on unwind either by dancing at the club or visit a lounge. Gameplay is a Sim being randomly abducted by an alien from outer space.

Yes, it is a broad term, but it applies to what is available in the game itself. What you do with it, is strictly up to you. ;)

"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.

So even doing those DJing and Singing activities didn't give you tips and/or gradually upped payout as their skill increased? Hmh I can really see how that could make the game repetitive and less invested in doing such recreational stuff. It's unfortunate. If only it were like showtime, where you would get a phone call for an opportunity when at a certain skill level a bar owner for example would invite to do a gig there for the pleasure of customers/audience and in return receive cash a reward after turning and mixing the tables.

To me it is live mode is gameplay for all the ages. Little details like with the newest pack seeing kids do laundry or toddlers playing in the wash tub matter to me. I also love seeing toddlers do cute interactions with the cats and dogs too. It is those little sweet interactions between more than one Sim being that I love about the Sims and make the game feel like for the Sims rather than a single Sim so a bit closer to the Sims roots. I also love when unexpected events happen in live mode like with the idle streams Eliza Pancakes catching on fire with the dryer or Boozy playing play with the toy car in a surprising manner or the roomba DJ Suck Suck breaking and spewing trash all over the house. I just love when chaos happens.

"samsims;c-16263920" wrote:
Have you ever played Sims, Sims 2 and Sims 3. It's real simple bring back the gameplay from the past.

The problem is that EA will never do that! The reason is the way EA is thinking which is that every Sims game has to be new and different! So the developers are actually working very hard to avoid just copying anything from a previous game and they are always focusing on finding new ideas to make each game different. This is very hard and clearly also the reason why they usually have to start working on the next basegame when they release the previous one just to make experiments and search for new ideas. The reason why EA’s top want it done this way is of course that they don’t believe that a new Sims game would sell very well at all if people saw the new Sims game just as some modified remake of a previous Sims game!

Just try to compare Sims 1, Sims 2, Sims 3 and Sims 4 with eachother and this should be very clear for everybody. At least it is for me! :)

So don’t encourage the developers to copy anything from a previous game because then they will alas just have to ignore you.

It’s just playing the game and anything and everything related to it.