What is 'Realism' play for you?
Including occult and human sims, unless otherwise stated.
Forum Discussion
- My level of “Realism” depends on the Sim/Household and the story I’m tying to tell.
Sometimes I play no occults and the alien abduction of my scientist becomes a “nightmare” they only imagined. Other times I am playing a vampire or alien or mermaid.
Similarly, some Sims have simple living (or whatever the food ingredients challenge is) and have to brush their teeth regular etc.. other Sims not quite so much. - I don't want to see grandma at the club. I don't want to see my loner sim at the parc. Why is my tatted up rebel sim studying at the library?! No stop doing that you weren't made with that kind of behavior in mind! I swear half my playtime is me raging about the sims I'm not playing. I wish you could set some rules for them and traits actually mattered. What type of lots they like or avoid, what kind of personality they have, etc (I don't have the pack with lifestyles so I don't know if that's what it does). Clubs help a little, but then again I can't even put a sim in a cooking club because all they'll do is cook and cook and cook for hours and hours and there's no more surface to put the food but oh no she's still cooking. I'm probably asking for too much but I hate how lifeless the sims are. I'm not immersed when I see 3 club members show up and do the actions like they go through a checklist. I wanna see cops at the bar playing games after work and get a few drinks, not get black out juiced at 9am on a tuesday. Why is this vampire at the beach? When I visit another lot and the same 5 sims follow me it's just weird (I use mods for that). This is what I mean by realism.
- The world is a complex place so I let it unfold as it wills, but reserve the right to edit the truly weird parts.
- I play with a couple of banking type mods that allow my Sims to each have their own bank account, if need be. This comes in handy when a youngster starts earning serious money, such as my Erik Cantrell, and now his firstborn, Jamison. Beyond that, it's the everyday stuff, pretty much. I have Bust the dust and Laundry Day. Those chores are necessary and keeps my Homemaker, Kayleigh busy while her family is off doing their own thing.
- The primary question is whether what happens on screen reflects what happens in real life, including all the messes said RL throws at us. The secondary one is do the sims resemble the sort of people we see on a daily basis. If both are true, we have realistic. If only the first is true, then it is semi-realistic. To not be realistic requires both to be false.
- No Realism for me. I like unusual & weird in my game. :D :p B) ;)
- I personally regard “life with all its drama” and “realism play” as two separate concepts.Spoiler
The Sims is a life simulator, it simulates life. The only way to simulate life is by introducing the possibility of death. That’s how we as humans can recognize life, for death is part of life. Life’s a -✨MYSTERY✨, and all we can do is to try to survive, both physically and mentally. This is where the drama comes in. There’s no drama without the want to survive. Survival is the key element, and it’s been the same in every major Sims game. At its core the sims is a survival game. As players we need to ensure that the sim survives for as long as possible, physically and/ or emotionally. It doesn’t matter how the sim survives, as long as the sim does survive. That’s right, even Ghosts & Vampires.
Life in The Sims 4 isn’t “realistic” to start with. If I were to translate every so called “realistic element” from the sims to actual factual real life…real life would turn out rather wacky indeed. A sim day is what, only a couple of minutes in our own life? Spare me the stress.
The way sims are born, age up, die…it’s all pretty “non-realistic” if you ask me. I wish it was like that IRL. It’s all very clean and sparkly. Sometimes it gets a little smokey. Who’s the creepy cool dude in the dark robes??
Some random lucky sim gets zapped by lightning and is utterly fine and happy again after about 5 minutes. Try that IRL. Actually don’t.
The “realistic” part depends on how I as a player decide to have my sims live their lives. It refers to the quality of life rather than simply trying to survive. If I want that quality of life to reflect real life in the most realistic way possible, I’d have to introduce “mundane” activities and chores. I’d make my sims use realistic appliances when cooking, I’d have them vacuum clean with a vacuum cleaner, I’d make them use washing machines and dryers, mow the lawn with a hand propelled Black & Decker, clean the gutters, power wash the driveway on Saturdays, force them to iron their suits before I watch them hop on their bicycles and head off to do their 9-5 salary maker job and drink way too much coffee, get a burn-out, get constipated, have “realistic” weddings, day in, day out, in other words, all that nasty stuff I really, REALLY don’t want to do or experience IRL. And that’s a household without KIDS! My goodness, the mayhem! Send help.
I can play (and live) that way for about 3 minutes before I go absolutely bonkers. My own mental survival is just as important. I don’t mind those so called realistic gameplay elements at all, in fact I do use some of them in my own game from time to time; I can really enjoy it up to a certain point, but for me there needs to be a fair balance. For every realistic kitchen appliance EA/Maxis should release a fantastical kitchen appliance as well - in that same year- such as, I dunno, something like that pigasaurus from The Flinstones that functions as a garbage disposal. It’s a pig-like creature that lives under the sink and gobbles up all the garbage. If you have ecolifestyle installed it will poop bits and pieces. Hooray! I’m already having too much fun in my head with this friggin’ thing. ? - I class realism as anything not involving occults. I have 'realistic' saves and saves where I play occults, because I enjoy both, but don't want occults breaking the immersion in my realistc saves.
- I personally regard "realism" and "the way I want to play" as two separate concepts :)
- I have a bit of trouble answering this quiz. To me occult sims are as realistic as regular sims, so for me it's realistic for a which to travel on a broom or for a mermaid to live in water and only occasionally come on land. A witch with no broom is as realistic as a sim without a car. Maybe it broke down and is in service or they haven't got their broom riding license yet. The everyday things and drama and chaos are the staple of the sims game and I expect them to be there. For more realism I would like little things like separate wardrobes and sims being able to buy and put together their own outfits, harvestable flowers and plants that look like their real life counterparts so I don't have to spend time and money on other plants to decorate the gardens. Also things like you make three jars of mushroom preserve out of one mushroom is unrealistic to me, but I sometimes welcome it. But overall, I think I would like more flexibility in gameplay like separate calendars for each household so spellcasters can have their own events, and regular sims their own. Also, households who don't have any members in highschool shouldn't have any highschool related events in their calendar since they can't even attend them.
