What is Your Biggest Criticism About Sims 4?
Note: This thread is not for being mean or insulting. Please try to phrase your critiques as civilly and respectfully as possible, no matter how much the issue irks you. Thanks in advance! For me, ...
Forum Discussion
1) Overcluttered interaction menu. Looking at any letsplay videos it can be seen how players struggle with finding needed options there scrolling over and over again for ages.
Definitely need some grouping/cleaning like taking away vampire chat options or wedding chat options from sims who has nothing to do with them. Sims 3 chat had a neat feature where all special chat options coming from traits or careers were grouped into separate menu. I feel like at this stage Sims 4 desperately need this.
2) Consistency. New features are initiated and dropped like new shiny toys child got bored with.
- Likes/dislikes still missing a great portion of activities. Decoration styles were changed several times already and have little in common with categories introduced in Home Decorator. Sims still doing autonomously things they hate constantly getting stressed about them, so autonomy for likes/dislikes also isn't getting fixed.
- Promised townies overhaul... I don't want even to start this. Apparently it's way much more important how two certain families look instead the fact that families have no implied relationships, no preset sentiments, no body hair settings, horrific random hot/cold outfits, no preset likes/dislikes including those for Decor and Fashion, how about preset lifestyles for those with expansion. Instead of tones of Caliente/Goth sketches that's what normal overhaul would look like.
- When neighborhood stories were implemented it was promised it's only the first step in introducing this feature. And more steps for improving it will come along. Have you ever heard about any new additions or improvement to it ever since? Sims can have babies autonomously but still can't form couples autonomously meaning after first generation the save will still die out without manual arrangement of 2nd generation of NPC couples.
- Swimmable water in base game? Or Windenburg or Brindleton Bay anyone? How many years since we were told they are working on this?
- Recent wants/fears update. Fears logic is very flawed in many cases leading to countless annoyances. Wants are very limited and repetitive especially music ones. And not only this feature was dropped without any discussion prior to it, it continue to exist without any follow up from the team side and bug/annoyances fixing. Also absolutely no feedback on wants/fears for other packs.
3) Integration. A lot about it is said above so I won't add more.
4) NPC management. NPCs were a big disaster in all sims games actually. And they are as bad in Sims 4. But some pretty obvious things I feel could be stopped.
- NPCs like Father Winter or Sages being pushed to different roles like showing in Uni campus events or even simple bypassers in Oasis Spring. Aren't there any other mechanics to fill these roles?
- Star NPCs control. I do understand some players want to see their stars every where but for those who suppose Judith Ward won't come for groceries into a low 24/7 car stop shop it can be implemented through "no stars" lot trait easily.
- Outfits which are so bad the team has to pretend it's not a bug but feature (I'm looking at you trendy shoppers). Many different suggestions were already made on how to tame random outfit generation craziness, but we still have clown NPCs everywhere and even generated on purpose.
5) Routing.
- Why when I order my sim to go and talk to someone they stand and wait for other part of the talk to come to them. Leading to such things as vendors closing their stalls/other NPC dropping their assignments to come to chat. If my sim is initiating the talk it's him who need to go and start it not the involved part.
- Why can't sims just stand and talk? If there are any seats in the vicinity they won't talk without occupying them first. Which leads to musical chairs, annoying routing up/down stairs for no reason and so on.
- Why sims are so prone to chat standing back to back not face to face?
- Why proper sinks usage is still such a problem?
- Do we still believe hugging or greeting each other in other ways before each conversation is a good feature especially in terms of routing?
- Bicycles need to be left outside. Living rooms are not a good place to stop bicycle rides.
- Constant task dropping.
I'm absolutely sure that with a good coat of polish for 1, 4 and 5 issues alone the game would be very enjoyable to play. These are things laying in the game foundation and making it even not more interesting but more usable and reasonable overall.
Definitely need some grouping/cleaning like taking away vampire chat options or wedding chat options from sims who has nothing to do with them. Sims 3 chat had a neat feature where all special chat options coming from traits or careers were grouped into separate menu. I feel like at this stage Sims 4 desperately need this.
2) Consistency. New features are initiated and dropped like new shiny toys child got bored with.
- Likes/dislikes still missing a great portion of activities. Decoration styles were changed several times already and have little in common with categories introduced in Home Decorator. Sims still doing autonomously things they hate constantly getting stressed about them, so autonomy for likes/dislikes also isn't getting fixed.
- Promised townies overhaul... I don't want even to start this. Apparently it's way much more important how two certain families look instead the fact that families have no implied relationships, no preset sentiments, no body hair settings, horrific random hot/cold outfits, no preset likes/dislikes including those for Decor and Fashion, how about preset lifestyles for those with expansion. Instead of tones of Caliente/Goth sketches that's what normal overhaul would look like.
- When neighborhood stories were implemented it was promised it's only the first step in introducing this feature. And more steps for improving it will come along. Have you ever heard about any new additions or improvement to it ever since? Sims can have babies autonomously but still can't form couples autonomously meaning after first generation the save will still die out without manual arrangement of 2nd generation of NPC couples.
- Swimmable water in base game? Or Windenburg or Brindleton Bay anyone? How many years since we were told they are working on this?
- Recent wants/fears update. Fears logic is very flawed in many cases leading to countless annoyances. Wants are very limited and repetitive especially music ones. And not only this feature was dropped without any discussion prior to it, it continue to exist without any follow up from the team side and bug/annoyances fixing. Also absolutely no feedback on wants/fears for other packs.
3) Integration. A lot about it is said above so I won't add more.
4) NPC management. NPCs were a big disaster in all sims games actually. And they are as bad in Sims 4. But some pretty obvious things I feel could be stopped.
- NPCs like Father Winter or Sages being pushed to different roles like showing in Uni campus events or even simple bypassers in Oasis Spring. Aren't there any other mechanics to fill these roles?
- Star NPCs control. I do understand some players want to see their stars every where but for those who suppose Judith Ward won't come for groceries into a low 24/7 car stop shop it can be implemented through "no stars" lot trait easily.
- Outfits which are so bad the team has to pretend it's not a bug but feature (I'm looking at you trendy shoppers). Many different suggestions were already made on how to tame random outfit generation craziness, but we still have clown NPCs everywhere and even generated on purpose.
5) Routing.
- Why when I order my sim to go and talk to someone they stand and wait for other part of the talk to come to them. Leading to such things as vendors closing their stalls/other NPC dropping their assignments to come to chat. If my sim is initiating the talk it's him who need to go and start it not the involved part.
- Why can't sims just stand and talk? If there are any seats in the vicinity they won't talk without occupying them first. Which leads to musical chairs, annoying routing up/down stairs for no reason and so on.
- Why sims are so prone to chat standing back to back not face to face?
- Why proper sinks usage is still such a problem?
- Do we still believe hugging or greeting each other in other ways before each conversation is a good feature especially in terms of routing?
- Bicycles need to be left outside. Living rooms are not a good place to stop bicycle rides.
- Constant task dropping.
I'm absolutely sure that with a good coat of polish for 1, 4 and 5 issues alone the game would be very enjoyable to play. These are things laying in the game foundation and making it even not more interesting but more usable and reasonable overall.
