Where are my evil sims at?
I know today is Hate Eco Lifestyle Day. I've done my share, I've liked some of the things and not at all others. But here is one of the general things I got from all this: where are my evil sims at? ...
Forum Discussion
I 100% feel you! There were hints of possible "good choices vs. evil choices" gameplay in the branching paths of some of the base game careers. Astronaut let you be either a smuggler or a space cop, secret agent let you be either a good guy/gal secret agent or a Bond movie style villain. There was a lot of potential in that (like there was in a lot of the mechanics that were there at launch but were either dropped, nerfed, or left to stagnate and be forgotten as the game has been expanded on over its run), and it really saddens me that it didn't get expanded upon to become a real key feature of TS4. "Will your sim choose to be an evil mad scientist or an altruistic innovator? Will your sim be a dirty cop or the long arm of the law? Will your sim do their best to serve their constituents or be a corrupt politician that betrays the public trust for cold, hard cash?" That could have been a compelling way to go with a lot of careers...but TS4 keeps things so neutral most of the time.
It's like they're afraid to let players make impactful moral decisions with their sims, so they just keep things as judgement-free and happy as possible. The farthest it goes is with GF's fame system...but your sim also has to gain fame for this to work from what I've heard, and fame in these games also comes with its own gameplay influences that I won't want for every one of my sims. For a game that's been called "the story-teller's game" and "the roleplayer's game" with its lack of sim personalities strong enough to push back against the player's will and the big emphasis in marketing about playing out a fantasy life through your self-sim, that lack of impactful moral decisions in the game is actually a bad thing. You'll see players who play any game that has any form of morality/karma system in it complain when the choices they've been given don't change anything much in the way the story plays out. You'll see it in complaints about Mass Effect, Fallout 3, Fallout 4--people seeing their choices not changing the events of the game or even the ending strongly enough and getting disappointed with that lack of influence their choices have. You see it in TS4's players too, whenever there is a complaint about our sims' actions and the choices we make for them not having any truly meaningful consequences. But...most players like consequences and meaningful moral choices in games that have any sort of roleplaying element, especially when they involve allowing the player to heavily customize their characters.
But, I said all that to say this: I, too, want to see more meaningful choices in TS4. I want to be able to have a sim go an evil route and be able to seriously impact the world for the worse just as much as I want to have a sim go a good route and impact the world for the better. I want mechanics that enforce stronger conflicts between my sims when I play them against each other, and I want to have a sim go bad and then have a real redemption arc. I say this not only as a fan of anime and action cartoons, but as an author and a storyteller. I've written and published two whole novels, I write both original stories and fan fiction, I'm working on improving my skills as an artist and animator in order to start my own animation studio to put out my own films and series one day. I love a good story, and I love writing good stories. I play these games in part for the gameplay challenges (which have been nerfed really badly and replaced with the fake difficulty of bad AI in TS4...but that's a whole other rant), and partly to play out a narrative. I want game mechanics that ENFORCE and ADD TO what I'm doing with that narrative as a player. Not ones that override them (like TS3-style story progression or TS4's happiness overload), not ones that ignore them (like how sims who hate each other won't instantly start arguing or insulting each other, or sims in the middle of a heated argument will keep doing friendly interactions in between mean ones in TS4), but ones that acknowledge my story and my influence in it and change the environment and AI behavior accordingly. The clean-up mechanics employed in IL and EL are a step in that direction for the game world, but with no dark path to go with the light, it's just as lopsided as all of the other mechanics in this game...
It's like they're afraid to let players make impactful moral decisions with their sims, so they just keep things as judgement-free and happy as possible. The farthest it goes is with GF's fame system...but your sim also has to gain fame for this to work from what I've heard, and fame in these games also comes with its own gameplay influences that I won't want for every one of my sims. For a game that's been called "the story-teller's game" and "the roleplayer's game" with its lack of sim personalities strong enough to push back against the player's will and the big emphasis in marketing about playing out a fantasy life through your self-sim, that lack of impactful moral decisions in the game is actually a bad thing. You'll see players who play any game that has any form of morality/karma system in it complain when the choices they've been given don't change anything much in the way the story plays out. You'll see it in complaints about Mass Effect, Fallout 3, Fallout 4--people seeing their choices not changing the events of the game or even the ending strongly enough and getting disappointed with that lack of influence their choices have. You see it in TS4's players too, whenever there is a complaint about our sims' actions and the choices we make for them not having any truly meaningful consequences. But...most players like consequences and meaningful moral choices in games that have any sort of roleplaying element, especially when they involve allowing the player to heavily customize their characters.
But, I said all that to say this: I, too, want to see more meaningful choices in TS4. I want to be able to have a sim go an evil route and be able to seriously impact the world for the worse just as much as I want to have a sim go a good route and impact the world for the better. I want mechanics that enforce stronger conflicts between my sims when I play them against each other, and I want to have a sim go bad and then have a real redemption arc. I say this not only as a fan of anime and action cartoons, but as an author and a storyteller. I've written and published two whole novels, I write both original stories and fan fiction, I'm working on improving my skills as an artist and animator in order to start my own animation studio to put out my own films and series one day. I love a good story, and I love writing good stories. I play these games in part for the gameplay challenges (which have been nerfed really badly and replaced with the fake difficulty of bad AI in TS4...but that's a whole other rant), and partly to play out a narrative. I want game mechanics that ENFORCE and ADD TO what I'm doing with that narrative as a player. Not ones that override them (like TS3-style story progression or TS4's happiness overload), not ones that ignore them (like how sims who hate each other won't instantly start arguing or insulting each other, or sims in the middle of a heated argument will keep doing friendly interactions in between mean ones in TS4), but ones that acknowledge my story and my influence in it and change the environment and AI behavior accordingly. The clean-up mechanics employed in IL and EL are a step in that direction for the game world, but with no dark path to go with the light, it's just as lopsided as all of the other mechanics in this game...
