Hello, thanks for running this survey. A little info about myself so you know what sort of sim player I am, in short:
- the Sims 4 is my first sims game
- Sims 1 to 3 never interested me
I play sims 4 because I had the urge to build and play within my builds so I sought out such a game. I had to choose between 4 other games and I felt sims 4 came the closest to what I was looking for. With that said, the sims 4 does scratch my builders itch, however I personally find the sims 4 empty and boring when it comes to game play b.c nothing I do in the game matters.
A higher level of challenge to me means:Meaningful Rewards and meaningful risk
What would you expect from it?
I'd expect things like:
Traits - to set the tone for the type of challenges my sims will face
Example: A sim who is Jealous may argue more often with their partner/best friend because they are so jealous of their partners "close" friends or "Exes"/ best friend having other good friends. Choosing Jealousy in the sims should mean that the challenge with this sims will be to keep them from burning all of their bridges with lovers and best friends.
Aspirations - I understand these are used as tutorials and that is fine, but I expect achieving a life aspiration to be meaningful to my sims even at end game.
Example: Athletic bodybuilder has a meaningful bonus trait - a sims weight can change, this trait helps a sim stay fit easier and upon completion your sim can live a longer life.
Food Master Chef is redundant and in my opinion isn't really worth getting. Raising your cook level causes a lot of food to be excellent so you don't even need this aspiration. Yes you can make food that never spoils, but I personally have never needed to care that food was spoiling because food is so easy to obtain and the fridge makes food feel like it never spoils.
Careers - I don't believe a career is better b.c I can play it, Interactive careers and rabbit holes can be good IMO. What I expect is for the career I choose to add to the types of interactions my sims have. I feel my careers should impact my gameplay, currently it doesn't matter what career I choose, they all offer no consequences to my gameplay.
Example: Criminal and secret agent gig. You get a lot of prompts to make choices for these gigs which I find fun yet disappointing as it only affects my job performance. The whole thing just gets watered down to "do you want a promotion or not", which is not necessarily a bad thing. The problem is if my sim becomes a boss, an oracle, or a villain, unless my sims changes clothes then I have no idea.
When another sim who works as a diamond agent, or detective finds out my sim is a boss, oracle or villain it means nothing. Isn't the landgraab story set up to sound like conflict will arise should they discover each others identities? Yet when they do, nothing happens. No one is mad, there is zero drama, they all do pushups and live happily ever after. What I expected when I first played this game and read their story was that I the player would have to actively try to keep them from discovering each others careers or else drama would follow.
Whims - I feel they should be attached to helping a sim feel good about themselves and that it should be meaningful instead of random.
Example: My creative sim may have a whim to try something new. If they are a botanist they may desire to create a bouquet, and if their trait is a music lover they may wish to listen to some music. I shouldn't just want a bee box b.c I own an expansion, the whims should be attached to the type of job, traits and skills I have.
Skills - All skills sort of play the same way, do x 100 times and level. Once a master unlock a little bit of stuff you may or may not use. Nothing is really wrong with that, the issue is just that it only affects 1 sim and the whole thing resets on a blank slat if I use another sim.
Example: A fisher at max skill can catch any fish but they can't take that skill and have a fisher book made for their later generations to read. My sim has caught all the fish and knows all the locations, but I can't give a grandchild the book about fishing locations and bait types to help them out or become some fishing hermit other sims aspire to become. My sim can't do any of that b.c their is no way to mentor or share your wealth of knowledge with others.
Worlds -
Neighborhoods first: I expected the deliberate choice to make a small world would allow for foraging locations like in other games, like this neighborhood and world only has onions and a log book would help players remember locations for certain herbs, etc so that foraging is fun.
I expected worlds to act as a gold sink, anytime I wanted to hop from say willow creak to oasis spring my sim would have to pay a small fee and I expected to have control over what sims showed up in my world since the game required me to instigate everything.
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