Smarter Sims, Have You Ever Seen One?

"bellagoth_;c-17568524" wrote:
it's fun how i never noticed these "smarter sims" because i just assumed that they should behave with some realism and common sense, this is a life simulator after all, you would expect a good AI.

ts4 just showed me that in fact, sims were smarter in previous games, their actions made sense, they acted according to their traits, personality, wants, fears, interests, situation, circumstances, etc. yes, of course sometimes they had some inconsistencies, but that's not the problem, the problem is that 10 years later sims should actually be smarter but instead i have to see how useless are their traits and their emotions. other nonsense like how vegetarian sims eat meat, how sims go wash the dishes on the bathroom, how they keep moving from chair to chair to have a normal conversation, how loyalty among the sims is impossible, how a mean sim is always good, how their conversation actions don't make sense, how the talking bubbles won't even make sense... and so many more. not even their randomly generated clothes make sense, let's not forget AI means everything else that the player can't directly control

It's not just TS4 though, I gave examples of how Sims do behave in TS2 by still sitting at a pc playing a game long after fun was full. Granted people complained and they did adjust things like that a bit. For instance, they would stop dancing. Or they would stop eating (even if plate was not empty) if hunger was full etc. But TS3 also had bad AI problems, such as children automatically doing homework as soon as they got home even though they were too sleepy, too hungry and or even needed to pee badly. Instead of taking care of fun which might have been in the red, they would go ahead and do homework. As I said TS4 is no better. lol I only have the one true example (From my TS2 game) that I can remember of actually seeing a smarter Sim in all these years. But even every trailer Maxis ever produced to introduce us to game play we are always told that next iteration will have much smarter Sims, it hasn't been true, not one time.
True, TS2's AI seems smarter to all the rest, at least they walk around a crowd if they can't get through it, who might be blocking a door (TS3's University) and or then again they may not and just wave their arms but most of the time a Sim will move and they will work their way through a crowd blocking a staircase and or door in TS2 or step over something.

TS4 Sims just might walk through them and collide right into the body of another. That's not smarter, that's just lazy, and a short cut I would only expect in a phone game or something where graphics don't matter. But when you see it on a bigger screen, it's like what?

The best critique of this is my husband. He doesn't play many games that are animated as much. He will walk by the screen and ask why did that train just run through that boy? lol Train tycoon games where the train moving on down a track may seem to run through a person.

Or why did that person just walk through that counter? (TS4). He often sees the stuff I don't pay attention to in little games because it's not about what I see but what I'm doing and how to level up etc.

But in The Sims, yeah, he will stop and ask me why is that Sim standing like that (need to pee) or why don't they go to the bathroom, lol, and or why don't they get up and get some food? Or why didn't they drink coffee before they took a bath? After twenty years, I would expect the Sim to be as smart as me, or at least to seem to be smarter than the first pixel where they stood and couldn't think, hey, I'm not low on fun right now, I need to stop shooting hoops, I need to stop dancing, I need to use my time wisely and maybe work on a skill and or a relationship, and or clean the house, and or build something, and or be more productive. With TS4 it seems Maxis must be trying to tell us we spend way too much time on fun and talkng, talking, talking because that is basically the whole essence of the S4 sim. It has to be some sort of message that people are using their phone over and over and over (can't even cancel it enough in TS4) and satire of what people aren't doing because TS4 Sims are some of the most obsessed Sims I have ever seen. But to be fair, none of these games have produced smarter Sims in my opinion.