Difficulty Level of Sims 4

[imayu94]

I don't know why but somehow for me I find Sims 4 a wee bit harder to play. The Build and Buy mode is great and the multi-tasking is amazingly useful, but I'm talking about the aspiration goals, career goals and relationships. Things aren't as easy this time around. 

What do you guys think of this? Are you finding it a challenge?

[Trip]

I am finding it challenging, but I'm not sure how much of it is actual challenge and how much of it is me not being able to change all that easily.

[Zyffyr]

It has taken me some time to adjust my thinking, but now it feels quite natural to me.

[Playalot]

I agree with Zyfyr, at first it seemed such a very different game to TS3. But now after many hours of playing I really like it. I still find some things challenging like getting work/promotion tasks finished at the same time as certain aspiration tasks, but that's good. It would get boring if it was all too easy.
Getting child skills, aspirations and an A in school while isn't difficult, is very time consuming. It still takes over the whole focus of any game I play once I have a child in the house.

[Stormi71]

I find the whole friendship thing difficult. My main household is two adult sims, two teens and a child, so managing their emotions and aspirations and school/work goals etc takes up time. Relationships decay too fast, I think. They no sooner make a new friend, then get busy for several days, then that friend's relationship bar has dropped back down to nearly nothing. So I find it hard to keep friends as well as do everything else.

[ladybug53]

I find the relationships decay too quickly as well . I have a musician that needs 10 friends for his next promotion and find this very difficult to do . Elders need decays much quicker as well plus they can't do much without getting exhausted . But , I really do enjoy all these challenges .

[Metropolis Man]

I think a big thing is at this point in the game's early incarnation there are no discovered money tricks like playing guitar in the subway or using the table - things you could do in Sims 3 that were game changers as far as making tens of thousands of simoleans in a short time. So, unless you're the kind of player that flat out cheats it takes more work now in Sims 4 to get the things you want. That's a good thing IMO. The money making aspect of the game is certainly going to make the 2015 Tournament Challenges more "challenging" hehe.

[Margerita]

The sims 4 is to me even on the difficulty level a step back to the sims 2, but for me I always felt that the sims 3 was overall too easy - yes even just the base game.
More challenging aspirations, more challenging career and school. Those 3 are all good things as far as I'm concerned.
Faster decaying needs are a bit more annoying but still anything that prevents me from getting bored is a good thing.

[Playalot]

There are certain skills that bring in large cash deposits each day though, thinking of painting and writing, it just takes quite a bit of game play to get your sim to that point. You can easily bring in over 20K a day with a writer sim and a painter both having completed the relevant aspiration with them both just working at home.

[ManiSims]

Personally for me, maxing out a skill or career is easier in Sims 4 but certain things like Aspirations are pretty difficult. And while things like getting As in school aren't hard per-se, they're much more time consuming and like someone else said, when I have a child school takes up most of the time. 

Relationships are a lot harder as well. While I like how it takes longer to build up a relationship so you can't meet someone one afternoon and get married that night, I hate how quickly they decay. They're much harder to maintain and if I even go a couple of days without focusing on socializing the bar drop really far down.

[Stormi71]

I think the whole friendship thing needs a bit of tweaking. If you get to good friend status, then it should decay slower. In real life, your good friends stay good friends even if you don't see them for months. They should make it that the higher the friend level, the slower it decays.

[Pam]

I think a big thing is at this point in the game's early incarnation there are no discovered money tricks like playing guitar in the subway or using the table - things you could do in Sims 3 that were game changers as far as making tens of thousands of simoleans in a short time. So, unless you're the kind of player that flat out cheats it takes more work now in Sims 4 to get the things you want. That's a good thing IMO. The money making aspect of the game is certainly going to make the 2015 Tournament Challenges more "challenging" hehe.

I've been using money cheats for comfortable home that keeps their needs high and I still find it more challenging than Sims 3.  For me, it's the specific steps we have to accomplish for careers, Aspirations, parties, etc.  I find it particularly difficult to get children and teens through school and still finish Aspirations, get good grades, and maintain part time jobs.  There's no coasting in this game for me at this point.

[beardeux]

I find keeping friendships is a lot harder.

The thing that I find not so much hard but more annoying is earning reward points.  I find the 3 little whims useless.  I find I don't notice them and therefore ignore them, plus they aren't worth much.  I'm forced to keep changing aspiration goals to earn significant rewards.  I'd prefer to keep my sim interested in one aspect such as collecting and later, go after other challenges at my leisure.  I have to give up what interests me the most in order to earn points to keep the needs bars higher.

[ManiSims]

I forgot to add this, but Prestige parties are so much harder. In The Sims 3 all you needed to do was make sure everyone was happy, pretty simple. But now I find it impossible to get a gold and pretty hard to get a silver, so I normally just go for the normal parties. (Holding five Prestige events for every single heir in my Immortal Dynasty is by far the hardest requirement. Gah.)

[Cheezey]

I think the childhood aspirations, particularly the whiz kid one, are near impossible on a normal life span with aging on. I have yet to successfully complete that one, and the closest I came to it was with the child going two nights without sleep burning through potions.

The "A" in school for children requiring level 4 in 4 skills is a big hurdle for me. They can level social and either creative or mental no problem, but motor seems to be hard to level in tandem with other skills.

Chess game win requirements can also be frustrating.  On public lots, sims crowd them, and then everyone starts talking. That slows the play time to a crawl, and all it takes is one random sim being a jerk to show up and put everyone in a poor mood.  There's also the chance that after you've invested 3-4 sim hours in a game, the opponent will get hungry or need the bathroom and just leave, making all that time wasted.  In your own home, the risk is a bit less, but you need to have a sim that has the free time to play chess with your sim.  You can invite someone over, but without them being under your control, you can't make them stay put.