Earlier today, I watched a recent video that Carl did, called The Sims 4: What could fix it?, which can be accessed from the front page of the Guide or by following this link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O41yW6qlOIM.
I was intrigued by much of what he suggested. I've been playing Sims 4 since it launched, and I also played The Sims, TS2, TS3, and The Sims Medieval. I tried Twallan's Story Progression mod briefly in TS3 but didn't like it, and I haven't used any mods in TS4.
I agree that there is a sameness to the Sims despite character traits. I've had Sims who hated children be good parents, and loner Sims want to meet new people. My noncommittal Sim has been in the same job, married to the same person, without any adverse effects, and so on. As a dynasty player, I like the fact that I can marry any Sim to any other Sim. As a storyteller, I hate the fact that Sims are so interchangeable.
My way of dealing with this is to play a modified ISBI (I'm Surrounded by Idiots), which is a version of the game in which you control only one Sim in the household, similar to the Asylum Challenge, and to play rotationally -- 10 different households in my current game. This gives me access to plenty of Sims who are pretty much free of my influence. One thing I like about this current version of the Sims is that it's safer to play an ISBI that in any other iteration. I've never lost a Sim to starvation, and I rarely have to deduct points for bladder failures and passing out. I did once have a teen Sim who was grieving over the death of her mother go 3 or 4 days without bathing, but this was before parenthood, when the Sim I was controlling wasn't able to influence her to take a shower.
I can say that active Sims will occasionally do push-ups on their own -- but they won't go jogging autonomously. Creative Sims will paint a picture -- but they won't start writing a book. Bookworms might autonomously browse through a book, but so will any other Sim. So yes, the criticisms are real. If you want to see Sims do things autonomously, you need to set up clubs, if you have Get Together, or use the influencing system from Parenthood, neither of which is real trait-directed autonomy.
I think that the developers have occasionally tried to fiddle with relationships. For a while, rotational play was dangerous because you didn't know what your married Sims would do when you rotated away from them. Complaints from us rotational players got them to change that just as complaints from "realistic" players reduced the frequency of alien abductions. I've come to accept one fact of simming: there are people who want their Sims to surprise them and people who hate it when their Sims surprise them.
Regarding Carl's video (which I think every simmer should watch), I took note of 4 different areas: traits, relationships, whims, and difficulty.
Traits -- I think traits are more powerful that people give them credit for. Not much more, but more. For example, I had to take a squeamish Sim out of the Doctor career because doing yucky stuff made her uncomfortable, and uncomfortable or tense Sims often gray out various activities. She was still able to give shots, however. I don't know what developers could do with traits that wouldn't annoy people who have gotten used to the present state of affairs. I liked the way traits were dealt with in TS1 and 2, but I don't think they could go back to that, and the developers were right -- people tended to keep their Sims in the middle areas of neat/slob, playful/serious, nice/mean, active/lazy, and the 5th that I can't remember.
Relationships -- Currently I have 2 Sims with the outgoing trait, who are happily married to each other and spend much of the day together because they're both in the Entertainer career. Their Social needs are always low because outgoing Sims need more social interaction. If I were controlling them, they would get more interaction, but because I'm doing an ISBI, they never talk to each other. As I said above, though, I think the developers dialed down the likelihood that 2 Sims would talk to each other, and reduced romantic interactions to 0 because of complaints about unwanted relationships. While writing this, I've realized that I could use the club system to increase some interactions.
Whims -- This is where I can see ways to improve the system. Indeed, some of them might have been implemented but players just don't know about it. For example, it's annoying that my Sims often get the whim to Research Vampires on the Computer. But I think that once I've xed it out, I don't get it again. It might be possible to introduce a "never again" X to the Whim system along with the regular x and the lock. Sometimes I x out a whim because I don't want to do it just then. I've noticed that when I lock a whim -- the whim to make $1000, for example, I will get repeats of that whim, especially if my Sim is working on the Fabulously Wealthy aspiration, which it's related to. I know that developers have tinkered with Whims. For a while my married Sims would often get whims to get engaged and get married -- which would be annoying, especially when there had just been a wedding. For a while they would also get the whim to make pancakes, for example, right after making pancakes, which was also annoying. While I would like to see more whims related to various packs, I have to admit that could get tedious, especially for players who have lots of packs. I think players would have to be made aware that new Sims would be bombarded with whims to research Vampires, watch the Civic Access channel, buy a beebox, etc. I also think an overhaul of rewards is in order. I can get 50 pts for buying a pet ball? Okay, I'll take it.
Difficulty -- I'll keep this brief. Anyone who wants more difficulty in their game is welcome to try any of our challenges or dynasties on this forum.
In closing, I want to thank
@Carl for a very thought-provoking piece and also to thank @Playalot for her input on it. And I would encourage anyone with an interest in game design to watch it.
