The Sims 4 Discussion - Share your Opinion on TS4 and Gameplay Features

[Dellena]

I've been giving the Story Progression thing some thought.  Maybe with the new emotions system, they felt they didn't need Story Progression as much.  Sims will be pushed to do certain interactions not just from satisfying one of the six needs but also from their emotional state.  I think the whole emotions thing is what's going to make this game totally different from Sims 3.  And it's the biggest unknown for us as players so we're all not sure what to make of it or how it will really play out.

I didn't mention it before, but I also like the idea of the Sims going off to work and school off screen, as it was in Sims 2.  In Sims 3, there's all these rabbit hole lots that are just there for people to walk into to work and nothing else.  So the removal of those doesn't bother me a bit.  I'd rather be working with lots that are more interactive.  And think of the public areas as big parks.

[Turoskel]

To me though rabbit holes were not just about work/school, they offered lessons, tours, places to woohoo, plastic surgery, inoculations, therapy and a place to have your baby, I know SimGuruSarah tweeted that sims can have a baby at hospital but didn't elaborate which is one reason I dislike this twitter business it's all so short and they never go into details.

Do they walk off screen to do that now if there is no hospital rabbit hole? I guess that is something else we will have to wait and see on.

The only thing I disliked about them was they weren't CASTable so blending new ones into your town wasn't easy as it broke the theme, but some of the store rabbit holes are lovely to look at. Yet with no open world I can see why they removed them, space is extremely limited already and they would only make it worse.

The only thing that differs from Sims 2 is you wont have to stare at your lot while everybody is out of the house, you can at least watch the public spaces and other sims, I usually move my camera about town if my sims are all in rabbit holes and watch what the townies are doing so I'm glad that is still possible at least.

EDIT: Apologies I got the wrong Guru it was SimGuruAzure who mentioned hospital births Tweet can't help but notice she ignores any questions of where the hospital is mind you.

[pallyndrome]

I actually don't like story progression because of the way I play but I think I might be alone in that lol.

[Seabody]

I, for one, don't mind a lack of toddlers. I'm more of a building and YA player -- I don't tend to play many families. I'm also on the fence about pools -- I don't see why they didn't include it unless they want to make it some sort of paid content later on, which seems a little redundant to me. I for one, do like the elements of TS2 that are returning in this. I like the open world, but sometimes prefer the confinement of just one lot, especially for lag prevention.

[Deklitch]

I actually don't like story progression because of the way I play but I think I might be alone in that lol.

I'm actually with you on this, Pallyndrome. One of the challenges I loved in Sims 2 was 'The Royal Challenge' in which you had to play a range of different families of different classes in the one town, and really needed there to be no story progression for it to work properly. I suppose it could be done in Sims 3 as well, but I found it great in Sims 2.

Having said that, I loved the way EA Story Progression was originally in Sims 3. I loved looking at my controlled sims, and seeing how far through the families I could get with regards to the family trees, and with the computer doing most of the work. I was kind of sad when the sims stopped having all the babies through the EA story progression system (ie without mods). I liked to play a version of '6 degrees of separation' or what I call 'the Wikipedia game' with my sims ... go to the family tree of one of your controlled sims, and see how far through the town you could get by clicking on their family members and boyfriends/girlfriends/children/spouses/exes etc.

As Saltypaws says, think of it as a new game, that's what I intend to do. Just because there's Sims 4, doesn't mean you can't play (and enjoy) Sims 3.

There's so much of Sims 3 I haven't fully explored yet, and I intend to in the lead up to, and after, the launch of Sims 4.

Dek

[notjustabook]

I guess what makes it hard for me to see TS4 as a separate game from TS4 is that TS3 won't be updated more, it won't get new expansions and, little by little, the modding community will die out, too - in that way, it's basically replaced TS4 as the game that people plays and devotes their time to. And usually, once I go from one gen of a game to the next, I have a very hard time going back. TS4 might prove to different in that respect, though. We'll just have to wait and see.

[Turoskel]

One of my main issues with Sims 3 story progression is the no kids thing so all the diverse original townies just die out to get replaced by those clone faces, and in my games they tend to be mainly elders when they move in or adults about to turn elder. I think there looks to be more potential for diversity in Sims 4 townies due to the presets in CAS, so hopefully there will no longer be towns full of clones. I'm still disappointed they wont have kids on their own so I hope to god it keeps some sort of balance amongst the ages when it creates new sims to replace the old, I hate that even one generation in my kids have no school friends sometimes.

The fact it has universal aging is a bonus, so no more will your 8th generation sim go to school with your 1st generations school friends like in sims 2, I never got the last couple of sims 2 expansions but I understand one of those gave you an option to age up townies on your birthday or something.

If the replacement townie spawning works well then I may not miss the lack of story progression too much but ideally I would have liked an option to have it on or not like we do now, choices are always better but I feel while this favours rotational gameplay it doesn't favour single household play quite as much, one of my funnest games was over several generations with Twallans story progression, I played the orignal pair and let the kids and grandkids loose in the world and it was nice to watch them thrive with no intervention from me. That just wont be possible now.

[Cheezey]

Story progression is one of those things I love in theory, but it's terribly broken in the Sims 3, so I can see why they got rid of it.  In an ideal world, there would be the option of a modded one on par with Twallan's available in the Sims 4, but in the meantime, it's the player's story or none, which is not necessarily a bad thing.  It's better than creating a family and putting them in town only to have them randomly move out (like they did in early patches of the Sims 3) or having the game kill off babies and toddlers born to unplayed households while keeping elders alive, to replace them with townies that all have the same default face.  I admit that I will not play the Sims 3 with an unmodded story progression.  I would sooner turn it and aging off and do it myself.  I find that tedious, and I'm disappointed I'll have to do that in the Sims 4, but I do prefer that to a bad story progression with no mods.

Has there been any mention of downsides to household switching in Sims 4?  In the Sims 3, you lose your active wishes and there's a good chance your sim's career could be changed, or they could break up with their partner or ruin other relationships because of story progression.  Inventory is also at risk, as I would not trust leaving something like a collection helper in an inactive sim's inventory.  If there is a way to ensure nothing will change with the sims you leave behind while you take care of other households (even if it's just to play them to have them have a baby or get married) then I find the notion of having to do rotational play far less frustrating. 

Also, has it been stated that the new townies the game generates won't all have the same default features, and will we be able to put them in CAS to change their inevitably mismatched, random, and inappropriate outfits (yes, I'm thinking of you, paparazzi in speedos and the Ambitions hospital gown!) without switching to them?

[Bri]

Also, has it been stated that the new townies the game generates won't all have the same default features, and will we be able to put them in CAS to change their inevitably mismatched, random, and inappropriate outfits (yes, I'm thinking of you, paparazzi in speedos and the Ambitions hospital gown!) without switching to them?

I would have to dig it up, but from the small tweets, it does look like there will be better variation on features.  However, no word was mentioned on changing outfits without switching to them as well. 

Sorry I don't have anything more at this point.

[blackforest0]

From what I've read of this forum so far, I'm glad it's a polite place. My tumblr was exploding with negativity, so much that I had to unfollow two people.

But despite all of the perceived "bad" things about TS4, I'm actually looking forwards to it. From what I can tell, most of the complaining is because everyone expects features from one game to carry over. This is a new Sim game, not a remake of TS3.

It's going to be a new experience for me, because I've never played a Sim game other than TS3. And besides, no one really knows if the game will be good or not, since it isn't released. You can't judge a book by its cover and you can't judge a game based on pre-release information either. 

[Jessywoo]

Even though I've been playing Sims 3 for a while I'm still a bit of a newbie in many ways and I never played Sims 1 or Sims 2, so I want to ask what people mean by an 'open world'? Does it mean that you won't be confined to a single lot i.e. you won't have a 'home lot' as such? I don't really understand this concept.

I also just want to echo what everyone else has said about this forum. It takes a lot for me to join up to an online community because usually there's always some form of personal attacks or negativity and trolling. While I don't join in with all of that myself, I find it really unnecessary and on the odd occasions where the nastiness is aimed at you, sometimes it can be really horrible. This truly is a safe haven, so thank you Carl and Pam and everyone else here for creating such a lovely environment for simmers to express their opinions freely .

[Dellena]

An 'open world' is what TS3 uses.  You can visit all of the town without any load screens, etc.

With TS4, there will be neighbourhoods where you can visit the public areas as much as you like but to go to certain places, you'll need to go to a different neighbourhood which will involve (so we're told) a very short (less than 30 second) load screen.

The hope, for me, with this is that it will reduce a lot of the lag issues that we've seen with TS3.

[KhaineGB]

I think the main problem is, it's labeled as "The Sims 4."

Doing that means people expect it to be a sequel, so they'll expect certain things from the game. Pools is a major one since they've been present since TS1. I think if EA/Maxis had decided to do a reboot and just called it "The Sims" or "The Sims: New Age" or something along those lines, people would be less negative about "missing features."

[Turoskel]

Sims 4 isn't as closed as Sims 2, in that you had your lot only, you could see some neighbours houses if you had them on in the settings but couldn't go to them at all, you could visit a community lot but it involved calling a taxi (paying for it too) and then you got in, vanished off the side of your lot and got a loading screen, then arrived at the community lot.

I've not seen anything about time in Sims 4, in Sims 2 when you visited a community lot time froze back home, so say you got there at 9am and left at 5pm you'd arrive back home at 9am, really messed up the motives and sleep patterns of your sims so I hope it's not like that.

[JudesSims]

I am also on the fence about purchasing this. If there are no toddlers and no woohoo, how will I play my beloved multi-generational games?

I'm curious if the Sims theme song will change or remain the same.