Sims 4 - First Impressions

[jillz]

I am confused as to why there are no dishwashers, though. It just seems odd. And my Sims leave EVERYTHING out. All over the house! Bowls, plates, books... They don't have the 'Slob' trait, and there is a sink for washing the dishes.

Hey Naria,

You can actually clean up after your Sims. Just place a garbage can in your house and you can drag & drop the dirty dishes into the can yourself. It makes it a lot easier! I suggest the expensive garbage can, you get simoleans back every time you use it for "recycling"

Also on the subject of books, there was a bookshelf in the premade lot in Oasis Springs they put you in at first, but I can't figure out which ones are the skill books? Are there skill books?

Yes, there are skill books but they don't come in the base book cases anymore. You can Order them through the computer. This is where you buy Seeds too.

[jillz]

4) Jobs are decent, but i do wish we could follow or check on your sims to where they work and have some influence on that. To me, i feel it's been dumbed down in some respect. It's not bad but they could have made it better i think.

You can influence what your Sims do at work. When they are at work, there is a little arrow icon in the upper right hand corner of the Portrait in the Portrait bar. If you click on that, it will give you a set of options on how they can perform at work "Slack Off "Work Hard "Socialize" etc. 

You can also do this for inactive Sims if you split up your household to different lots.

kymber13 - To travel off of your lot to World View, click on your Phone Icon to the left of your Portrait Bar and choose "Travel" or "Travel With" if you want to take other people from your lot with you.

[dnagirl]

Been playing for about an hour.  I admit, I'm struggling, but it is just an unfamiliarity with the controls and where everything is.  It took me five minutes just to find the phone lol!  I'm sure I'll get better.

I do like the quick loading screens and don't mind the neighborhood function.  I tried to build a house but gave up after I couldn't figure out how to make an octagonal roof for my octagonal room.

[JudesSims]

After 4 days in labor, yes you read that right, I had to click on the bassinet and tell my sim to have baby. Immediately after, she had to go to work. No maternity leave!

[BriannaSkif]

I spent about six hours playing last night with a single Sim.  Here are my thoughts so far:

I love the updates to careers!  No more running all over town to get a job.  Click the phone, pick your job, and it's yours.  The daily tasks and other goals for career progression are a nice touch.  I occasionally received a pop-up asking me to choose between two options; reminded me of the opportunities in Sims 3.  I noticed that if I left the game on normal speed when the Sim went off to work, the game zipped right to the end of the work shift, but if I sped the game to the 3rd speed before they left the property, the game took a couple of real life minutes to get to the end of the work shift.  I haven't tried this with more than one Sim in the household so I need to research this more.

The Sims are far more social than in Sims 3.  I took my single Sim to the library and joined a chess game with a Sim there.  I then clicked "Friendly Introduction" on every Sim there as they approached the chess board.  In just a few minutes the library was one rocking place and my Sim was in a group conversation with about 8 people.  I didn't get any relationship above the acquaintance stage, but the next day I invited 7 of those acquaintances to join my Sim at the nightclub.  Most of the relationship bars with these 7 were empty (or very nearly so) and in Sims 3, many of the Sims would have declined the invitation.  In Sims 4, all of the acquaintances accepted the invitation.   More Sims came into the nightclub as the evening progressed and even joined the group in dancing and conversation.  I was never able to a nightclub this active in Sims 3.  I loved watching the Sims socialize.  As one Sim would get up from a chair (to go to the bar or the restroom), another would notice the empty seat and slide right on in.  Sims that were dancing would start talking to the Sim dancing right next to them.  In Sims 3 I rarely ventured off the home lot.  After this experience in Sims 4, I found myself looking for other places to go and trying to figure out how soon I could take my Sim there. 

I struggled with the camera controls at the beginning, but setting them to Sims 3 style helped.  It still took some adjusting but I was getting the hang of it by the end of my play session.

I really like the multitasking aspect of the game so far, but need to play with it some more.

[Pam]

I'm really loving this game!  The differences and similarities to Sims 3 are fascinating to me.  The new interactions are great and I'm learning the emotion system.  I didn't miss Create-A-Style at all.  I really didn't.  There are enough color choices for all of the clothes to satisfy me.  One less decision I have to make and that makes me happy.  It's a bit awkward learning the new controls and finding where everything is.  Like, the phone is down next to the icon picture.  I loved seeing Sims 3 on the television!  I haven't found anything I don't like yet.  It's seriously a lot of fun!

[VioletG]

kymber13 - To travel off of your lot to World View, click on your Phone Icon to the left of your Portrait Bar and choose "Travel" or "Travel With" if you want to take other people from your lot with you.

You can also hit "M" and the map will come up.

I have only played for about two hours, and a lot of that was figuring out all the new controls, etc. plus creating sims and furnishing a house. I have been having a lot of fun with it so far. I find the socialization to be a lot easier to manage so far, although I haven't done much with that. I'm a little worried for the jobs that require you to do certain kinds of socialization -- that kind of forced socialization is my least favorite part of the Sims. Still what I've read about that seems a lot easier than the days when you would have to maintain a million friendships in order to get promoted.

I've had a ton of fun playing with the skill systems though. The cooking animations are hilarious and the gardening and collecting seems really fun and interesting so far. I just started on my first pregnancy, so I'm really interested to see how genetics and generations of a family turns out. I also like the multitasking and emotions. It makes everything a tad more lifelike and intuitive. I also feel like so far, the days are more fun because I haven't yet had to grind through skills for hours of the day until I could get to the "fun" parts. My Sims are able to get quite a lot done, although that's probably because they don't have jobs!

The Create-A-Sim is both better and worse for me. I enjoyed being able to make Sims look exactly how I wanted them in Sims 3, and I have found in Sims 4 that I had to abandon trying to make a Sim that looked like me or any specific person. I just couldn't get it near close enough. On the other hand, when I scrapped that idea and made some totally fictional sims to start my household, I really ended up liking the look of them. On one hand it's a more cartoony style, but I actually things it looks more lively this way and I'm really happy with my first family. I definitely miss Create-A-Style, though. I think there is plenty to do to keep me occupied without it, but I probably won't be spending as much time making random sims and extra houses with the current selection of customization options. I also had a hard time getting object placement to work. For some reason it was a struggle to get things to face in a different direction than the default. I'm sure with some more practice, I can get the hang of it though.

[Echo]

I noticed that if I left the game on normal speed when the Sim went off to work, the game zipped right to the end of the work shift, but if I sped the game to the 3rd speed before they left the property, the game took a couple of real life minutes to get to the end of the work shift.  I haven't tried this with more than one Sim in the household so I need to research this more.

I noticed this happening as well but didn't make the connection between what speed it was set to when they left for work and the time spent at work.  Just noticed that sometimes they seemed to be gone for a few minutes and sometimes it was more like 10 seconds.  Good eye!


One annoying thing -- I went to have my sim plan the wedding with his fiancee.  Selected the wedding ceremony, guests, singer, mixologist, and put it all in the local park.  It kicked the ceremony off immediately, but there was no bar, no wedding arch, no guest seating, etc.  I placed all of those via the build menus, and then while I was chatting with the guests (one of the event goals) both my sims decided they needed to go to work RIGHT NOW.

Seems like sim jobs don't offer leave for weddings/childbirth/etc.  Weird.

[flootiebeauty]

After playing for about 5 hours, I'm really enjoying it! My sims' needs generally don't decay as quickly as they used to, which for me has been a big plus. I've actually been able to give my sims some free time to develop things that aren't directly related to their career!

I'm also probably one of the only people who has found it easier to develop friendships. My only complaint with how the new social interactions work is that if my sim is out somewhere and they only want to talk to one specific sim, and another random sim walks up and joins their conversation, I have to stop talking to the sim I want to talk in in order for the 'third wheel' sim to go away. But on the plus side, my sims have lots of acquaintances from this happening!

I really thought I would miss CASt, especially after playing the demo. But now that there are more items included in the actual game, I haven't struggled to find colors/patterns for things that I want to use. I have a feeling that I will feel stifled by the lack of options, especially once I start in on some character recreations, but for the time being, I like what I have. And I'm willing to bet that EA will give us more hairs and clothing as expansion packs come out!

I set my sim lifespan to long so that I would have as much time as possible to explore before I started to feel pressure for her to have a baby, so I haven't gotten to see the whole no-story-progression, just aging, thing in action, but I am curious to see how I'll feel about that once some of my favorite residents start to die off.

I also find it slightly evil that Origin tells you how many hours you've played a particular game. It keeps me honest! 

[_Annika_]

I also find it slightly evil that Origin tells you how many hours you've played a particular game. It keeps me honest! 

I sometimes leave my game open, so I never get a true reflection of my gaming hours.

[MischaMusic]

I'm really enjoying the game.  I'm a teacher so the timing of the release has been TERRIBLE for me, but I keep waking up and sneaking in the computer room at odd hours to get a few quick minutes of game play in. I've lost patience with CAS - it's too hard to make a sim look like someone I know. My husband came to look over my shoulder and started giving me suggestions for my simself - it almost came to blows.

"My nose is not that big!"

"I love you just the way you are, babe."

<launches her notebook across the room>

[Kamxam]

Played it some more tonight and while the pregnancy took awhile it did happen. You do have the option to breast feed a baby (Pixelated of course) or use a bottle. Clicking on the basinet aged up the baby into a toddler.
Had a girl and she has the red hair of the father and blue eyes of the mother and looked like both somewhat.
DID find out to rotate stuff, (Stupid me lol) so not that problem anymore.
All in all, doing okay atm but I do miss some of the Sims 3 stuff. (Will be added later I suppose though just like TS3)
Gave the child the creativity skill and she's aggravating the whole house with a badly played violin.
Does anyone know if you can teach the talking skill?  Saw it mentioned in the game but didn't see anything to do it with. Maybe not in the game?
All in all, I like it so far as I said but i'll play both TS3 and this till they add more stuff to flesh it out. (Or at least CC content)

[_Annika_]

If by talking you mean charisma, yes, the game has charisma skill.

[Twinmum]

(snip)
 Clicking on the basinet aged up the baby into a toddler.
(snip)

I think you mean it aged the baby into a child.. TS4 doesn't have toddlers.

[kearn76]

I like it!
It works on my laptop.  I tried bumping up the graphic settings, and started having random crashes, but so far no more since I put the graphics back to lower.  It is still lovely.
Love that my Sim's flip-flops actually have that authentic flip-flop sound - I hadn't heard that in prior versions.  The fireflys at night are enchanting.  My Sim is gardening...I haven't found an automatic sprinkler for the garden, and boy do I  miss that. 

I don't miss the long drive to work...(enough of that in real life! ).  Sims can work on their mood/emotions right up to start time for their job, that's a big plus.

Karen