Why Isn't The Sims Fun Anymore?
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- Опубликовано: 10 сен 2024
- I have been playing The Sims since its release in February of 2000 and while The Sims 1 and 2 were amazing games, unfortunately since the release of the Sims 4 over a decade ago we have been stuck in a cycle where The Sims games are insanely boring and uninteresting.
In this video I explore what precisely has led to the collapse of The Sims and how the core gameplay has been abandoned. Let me know what you long time simmers think of this video and let me know your thoughts on the state of the franchise!
Sims 4 is the weenie hut juniors of the series
Don't insult Weenie Hut Juniors like that. 🤣
Nah, you wrong, its Super Weenie Hut jrs.
The franchise died after sims 3, its boring because they made it less fun by removing the burgular even, which scared the life out of me as a kid in sims 1, but in sims three I made chuck norris and got him so strong he would just walk over to the woodbe theif and kick the seven shades of snot out of them. and the stuff like the jobs pack that added ghost hunting was fun as I also totaly made the Ghostbusters from the film and they lived in a awsome house, aslo the pack where you can go to egypt and go tomb raiding was dope, yes I aslo made Indiana Jones in sims 3, but hell that was fun.
sims simps
I QA Tested it. Oh my god we QA testers knew even back then, but EA devs don't respect QA.
Older sims games obstacles: sudden death, fire, aliens, burglar, etc.
The sims 4 obsctacles: bugs, crashes, long logging in, high prices for dlcs💀
You are not wrong. What sad obstacles for this potentially deeply special to be saddled with. It is such a shame!
fr
Every stinking "update" makes something break. My game is better with CC but you can't play every month when it's broken. When are they gonna focus on S5 and stop mucking up S4?!?
I also liked how in the sims 2, they took mental health into account too. I imagine in 2024, they’d want a more nuanced approach to “having a mental breakdown” than they would have in 2004, but I really liked how the consequences for being lonely, unfulfilled, or stressed were just as noticeable as the consequences for not eating, not sleeping, or not going to the bathroom.
In the sims 2, if your sim didn’t engage in enough social interaction or encountered so many traumatic experiences that he failed to fulfill his lifetime aspirations, then the game would take control of the sim and make him start acting crazy and talking to people (and bunnies) that weren’t there, and if the other sims witnessed this, they would lose lifetime-relationship points with that sim, and trust him a little bit less. I loved that. Now, in the sims 4, if a sim has a low social meter, or fulfills too many fears, or something like that, then the sim just kind of complains a bit, but you can still make them go to work, woohoo other sims, and clean and stuff. But think about it. Are YOU able to do those things when your social & fun meters are at rock bottom, you’ve fulfilled your worst fears, and you’re really far from achieving your aspirations? Of course not. So that was a huge touch of realism that was taken from the game after the sims 2
Honestly. I was playing sims 1 over the weekend and it blew my mind when I told a sim to do something, and they just... did it. They didn't just stand there for two hours in an idle animation before going to do the thing. Honestly, I would like all the things in sims 4, if they would actually work
It’s because they took out all the kookiness. The hallmark of the Sims franchise was that it was a bit insane, wholly unrealistic, overly dramatic, and totally eccentric. Now it’s just pretty visuals devoid of a soul. I remember sending my Sim to work and just going around the open world of TS3 to see a wild horse. The graphics wasn’t excellent, but they made it feel like a significant experience even for the player and not just the Sim. TS2 was bonkers in the best way possible, so much mystery and intrigue going on. The issue with TS4 is that the things happening on-screen are only significant to the in-game Sim character. I as the player get no joy from watching the world itself, the stories (there are none, to be fair), the moments unfold. I played TS3 with just the base game for the longest time, and never felt like I was missing anything. My politician Sim’s fundraisers felt like real-life mingling, as I invited over the Altos and the Landgraabs, struck friendships with them, and asked for huge donations which they made - the game invited imaginative thinking! I’d be having convos with Geoffrey Landgraab about how his day at the hospital went, I’d imagine him at his office, wearing a doctor’s coat, speaking to patients… now I can’t bring myself to dream up a single storyline. Each and every one I come up with feels so hollow, especially with the closed world and the many rabbit holes. They also killed the feel of community lots by keeping the maximum number of Sims at any given lot to a bare minimum, huge parks feel deserted. I just want TS3 back, minus the part where it made my computer crash lol
When I was getting footage for this video I came upon this realization as well. Old Sims games really leaned into just being silly, whereas the new ones don't and it makes them less fun.
The Sims used to be a little mean spirited, which it is missing today.
Similar to animal crossing
They consolidated all of that into the children's school event cards in this game. Those are *ridiculously* mean spirited, often both ways they can go, while everything else lost any edge whatsoever.
Yup, I laughed my butt off when I would get robbed randomly or when you fast fwd and don’t see the baby crying and they take the kid away. It was a beautiful mess.
100%, the chaos is what made the game good
@@mimik222TRUE
I just want to do my own thing but the game bombards me with nonstop interruptions. The smartphone is a major irritant just like in real life. I'm not a glued-to-my-phone type of person and I don't appreciate how you have no choice but to be one in the game, or else be constantly clicking to ignore texts and calls while you're busy. The almost-daily holidays and festivals are a pain, as well. I don't want to drop everything and travel to the town square to fool around and buy snacks from booths every single day, so I ignore most of them, and it's annoying to be basically told, "You had a shitty holiday!" after choosing to ignore a holiday because I'm trying to level up a skill or whatever.
I end up playing a character who never answers the door or makes friends or travels anywhere just to keep the constant intrusions to a minimum, but then I'm just role-playing a hermit and that gets old quick.
I think the best part of the older games was that they took place before always-online culture had become a thing that had to be modelled as gameplay. I hope The Sims 5 has a retro mode that lets you play in the equivalent of the 1980s.
A retro mode is honestly the best idea ever
Lifetime aspirations used to be hard and rewarding, really defining who your sim is. In Sims 4 it feels like DLC tutorial like "make 3 sweaters".
OMG THIS!! The lifetime aspirations in sims 2 and 3 were hard and literally took the sims whole life to do (which is like the point lol). The sims 4 lifetime aspirations are literally just a checklist and make it so easy to complete, no challenge at all!
I played a sim from teen to elder and she completed 6 aspirations with no cheats
I laughed harder than I should 🤣 imagine this in real life: to get a degree read 3 books
@@shannadupree3030 I once completed all aspirations on the same sim but I did have to use potions. All legit though.
@@Creamcups I'm watching youtuber doing it right now. I'm not a big sims 4 player but once I had 2 kids fulfilling 3 aspirations without any cheats or potions.
The Sims 4 DLC doesn't bombard you with tons of features. It underwhelms you with little to no value for its asking price. $40 for horses and nectar making. $40 to form clubs. $20 for yoga. $20 for fursona werewolves. $40 for SFW Wicked Whims. $40 to snowboard. $10 for hamsters. Meanwhile The Sims 2 and 3 gave you tons of content for $20 and $30/$40 respectively. Stuff Packs back then came with a lot of stuff. Now you pay $5 for 15 pieces of a castle themed build mode objects that don't make a castle unless you pay $40 for Get Together.
I totally agree with everything u said, but also; sims 4 is awful because they started forcing the game into becoming a cozy game. They had to strip all the gameplay away from it to make it welcoming for the new players, in a way that any child could master this game and also get tired of it in less than 1 month playing.
EXACTLY
Agreed 100%. I put 1000s of hours into Sims 1 and 2, hundreds into Sims 3, and only about 80 into Sims 4. It's just far too easy, and the world never seems to change no matter what you do.
To be fair, that's also a lot of modern gaming. The low barrier of entry is also for Casuals, not Kids. And anything Free To Play wants to get you hooked enough to PAY for something (in Sims case asset packs like Kits and of course the various "packs").
Goal: Get casuals in....wave DLC in front of their face, make money. Most "capital G" Gamers don't play the Sims and many simmers are JUST Sims players. And many Sims 4 players have only played Sims 4. Sims tends to attract people that play no other games and while Sims 1 was designed under the thought "gamers want challenges to overcome" honestly the bar has dropped slightly in every entry in the series. In Sims 2 and 3 I do think there was better balance in being challenged by the game AND having time to enjoy some of the fun absurdity. But Sims 4 just lowered the bar so far into easy mode the ONLY thing that keeps the game going is player created community challenges and build mode.
@@TheDawnofVanlifewell EA is definitely trying to make The Sims mainstream
The Sims 4 Gameplay is like:
Ok Randy. Fix the broken TV.
⚡
Randy!!! NOOOO!!!!
Wait. He's just standing there and is just in a slightly bad Mood?
What Kind of Horse Crap is this?
Ok, I guess, order a few Grapes from the Internet.
5 Minutes later:
Millionaire
what i really liked about older sims games is that you never know what will happen in the game when you started it. in the sims 4 nothing will happen...like never. you must try really hard to make something special happen and plan every detail yourself. who wants that???
Admittedly I do enjoy the game for that aspect, being able to perfectly plan out a life and use it as a way to tell a story to myself I end up even turning off need decay to focus on my sims life stories. It can be really fun that way for me, but I imagine for others that got the game hoping for more realism in the simulation aspect that has real stake challenges, the other versions must be best. I only briefly played the older versions of the sims so I don’t remember very much about them at all.
I was always a more imagination driven kid so I would never get very far in those games because the stress of knowing how to keep my sims alive longer than the first day wasn’t for me.
I remember one time I had a sims wedding and the father of the bride died from using a broken computer during the ceremony.
So there was this sort of funeral and half the Sims were grieving while the other half was celebrating all in the same room.
In the end the guests gave positive feedback, it was a great party apparently.
Modders have extended The Sims 2 and 3 far beyond their expiration dates.
I have more CC & mods for both Sims2 & for 3 then I ever had for Sims4.
The communities are STILL going! I was so surprised.
@@DiscoTimelordASD Where do you find good sims 3 cc? The ones I managed to find are kind of ugly and 'outdated' in a bad way
@@hvbg Tumblr is a great place for cc for all the sims games!
@@hvbgtumblr is the perfect place to fine ts3 cc. I downloaded all my cc from there and people are still uploading new cc. Look up the hashtag #ts3cc and you’ll see tons.
@@hvbgcheck out mod the sims and tumblr 😊
Personally i think they lost the meaning of "life simulation" - it's not to REPLICATE life exactly and precisely, but to SIMULATE life, a world where the lines between real and imagination blur a little and that's okay. That's what made the earlier sims games fun. It was a true dollhouse experience, it could be as real or random as you wanted. There was a consistent baseline of needs that were the same across the board for all sims, and then these finer nuances that truly changed the way sims behaved in the game. Instead of trying to make ot hyper realistic on paper - adding pronouns, sexual orientation etc. They made it hyper realistic through animation, and really, the animation side is all most people really want to focus on.
The balance of expected vs unexpected was just right, and you could SEE the stories play out, not just read about them.
The sims was never meant to be too realistic, but rather explore all extremes of the imagination. I think to some degree that's what has been lost.
The animations got more and more complex and long but time is still 1 minute in game = 1 second real time so in Sims 4 you'll have very realistic and fun animations of your Sim doing yoga or pouring cereals or some shit and it takes HOURS in game.
As someone who has only played the Sims 4, I think the biggest issue is that no matter how many expansions and packs they make, everything is only interesting the first time you see/do it. Doing a restaurant date is fine the first time but the novelty wears off after that and it’s just a chore from that point on. All those new interactions are kinda cool the first you see/do them but then they lose their novelty. I can still boot up the game once a year, make a new household, and get a few hours of satisfaction messing around with the building options before getting sick of the actual gameplay after 30 minutes. The best you’re getting in terms of content is a few new animations
And there's no depth. Things you'd expect to be included are not, almost every new interaction in a pack is available immediately without any work required to access it, there aren't really storylines associated with the expansions, and the game is so buggy that half the interactions don't work anyway. The expansions are shallow. There's just no heart. And paying obscene amounts of money to access either features that should have been included in the base game or maybe 5-6 different interactions is disheartening and makes you feel like the game you looked forward to for years when it came out isn't a complete game at all.
Try sims 2
@@feloniousbutterfly I would love to play that but it doesn´t work with my computer😕
@@milzii what kind of computer do you have?
@@pandaworld8166 some crappy old pc that I don’t even use that much bc I play sims 4 mostly on playstation
Inshitification is what happened. EA stopped caring about what actually made the franchise endearing and special. There is a reason why simmer were primarily players who have been playing since Sims 1 or Sims 2. EA trying to capture a "younger" player base significantly watered down the game. Also, it's not a secret anymore that the sims 4 was released entirely unfinished. It was missing key life stages, core assets (no pools? c'mon), and severely lacked in content that after doing everything, there was nothing left to explore.
When your player base has to rely entirely on the modding community to make your fecking game playable and enjoyable...there is fatal flaw in your game design. Which is utterly unacceptable and a slap in the face to the franchise many of us literally grew up on.
I have played the sims and all it's iterations since February 2000...and it really does hurt that my favorite games that I've played more than anything else is becoming crap....and on top of that...they drop support for probably their BEST iteration of the franchise (the sims 2) and it's almost unplayable on newer machines.
That last thing is screwed up :(
I've been thinking about giving sims 2 a try after this video, but I'll be fine to settle with sims 3 and see what happens too
I miss the chaos that was connected to your choices and state of the world. Burglars were more likely to appear on lots that had more expensive items, Sims were less likely to advance in their careers if their moods were low and you could choose a goal while they were at work, etc. It felt more like an actual _life simulation game._
Dude i hate the social media // mobile phone gimmicks so damn much
As someone who used to play mostly TS2 all the way until Sims 4 came out, I think another core difference is the way the previous game revolved around the sims and their story and made you feel like you were a part of it. You didn't spend all game micromanaging every single interaction or making sure to get rid of a certain moodlet. You would choose a path for your sims and watch how it played out, how they reacted. You would make your child sim spend hours on homework instead of playing video games and then watch them run around the house showing off their perfect school report to their family. Getting their first A+ would be a memory they'd carry for the rest of their game time and they wouldn't be able to achieve that without you. You would spend all the free time with your teenage sim flirting with their buddy from school and get rewarded with a cutscene of their first kiss and a memory you'd be able to look back at once they grew older and parted their ways with that sim. You would watch your character get inside a dusty dirty car for their minimum wage job and then feel pride watching them waiting for their personal helicopter and smiling at you. If your Knowledge oriented sim got abducted by aliens, their entire wants panel would change drastically because they would actually become obsessed with aliens, while others would go insane if they ever went through that again. If your sim had a good relationship with their children, you'd watch their kids drop everything and run to greet and hug their parent once they returned from work, and it'd feel way more satisfying than learning that your sims' children are now Responsible and have a different interaction name for paying bills on time.
Every meaningful event that impacted your sims would stay in their memory and influence their relationships, abilities, wants and fears. And, on top of that, every big achievement was a challenge. That's why the game was both entertaining from the gaming standpoint and would make a great storytelling tool for your creativity. TS4 on the other hand is a literal dollhouse where you literally have to move their arms and legs and imagine the way their lives go because the best the game can give you is a moodlet for N hours 😕
I think you really expressed this well. This was everything!
100% agree with this, it’s these many small details that the sims 4 doesn’t have that overall takes away the fun and original experience of the game
@@officiallylizzie Yeah, they just oversimplified everything in the sims 4 and now that they're trying to make it complex again the game breaks LMAO
Extremely nicely put this is exactly why I played The Sims to every day
Totally agree the little cutscenes were so cute and made the gameplay more interesting. Plus it never felt like you had to have any expansion packs, whereas base Sims4 just feels bland. So I tend to use it to build places with their own stories because I find the sims gameplay just feels hollow
You kinda nailed it with the ease and comfort. A game that lacks real tragedy is never going to feel like a life simulation in this day and age.
On that note: EA please give us a Crime and Punishment expansion.
I agree with your points but one of the reasons why there aren’t any challenges is also because sims themselves are broken. Even in sims 1 and sims 2 before the trait system, the personalities of the sims affected their lives and relationships. but in sims 4 everybody is the same, your sim can fall in love and get married to anybody in a single day , their interests don’t matter because they will all default to doing the same activities, it doesn’t matter if two sims got in an argument, they will joke and laugh the next minute like nothing happened. There is no variety in their personalities and relationships, you have to do it yourself and pretend there is a storyline going on. If I have to imagine everything in my head, why am I playing the game in the first place?
I keep getting annoyed because my one Sim kept going to play video games when I gave her the outdoors trait. No matter how many times I said she hates video games she would default to that instead of going outside
@@katiemutschler6040 Thats because traits dont do anything in sims 4 like they do in sims 3 where they actually affect actions.
YES!!
My favourite Sims was Sims 2 because I loved the wild sims behaviours. My friends and I used to create entire neighbourhoods with conflicting personalities and then each one would have unique problems to deal with as you tried to guide them through their lives. The stories you could make were hilarious!
You know, for all the efforts they put in Sims 4, they could've fixed Sims 3's memory problem instead and put everything that makes Sims 4 more modern (like multitasking) and release it as the actual Sims 4. Will result in good reviews, good sales and profit for the company.
The roadblocks in 1 and 2 felt random but realistic, and could really set you back. The roadblocks in 4??? Checklists. "Oh you want to be the very best like no one ever was? Get level 2. Meet one person. Play the game for 24 sim hours. Have your sim sleep once. Ok, all done!!" It makes winning a task rather than a journey.
Well, I played The Sims original and 2 and got bored with them. I started playing TS4 last November because I read it was free to play, and I was curious. I didn't even know The Sims was still alive. I am glad that the focus is no longer purely on keeping my Sims basic needs up so that now they can actually go out and do fun things. The Sims got better when they could finally leave home, but there was barely time to appreciate being out of the house because almost immediately, they were either going to die of starvation or pee themselves. I'm having fun for now, but I don't expect any video game is going to hold my attention forever.
Right! Where is the drama in Sims 4? None! Where is the challenge? Where is the heart? I love how the Sims look in Sims 4. But I have been playing Sims 2 again and have remembered why I loved the game in the first place and would stay up until the late AM on my laptop playing growing up.
As someone who has a plethora of OC's I have many ways to play the sims plus there are many simmers out there who give imaginative ways to play the game so combining them is fun for me. I also only play with the base game so that may also help and I don't use cheats unless i'm trying to get the toddler potty skill to 3
Why did that make me think of pokemon with the best like no one ever was
@@magita1991 Because it's an obvious Pokemon reference.
Other reason why the dlcs aren't going to fix this game, is because they work separated from each other.
I remember that if you have sims 3 seasons, pets and generations, there were unique interactions and moments you can live with your sims children and pets while in winter for example.
And all of that was achievable because the base game loop didn't suck.
I think until 3, the game had a level of care and unpredictability that made the game so iconic, and the sims were actually unique and full of personality.
Im one of those simmers that always use the motherlode with my families and have them live comfy lives. Sims 2 and 3 kept me entertained for months on end, even without the struggle. I would make their needs maxed and static and have a ball with my generations. In Sims 4, I got so bored that I decided for once not to cheat. IM STILL BORED with gameplay even though nothing is handed to my sims anymore
Same here, I’ve been playing like that for YEARS and never got bored. There’s just so much depth in those games it’s insane
I'm the same, but I usually didn't max their needs, yet I remember when the adventure pack for the sims 3 came out. There were so much to see, so much to discover, so much so I had to cheat to max the needs out to not waste time. Then there was the visa thing and waiting so sim could go there again. To this day I haven't seen all there is to see in that pack.
Exactly!!! I don't need for my sims to be broke and bust their butts for every dollar or to have to pee and eat every 5 minutes and constantly fight to keep them alive in order to have fun with the game. I would always use cheats too in the Sims 2 but still had loads of fun with that game. It had so much personality. The sims 4 is seriously flawed in so many other ways, that's what makes it boring. It feels like I'm playing in some bizarre broken matrix of a world. The interactions are so nonsensical and predictable.
SAME! I started with The Sims 2 and loved both that and The Sims 3 (open worlds and Create-A-Style did SO MUCH for the game), but I did always use cheats at least for their needs and often also for money. In The Sims 4 I don't cheat their needs anymore because they're so easy to maintain anyway, the minor added challenge just makes the game less boring
I’m the same way
0:37 we already knew
It's honestly a shame too because the CC catalogue in ts4 may be the best in any sims game. But the way they stripped away the sims' individual personalities is not it... In ts4 it just feels like you're creating the same phone-obsessed, smiling, laughing idiot that may look a bit different but doesn't act that much more than the other ones.
Honestly regret buying it at launch just for it to be a broken free game afterwards
This. They truly do feel all the same. And even though there's theoretically so much to do, you end up doing all the same things every day, while being frustrated cause they get distracted by other activities or glitch out and never stop doing that one thing for days on end.
I dunno. Sims 2 CC is pretty plentiful and so are the mods.
@@DiscoTimelordASDnot better tho
The cc is plentiful bc it's the longest running cash grab of the series
Sims 3 and 2 have awesome CC. Sims 4 has more because it’s new
My problem with Sims 4 is that you can't really lay back and watch your sims life. Because free will in the Sims 4 is just whack. They either don't do anything or the same tasks like every other sim or they do the most unlogical things that just don't suit their personality traits. You have to hoover 24/7 over them like a helicopter parent. This is why I loved the Sims 3 so much; I never got bored because every Sim had diffrent wishes and the world around them affected their wants. You could take them anywhere in the world and if your sim hates the outdoors they will be uncomfortable and roll the want to go home. Meanwhile a sim who loves the outdoors will roll the want to play frisbee with his friend. I loved that you could say: yeah sure let's do this want or delete the want. You could let them run free and chat with diffrent sims and watch them make friends without constantly flirting with other sims just because they feel flirty. Sims 2 is really good because of the same reason. Plus the attention to detail in animations. The Sims 4 gets boring because no matter how many packs you buy, you will always see the same lifeless animations over and over again. Because that is what they do - recycle animations as much as possible. I'd rather have less new objects and clothes like in the previous game if it meant they would expand the actual gameplay and animations. However since the root of the tree is infested with bugs, a fertilizer will not help when the tree is rotting away from the inside. I am currently not even playing Sims 4 because I have a bug that won't allow me to save my unmodded game... The worst part is, that Sims 4 needs so many fixes to be enjoyable and those fixes need to be uodated by their creators with every update. But with every update 10 more things seem to break so I just spend more time fixing this game with mods and hotfixes than actually playing.
What are you talking about? The Sims 4 has lots of roadblocks and challenges. Like every time they release a new ep or update the game crashes and has bugs galore.
had me in the first half ngl
I played every mainline single sims entry, and loved it... except sims 4. I played it on release and i could never get into, and have played sims 2 and 3 ever since. Best way for me to describe 4 is that they took out the sandbox open world elements from 3, and also removed the challenge and personality of 2 and what you're left with is the carcass of the sims franchise.
Sims 4 is a liminal space experience to play with…it make it seem like the world is an open world with so much buildings but you are actually trapped within your house and lot
That is what is getting on my nerven most, yes.
This is why Sims 2 was so good! It upgraded so much from the original game but was still an incredibly challenging play! Definitely the best one, in my opinion.
I am not old enough for Sims 1 and 2 but sims 3 was my main game until 4 came. Sims 4 has so little to explore, I don’t mean features I mean actually explore: My favorite thing in Sims 3 was owning horses and competing and then finding out that your win is in the news paper, or finding plants around, finding out where to fish certain types of fish, the dungeons while traveling, the hidden islands, changing the present to change the future… Sims 4 everything is just handed to you, you don’t need to explore because you are told where everything is or how everything works, I mean there is literally only like two types of fish that cannot be caught in every body of water in the sims 4
A great example is how both get famous expansions work : TS3 you start out as a living gift card, you overwork yourself people might find you funny, then you get better and more famous and then get to sing at parties and eventually on stage. The gameplay significantly changes. In TS4 NOTHING about the gameplay changes in the actor career, only the set changes
This!
I'm an avid Sims 3 player and have been playing for YEARS, yet still I discover things I didn't know before. Adding a few free mods can really change the game up too, and because there are no updates, you don't have to worry about your mods breaking or the game breaking due to updates.
I know you didn't play 1 and 2, BUT a huge part of the games were all these things to explore. Even in Sims 1, you were mostly in your house, but you could still find tons to do. Sims 2 opened up the world a little more, but Sims 3... that open world just changed everything. Then Sims 4 came and pretty much closed it back up, but with less to do, while also having more to do. They should have kept the game evolving, instead of going backwards.
I got sims3 as a birthday gift from my grandma when it just came out. I still find new things in it, careers I haven't played. I'm advancing in the horse riding career with a black unicorn rn, never done it before. After all this years I still haven't explored everything and have to check carl's sims guide. I still haven't even touched the university expansion! I usually played the world adventures and this one expansion is gigantic
6:16 I would change the restaurant analogy to "there's a bunch of stuff on the menu but the chef doesn't know how to cook a basic omelette".
Lack of development is what has put The Sims 4 in this state in my opinion. When we finally got high school years I was shocked over how little development that went into the actual high school part. It felt like they just gave up, they didn't bother developing any active classes or different things to do at the high school. Packs have to add variety and challenges.
Yeah, I wish high school years had a bit more to it, I was hoping sneaking out would be like in the older games and you could actually go to a different lot. I think having burglars or police would help add some drama to things. Being out after curfew and getting caught was something I'd worry about playing the old games, but now it's like "Oh whatever, my sims don't need the family board to even have a curfew set since they just lose responsibility and gain it back after doing homework.".
As for some of what was said in the video, there are lot challenges if you people want to make things harder, like adding cursed or mold challenges. There actually are layoffs as well if enabled, but yeah. I'm not sure how many people bother with those to make their sims stories seeing as most just like to decorate and make their little perfect life usually.
I do agree the game as a whole needs a lot of improvement, either reorganizing certain lot traits and other such things so there's less clutter, or improving some current systems. For example Social Bunny. That said they have a lot of bug fixing to do still anyways. e.e
All of the packs feel that way now, every single one feels SO lifeless and barren. Ever since lovestruck, I've had to clean up and redownload my entire mods folder to be even to play. So when I finally update all the mods, BOOM, another forced update (since I had to move to the dumb EA app) breaking every single mod I just redownloaded and update. That's gotta be SO frustrating for the modders of our community who are literally the only thing holding the Sims 4 together.
High School Years was the perfect opportunity to add tweens, first loves & interactive classes like the careers from Get To Work. Being a teacher could have been an interactive career: starting as a substitute with the end goal of principal or becoming a professor for cross-pack with Discover University (but they'd have to refresh that pack to get it to work). Instead we got a thrift store, social media, lackluster body hair & a lifeless boardwalk.
For $1.2k you can buy 20 AAA games on full price. Or if you prefer good games, then 40-60 that are made by indie devs.
Sims 4 was never worth the price.
For me, personally, it just lacks challenge. I'm 100% fine with the cozy dollshouse gameplay being the default, and 99% of the DLCs built around that. But this is the 4th game, with shitloads of DLCs.. couldn't they just make 1 single DLC that adds some challenges? Especially since they dumbed down Sims 4 anyways.
I played the sims 4 for the first rime in 5 years for a couple hours before i went back to the sims 3. It just really felt like such a hollow experience.
I just recently did the same. I wanted to see if all the base game additions they've made since I stopped playing (about a year after it came out) added anything to the game. It did not. Really tried to give it a chance too.
But you play 3? Funny.
Because sims 3 is actually good
Literally can’t play sims 4 for that long. I get so bored. Sims 3 is my go to to this day.
@@nervousheadache Sims 3 is more fun. Sure they have rabbit holes and it has a performance problem but it's 10x more fun than sims4. I would go back to sims3 than 4 any day
You make a good point.
I'm a simmer from ye old Sims 1... yes, TS4 has a nice graphic/animation and a ton of fancy stuff, but TS1 was the real deal with crazy, unpredictable accidents that kept you on edge all the time.
I remember spending days, whole weekends!, playing TS1, while now I spend more time personalizing my sim and building/furnishing my house than actually playing.
I'd love a bit of thrill.
I reinstalled The Sims 1 a while ago and found out that money wasn't much of an issue if I just keep quitting and take new jobs for the promotional money.
Compared to Sims 4, there definitely is a more difficulty curve, and that makes it more fun to navigate.
What I adored about Sims 2 is the lore and that each neighborhood was built around it. I always was a person who liked playing more than one family, but in Sims 2 you were really rewarded for it as playing each family in a certain order was like unlocking prices of a larger neighborhood story. Sure the larger gameplay loop was there, but there were also programmed "starters" for each home built into the game. You could not make a Sims at all and just play through these overlapping lives with Established lore and no Sims game has done that as well since. As a rotational player, Sims 2 will always be my gold star Sim game.
Sims 2 is the best ❤
I prefer to play with just one family so sims 3 is my favorite, but I do agree Sims 2 is amazing! There’s some details I really wish were in sims 3
@@voguishthrone5887i can't live without an open world and the customisation level of the sims 3
@@reasonablyserious most definitely! But I do appreciate how there are details like sims using the drawers while cooking in 2- although that probably would cause TONS of lag
Would you reccomend getting it in 2024? I've been thinking about it
Another problem is the size of the lots and neighbourhoods. The neighbourhoods are mostly set dressing. I remember playing the originally sims games where you had one small house and as you got more money you would slowly expand it out. Now you just go to neighbourhoods based on what jobs you want and by the end you just move into a mansion
The core of an engaging story is conflict, and The Sims 4 has no conflict.
that's wrong, the conflict in Sims 4 is between you, your wallet and EA.
A game that I still really enjoy is Sims Medieval. Getting to see the different sims interact for their stories is so fun and I find myself playing that more than Sims 4 most days.
Needs more drama🤷🏻♀️it’s too boring. In earlier sims especially sims 3 there were burglars & zombies & better occupations. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg tbh
EA ruins most games it gets its greedy paws on. Sucks :/
Zombies and wild animals eating my plants were making me see red as a kid lmfao
Lot challenges kind of help with drama, but they're lowkey hidden in the UI for some reason. I usually forget they exist. Plus the challenges are wildly unrelated (why is 'off the grid' with 'cursed' and 'gremlins'?) and most of the cool ones are locked behind a DLC paywall.
1:51 😂 boi that was peak game moment. The Sims 1 and 2 were widely open to mods, that were covering gameplay, fashion, furniture, skins...Communities and forums were thriving around the game, players were building whole family sagas, making neighborhoods ( ingame costruction tool was also a big selling point) etc. The EA decided to fire Maxis ( the studio that created The sims, and much later, Spores), in The sims 3 they changed the code so badly that modders had an almost impossible task creating anything, the goal was cannibalise any content that was interfering with their store and stuff packs sales. The last expansion pack for the sims 3 was so full of bugs that literally broke the game and because it was the end of line, they never bother fixing anything. On top of the fact that at every chapter, all interesting functions were taken away in order to be sold in the EP, after playing 3 chapters, starting over again did sit right for a lot of players. EA killed yet another golden egg goose in their roster, simple and plain.
My favourite example is the difference between improving utilities in TS3 and TS4. In 3 you can always upgrade the object with one improvement, while in 4 you can eventually unlock all the improvements. While 4 makes more sense, 3 forces you to strategize and decide which one you prefer at certain spots in the house. 4 just isn't about strategy anymore. You can do whatever whenever, but there's no reason for doing it.
My biggest gripe with 4 is lack of interesting and unique AI that could interact in unpredictable ways. Emergent gameplay was a big part of the sims franchise until 4 dropped.
yes many times i had a mechhanical sim so i would choose the cleaning because letting objects break would help my sim, its a good decision and make the gameplay good.
@@gabrielandy9272 Exactly! But on the other hand, I always improved the objects on the first floor/near the entrance with "unbreakable" because those were always the first to break during parties. It was a balancing act lol
Right? Sure I'd love for my stove to be unbreakable but fire proof makes more sense. Same for the fireplace
I ended up pirating the entirety of the sims 4 just because I can not at all afford those insane DLC prices, and I still feel like i've not gotten my moneys worth
Was playing the sims 4 for a bit, got into that sims 2 weeks phase y'know? lol anyway
I got bored within the first day even with all the expansion packs (don't worry I didn't pay for any, I'm a pirate but not insane)
Decided to try sims 3 again, haven't in a while and at the time the packs were on sale, got a few and started playing
instantly I was having a lot more fun playing, and I knew why. The world felt more alive, more interactable and I had more to do and manage. Got bored with my sims family? Send him on a trip to China. Bored of living in a normal house? moved into a boat house, that moves. Bored of your sims office job? Be a interior designer and remodel all your neighbors homes.
Sims 4 is "aesthetic", "cozy", but it lacks the features from previous games that really made them fun.
The curse of every sims player is to go back to the franchise at least once a year, but I've totally given up The Sims 4 for The Sims 3.
EA doesn’t care about what the pirates prefer; they only care about paying customers. You saying you won’t touch the game isn’t an insult because you stole it in the first place; of course it has no value to you.
but.. you can do it all in sims 4. bored? send your family to sulani or any other world; renovate your neighbors home, sims 4 building is one of the best in entire series; my point is - you can do all of that with sims 4.
@@itswindyhere Sulani doesn't have all the dungeons and artifacts to explore and collect, jungle adventure doesn't come close to it and sending a sim to other world on holiday, doesn't feel like holiday at all... Which I'd say is also difficulty thing, in TS3 you had to work for it and then you had your clock ticking before you would be send back, couldn't access the words whenever you wished. If I'm not wrong, you can't have a houseboat in TS4. I miss kraken and those little fun details, when you got actually scared in the middle of night at sea cuz a huge octopus swam under you. You can renovate but what's the point if the neighborhood doesn't feel alive, only if you really like building. Even with some improved story proggression I feel like I have to do things to make at least something happen in the game. So... nope I can't do all of that in TS4... not without mods at least.
@@itswindyhereit’s not as fun in 4. In 3, there’s a lot to do hands on in China. The adventures aren’t rabbit holes. There’s puzzles in the tombs, you have to make friends to complete certain adventures, or you can just sight see. In 4, you’re mainly sight seeing in the vacation worlds, or in Jungle Adventures it’s mainly text boxes and rabbit holes.
I'd say there are five types of Sims players (or at least, five types of gameplay):
* The Puppet Masters, who generally go through the "doll house" gameplay & reenact life in general, without an overarching goal
* The Story Tellers, who want to either tell stories with their sims or see what stories the free will sims end up creating through their hijinks
* The Builders, who take the minecraft approach and are here to play with the architectural & decor sides of things
* The Questers, who want to complete missions and objectives (more often seen in the console versions of Sims like Bustin Out, Sims 1 & 2 for console, and Urbz: Sims in the City)
* The Murder Hobos, who just want to see their sims die in random ways
There is no deep and meaningfully gameplay. Its just animation that gives and changes nothing. I cant stand talking wheel there is to many options all useless just let me have one intereaction “speak with” and sims do it unless i cancel it and give notifications what i learned abaut that sim and let friendship bar fills this way looking for certain option in this menu is hell. They add so many options for everything and they still changes nothing! You need to literally imagine things happens. And dont make me even start on random reasonless moodlets
Exactly! Why to make amazing wheel, when there aren't any strong reactions from the other sims? Even the discussions in the social bunny are so boring.
And having to click through so many options slows down all the gameplay T_T
This literally explains life. If we all had success there would be no challenges in life. It's the twists and turns that make you not wanna give up in the end. Wow that was deep. The more challenges you face, the more of a fight you put up. And the more you appreciate how far you've come
What bothers me the most is the lack of spice in the sims. There are no longer dangers, drama and funny innuendoes. The edge is gone and I think the game suffers from it. It has become too child friendly in my opinion.
the sims seriously lost their magic and soul,
when Will Wright stopped working on them 💔
He stopped working on them during the sims 2 era, hope that helps
I'm deleting sims 4 for good, after the lovestruck pack I realized how greedy and lazy EA is. Yes they've always been this way but they've pushed me to my limit 😭I can't handle the bugs anymore and the fact that they SELL broken packs with no shame just irks me. Maybe I'll check out sims 2 or 3 but until then I'm done 😭
My game is broken after LS 😂i can’t play
The older Sims games are fun but somewhat infuriating when you launch them for the first time because of all the bugs EA certainly knew about but never fixed. The Sims 2 on Origin, for example, was missing all the resolution settings and the shadows didn't work. User-created patches fixed the issues, which should never be how that goes.
For Sims 3, EA was content to sell Island Paradise - a completely broken mess of routing errors - and never fixed the obvious issues that created a quagmire of unplayable lag. Again, that great concept but horrible execution was fixed by the player community. So yeah, bottom line, this has always been EA's MO: sell a completely broken product to the community who is sold on the core concept, let the community fix what EA has broken, rinse and repeat for three sequels.
Bro I was done after get to work how did you last this long ☠️
@@evanboeckler9610 mods were a huge help tbh 😭 without them I wouldn't have lasted this long
I deleted after for rent and I’m never going back. I have had enough and I’m always bored playing it
Personally I think part of the charm of Sims 1 and 2 was "multiplayer" option. There was no personal saving system, basically anyone using the same PC profile shared the save file with each other. So for many people they played with their siblings, moms and/or grandmas. And that created an unique experience.
You never knew if your sims met someone new while you were away, maybe they got new friends or enemies? Maybe someone close to them died? Maybe one of them cheated with other sim? And in Sims 2 specifically it could be stuff like childhood friend of a sim suddenly is in college? Also what happens when your sim and other person's sim are interested in each other romantically? Will you be sharing the family gameplay or talking about important decisions? Or the ownership will just go to only one person and maybe later you get to take a control of kids if they happen and get into adulthood?
I remember few stories that happened because of that. F.e. when I was like 7 or 8 my sim befriended my mom's sim. Then I've noticed a flirt (or kiss?) option showed up in the wheel. I was confused because I wasn't aware that same sex interest can even exist irl, so seeing it in game made me curious about why it's possible and what will happen. So I tried this option and they both got a crush on each other. I got a little scared of what I've done, so I saved (because I played for a while and didn't want to throw it away) and finished playing. Next day my mom was confused why her married sim has a pink heart towards another sim.
Sadly, stuff like that is a relic of the past, nowadays pretty much everyone have a personal pc. And I feel that even Sims 1 and 2 took a hit because of that. Now player is kinda the omnipotent all controling entity and that is becoming boring after a while. When game was shared within people you lived with, outside of what I've mentioned, you always could compete with them for like wealth, relationship, career mastery and you always had someone that would notice the house you've built or a sim you created or raised.
So I think, if EA would ever want more engagement from Sims experience they should go back to it. Now with digitalized version of that (like f.e. a neighbourhood code that you could share with your friend(s)/partner/family and that way you could play like how Sims were designed for). Yeah, Sims starting with 3 became way easier and simplified and that's also a problem, but neighborhood sharing and social aspects of it were the soul of the game. Without it the game is barren - because you can do anything you want instead of having to adapt to what others are doing. Honestly, I don't know a single person that played Sims during 1-2 time who didn't shared neighborhood with other pc users (or sometimes even guests).
Sims 2 adds to the original formula by not just making money the goal but your sims happiness through the aspiration Meter and wants, and failure was literally mental breakdown. Very very engaging and probably why it has the best game play to this day by far
100%. People in charge who decided to abandon the logical and relatable Sims 2 systems are idiots
Also be sure to download the "Mental Breakdown Memory" mod so they will remember their failures over and over.
I am too young for The sims, as a kid I loved TS2, there was a story in the preset families you could have had followed on, there was lots of fun tiny details which made them feel real, you couldn't pause aging, so you felt the race to do and get all the things you wanted to do with the sim, it was awesome, cause one never grew tired of it, no matter what you chose to do, TS3 to me is a perfect digital dollhouse, you have open world, you have unlimited customization, you can do anything with your "dolls" you like as long as they are not too tired or too hungry... what does TS4 have? no fun details, no story, tiny worlds, so smooth graphics it hurts my eyes, some moods stop you from doing what you want, so you don't have either a game that couldn't bore you either a game that would make you feel unlimited in power, you are supposed to play the game with the expansions and other which are expensive as hell and after every update you better pray to be even able to play, unless you only play to kill off sims or to design some extravagant houses in it, then TS4 can't keep you engaged for a long enough... that is at least how I see it... I could also say that new content for TS4 is making me cringe and feeling like EA has grown lazy to the point when the final users are treated as testers, gives me an idea they will consider subscription model for TS5 if we ever get one, but these are highly subjective of me. The last thing that takes fun off for me is definitely the fact that the new expansions give me a trend like vibe, whatever is trendy at the moment is going to go into the game, whatever is trendy is going to inspire the content and with the number of new content and the speed they release it in, yeah, it just gives me a feeling they are trying to keep the game "trendy" to make money off it but less and less effort goes into it. Yeah, I do hate TS4, today I played TS3 for 6 hours straight, I highly doubt I would last this long with anything newer.
To me it’s cause they decided to steer away from the realism and have geared towards children WAY TOO MUCH. It’s too cartoony and has the “silly goofy” gameplay that 8 yr olds would find funny. I’m 100% sure 95% of the simmers want Sims 2&3 combined.
I read that they removed burglars because some users could find home invasion distressing. Yet I bet kids would love the Sims 1 burglar 😂
@@Gpchv25 distressing my ass. you literally can't walk down the street without upsetting anyone nowadays. THAT'S LIFE goddamit and it's not all butterflies and rainbows and convenient people all around you and kids need to learn it as well. as soon as possible.
@@Gpchv25 like why tf we, people who want to see burglars in our game, have to respect their opinion and they don't have to respect ours? why it's us who sucks dicks and not them? IF YOU DON'T LIKE IT DON'T FUCKING PLAY
@@Gpchv25 sorry i'm extremly emotional about it as you can see. i see it as injustice.
Unfortunately for us, Sims 1 was an outlier, it was never meant to be more than a virtual doll house, it was an accidental success.
I see lots of people enjoy the latest sims, and they're all using it exactly like a virtual doll house, making it more difficult would just get in the way of that.
But I like your idea of adding difficulty as an optional thing. I think that's a perfect solution.
For me it's become boring because it's literally just a chore simulator. What am I doing different in The Sims that I am not doing different in my own house
Honestly, it's fun as long as you play the version you enjoy the most, not which is the newest or has the most possibilities
Well said at 7:02, "think creatively" is the core of the game, what truly matters is what you like doing the most, building houses or community places to watch your Sims have fun and fight with their neighbors, creating families and watching them expand with each generation or just having fun with the occasional chaos
Like, Sims 2, that I almost exclusively play, was most likely the most chaotic with its social interactions (random fighting cause some Sims didn't enjoy having a chat), bugs (pregnant Sims giving birth during a house fire) and emergencies (like the burglars), and as the third type of players (chaos enjoyers), it almost never disappoints
Some time ago, a burglar was about to rob my Sims, so, as they live in an apartment, I had time to call the police and before he arrived, I made my Sim freestyle in front of the front door, the poor burglar couldn't even enter their apartment, he just stared at my Sim blocking the way, nobody got the burglary memory and he wasn't even caught (I would've let him out anyways)
It's the type of chaos that makes some players want to play the game, and Sims 4 IMO is just too calm, you have to force the game to be chaotic by e.g. breaking into their house and annoying its owners when they come back, absolutely destroying someone's house while renovating it (I discovered mold and got soft locked with my racoon suit wearing Sim after its inhabitants died, I buried the house just in case), lowering other Sims' motives with mods to watch them try to attend school despite looking like a zombie (quite realistic) or using bugs to cheat relationships (and what's tragic, is that these ways require DLCs)
It all just depends on the player, whether they're a builder (who most often play Sims 4 because of its advanced build mode), a storyteller (who often like Sims 3 because of its story progression), a chaos enjoyer (Sims 2) or a nostalgia enjoyer (Sims 1)
I should NOOTTTT be able to build a 2 bedroom 2 bathroom house from the ground up in like 3 in game days with rocks and frogs. Its absolutley ridiculous.
what later sims game lacked was struggle. If everything is always perfect and always goes your way that gets boring. A game where everything is working against you is more fun
Something I always tell to my friends is that The Sims 1 and 2 had a very funny and "just because" sense of humor so 2000's. Like those random phone calls, so the newer games don't have that. They lost the spicy and random events haha.
there's like 10 different upcoming games that intend to compete with The Sims, whereas previously there was nothing else. this can't be a coincidence.
this is literally why I'm obsessed with Project Zomboid. It runs like an Ironman game(you can always respawn with a new character in the same world but time passage means something). I literally lost everything on a FANTASTIC run because I put a can of bean into the microwave and it blew up up the microwave and destroyed my shack and killed my character in 5 seconds flat. I was so mad, then I laughed, then I made another character and started over.
You have to CHEAT TO DIE in the sims 4. Or force it so hard there is no fun in it.
Love PZ! It's also hilarious to me that it looks so much like The Sims 1. Fantastic game that gives a superior experience imo. Can't wait for the update with NPCs and animals.
Sims 3 is my favorite one of the series
Honestly recommending simmers rimworld is genius
It's The Sims 1 but the burglar can kill you and burn down your house 😅
I think it might also be because most of us have grown into adults and playing the Sims doesn't feel like playing dollhouse anymore but more like subconciously recreating our own life but better - which is even more depressing
And the fact that Sims 4 is set in our current reality it's also full of phones (they even have ingame social media wth) and advanced technology so it's no escape anymore
Its why Im grateful for mods. The vanilla game is too dull, too safe, and is about as spicy as flour. Mods literally make the game playable and enjoyable.
It would also help if every patch we got made the game actually work instead of just setting your pc on fire.
What mods would you suggest to make the game more interesting?
@@hardy_har689 For more mature gameplay I suggest wicked whims, wicked perversions, basemental drugs, life's tragedies, road to fame, extreme violence. For pg-13 content I'd suggest anything by SimsRealist they have private practice, SN bank/bills mod, flowfit, chingyu kawaiistacie, a deep indigo and lumpiou have lots of CC traits, skills and career mods that help make the game better. I'd also suggest more columns in cas, build/better/buy mod and weerbesu UI cheat extension mod.
@@hardy_har689 Wicked Whims is a good baseline.
@@NoobsofFredo Hard pass, idk how sex makes a game more fulfilling.
@@hardy_har689 Extreme Violence
i’m having the time of my life playing the sims 3 lmao, the sims 4 just sucks ass
TS2 & TS3 is still very fun for me. Can’t say the same about TS4
Wow, difficulty setting is spot on! EA - hoping you’re reading this and give us at least the option of either increase or decrease negative random events frequency.
1:17 Urbz was UNHINGED and I loved every moment of it.
They removed the drowning
I’ve never looked into that from this perspective but you actually have a point. And when I clicked on the video, I expected at least a thousand views. Underrated fosho!
As someone who started playing with the sims 4 I agree with this completely. When the sims 4 first started I noticed there were a lot more fires, fridges and electronics breaking. Ways for sims to die in fire, get electrocuted or die from laughter!
As the game has progressed they have slowly patched out these challenges and roadblocks more and more. It's made me go to watching lots of sims 2 content (as it's hard to download sims 2 on modern computers) and wishing the game was like its predocessor! Sims cant even get fired in the sims 4, which is depressing to me.
Old Games Download makes it easy, for all computers
TS4 bored me to tears. CAS was fun with modded content but after I populated my cities, I tried playing - as usual with 0 money start on the largest lot. I had Carl mod to make bills higher, earnings lower. It was still a complete piece of cake - the build and buy menus are HORRIBLY imbalanced and cheap. Items have utterly random prices. I made my own personal mod where I repriced most items to make earning them actually take a moment, especially with max difficulty settings from Carl's mod. This was the only way for me to even start enjoying the game
Eh, I don’t think the difficulty is the problem at all tbh. The expansions aren’t either. The Sims 3 had (imo) the perfect balance of gameplay and creative control. The expansions were actual expansions rather than stuff packs disguised as expansions. If EA just replicated what they did with the sims 3 (providing an open world, in depth story progression, etc.), 4 would have been wayyyy better.
9:59 I would absolutely buy a sims 4 hardcore mode. But you can also do that by playing a house with babies and dogs.
I had two toddlers and a baby to care for (along with three adult sims) and it was truly difficult lmao
Especially because the adults are so dumb it's excruciating for them to take care of a toddler and you have to remind them constantly about their kid's existence 💀
Well said! I won't play without mods anymore: higher bills, lower salaries, additional diseases, paying for internet/phone access etc. And I usually start my Sim on an empty lot and take away all their money after they bought the lot. And still, I get bored often and stopped playing now anyway (mostly because EAs greedy politics and the buggy game though, not because of the missing challenge).
$1,000 worth of DLC is just isn't enough to make a barely functioning game fun. I've been wanting to go back to the Sims 2 games a lot recently.
I loved the sims 1 but hated how hard it was to manage needs and relationships.
My perfect happy medium was sims 2, challenging but it didn't leave you sweating. Quirky but not corny like the way sims 4 does with their cross eyed character spazzing out, and realistic enough without them trying to lecture you about the world or beat you over the head with social politics....
Sims 4 has a lot of cr.p pumped into it without a complex game system.
Sims 2 had: Aspirations with Wants and Fears, interests, personalities with intensity (which determined how fast they can master skills, how they behave with other sims, etc.)... then the EP-S added also complex systems.
Hobbies, Influence meter, Lifetime Aspiration... It was the last Sims game made with mostly love, rather tham greed.
but it is a part of the game right now, too? isn't it? what's the difference?
@@itswindyhereno soul. 😢 like a basic worse version if the aims 2 and 3 system basically
@@dw9524 fair point :)
@@itswindyhere They've added "Fears" back to the game because it had no soul at the first place... but their implementation of them to the game was just lame... Like so many things and they do not interconnect with each other in the Sims 4...
Sims 2 sims didn't like "Fear of things" like you are having phobias... they were afraid of not having fulfilling life in general...
@@lllamaface3047 okay, good to know :)
I was hesitant to click on this. I really didn't need someone harping on how much they hate the Sims 4 compared to previous versions and basically condensing the comments section of every EA post ever into a youtube video, but I was pleasantly surprised. This was well thought out, well delivered, and funny.
I don't think the DLC features are a problem as such, but rather the fact they're introduced via this endless DLC model, which means they all have to work independently of each other in their own little feature bubble instead of working together in a coherent whole. All this based on the core game which is all about the "emotion" mechanic, which is kind of really bad. I'd really like that Hardcore DLC though, a bit of real life tragedy and adversity would go a long way into making Sims 4 less bland.
The sims now sounds like Sandbox everything is possible to get and achieve they need to think about getting Fun back! With more story quests and rewards when achieving them and much more
I only play Sims 1,2 & 3 now. I started with Sims4!
I'm currently doing the Sims2 Asylum Challenge IN SIMS1.
Yeah, it's absolute freaking chaos lol
It was a snoozefest in Sims4 & thats why I went searching for the older games.
I had no idea how much editing GreyStillPlays & CallMeKevin must have done to make their Sims4 videos look so exciting because I found the game so uneventful, easy & just... boring.
I was so excited when I bought Sims4 though😭
I actually found ways to make sims 4 more challenging for myself but it requires work. First of all there are "challenge" scenarios, then you add traits that work against it to your sim, then you use one of the supernatural packs to make your sim something that also could be used to make the scenario harder (like a hissing vampire trying to be friends with everyone or an angry werewolf and an overly scared sim trying to build a romantic relationship from starting out as enemies who hate each other), then you make sure that the sim's life cycle and season cycle is very short so you always have to juggle choosing to attend events, or going to work or building skills or working towards successful scenario since shortening all the cycles and life spans makes it so much harder to accomplish everything you need to do with the amount of random fluff they added. To further eat your sim's time you should also add things like the laundry pack so they have to do laundry as well. And then pick a lot with lot challenges, that is empty and expensive and then pick all the bad environmental furniture or ones with lowest reliability and only get the bare minimum (not that much can be afforded if you buy a big expensive empty lot, also big lot means more taxes and if you make most stuff industrial then you also pay extra on all bills). The gameplay can be brutal but hilarious. It gets easier as you go but it is some real hard beginnings and that keeps on being fun for a bit. Sims 4 does have hard mode it's just you have to choose to give it to yourself. A mermaid sim living in an apartment building with no pools anywhere nearby and only a shower rather then a bathtub will be a pain just as much as a werewolf with added angry trait who is trying to cohabitate with people. For even more fun you can make your sim start on being infamous and give them all the most "interesting" fame quirks as you play. You also have fears that were added to the game which can be detrimental to everything you do and you can cheat to give yourself specific fears if you want or come by them through gameplay. And finally for an extra oomph there is a mod that makes it so that violence and death can just happen to your sims outside of your own actions. For an extra challenge there are some jobs that are harder with some traits in a combo so you can do that as well. There are ways to make your sim's life hard. The only thing I really hate is that there are so little of the fun random encounters of the other sims games. I really miss things like the burglars. Becoming friends with sims with kleptomania and then giving them a key to your home is the closest I have come to experience theft in sims 4. They do randomly steal shit but they mostly go for books and paintings and decor from experience.
as someone who likes the supernatural magic stuff and additions: the sims 4 even messes that up.
As a vampire you can: no longer need to shower, ignore the social need and even just ignore thirst eventually.
As a werewolf you can: Regain hygene and social skills anywhere, and even be less hungry.
As a witch you can: instantly fill all moodlets with a potion that costs just an apple
Diffrent lifestates in this game are not "A completely different existence, trying to make the most despite being cursed." they are solutions to mundane problems.
Vampires, out of all of them, are the most fun because to get the cool end-game magic you need to take debuffs and quirks like constant hissing, anxiety during the day, things that make it harder for the sim to have a good time. A vampire in a haunted house is the game actually showing some teeth and a bit of challenge.
but with the latest lifestates they just- don't. Werewolves get quirks yes, but you can just keep gambling until you end up with a werewolf that has 4 super-quirks that means they never rampage and get some extra bonuses as well.
And don't get me started on magic users. you get cursed? just use the "curse-be-gone" spell or potion, you also cannot get cursed experimenting with magic or potions, only when the full spells/potions goes wrong.
I feel if they went all the vampire route of forcing the player to either be a weak little baby mage/werewolf, or accepting some cost to the power it would have been great. (also just make the apple potion cure diseases or fill hunger not solve every need like jesus christ.)
The Sims series used to actually be innovative, but with Sims 4 it became complacent with itself and relied on brand recognition more than anything to sell. Yes, Sims 4 revolutionized its Create A Sim, but it was the only thing they really 'expanded' on for the game while the rest of the core gameplay features in past games were massively downgraded. We didn't have pools or toddlers at launch, for fuck's sake. Sims 5 / Project Rene's leaked gameplay shows that they're overhauling the build mode as their main selling point, but I have no doubt that its free-to-play nature alongside its release on mobile devices are only signs of worse things to come.
The worst part about all this is that EA / Maxis have no incentive to change considering that A. people buy each $40 DLC they release like hotcakes - no matter how half-baked they may be content-wise, and B. they are quite literally the only life simulation game of its kind on the market right now, so they have no competition. InZOI and Paralives are looking decent, but there's no telling how big of an effect, if any, they'll have on The Sims' inherently flawed design philosophies. Sims 1 was the first of its kind, Sims 2 brought that world into 3d with loads more gameplay overhauls all around, Sims 3 gave the series an open world to play in with virtually no loading screens, meanwhile, Sims 4 expended all its creative energy into CAS and didn't bother to bring the game up to the standards its previous entries set.
As someone who's played The Sims games since I was 9, it's extremely disheartening to see the games I once held dear essentially go down the shitter. I hope that the new life sims games coming out gives EA the kick in the ass it needs to get back on track, but with Life By You's failure, and the fact that Paralives is largely a passion project by a small indie team, I'm extremely pessimistic about this series' future. I hope I'm wrong, though.
So I never got the chance to play Sims 2 because I was simply too poor to afford any games- I started with Sims 3 and it was my absolute favorite game. It actually never got boring and I loved making a big family and just starting everything from scratch… what I love about Sims 4 is how easy it is to design a sim; and I still enjoy the gameplay because I’m able to think of ways to make it fun. Sure, there is WAY too many DLCs and we don’t need them but with enough imagination… you can still make it fun ): I would rather it have much higher difficulty level though.
I recently took one of my friend's OC families and created them in the sims and with her guidance on looks personality family ages and dynamics I'm having a blast. I keep her updated on it all and I have yet to get board. the only pack I bought for this play is island living because the dad and kids are mermaids but the mom is human and It was on sale
@@FireFang97 I have 90% of the packs and the other crap because I share my EA account with a friend and she buys it all but that is such a good idea! I just made a new one and my girlfriend told me that she reminded her of Bella Poarch (that tiktoker or whatever) so I made her into a music lover and now she’s learning instruments, singing and acting! :D I’m also having a blast :)
@@Purpeliex yes it is a very good idea one of the kids wants to be a writer the other music like dad and the mom paints the dad stays home and the mom works.
I don't play The Sims but this popped up in my recommendations for some reason, and I've got to say this is this a really great video.
To give my two cents, it sounds like the game falls into a trap that a lot of modern games do. They remove all sources of friction to avoid frustrating the player, but in doing so they make the experience formulaic and repetitive. It's no fun if everything is handed to you and you lose memorable experiences that create long term players.
this hardcore dlc you made up actually sounds so fun! 😭
and I really enjoyed the video in general :)
My main problem with Sims 4 is that gameplay features that should be in the base game are locked away in DLCs. Like Parenthood, Growing Together and Lovestruck, WHY do I have to spend like 75€ just so that my Sims can have realistic relationships (both with family and partners)? DLCs should be strictly for new worlds/activities/build items and only introduce new social interactions based on these worlds. I wouldn't mind buying Sims 4 for like, 40-50€ if it had all the relationship features of Parenthood, Growing Together and Lovestruck (and maybe Wedding Stories? damn I almost forgot that one...)
Sims 1 was a digital dollhouse with consequences and gameplay. Sims 4 is just a dollhouse with no consequences, and minimal gameplay so you have to use your imagination for storylines
You said it was in an effort to please everyone, but I assure you it was in the effort of making the cheapest expansion packs that are just barely good enough for people to buy them.
it’s just too buggy. all of my mods are updated but the new world keeps giving me an error so i can’t play in it. sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t
One thing that frustrates me as well is how buggy The Sims 3 is. I feel like that's the best of the series but because the game doesn't clear it's cache right the longer you play a file the worse it runs. Really amateurish development ruins what could be amazing titles.
That’s why it’s better to play Sims 3 off console instead of PC I use to be on that game for hours
Same I have this bug that deletes all my doors no matter how much I try to fix it
@@pancakesean6888 - In case you don't know, you should turn off the memories/scrapbook immediately in the options menu when creating a new/fresh town, and always use the NRAAS Overwatch mod for the eternally-spawning-cars bug. Both of those bloat the save file bad and the cars bug will inevitably tank the save file because it eventually becomes impossible to load. It's also worth making multiple saves of the same town and overwriting the oldest save with new progress, to minimize losing a ton of work to a failed save.
Losing my first ever Sims 3 PC save (an asylum challenge) taught me to use Overwatch and create multiple saves for the same town. At least I was able to grab a half-done version of my sim and his loony roommates from a backup that hadn't corrupted, but of course I'd almost finished the challenge when the main save died to the cars bug.
If the sims 4 creators really cared that much we wouldnt have to pay to make the game better…
Playing a bit of devils advocate here. I agree with the overall main point of this video, but I also think age plays into it as well. In my opinion a large part of the sims Community/players are millennials in their late 20s early 30s. Myself for example I am 32 years old I have played sims since I was probably 8 or 9 years old. Playing the sims as a child was a lot more exciting than playing now as an adult. It felt like I was playing with dolls or playing house. These sort of things as an adult don’t really appeal to me anymore. It’s fun sometimes, but it gets old quick. And I’ve noticed this happens even when I play sims 3 not just sims 4. However this is just my experience, and I do understand that it’s not the same for everyone. But again I do agree with the points you made in this video too
valid but I love other, newer simulation games about as much as I did when I was younger
I'm 33 I understand what you're saying.. things are still fun just in lower usage. I still play sims but maybe for an hour here and there.. not multiple hours a day. Same with every video game. I have other priorities, and can't play everyday like i used to.
I use the sims to relax after a hard day at work and before I go to bed I find I sleep better because I'm not going to bed stressed like I used to.
I still play the sims 2 to this day haven't even touched the newer sims
I agree with your points. I need to limit myself in INSANE WAYS to enjoy Sims 4. You get so much money so quickly but nothing to spend it on. It used to take generations to get a mansion, now ti takes a week xD
As a long time simmer there are some adjustments i have made to make the world more interesting using mods. I know it shouldn't be this way but ok...
1. Change the game time speed.
a. Making the game's time run slower give you more control and hours in the day for things to really make impact maximising the dollhouse idea.
b. Speeding it up does the oposite adding more challenge to the life simulation and game aspect of thing.
2. Better autonomy. Using mccc you can make sims go through things more randomly. Sims will forms relationships outside of your control, do things at random, gain interests on their own. Etc. Or turn it off entirely to be in full control rather than getting steered towards 100% good all the time.
3. starting households with random finances, jobs and former experiences. Getting the sims a life before you and some things to work with.
4. mods>packs. But really, if there is a mod for it, it's often better and free. And most mod creators are worth your money more than EA....
5. Break the game. Really, try to break it. It's fun :)