So, let's talk about death and how it should be done for sims 4.

First of all: the chance of death should remain. I am fine with death not being completely random like a satelite coming out of the sky (never happened to me) but some actions certainly should have death as a possible consequence. Also, please keep in mind that all these suggestions are not soley for the base game of sims 4. A lot of it could be added over time through expansions.

Some new deaths could be introduced, traits could play a factor in this as well either increasing the chance of death or lowering it.

New deaths:

-Chocking on food.
Sims who are really stuffing themselves with food could choke on it. However, another sim can save them from choking. Unless they are a sim that easily panicks, then they'd just freak out and not do anything about it.
Especially gluttonous sims could be prone to choking, sims who eat calmly wont have this happen to them ever.
It shouldnt ever be something that happens too often though, small chance of occuring.

-Dangerous mission in army.
When in the army, there could be opportunities for dangerous missions. You can always decline these, but if you accept its a good way to get promoted and maybe get a medal as well for heroics. But also the chance of death. Traits and skills could determine their chances of survival. I know thats not realistic, but its a game. A brave athletic sim with body skill maxed out would have much better chances of survival than a clumbsy over emotional sim.
Soldiers that die in a war could get a different tombstone however, honouring their sacrifice.

-Shark attack.
At beaches, there could sometimes be a shark. You'd just see the fin in the water, and some jaws like music could play. You'd need to get your sims out of the water quickly, or you'd see them yelp and get dragged underwater, following a death notification. No blood though.
Maybe sims could also obtain an item that scares sharks away if its in their inventory, so they can't be killed by sharks anymore.


Now, for the afterlife..

First of all: different tombstones. I'd like to see a different tombstone for each type of death. And a different color for their mood when they died. Those who died angry could have a black tombstone, those whose mood was average could have a grey tombstone and those who where happy at the time of death could have a white tombstone.

As for ghosts, by default there should not be any ghosts haunting, certainly not all sims coming back as ghosts.
Something should need to trigger it. Some special item in a household, paranormal employed sims getting the ability to speak with ghosts and get them to appear, magic, etc.
How friendly the ghosts are would depend on the mood they died in. Those with a black tombstone could be vengefull spirits that could turn your lovely home into a haunted house, those with a grey tombstone would be pretty much as they where in life. They might pull the occasional prank but thats it. Those with a white tombstone would be quite happy, and would return to rest quite easily because they are fully at peace. They could be persuaded to do something nice for you before they leave though. Like blowing all the leaves in your garden away or fighting an angry ghost physically. If they win they'd stop the angry ghost from haunting your house.

Now as for haunted houses..
This could get quite unpleasant for your sims. The angry ghost wont kill them or anything, but can annoy sims greatly. More stressfull sims could be scared to death like in sims 2 however.
Plates of food might fly around, every item that can break may break at random due to the ghost, the ghost might go for a ride in your car, they may posses a piece of furniture and make it float, and looking into a mirror could get some freaky results. (like your sim seeing a ghost or other supernatural version of themselves.)
Aside from good ghosts fighting the angry ghost, you can also hire a psychic to expell the ghost and sims that advanced to a certain rank in the paranormal career can expell them as well.

Moving onto revival.

In sims 3, its way too easy to bring sims back from the dead. I do like that its possible, but its something that should not be easy.
Ways I suggest for it:

-Plead with grim reaper.
Your sims can beg the grim reaper when he comes to collect the deceased sim. There are many options here with different results:
-Take me instead. This always works but its the most costly option. The grim reaper allows the dead sim to live, but the one asking this disappears along with the grim reaper instead.
-Bribe the grim reaper. Rich sims might want to strike a deal with the grim reaper. This wouldnt always work, and what the reaper takes could be ranging from 10 simoleons to all your money as well as your furniture. Depends on what the reaper considers the dead sim's life to be worth. (I'd be offended if my sim's life was only worth ten simoleons.)
-Intimidate the grim reaper. Very high risk, the reaper might just take both the dead sim and the one intimidating him as well. To pull this off you'd need a sim who is already dead because they cant die.
-Plead with the grim reaper. Default option with 30% chance of succes, 30% chance the sim comes back as a zombie and 40% chance the reaper is not convinced.

-Raise the dead.
When magic is added, one spell would be to raise the dead. You can revive any dead sim this way, but theres a good chance they become a zombie instead.
Also, you need to gather several rare components each time you cast the spell.

-Magic lamp.
Wishing a sim back with a magic lamp is fine, but there should be a chance of complications here as well.
The revived sim could randomly be a different age group. theres also the chance they have a different personality, or the wrong person is revived. Then you suddenly have a random neighbourhood sim revived.
Wouldnt be any chance of zombies or additional deaths with the magic lamp though.

I like a lot of your ideas. I do disagree with the coloured/different tombstones though, I'd rather we just keep the ghost colours and the platinum tombstones if aspirations are back. Imagine how bad that would look in a cemetery once we got a lot of death types and mood combinations. Given EA's usual taste, I'd say it'd look like a muted rainbow palette at best. I'd also prefer if all of the deceased could haunt, although how aggressive they are should be tied their personality and mood upon death. Hot headed/evil/etc sims should have an option to haunt aggressively, even more so if they died in a bad mood. On the other hand, family oriented sims should never scare children, preferring to just hover around watching the young ones, maybe even tucking them in once they're asleep. Neat ghosts could clean the house like some of the ghosts did in TS2. And so on and on. Most ghosts that died in a good mood with traits that don't play into haunting would mostly just hover around the house and haunt the furniture occasionally, so they wouldn't be much of a bother.

It'd be nice if prior relationships played into their haunting too. A mother coming out of her tombstone just to see her son's wedding for example. That might take too much work for something that won't have any effect after a few generations, but little touches like that would be nice. And I might be in the minority, but I liked the fact that we could marry ghosts in TS3, one of the few supernaturals I truly liked better. In this case I do think something special should be done to enable a sim to talk with the dead. Maybe they're just born with a hidden trait that allows them to do that (they really are psychic), working in the paranormal career, researching the paranormal and/or getting a special item would do the trick.

I absolutely love your ideas to plead with the grim reaper. Nothing to add to that, just wondering why EA hasn't expanded the current system in such a way yet.

I think I'd like to see random death retained though. There's nothing quite like seeing a satellite squash your sim. The expression on the sim's face was priceless.

Now, that sounds very Sims-like for humor to me. I like it. My sims might never swim in the ocean, I admit, because I like to control things (they never watch clouds in TS2), but as long as it's very rare, I like that one. Though I'm sure some groups would be opposed to it, as they are to the Jaws franchise in general for how it presents sharks. I guess a generic sea monster could be used, but that just wouldn't be nearly as funny to me.

Well my sims nearly lost the will to live just from being stalked by the shark mascot in TS1 when on vacation, so there is a shark precedent to death already :D

I would like better wills.

I don't think TS3 had wills

I'd just like an option to turn off non-natural caused deaths.

I love the idea of applying necromancy into sims. I would love to see spells like that and more black magic in general in sims.

I would love to see a new concept for the ghosts. TS3 ghosts are not even scary...

In an "I want this, but I know it will never happen" way, some vampires should drain to kill and be less Interview With A Vampire/Twilight. Now before you dismiss me, we could sort of have this Ash/Cyn from Carpe Noctem* deal. The nice/playful vampires with popularity/romance aspirations could ask to/consent to bite somebody, but the grouchy ones who want to play the predator instead of the pet (because humans are food, not friends) could drain to kill.

Similarly, sims could get mauled by werewolf sims with poor self-control.

Meh, since we're discussing death here, I'm surprised nobody mentioned those two. o_o

EDIT: There should also be death by slayer! Inge agrees!



( I thought I was the only one 8D )

*part of the Tales of the Vampires comic book anthology



So long as the ghosts (from drowning) don't drip all over the place, ugh. ><

Personly I wouldn't mind supernatural sims being lethal in some way, but then it would mean sims are capable of killing other sims which seems like a big no no in the series so far.

Instead of death, I do think that sims could be given a time out of sorts in various ways.. instead of death. Sims can be incapacitated in so many ways without having to die.

Some examples:

-A sim who gets mauled by a wherewolf is taken to the hospital.
Theres always been a hospital, why not actually use it? A sim would stay several days in the hospital after a wherewolf attack, friends and relatives can come and visit them while they are here.
Ideally, the hospital would have rooms and you'd actually see the mauled sim laying in a bed and all interactions with the sim would come from others, you'd be unable to give any commands to the mauled sim. They'd stumble to the toilet occasionly on their own and would be given meals in the hospital when hungry.
Aside from this, there could be a small chance that the mauled sim could turn out to be a wherewolf themselves after they leave the hospital.

-Vampires can drain a large amount of blood.
This would be a hostile action, I dont think drinking blood should be something done amongst friends.. should be possible, but drinking it from enemies makes more sense.
A sim who lost a lot of blood could become tired very quickly for a few days, spending most their time in bed. Pretty much just leaving it to eat, use the toilet and maybe take a shower.
They'd recover in a few days.

-Alien can get a sim abducted.
Alien sims would be able to target a sim for abduction, they'd be taken away by a UFO and would stay away for a while.
The alien could also specify the purpose of the abduction: impregnation, probing, cloning or even just a friendly visit to the homeplanet for the targeted sim.

-Genie can teleport a sim away.
Genies can simply teleport annoying sims away to a random place on the planet. How long they are gone could range from a few hours to several days. If the sim is in your selected household, you can see how long their trip will take. The progress bar of the interaction would show. It can't be cancelled though. Perhaps they can pick up some items during their travel back home.

-Magic can turn a sim to stone.
The sim would become a stone statue, their motives frozen, their aging as well. You could keep them like this for a hundred generations if you'd want to, or just a few hours. A mage would need to cast a spell to undo this magic.

I think it is a pity that sims killing other sims is a "big no no". It doesn't need to make it "just an other shooter game". I think it would be cool if a jealous sim who surprised their spouse wohooing with an other sim would go and grab a weapon and potentilly harm or kill either the spouse or homebreaker as revenge. There could be a random function determining who get killed. Either the spouse, the homebreaker or both. The jealous sim could then either remorse or be happy depending on the sims caracter. The weapon could be anything. A kitchenknife, a hammer or even poison as well as firearms.

Nah, they already did the "impassioned killer" angle with Olive Specter (the theory was that she fell in love with Grimmy, so she killed various people, just so Grimmy could come on her lot everytime) and even then it was a suckfest. Pun unintended, of course.



@Inhuman_One: But vamp feeding isn't really a hostile action! I mean, draining is like eating for a vampire, not like, a malicious act. Heck, even if the vamp were to drain you instead, it wouldn't be because they hated you, it would be more like they were hungry and viewed you in the same way that most Americans view a cheeseburger.

Ethical "vegan" vampire = Would only drink animal blood, so they would not view a human as food. Because that's dehumanizing.
Neutral Vampire = Would ask for consent and only drain from the "I <3 Fangs" crowd, just a little bit, so the human can still live and not be in critical condition.
Feral/Predatory Vampire =
"The blood just isn't the same without the fear-derived adrenaline, you know? It's nothing personal June, but I'm hungry."

*vamp face*

"And I don't feel like being your boyfriend either."

*gets staked from behind by a vampire hunter*

It just bugged me how supernatural creatures, well...didn't really act the part. :\ Although they got it pretty close with the zombie and werewolf personality changes, vampires were pretty much sims with the static motives cheat and an intolerance to sunlight.