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Lab Assistant
Original Poster
#1 Old 6th Jun 2017 at 7:46 PM
How is the sims 4 coming along?
As always, I am not sure whether I am posting this in the right section, but this seemed to be the most logical place to me. Feel free to move it elsewhere if necessary.

Hey there people,

So it has been quite a while since I played a sims game, and the last time I played I was still fully on the sims 3. When a new sims game comes along, I tend to wait about a year or two, because I really hate to go from a fully expanded game full of content and cool mods to a completely vanilla base game. Sure, the sims 4 had a lot of cool new features, but it was not quickly gonna measure up to the huge amount of content that I already had for the sims 3.
So I wait a while for the game to 'develop', and by that I don't just mean waiting for new expansions and patches to come out, but also for the community of modders to develop, so that by the time I start playing, I'll have access immediately to all the stuff I could ever want for the game, and all their problems or bugs I might encounter will mostly have been fixed or at least have a workaround developed for them.

I've been trying to get a good idea of how far the game has come along since its release, but the wiki's and game reviewers can't really satisfy my curiosity on what I really want to know. The wiki's only outline the 'red thread' of the released content, and game reviewers only review the games one expansion at a time. What I want to know is how the game is right now as a whole! With this I am including the new game itself (obviously), all expansions, stuff packs, patches, possible bugs/glitches and most importantly, the available modding and costum content. How well do all of these aspects work together, and what sort of a gameplay experience can I expect if I were to dive into the game right now? How do ts3 and ts4 as a whole compare with each other?

I hope this doesn't seem like to weird a question to ask, but I would really like to know as sure as possible whether this generation of the Sims is worth it for me to spend time with and dive into, and I feel like the community here are the best place to ask, since the overall experience is only best judged after a good amount of gameplay and tweaking. So I really hope you guys can help me here. I would love to have as many opinions as possible, and know that there is no such thing as too much information. If somebody wants to outline pro's and cons, I would love that, but if you just want to give a quick response, I welcome that too.

Thanks in advance!
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Test Subject
#3 Old 7th Jun 2017 at 2:41 AM
In a short answer, as a person who started simming with ts4, I don't have anything to compare to like most people. The game has its pros and cons like most aspects of life but one thing that stood out to me when I first played was the humour! Sims have plenty of cartoonish little interactions that might put a smirk on your face!
Lab Assistant
Original Poster
#4 Old 7th Jun 2017 at 7:39 PM Last edited by peepeevs : 7th Jun 2017 at 7:40 PM. Reason: Adjusting lay-out
Thanks for the response. I was hoping I would have more responses by now though. I kinda thought people would love to talk about a game they adore.

I was mostly hoping for some comparisons to the previous sims games, as I am a little worried that the amount of content for ts4 doesn't seem to come close to the amount of content given for ts3. Granted, ts3's content was overall very broken, and it took a lot of work and mods to make the game work to your liking, but there was still a lot to do. So let me elaborate a little on the things that I have seen so far about ts4 that worry/disappoint me a little when compared to ts3:

In any gamefranchise, I tend to get frustrated when playing a new installment of an IP that misses a lot of stuff that I at least kinda liked about its previous installment. So no matter how mundane and stupid it could be sometimes, the fact that I've seen no sign of some sort of university/college expansion brings me down a little. I've also noticed that they released a gamepack focused solely on vampires, which I always thought was one of the less interesting supernatural states in the game. I would have loved to see a return of wizards and servos (that I could make look like humans), but I haven't really any sign of those yet.
I've also noticed that they have an expansion that focuses on camping out. Previous installments would give us an expansion that would allow for vacations in general, in which you could, among many other things, camp out. Heck, ts3 even gave us a pretty awesome Indiana Jones expansion. I am however pretty excited by the 'get to work' e and the 'dine out' expansions. They seem to bring back stuff from ts2 that i had been missing in ts3.
From what I can see from here, I do see promise, but the fact that some expansions solely focus on stuff that would have been part of a larger expansion in older installments does worry me a little.
Top Secret Researcher
#5 Old 17th Jun 2017 at 5:23 AM
You might get better responses in the Sims4 section or just by reading there.
Mad Poster
#6 Old 23rd Jun 2017 at 8:38 PM
Exactly as expected. Mediocre. Lukewarm. It's shallow.

insert signature here
( Join my dumb Discord server if you're into the whole procrastination thing. But like, maybe tomorrow. )
Theorist
#7 Old 25th Jun 2017 at 5:01 AM
You need Perfect Patio Stuff if you want hot tubs at all, maybe there's hot tubs in City Living which I don't have. Get to work has arguably interesting careers and build / buy objects for theme builders, but it is MISSING THE BANDATRON that allows sims entry on your property and charges them by the hour to stay. That is the best business object to me from Open for Business. I got backyard stuff mostly for the waterslides, and Spa Day for massages and wellness ( though I don't see, yet, how wellness helps ). Really, TS4 encourages me to throw money to piece together what I had going in previous sims games.

TS4 has the Gallery which is an ingame tool to look for sims and lots from the community. Useful when you want to upgrade lots and population on a whim, because it can be done right away. Not so useful when you get those things from third party sites because you have to restart the game before you can see the objects. To me, TS4 still needs more strong content.
Lab Assistant
#8 Old 12th Jul 2017 at 6:01 PM
Honestly, the game is lukewarm. I like the awesome Gallery, the Build Mode, the CAS, the new emotions, and the new interactions. However, there are more aspects that went wrong. No more CAP, open-world, or normal EP development,they produce infinite numbers of stupid and useless stuff packs instead (one of them is that bowling and the fitness, 20 bucks saved). So many lost potential.

EA ruined YET ANOTHER franchise.

Always mark an answer as helpful, if it helped you out, so people won't need to create another thread on the same topic.
Test Subject
#9 Old 16th Jul 2017 at 5:10 PM
Really good game, but you need to have money because dlcs aren't adding anything: these are just removing important things from the base game and making you pay more. Anyway, I was just afraid they took custom content
Alchemist
#10 Old 23rd Jul 2017 at 10:55 PM
Lack of open world. Lack of interesting lots to go to. Lack of interesting sims. Sims 4 is still just...lackluster.
*Cracks knuckles*
If I'm going to break it down, in a nutshell: I've been with The Sims since numero uno. I've owned nearly every EP, SP, and haven't skipped a single series. Sims 1 was brand new, and nothing like any other game at its time, the very first dollhouse/architecture/"life" simulator. A lot of TLC went into that game....a barrage of create-a-sim options, some very basic traits, and closed-off single lot gameplay. However, there was a lot you could do on that lot, and other places held specific purposes and unique functions. You didn't have a lot of nothing burger lots, and you didn't have ONE LOT TO RULE THEM AALLLL (If you're like me, this just means I visit one lot for the entirety of my gaming). The music was catchy and fun to listen to. On the other hand, the motives were tedious, relationships took some real time and effort to establish/maintain, and a lot could go wrong (As in, in general. Fires, anyone...?). The sims in #1 didn't have any REAL personalities, they were just a colorful collection of those beginner traits.
When The Sims 2 came along, it did something amazing for The Sims: It 3D'd it. Sims were more like people than like robots designed to look like people, and a lot more customization for the actual sims was introduced. A fuck ton, actually. It was still a 1 lot system and there were still loading screens, but it also kept the "tons of things to do on your 1 lot" theme. Your sims aged more progressively, and other areas of the previous game were expanded. Fires still abounded, but not nearly so much, and the motives didn't decay rapidly enough to get stuck in the "sleep, eat, toilet, shower, work, entertainment, eat, sleep" loop that you might've found yourself in, in Sims 1. The personality system remained very similar, but sims were also assigned specific behaviors to their personalities: Attractions/turn-offs, zodiac signs, aspirations. The Sims 2 expansion packs added even more to The Sims 2 gameplay and evolution of The Sims.
Then came my favorite, to this day: Sims 3. Sims 3 took a lot of risks, and in my opinion, it paid off. There were personality traits that were not numeric values, but actually determined the behavior of your sim, and there was an open goddamn world. An open world was brand new to Sims, and while it had its drawbacks, overall, to be able to look around at will and see your other sims in real time was amazing. No more having to swap around to continue other houses (Although you still could if you wanted) if you'd lost interest in them but didn't want to delete them. A lot of things that the previous games had to have patched in or added as an expansion, Sims 3 had on its base game. The new traits system ultimately made the sims feel even more like real people, and less like a collection of numeric values. The pets, unlike in sims 2, felt like real animals and not robots wearing animal skins sent to punish your lawn for your existence. Motives were even more easily kept aloft, and the monetary grind was even less necessary: The focus was on architecture, and the actual sims.
So after that horribly choppy (And in no way all-bases-covered) personal summary....we get to Sims 4.

This was how I felt playing Sims 4 for the first time. It felt like a hollowed out shell of The Sims franchise. Granted Sims 3 wasn't perfect at replicating its predecessors either, but it at least attempted to compensate (It's arguable whether or not those compensations were successful or not) for that with new themes, new gameplay mechanics, and new contributions to the sims or their environment. Sims 4 is in no way a fully EP'd out game, so it's a little unfair to compare it to 1, 2, and 3....but seeing where it's gone already and with no hint of where it might be going (What is it, intrinsic to the nuclear codes?? Drop a hint, EA! Drop several! Drop hints like it's a nudist beach and you arrived in snow gear!! And for the love of god, it better be seasons or pets or something interesting and not niche as fuck), this is what I have to say about Sims 4, having recently gone back and given it another try.

It's still a hollowed out shell of The Sims franchise. The sims themselves are even wackier and cartoonish than they'd gotten from 2 to 3 (Which was a noticeable amount), but with no containment field. Well, unless you count the brand new, fresh, innovative, totally entertaining one...lot....system. .... Wooooooo..... Haven't seen that before........ *Nods off of boredom just thinking about it* But of course, with even less to do on that lot than before. (More things to do on the lot means you shovel more bills into EA's cocaine bucket fund.)
I realize this is a giant nutshell as it is, but I have very little positive feedback for Sims 4. The moods system is unappealing and transparent (Say it with me now: "A room for every specific mood, or a cluster-fucky weird room where they flash from one mood to the next so fast it's worrisome and slightly scary") and downright stupid (Dying from laughter, fright, etc, is stupid. I say that objectively). They don't feel like they have any definitive personalities: They ALL have the Sims 3 "unstable" trait, as far as moods and wishes are concerned. The sims are practically immortal, however, in every other sense. New gameplay content trickles in, rather than the flash flood it was until then, and feels even more lazily compiled than Sims 3 "brand new" content (Sharing animations for different traits...shame on you, EA). There are limitations right off the bat: Buy mode has locked objects. Not just one or two, either. Want a fancy easel 'cause your rich sim wants to paint on a fancy easel? NOPE GOTTA JUMP THROUGH THE HOOPS FIRST. Fuck you, I wanna make my own hoops. Every single Sims game before this, was about making my own hoops. The graphics are of better quality, but still keeping with the bizarrely cartoonish feel of the game.
I expect Sims 5 to look like this, at this point:

(The sound will cost you extra in the form of DLC.)

"The more you know, the sadder you get."~ Stephen Colbert
"I'm not going to censor myself to comfort your ignorance." ~ Jon Stewart
Versigtig, ek's nog steeds fokken giftig
 
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