I hate highly saturated colours. They're flashy and obnoxious. True black is way too much black for me.

Black being called flashy is sort of funny to me. XD
Pure black can never be obnoxious in my book. *sniffs*

Sorry SneakyWing, I think we veered quite a ways of course.

I just hate harsh colours, idk if 'flashy' is the right word but it's definitely harsh

ʇɐɥʇ uo noʎ ɥʇıʍ ǝǝɹbɐ oʇ ǝʌɐɥ ı

ShigemiNotoge has very...weird opinions about colours. If white is just a fad and black is obnoxious, I'm wondering what'll happen when we tell him about bright red or green. Maybe he'll just burn up like a vampire in the sun, who knows.

"pure" any colour looks terrible to me, be it white, black, red, green and purple are my favourite colours and even they are obnoxious with full saturation.
I appreciate subtlety in my environment because I lack it in my personality = .=

Subtlety was like, so cool back before it wasn't. I remember when subtlety was still cool.
Nowadays, with the whole entitled spoilt millennial, semi-autistic, post-ironic, holographic Snapchat frappé, "omgz so retro"/"i waz born in 2003 but miss the 80s SoOoOooO much like 4 real" trend of wearing your 53-year old mom's pants, subtlety just isn't cool anymore. And if something's not cool and edgy and, totally, like, fucking dope, bro (actual words used to describe something I once made), it just isn't suitable for this world.

Just be glad you haven't heard of millennial pink.

Black is very hard on a screen, and the way it's used sometimes. As a background on a screen it steels a lot of attention from the subject. Very often less is more.

Goth on tge other hand works with black only because it's an established style, otherwise most people where I live will say it looks cheap.

And let's not forget that many screens don't handle black very well. Most screens, even. You've never seen true black on a display until you've seen an OLED display, and OLED displays are rare and expensive everywhere but in smartphones. Things like this should be considered as well, and often are when designing UIs or things like the demo reels they play on TV sets in stores.

How I would design a perfect UI for a sims game, it would be literally a(n almost) no UI. I wish I knew how to photoshop, because it would help you guys visualize (If at all, you care to know what my ideas are).

The In-game displayed clock would be in the center of the bottom (like how it already is in TS4) or top side of the screen . Needs/Motives would just come in a form of lonely bars, that go in one line order of the bottom of the screen, instead of the typical panel that has the needs position in a column of two by four per each one.

If a player needed to look up the age of the current played sim, they can find that information in the same means as how you find the name of a random towny: by hovering a mouse over them. The Tag would show the sim's name and, If they are from the household your currently playing, below the displayed popped name an age meter will appear in the tag.

Regarding the playable sim's relationship status with others and their job's neccesary information (such as the rank, schedule, sallary, and the skills that are required to earn an promotion) would be toggle-able through a respective brenched interaction ("browse through contacts" and "job >> info") that can be initiated from the phone of the desired sim you're looking to check in about them. It would open up a window of the panel. These interactions wouldn't interrupt with the queued-up actions and won't cancel the sims interaction (think of it how you open up the fridge to check-in what produce are store in it, in TS3).

Haven't thought how the whimps, wants (& fears?) system would in regards with this concept, but I can think of new whimps appearing on the right upper corner where the sims typically get messages. From there, these whimps and fears can be locked. I haven't really think through how or where in the screen these wants&fears will pile up to a certain maxime number that can be locked, but I can imagine being like how the task queue does its thing, except on the right top corner as an icon.

Buttons wouldn't exist for the player to click on, as the game would be control and orientated through a keyboarrd, apart from how the simmers typically control playable sims: through the means of a mouse by clicking the object/entity they want to initiate the interaction of the current selected sim. Switching between sims to select them would be only doable through by [ctrl + #num] keys. The Portrayed and little icon of the sims wouldn't be displayed, since you can already tell which and who is selected by looking on what corresponding sim the plumbob is hovering that indicates the controlled target. As for knowing difference on what time speed the game is played on, read more below ~

As for controlling the speed of the time, all types except for 'pause' will fade away after appearing and staying for a few seconds, which the icon of the type gets displayed in the center of the screen, taking a quarter of the screen. In a similar fashion, I guess, how you would reverse/play/speed/pause/rewind a video, movie or a show of the clip on a tv

Yeah, that's more or less the idea I'd go for, too. Let's put less crap onto the bottom of the screen, and let's shift some of it into the game environment. If thought bubbles and the little money popups that float upwards aren't part of the fixed UI, why should all the other stuff be? That's dumb UI design. Dumb UI design is dumb.

Well, as I would agree that sims themselves should convey certain part of their psyche... we still need info on lots of the things, like skills, career level, relationships. And having no UI and putting it all on hover or making it subtle part of sims themselves would just either make the game cluttered or incredibly difficult to understand (which, again goes agains the sims simplicity philosophy).

I would get rid of the needs completely, especially now when you have visual representation in the need panel, visual representation in the button for the need pannel, visual representation in the emotions/moodlets, visual representation on the sims animation themselves and visual representation in their thought bubbles/complaints. Some of it has to go. One is enough.

One part that can also be shifted into the game is skill meter, but it should not be always there, above sims heads. Like you said for plumbob dissapearing, in plumbobs case that would not be good. But for skill meter, showing up over sims heads for a short amount of time when a sim starts a skill (with skill level over it), and then showing up for short amount of time again when a sim stops skilling or when you direct them to, thn dissapearing.

Now that would make it hard for viewing how much skill a sim already has when you want to improve certain skill or you want to do certain skill action. So some need of UI is still needed.

I would looove if the UI was toggleable, so you can press just a single button to make it show up and press it again to completely hide it. If the option would be available, then the hybrid of the object-based temporary pop-up and standard toggleable UI would be perfect.
I made a presentation of something like that back in 2015. Here it is (without that pulldown menu in the top-middle):

Looks good. It's very low profile but the bulk of the functionality is still there. As a purely schematic, functional concept, I'd say you've already made it work pretty damn well.
I only say that with a limited degree of certainty, because I'm mostly about making it look good rather than making it work, but I'd say this is a good start.
Actually, you know what, those buttons should be bigger. These are too small, for sure.

IMO getting rid of needs or having one shown that is at a critical low point would just make it harder to fulfill them. I like satisfying needs in advance even If they're not red. I like to stradegy routines for my sims, ya know? I do agree that skills need some sort of a way to be shown to the player, nontheless. I can't think of any other than doesn't touch UI, so I would leave it as a button on the screen to show the list/panel of the skills a selected sim has learned.

I did say you could check the relationship status and career progress through a means of phone, which would be two buttons down off for not cluttering the UI some bit.

UI toggle is kind of a thing, with a tab button. Though is just lacks the ability to unrestrict the mouse usage for initiating interactions.

For newcomers, an almost empty UI would be hard to grasp and understand without any confusion or difficulty. I can see that happening, so I would just a tutorial of some sort that like introduce what each key of the keyboard mean (I can imagine ESC opening option menu, while the basic F2 and F1 remaining the buttons for build mode and live mode intact). Nontheless, I like your simplistic design in your provided example image @mixa97sr .

I also forget that their moodlets. Not sure how they would be displayed. Maybe they could be hidden, but hinted in a way through though bubbles that appear on random occasions on sim's head. Actually, that may add an element of short short of thing, where players would have to guess why the sims is feeling or acting that way. Same could be applied If memory system was introduced back (referring to TS2 system, not that "take a picture and share it on social media" crap). If a sim has a diary/photo journal purchased in their inventory, there would be an interaction where the sim sits down on something and the player is greeted with a window gui that dislays memories of the past.

Moodlets are definitelly unneeded things... get rid of them completely. Making it hard to understand what sim wants of how they feel would actually make the game more interesting. You get basic needs, you get sim animations, you get the thought bubbles... that's it. I'm 100% sure that would work in games favor more than these stupid moodlet stats that clog the UI the most.

Fun fact, pressing F10 on keyboard in sims 3 gets rid of the UI completely, but lets you still play the game.

A possible way of getting skills off the UI is to have the skill icon and level number pop up like a tool tip when you hover over a skill object while controlling a sim.

That's how I'd do it if it was necessary to get skills off the main UI at least.

That's quite clever, @ShigemiNotoge. I wonder how will traits be like. They could either be hidden to have players figure them out on their own when they move in a towny or memorize which ones the simmer gave for the cas sims, which is pretty easy to tell by the sim's unique animations and behaviours. And... there isn't much else to point out I guess. A Sim game theorically doesn't need a very complex UI, as it could be practical If there are methods of finding information without requiring to click buttons.

I don't know, I know for a fact that I'd miss being able to see an overview of all skills. I like the skill journal menu in TS3, where you get achievements and statistics about each skill.

Don't like it either, especially the sideways mood text. I'd rather not tilt my head to read it, thanks.

I really like moodlets, it's just that they are poorly implemented in TS4 in comparison to TS3. But then again most things are poorly implemented in TS4 in comparison to TS3. So...

I've never had any problem with moodlets in TS3. Sure, they're not the greatest thing in the world, but they're good enough. From what I recall about TS4's moodlets, you just kind of forget they're there.

What I like like about the TS4 you can tell what mood they are in just by their behavior, you really don't need to look at the panel at all just to find out.

Or at their plumbob, in any sims game.

Not necessary what about npc visitor sims?

What if you think the Plumbbob is a distracting nuisance that must be disabled and invisible at all times?

I really hate the camera controls.