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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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
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!
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._
I'm the opposite. I hate the chaos and it frustrates me to no end if the game doesn't follow my plan. Burglars were something I absolutely hated and I'm so glad they removed it. Like, I wanna have fun and getting all the cash to buy cool things, just for them to get stolen again doesn't sound like fun to me.
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.
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.
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.
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!
@@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.
@@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.
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 😕
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
I’m so glad you made this video because you’re exactly right. The sims is supposed to be a life simulator. But they’ve been slowly chipping away at the challenges and things that make it interesting! I mean, the burglars alone were a simple way to add a bit of a challenge that shook up the game a little every now and then. They could’ve added more severe weather to the seasons experience so it’s harder to contend with. Relationships (until recently) have been very one sided and desperately needed the NPC part of the couple to have some autonomy (it could still be improved but at least lovestruck was a start). There are so many easy ways to add a bit of friction to the game- I liked the way Generations worked in TS3. I liked that teens could throw parties and the parents might come home. Mid life crises were also a welcome challenge. It doesn’t take a HUGE challenge to make the game interesting again, they just need to give us SOMETHING
I still think Sims2 was perfection. The best combination of graphics, story, not overly filled with DLC and normal difficulity. Also option to add so many mods and make your own clothes, maybe import mp3 into your files so you can play few song you like in the radio... you could play with the game and also with game files to make it better. I´m sad my DVD doesn´t work anymore. I wish i could just download the game using code on the DVD cover, but EA is never gonna do that. And yes, i know it is possible to get sims2 on abandonware sites, but i don´t think I´m ready for losing my PC to multivirus attack. 😞
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.
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.
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.
In my opinion, it isn't the wackyness that's really lacking (even if it kinda is), but more so just making the game for people who build a house and then never play the family. I mean, seriously. You can be best friends by taking a selfie with a random person (which they wont refuse btw). Your sims just do nothing in term of socialising with anyone without your consent. And all the features that they tried to bring back from older games are there in such a muted state that it really doesn't matter. (I especially hate that Sims now ask you "Hey is it okay if I find a new job, or get in a relationship with this person?". On top of that, your sims practically can't die without you purposefully forcing it, and even then they made it a hassle. The only good point I'd give them, is that they made the werewolf lifestate actually do something... Even if what it does is turn your sim into the ultimate hobo, since you can meet all your needs without a house, and can become immortal... You know, the sim becomes literally immortal, since they don't have anything that risk them dying near them, and wont ever need anything. Just like you can make vampires delete the emotion system, which is supposed to be what the game is about... I understand that some people don't like when their sim die and stuff, but at the end of the day, life happens like that too sometimes. But they turned the game into a control freak paradise (hence why it is so easy to make money in the game, to the point I'd just use motherlode because at this point, the cheat just saves you time from the non-existent gameplay), or as I said, for people who build houses, but don't actually play the game.
In sims 3, I had a sim who had a criminal career, and his house was right next to his work, so he'd take his car there, do a spin, get out and go to work on foot.
@@marikothecheetah9342 Yeah, and maybe it was a bit too much at times (especially for higher tier jobs), but at least you had to work for your sim to be successful, and not living paycheck to paycheck. If you wanted your sim to live off painting, you couldn't do it early on because the paintings didn't bring you a lot of money, and took like, 3 days of work to complete because of your sim's needs. Sims 4 is just... Do thing, get rich. Whatever thing you do will make you rich. And there are no real risks of failing because, your sim isn't going to die most of the time. And for the case of painting, you can make 3 or 4 painting a day in the sims 4, so even if they sell at a low price, you can still get around 500 simoleon a day. They are making a "Life and Death" pack for halloween. I am a bit curious what they would add, but I bet what this is going to be is bring back zombies, which either will be a huge miss and useless (like most lifestates in the sims 4), or will be kinda fun but game breaking (like vampires and werewolves).
if you looked away for 3 minutes in the sims 3, your sim got married, had kids, got a mid life crisis, divorced, and woohoo'd the grim reaper. in that time my sims 4 sims haven't even finished their grilled cheese sandwich 😂😂
I didn't hit on this but you're so right. The pace of The Sims 4 is lethargic at best. Even at full speed I feel like it just takes forever to do basic things.
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
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
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.
@@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
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.
Sims 3 was guilty of price gouging, too. That's where EA really started it. But Sims 3 was at least a good game. For all it's price gouging, at least they gave you something. Sims 4 perfected price gouging, and has watered down packs more and more, or locked features of a pack behind other packs. I don't even bother with packs anymore. CC is so much better
Its marketing 101. Intentionally overprice your product, then put it on sale for the real price and manipulate the buyer into thinking they got a good deal. Haven't you noticed the the dlc goes on sale almost every month. And they always go on sale for the exact same price. Not even the older ones go on sale for lower than 20 bucks. Because 20 is the real price, and they know it, but they also know that people will wait for sales, so they make the sale price the market price, while simultaneously scamming dedicated fans who will blindly buy day one. Like is said, marketing 101, many stores do the same thing where they mark up items then put it on sale for what they were selling it for to begin with. Its crazy people haven't caught on.
They’re saving on labor by making simplistic and buggy DLCs. They’re maximizing money by making a lot of those DLCs. And they’re maximizing demand for those buggy DLCs by minimizing the barrier to entry by making the game free and incredibly easy to play. They’re laughing all the way to the bank. Making a quality product is no longer their intention. That’s why there will never be a sims 5.
I have a core childhood memory of one of my favourite sims getting crushed by a satellite in sims 2... I was like 10 and i was devastated, but also absolutely buzzing with ideas about the unexpected directions the story could go now. That was one of the biggest things that ever went wrong in my game, and yet one of my favourite things to ever happen. Bring back the struggle
I can see how what you're saying is true for many players. I also wanted to give the other perspective - there are people whose jobs and personal lives are so stressful and filled with real-life obstacles that opening a chill, laid-back game is the disconnect they need. I spend the majority of my day putting out my client's fires, solving my family'a problems and making sure I don't throw myself in the pool 😂 I really don't want to continue to do the same thing in the evening when I turn on my laptop to relax at last. Same goes for all the other games I play, I always choose the lowest difficulty level and play it either for the storyline or for the visuals or for my own imagination. In Sims 4, I think I spend more time building and decorating the houses than playing with my sims to be honest 😅 Sometimes I don't want to think, I just want to have fun and for me, fun doesn't equal stress. Other people like to play with the frustrations, the difficulty, the yelling and being pissed off about failing and that's fine, maybe that's how they release real-life built up stress. However, not everyone is the same. So I think Sims should probably have difficulty setting just like other games and that would solve it. Like you said - can play hardcore or can play it with no brain required 😂
Yes, I couldn't agree more. There is a mod, or in the game itself, where you can unlock a feature to slow down your Sims' needs, because I'm tired of making them go to the toilet all the time 😂
@@kibaakamaru2354Yes! I have one that slows down the in-game clock and I love it! You can actually plan and host and attend events and work on hobbies and stuff instead of just eating, peeing and going to school/work :D
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
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.
@@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
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 would be amazing! Can't believe they haven't done something like that already, especially given how much people enjoy TV shows / movies set in retro decades. One of the most fun things about gaming is the sense of escapism from real life, its a strange move to include annoyances of real life, like smart phones, in a game
Those damn phones also feel very immersion breaking the moment you decide to play in a different way. When you see your decades challenge sim who doesn't even have electricity in their house (or that sim you locked in a basement) posing for a random selfie it accentuates this feeling that the stories you're playing are really just in your head
As someone who got kicked out of Maxis as I was putting the finishing touches on Superstar.... your Makin' Magic joke was heartwarming, and bittersweet. :) The key is CHALLENGE, vs Difficulty, vs DLC brain rot. Keep up the Good work. We keep moving Forward. - irk/Captain Hedman
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.
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.
@@keerya4179 Which game? The first game didn't have that. If your computer was broken in the first game, then you would have only been able to choose "repair," and sims wouldn't have done that by themselves; you would have needed to tell the sim to do it.
@@yeetusfetus1537I’ve played sense the Sims 1 days and I really do miss the chaos of the earlier games. That being said, I can see your point of view completely. Maybe a chaos slider would be good? Kind of like how you can choose how strange you want strangeville to be. The higher the setting the more chaotic. That could be a good compromise that’d make most people happy
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 Edit: If you want something to do that is a little deeper to spice up gameplay, try getting all achievements. It put so much spice into the gameplay because you have to get creative and actually have a goal!
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
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
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
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.
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
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
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.
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
I played the orginal sims for ages, was stoked when sims 2 came out and could spend endless hours playing it, got reeled into the sims 3 with the color wheels but gameplay time dimished a lot when I spent so long color coding things, but also maximum disgruntledness because it was far more challenging to make your own custom content compared to sims 1 and 2. Then came the sims 4 and we were promised so much, and instead we got a bar bones game that barely functioned. The early days were filled with crashes, and missing content. And all we had been promised in game play has yet to be realized. Recurring theme to every expansion since. Not too mention the drug induced textures. Sims 1 and 2 had something for everyone. The modders, the builders, the fashionista, and those who just wanted to see the world burn, the digital serial killers and casual psychological warfare practioners. I mean sims 1 you could recolor everything with your computer's preprogrammed paint. No 3rd party extraction/packaging software needed. And really both horrifying and hilarious sometimes when recoloring their faces especially. But it wasn't just the challenges, that kept me playing at least. It was that there was sooo much you could do to really make it your own game. Heck sims 2 let you create entire worlds if you had sim city. So appealed not just to the above list but also the city planner type players.Sims 3 killed it and the Sims 4 buried them.
From a deep perspective, most of our lives now are lived thru technology for everything. It used to be an actual experience to play these games, now it literally just feels monotonous like life. It would be more of an experience to unplug from everything
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.
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.
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.
@@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
I'm really going to age myself here, but I've been playing since the first game. I feel like Sims 2 really mastered the balance between enjoyment and hardship. It wasn't easy, but it had some features that Sims 1 lacked that gave you moments to catch up and do fun things. Not to mention it was a significant upgrade over the previous game. I felt also that the game gave you some goals you could go for but didn't impose too much on you, it was more self-guided. There's so much I like about it, but also it's such an old game that could do with updating that is beyond mods. Honestly, if EA remade Sims 2 with some common things we like about the later games, like open world, colour wheels/textures, more diversity with create a sim and better building tools, it would be amazing. It's sad but I think I've finally accepted that this series is no longer for me and will look forward to the life Sims that other companies are making. I still have all of my past Sims games if I want to feel nostalgic. I haven't bought anything Sims 4 related for years and they made it clear that they don't care about legacy players like me.
@@cosmictheorist6091 Sims 3 is my bae. I absolutely love it and just wish that it ran better in the late game. If they could figure a way to clear out the cache regularly I think it would be so much better.
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.
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
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.
One thing i'd love to see return are Fatal Flaws from the Sims Medieval, Having your sim not be this perfect individual and actually have bad qualities about themselves would make the game pretty interesting.
A core memory of mine is that when my Sim got so crushed by parenthood that when the baby started crying during the night, my Sim spent so long throwing a fit that child's services came in and took it away.
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.
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 😭
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.
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
The Sims 4 was built upon the rotting carcass that was initially intended to be a multiplayer game. As a large scale publishers whose only concern is giving their c-suite larger paychecks, World of Warcraft and Fortnite showed just how profitable long-term multiplayer games can be - which is what EA wanted with TS4. Rimworld is a great comparison for The Sims series since that game showed how easy it is to provide basic mod support while also releasing massive gameplay changes at half the price of TS4 DLC. Both Rimworld and the GTA series are also popular for letting you explore aspect of life you normally can't do (i.e. steal a car, create a drug cartel, etc.).
As a Sims 2 loyalist, this is definitely a big part of why Sims 4 doesn't inspire me. Beyond that, though... I miss the _lore!_ The Sims 4 still gives families little bios, but they just don't have the same magic as the ones in The Sims 2, which were backed up with memories that players could interpret in all sorts of fun and crazy ways.
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.
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.
Things that show how easy The Sims 4 is: 1. Your sim can access (almost) all clothes after being created. In The Sims 1 and 2 you had to purchase new clothes if you wanted a change. 2. Picking the plants around your lot and then replanting them can make you rich. Gardening is pretty much my only income for my 100 baby challenge and I only have one of each plant, I'm not one of those that goes okay lets have 50 orchid plants. I have one. So with like 15 different plants on my lot I can purchase houses for all my children. (3. also in The Sims 2 you had to purchase groceries)
They’re saving on labor by making simplistic and buggy DLCs. They’re maximizing money by making a lot of those DLCs. And they’re maximizing demand for those buggy DLCs by minimizing the barrier to entry by making the game free and incredibly easy to play. They’re laughing all the way to the bank. Making a quality product is no longer their intention. That’s why there will never be a sims 5.
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 used to play Sims 2 and later Sims 3 all the time, but then when I tried Sims 4 earlier this year I got bored after half an hour. Thought I had just outgrown it, but this video and the comments section have made me realize that's probably not the issue... So now I'm off to download Sims 2
the fact it's almost impossible to even have a fire in the Sims 4. or die. nothing ever happens in the Sims 4. I played sims 2 the other day, made a wrong decision at work and lost all my charisma points!!! i didn't even know that could happen!! and that was only a week after getting fired from another job for making a bad decision there. the sims 4 expansion pack you described in the end actually sounded perfect. it's exactly what the Sims 4 needs.
something random is always happening in the Sims 2. one day a neighbor ran to my house, stole my paper and ran away. my teenager got a bunch of pimples waking up one morning. a penguin walked past my house and I could pet it?? plus the details are incredibly important. even the way the sims actually grab things. in the sims 4 they just wave their hand with a swish sound and things just APPEAR to their hand.
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.
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.
It also just really doesn't work. Relationships disappear, bugs everywhere. Owning a business doesn't work. Eating out takes all day and night and they don't even get to eat. Nothing works😭 So even if it would be possible to have fun, the game is just a big bug anyway
Fittingly that's a very common problem for bad restaurants. Cooks who are in way over their heads, and an absurdly bloated menu that even the most experienced chef would struggle to keep up with. So what you get is 100 varieties of flavourless reheated slop.
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.
@@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.
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!
your points are so valid. i understood a while ago that i just dont find the sims fun anymore. i kept having to download mods to make things harsher, make uni debt bigger, make things pricier or earn less money. the game, while having soo many new things to explore, has become far too easy, and therefore, boring.
I'd also recommend CK3 as a similar but different experience. Yes ultimately it's a medieval grand strategy game where you play as a dynasty controlling one character then their heir when the current one dies. However, each character has three personality traits (sometimes more), in addition to various lifestyle and genetic perks that change how characters react to whatever situation they're presented with. Also you can do all the mean shit a medieval ruler could do to someone. The character's story is told through events and these can absolutely help guide the story you'd like to tell or even derail it into something entirely different. It's really dynamic, and it's best dlc just released that lets you play as a landless person (AKA an adventurer).
@@pancakesean6888 Same with me and CK3. I sadly didn't discover the Crusader Kings franchise until 2021 despite dabbling off and on again in City Skylines 1 for years. I love what CK2 has to offer especially with the secret societies, but the ui kinda gives me a headache after awhile when I compare it to CK3.
@@Nirob615 Yeah after CK3 came out I can't go back to CK2 even though I have a good 500 hours clocked on it. Honestly I think with all the CK3 expansions it's definitely the superior product. I do wish they'd bring back secret societies but maybe they'll add it down the road.
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.
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.
the Sims 4 has interaction between the DLCs too. For instance, if you have Seasons and Vampires, your vampires will carry around umbrellas to protect themselves from the sunlight. The interactions are small. but they are there.
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 music is what made the original sims nostalgic. Building a house using the rosebud cheat, with the piano going nuts in the background gave you that cozy rainy day feeling.
It's my video! @8:08 There's definitely something special about the Sims 1, even after all these years. I wasn't a fan of Sims 4 at launch but surprisingly it grew on me a lot since then? Sims 2 and 3 have their own strengths but I find myself revisiting them less than Sims 1.
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
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.
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
1. Paywall everything, almost every dlc expansion/kits/etc. not worth it after parenthood/cottage living. 2. Loading, loading, loading 3. Need all dlc to experience features that still not as good as Sims 3. 4. Script lags 5. Updates breaking mods and existing DLCs that never fixed for years (strangerville as example). 6. Political views of the sims outfits/skins representations overtake gameplay enhancements. 7. Barely adding new things to do, just clutters, textures or colors. 8. The neighborhood stories broken deleting sims, badly generated sims, newest expansion theme is all over names of random sims (komorebi mew random sims always japanese while not looking asian at all, Last is Thai theme and everyone is thai, etc.) 9. Eom nagging small bugs (Yamachan never leave and littering water cups, Clay everywhere, sitting on workdesk to computer doesnt work sometimes. etc. 10. Need to ke0t using bb.moveobjects so our design and placements doesnt ruin proportions. 11. Landlord system is broken. Make bills skyrocket. 12. Lack of place to build or visits.
Really cool to see a video talk about the core game play that started the Sims series, how it was fun, and how that correlates to Sims 4 not being fun rather than only critiquing insane DLC prices for underwhelming/poor quality content and the decreased quality of the game and details. Which are still valid, but it was nice to see a new perspective added to the discussion.
Such an amazing video, from a small channel too! 😄 2:20 music made me sad from nostalgia. 😭 I agree though. I only play Sims 4 when I feel inspired to build a certain home I've seen in person, movie or show then upload it on the gallery for my 40 downloads and three likes. Nice!
The series was inspired by the creator's house burning down. He wanted to make a life simulation, good and bad included. The subtle brutality of the early games was part of the fun. That edge has been sanded away because a demographic that hates conflict and cruelty also spends the most money by far.
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 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 💀
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.
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 :)
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
Just saying, you know the gameplay is bad when there is people making content of torturing their sims in the craziest ways possible Ehem... GrayStillPlays
@@MagicalMedic We'll call them the Pornomancers lol Type 7: The Stylists, who spend most of the game creating households and don't really play the game much outside of that.
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.
@@cosmictheorist6091 I still have the Sims 3 on PC and I really liked it. I've redownloaded it a lot here and there, I like it a lot more than Sims 4. The only reason I go back to Sims 4 so much is the sheer amount of quality of life mods that I wanna play with. That and it having infants now. But, Sims 4 being unplayable at its core annoys me so much, I rarely play more than an hour before giving up and playing something else. Sims 3 and the Sims 2 PS2 games (Bustin' Out, Pets, Castaway, etc) are my go-tos for the most part.
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
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 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
I would love a remastered Sims 2 and 3. Like I’d honestly pay money for it. Again.
EA: here is your game with remastered graphics, remastered glitches, and separated store contents. That would be $50
@@moch.farisdzulfiqar6123I would pay big money for a remastered sims 3!!! 😭
Sims1 to he is the best after Sims2
Yes Sims 1 as well. I will get it without a second thought, it must work correctly though with all expansion packs.
@@moch.farisdzulfiqar6123Am I the only one where I don’t want EA to touch the Sims 2 and 3 I’d feel like they’d ruin them even more.
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.
if you like medieval give the stories games a try too
I haven’t been able to get it to work on my laptop :(
Sims Medieval is one of my favorite games all time.
!!!! Found my new BFF right here.
yes!!!! me too
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!
💯
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._
I'm the opposite. I hate the chaos and it frustrates me to no end if the game doesn't follow my plan. Burglars were something I absolutely hated and I'm so glad they removed it. Like, I wanna have fun and getting all the cash to buy cool things, just for them to get stolen again doesn't sound like fun to me.
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.
Very well put!
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.
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.
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.
@@RosesTeaAndASD 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 😊
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
I’m so glad you made this video because you’re exactly right. The sims is supposed to be a life simulator. But they’ve been slowly chipping away at the challenges and things that make it interesting! I mean, the burglars alone were a simple way to add a bit of a challenge that shook up the game a little every now and then. They could’ve added more severe weather to the seasons experience so it’s harder to contend with. Relationships (until recently) have been very one sided and desperately needed the NPC part of the couple to have some autonomy (it could still be improved but at least lovestruck was a start). There are so many easy ways to add a bit of friction to the game- I liked the way Generations worked in TS3. I liked that teens could throw parties and the parents might come home. Mid life crises were also a welcome challenge. It doesn’t take a HUGE challenge to make the game interesting again, they just need to give us SOMETHING
I still think Sims2 was perfection. The best combination of graphics, story, not overly filled with DLC and normal difficulity. Also option to add so many mods and make your own clothes, maybe import mp3 into your files so you can play few song you like in the radio... you could play with the game and also with game files to make it better. I´m sad my DVD doesn´t work anymore. I wish i could just download the game using code on the DVD cover, but EA is never gonna do that. And yes, i know it is possible to get sims2 on abandonware sites, but i don´t think I´m ready for losing my PC to multivirus attack. 😞
I have so much nostalgia around hearing my favorite songs on the in-game radio, glad someone else remembers this.
the version on oldgamesdownload is perfectly safe.
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
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.
@@RosesTeaAndASDnot 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
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.
In my opinion, it isn't the wackyness that's really lacking (even if it kinda is), but more so just making the game for people who build a house and then never play the family. I mean, seriously. You can be best friends by taking a selfie with a random person (which they wont refuse btw). Your sims just do nothing in term of socialising with anyone without your consent. And all the features that they tried to bring back from older games are there in such a muted state that it really doesn't matter. (I especially hate that Sims now ask you "Hey is it okay if I find a new job, or get in a relationship with this person?".
On top of that, your sims practically can't die without you purposefully forcing it, and even then they made it a hassle. The only good point I'd give them, is that they made the werewolf lifestate actually do something... Even if what it does is turn your sim into the ultimate hobo, since you can meet all your needs without a house, and can become immortal... You know, the sim becomes literally immortal, since they don't have anything that risk them dying near them, and wont ever need anything.
Just like you can make vampires delete the emotion system, which is supposed to be what the game is about...
I understand that some people don't like when their sim die and stuff, but at the end of the day, life happens like that too sometimes. But they turned the game into a control freak paradise (hence why it is so easy to make money in the game, to the point I'd just use motherlode because at this point, the cheat just saves you time from the non-existent gameplay), or as I said, for people who build houses, but don't actually play the game.
In sims 3, I had a sim who had a criminal career, and his house was right next to his work, so he'd take his car there, do a spin, get out and go to work on foot.
@@ChizuruMinamoto I remember in Sims 2 it was pretty difficult to socialise. You really had to work for it.
@@marikothecheetah9342 Yeah, and maybe it was a bit too much at times (especially for higher tier jobs), but at least you had to work for your sim to be successful, and not living paycheck to paycheck. If you wanted your sim to live off painting, you couldn't do it early on because the paintings didn't bring you a lot of money, and took like, 3 days of work to complete because of your sim's needs.
Sims 4 is just... Do thing, get rich. Whatever thing you do will make you rich. And there are no real risks of failing because, your sim isn't going to die most of the time. And for the case of painting, you can make 3 or 4 painting a day in the sims 4, so even if they sell at a low price, you can still get around 500 simoleon a day.
They are making a "Life and Death" pack for halloween. I am a bit curious what they would add, but I bet what this is going to be is bring back zombies, which either will be a huge miss and useless (like most lifestates in the sims 4), or will be kinda fun but game breaking (like vampires and werewolves).
if you looked away for 3 minutes in the sims 3, your sim got married, had kids, got a mid life crisis, divorced, and woohoo'd the grim reaper.
in that time my sims 4 sims haven't even finished their grilled cheese sandwich 😂😂
I didn't hit on this but you're so right. The pace of The Sims 4 is lethargic at best. Even at full speed I feel like it just takes forever to do basic things.
In the sims 2 they became plant milk
6:26 bro literally just explaining the plot of The Menu (2023)
This is an amazing comment
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
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
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.
Sims 3 was guilty of price gouging, too. That's where EA really started it. But Sims 3 was at least a good game. For all it's price gouging, at least they gave you something. Sims 4 perfected price gouging, and has watered down packs more and more, or locked features of a pack behind other packs.
I don't even bother with packs anymore. CC is so much better
Indeed, the DLCs are meals, but they only leave the player emaciated
Its marketing 101. Intentionally overprice your product, then put it on sale for the real price and manipulate the buyer into thinking they got a good deal. Haven't you noticed the the dlc goes on sale almost every month. And they always go on sale for the exact same price. Not even the older ones go on sale for lower than 20 bucks. Because 20 is the real price, and they know it, but they also know that people will wait for sales, so they make the sale price the market price, while simultaneously scamming dedicated fans who will blindly buy day one. Like is said, marketing 101, many stores do the same thing where they mark up items then put it on sale for what they were selling it for to begin with. Its crazy people haven't caught on.
They’re saving on labor by making simplistic and buggy DLCs. They’re maximizing money by making a lot of those DLCs. And they’re maximizing demand for those buggy DLCs by minimizing the barrier to entry by making the game free and incredibly easy to play.
They’re laughing all the way to the bank. Making a quality product is no longer their intention. That’s why there will never be a sims 5.
I have a core childhood memory of one of my favourite sims getting crushed by a satellite in sims 2... I was like 10 and i was devastated, but also absolutely buzzing with ideas about the unexpected directions the story could go now. That was one of the biggest things that ever went wrong in my game, and yet one of my favourite things to ever happen. Bring back the struggle
I can see how what you're saying is true for many players. I also wanted to give the other perspective - there are people whose jobs and personal lives are so stressful and filled with real-life obstacles that opening a chill, laid-back game is the disconnect they need. I spend the majority of my day putting out my client's fires, solving my family'a problems and making sure I don't throw myself in the pool 😂 I really don't want to continue to do the same thing in the evening when I turn on my laptop to relax at last. Same goes for all the other games I play, I always choose the lowest difficulty level and play it either for the storyline or for the visuals or for my own imagination. In Sims 4, I think I spend more time building and decorating the houses than playing with my sims to be honest 😅 Sometimes I don't want to think, I just want to have fun and for me, fun doesn't equal stress. Other people like to play with the frustrations, the difficulty, the yelling and being pissed off about failing and that's fine, maybe that's how they release real-life built up stress. However, not everyone is the same. So I think Sims should probably have difficulty setting just like other games and that would solve it. Like you said - can play hardcore or can play it with no brain required 😂
Yes, I couldn't agree more. There is a mod, or in the game itself, where you can unlock a feature to slow down your Sims' needs, because I'm tired of making them go to the toilet all the time 😂
@@kibaakamaru2354Yes! I have one that slows down the in-game clock and I love it! You can actually plan and host and attend events and work on hobbies and stuff instead of just eating, peeing and going to school/work :D
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.
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
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
A retro mode would be amazing! Can't believe they haven't done something like that already, especially given how much people enjoy TV shows / movies set in retro decades. One of the most fun things about gaming is the sense of escapism from real life, its a strange move to include annoyances of real life, like smart phones, in a game
Those damn phones also feel very immersion breaking the moment you decide to play in a different way. When you see your decades challenge sim who doesn't even have electricity in their house (or that sim you locked in a basement) posing for a random selfie it accentuates this feeling that the stories you're playing are really just in your head
Articles have come out saying there will NOT be a sims 5, only a sims 4 multiplayer spinoff. I wish I was kidding.
As someone who got kicked out of Maxis as I was putting the finishing touches on Superstar.... your Makin' Magic joke was heartwarming, and bittersweet. :) The key is CHALLENGE, vs Difficulty, vs DLC brain rot. Keep up the Good work. We keep moving Forward. - irk/Captain Hedman
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.
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.
😂😂😂😂😂😂😂
@@keerya4179 Which game? The first game didn't have that. If your computer was broken in the first game, then you would have only been able to choose "repair," and sims wouldn't have done that by themselves; you would have needed to tell the sim to do it.
@@yeetusfetus1537I’ve played sense the Sims 1 days and I really do miss the chaos of the earlier games. That being said, I can see your point of view completely. Maybe a chaos slider would be good? Kind of like how you can choose how strange you want strangeville to be. The higher the setting the more chaotic. That could be a good compromise that’d make most people happy
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
Edit: If you want something to do that is a little deeper to spice up gameplay, try getting all achievements. It put so much spice into the gameplay because you have to get creative and actually have a goal!
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
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.
I remember wanting to master Magic and alchemy just to fight/cure the zombies.
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
Sims 3 is my favorite one of the series
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.
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.
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 played the orginal sims for ages, was stoked when sims 2 came out and could spend endless hours playing it, got reeled into the sims 3 with the color wheels but gameplay time dimished a lot when I spent so long color coding things, but also maximum disgruntledness because it was far more challenging to make your own custom content compared to sims 1 and 2.
Then came the sims 4 and we were promised so much, and instead we got a bar bones game that barely functioned. The early days were filled with crashes, and missing content.
And all we had been promised in game play has yet to be realized. Recurring theme to every expansion since. Not too mention the drug induced textures.
Sims 1 and 2 had something for everyone. The modders, the builders, the fashionista, and those who just wanted to see the world burn, the digital serial killers and casual psychological warfare practioners.
I mean sims 1 you could recolor everything with your computer's preprogrammed paint. No 3rd party extraction/packaging software needed. And really both horrifying and hilarious sometimes when recoloring their faces especially.
But it wasn't just the challenges, that kept me playing at least. It was that there was sooo much you could do to really make it your own game.
Heck sims 2 let you create entire worlds if you had sim city. So appealed not just to the above list but also the city planner type players.Sims 3 killed it and the Sims 4 buried them.
From a deep perspective, most of our lives now are lived thru technology for everything. It used to be an actual experience to play these games, now it literally just feels monotonous like life. It would be more of an experience to unplug from everything
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.
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.
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.
I'm really going to age myself here, but I've been playing since the first game. I feel like Sims 2 really mastered the balance between enjoyment and hardship. It wasn't easy, but it had some features that Sims 1 lacked that gave you moments to catch up and do fun things. Not to mention it was a significant upgrade over the previous game. I felt also that the game gave you some goals you could go for but didn't impose too much on you, it was more self-guided. There's so much I like about it, but also it's such an old game that could do with updating that is beyond mods.
Honestly, if EA remade Sims 2 with some common things we like about the later games, like open world, colour wheels/textures, more diversity with create a sim and better building tools, it would be amazing.
It's sad but I think I've finally accepted that this series is no longer for me and will look forward to the life Sims that other companies are making. I still have all of my past Sims games if I want to feel nostalgic. I haven't bought anything Sims 4 related for years and they made it clear that they don't care about legacy players like me.
It's ok I'm ancient too
Did you try the Sims 3, just curious.
@@cosmictheorist6091 Sims 3 is my bae. I absolutely love it and just wish that it ran better in the late game. If they could figure a way to clear out the cache regularly I think it would be so much better.
Honestly, I have played all four installments, and for me the Sims truly peaked at 2.
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.
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
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.
One thing i'd love to see return are Fatal Flaws from the Sims Medieval, Having your sim not be this perfect individual and actually have bad qualities about themselves would make the game pretty interesting.
A core memory of mine is that when my Sim got so crushed by parenthood that when the baby started crying during the night, my Sim spent so long throwing a fit that child's services came in and took it away.
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
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
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
The Sims 4 was built upon the rotting carcass that was initially intended to be a multiplayer game. As a large scale publishers whose only concern is giving their c-suite larger paychecks, World of Warcraft and Fortnite showed just how profitable long-term multiplayer games can be - which is what EA wanted with TS4.
Rimworld is a great comparison for The Sims series since that game showed how easy it is to provide basic mod support while also releasing massive gameplay changes at half the price of TS4 DLC. Both Rimworld and the GTA series are also popular for letting you explore aspect of life you normally can't do (i.e. steal a car, create a drug cartel, etc.).
As a Sims 2 loyalist, this is definitely a big part of why Sims 4 doesn't inspire me. Beyond that, though... I miss the _lore!_ The Sims 4 still gives families little bios, but they just don't have the same magic as the ones in The Sims 2, which were backed up with memories that players could interpret in all sorts of fun and crazy ways.
Dude i hate the social media // mobile phone gimmicks so damn much
it dates the game soooooo bad
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.
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.
You worded it so perfectly. 🙌🏾🙌🏾 Especially on the fixes and updates. It's insane
Things that show how easy The Sims 4 is:
1. Your sim can access (almost) all clothes after being created. In The Sims 1 and 2 you had to purchase new clothes if you wanted a change.
2. Picking the plants around your lot and then replanting them can make you rich. Gardening is pretty much my only income for my 100 baby challenge and I only have one of each plant, I'm not one of those that goes okay lets have 50 orchid plants. I have one. So with like 15 different plants on my lot I can purchase houses for all my children.
(3. also in The Sims 2 you had to purchase groceries)
They’re saving on labor by making simplistic and buggy DLCs. They’re maximizing money by making a lot of those DLCs. And they’re maximizing demand for those buggy DLCs by minimizing the barrier to entry by making the game free and incredibly easy to play.
They’re laughing all the way to the bank. Making a quality product is no longer their intention. That’s why there will never be a sims 5.
TS2 & TS3 is still very fun for me. Can’t say the same about TS4
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 used to play Sims 2 and later Sims 3 all the time, but then when I tried Sims 4 earlier this year I got bored after half an hour. Thought I had just outgrown it, but this video and the comments section have made me realize that's probably not the issue... So now I'm off to download Sims 2
Good luck 😢 you have to reset your computer OS to an old version
the fact it's almost impossible to even have a fire in the Sims 4. or die. nothing ever happens in the Sims 4. I played sims 2 the other day, made a wrong decision at work and lost all my charisma points!!! i didn't even know that could happen!! and that was only a week after getting fired from another job for making a bad decision there.
the sims 4 expansion pack you described in the end actually sounded perfect. it's exactly what the Sims 4 needs.
something random is always happening in the Sims 2. one day a neighbor ran to my house, stole my paper and ran away. my teenager got a bunch of pimples waking up one morning. a penguin walked past my house and I could pet it?? plus the details are incredibly important. even the way the sims actually grab things. in the sims 4 they just wave their hand with a swish sound and things just APPEAR to their hand.
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.
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.
Honestly recommending simmers rimworld is genius
It's The Sims 1 but the burglar can kill you and burn down your house 😅
It also just really doesn't work. Relationships disappear, bugs everywhere. Owning a business doesn't work. Eating out takes all day and night and they don't even get to eat. Nothing works😭 So even if it would be possible to have fun, the game is just a big bug anyway
I totally agree with you, I really wish The Sims could get back to it's former Sims 2 glory.
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".
Fittingly that's a very common problem for bad restaurants. Cooks who are in way over their heads, and an absurdly bloated menu that even the most experienced chef would struggle to keep up with. So what you get is 100 varieties of flavourless reheated slop.
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.
@@LoremasterYnTaris Hard pass, idk how sex makes a game more fulfilling.
@@hardy_har689 Extreme Violence
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!
your points are so valid. i understood a while ago that i just dont find the sims fun anymore. i kept having to download mods to make things harsher, make uni debt bigger, make things pricier or earn less money. the game, while having soo many new things to explore, has become far too easy, and therefore, boring.
I'd also recommend CK3 as a similar but different experience. Yes ultimately it's a medieval grand strategy game where you play as a dynasty controlling one character then their heir when the current one dies. However, each character has three personality traits (sometimes more), in addition to various lifestyle and genetic perks that change how characters react to whatever situation they're presented with. Also you can do all the mean shit a medieval ruler could do to someone. The character's story is told through events and these can absolutely help guide the story you'd like to tell or even derail it into something entirely different. It's really dynamic, and it's best dlc just released that lets you play as a landless person (AKA an adventurer).
Bro you know I got hundreds of hours in CK2 and 3. Fantastic game, great recommendation.
@@pancakesean6888 Same with me and CK3. I sadly didn't discover the Crusader Kings franchise until 2021 despite dabbling off and on again in City Skylines 1 for years. I love what CK2 has to offer especially with the secret societies, but the ui kinda gives me a headache after awhile when I compare it to CK3.
@@Nirob615 Yeah after CK3 came out I can't go back to CK2 even though I have a good 500 hours clocked on it. Honestly I think with all the CK3 expansions it's definitely the superior product. I do wish they'd bring back secret societies but maybe they'll add it down the road.
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.
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.
the Sims 4 has interaction between the DLCs too. For instance, if you have Seasons and Vampires, your vampires will carry around umbrellas to protect themselves from the sunlight.
The interactions are small. but they are there.
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 music is what made the original sims nostalgic. Building a house using the rosebud cheat, with the piano going nuts in the background gave you that cozy rainy day feeling.
It's my video! @8:08
There's definitely something special about the Sims 1, even after all these years.
I wasn't a fan of Sims 4 at launch but surprisingly it grew on me a lot since then?
Sims 2 and 3 have their own strengths but I find myself revisiting them less than Sims 1.
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
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.
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
1. Paywall everything, almost every dlc expansion/kits/etc. not worth it after parenthood/cottage living.
2. Loading, loading, loading
3. Need all dlc to experience features that still not as good as Sims 3.
4. Script lags
5. Updates breaking mods and existing DLCs that never fixed for years (strangerville as example).
6. Political views of the sims outfits/skins representations overtake gameplay enhancements.
7. Barely adding new things to do, just clutters, textures or colors.
8. The neighborhood stories broken deleting sims, badly generated sims, newest expansion theme is all over names of random sims (komorebi mew random sims always japanese while not looking asian at all, Last is Thai theme and everyone is thai, etc.)
9. Eom nagging small bugs (Yamachan never leave and littering water cups, Clay everywhere, sitting on workdesk to computer doesnt work sometimes. etc.
10. Need to ke0t using bb.moveobjects so our design and placements doesnt ruin proportions.
11. Landlord system is broken. Make bills skyrocket.
12. Lack of place to build or visits.
Really cool to see a video talk about the core game play that started the Sims series, how it was fun, and how that correlates to Sims 4 not being fun rather than only critiquing insane DLC prices for underwhelming/poor quality content and the decreased quality of the game and details. Which are still valid, but it was nice to see a new perspective added to the discussion.
The sims 4: wake up, pee, breakfast, shower, work, lunch, pee, sleep, repeat….
1:17 Urbz was UNHINGED and I loved every moment of it.
0:37 we already knew
Such an amazing video, from a small channel too! 😄 2:20 music made me sad from nostalgia. 😭
I agree though. I only play Sims 4 when I feel inspired to build a certain home I've seen in person, movie or show then upload it on the gallery for my 40 downloads and three likes. Nice!
The series was inspired by the creator's house burning down. He wanted to make a life simulation, good and bad included. The subtle brutality of the early games was part of the fun. That edge has been sanded away because a demographic that hates conflict and cruelty also spends the most money by far.
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😭
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 💀
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.
I'd like to point out EA refuses to sell The Sims 2, which is, totally non coincidentally, is the peak of the series.
Erasing the past :(
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 :)
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
Type 6: the perverts who add WickedWhims. 😬
Just saying, you know the gameplay is bad when there is people making content of torturing their sims in the craziest ways possible
Ehem... GrayStillPlays
All of above 😅
@@MagicalMedic We'll call them the Pornomancers lol
Type 7: The Stylists, who spend most of the game creating households and don't really play the game much outside of that.
You forgot the players who open the game, spend hours on create a sim with a bunch of custom content then save and close the game.
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.
$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 am always curious if Sims two enjoyers have ever played the The Sims 3. If you have what pulled you away from the Sims 3?
@@cosmictheorist6091 I still have the Sims 3 on PC and I really liked it. I've redownloaded it a lot here and there, I like it a lot more than Sims 4. The only reason I go back to Sims 4 so much is the sheer amount of quality of life mods that I wanna play with. That and it having infants now. But, Sims 4 being unplayable at its core annoys me so much, I rarely play more than an hour before giving up and playing something else. Sims 3 and the Sims 2 PS2 games (Bustin' Out, Pets, Castaway, etc) are my go-tos for the most part.
@@Zeroshiki oh Cool. Thanks for answering
8:30 I almost skipped this thinking it was sponsored content LMAO
Hey man, GOOD JOB ON GETTING PICKED UP BY THE ALGORITHM AGAIN since your Majoras Mask vid! You will make a great popular content creator!
Thanks! I'll keep making content and pushing!