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The Sims 4 : Come Play Dolls With Me! :D
The Ender
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
The Sims? I have heard of that before. In fact, I have heard that this is some casual girly bullshit, The Ender.
Son, this is the most hardcore virtual dollhouse on the market. You'd best strap yourself in, boy, because we're on a highway to the get a career zone.
The Sims is a home building & household management game franchise, built with accessibility as a core principle. It has a very complex behavior management system, but it is so Goddamn good at giving the player feedback that these systems are easy to manipulate. The latest installment features what I would say is hands-down the best digital house-building toolbox on the market at the moment, as long as you're not looking for something with structural rigor in mind (you don't have to build supports, trace out plumping or electrical work, etc. Again, accessibility is a core principle here).
You manage a household budget, pay bills, develop relationships with other Sims, buy new things, fix those new things when they inevitably break, work out at the gym, have gratuitous sex with the neighbors, throw dinner parties, have cook-outs, etc. I like to think of it as the 90% of Star Trek that we never got bundled with any of the official Star Trek titles.
I played Sims 3. How does Sims 4 stack up?
You will not want to go back to Sims 3. My God, the loading times - they are like 15~ seconds long. It's night & day.
Sims 4 has roughly twice the content as vanilla Sims 3, with a couple of very notable compromises / cut features:
1) There is no Create a Style anymore. This was axed because it was the culprit behind the atrocious loading times in Sims 3. You do get plenty of palette swap choices for most objects, but yes, it sucks that this feature had to go.
2) Lots are now instanced. To visit any lot, you unload the current one and load the new one. This was, again, to save on load times (as well as improve performance) - you load more lots overall, but the load times are so fast it more than compensates for the change.
The game does not have all of the content of Sims 3 + it's 15~ expansion packs, so you will feel like you're missing a bunch of items as you start playing, but this will no doubt be remedied as Sims 4 gets it's own expansion packs / DLC.
The Build Mode - especially when it comes to scratch building a house - is so much better than Sims 3 that it's kind of crazy. Look at this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V16PVsrk_V8You can easily build a starter home in seconds. Or if, you're crazy like me, you can spend 8 hours bullshitting together a 3 story monstrosity that your Sims can only dream of being able to afford some day.
The game has a much more active pace than the Sims 3. In addition to retaining Aspirations & Moodlets, Sims now have Whims and Emotions.
Whims are little mini-goals that your Sims will constantly generate based on their career, emotional state, aspiration & other things happening in their life. Fulfilling these Whims (as well as pursuing your Aspiration) will give you points to spend on perks (many you'll already be familiar with, like Steel Bladder, but there's some new stuff to play around with as well).
Emotions are states that your Sims enter based on their environment, influence from objects, interactions with other Sims and engaging in certain activities. These generate unique Whims & give your Sim bonuses (and sometimes drawbacks) when using certain skills. Most emotions will open-up unique interactions (both with other Sims and with certain objects).
With a household of 2 Sims, Emotions and Whims have generated so much stuff for me to do that I have never even touched the time compression controls (though that's at least partly because my Sims are self-employed)
The Sims! Let's talk about the best way to dress up our mans, build them cool houses and get them hot dates!
Woohoo!
:winky:
With Love and Courage
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Theirs no pools in Sims 4.
Steam: Noai
Warframe: Fairwoods
(Yet)
http://ianroach.imgur.com/
Y.
Aside from bad load times, potatofaces, and bugs, it's pretty good. Plus it has a massive mod library by now, and more content than 4 will have for years.
Old PA forum lookalike style for the new forums | My ko-fi donation thing.
But It was like 50 bucks for content that would usually cost over 100 so I couldn't pass that up.
Steam: MightyPotatoKing
Nothing yet, but its EA so I'm sure they'll eventually try to release it on everything ever.
Speaking of which, I like how the new gallery mode lets you download sims, houses, and even individual rooms on the fly while playing the game, rather than dicking around with the launcher and the sims exchange in 3.
I can't speak for the pro gaming, but my sim went into the startup branch of tech guru and got the biggest TV for free, as well as a bunch of nice artwork that adds focus décor to a room. He did pro tournaments on his own time as it was part of his aspiration's goals however, and made thousands per tournament. You can't grind them as you only get 1-2 tournaments in a day (I think) but you don't need to, the payout is plenty when your sim's videogaming skill is high enough.
Steam profile - Twitch - YouTube
Switch: SM-6352-8553-6516
The house building in this is so easy and amazing. I am very excited for more furniture options though.
Multi-tasking is a godsend. I can chat with another Sim, eat dinner AND watch television at the same time!
The loading bugs me a lot less than travel time did in 3. I hated that it used to take my Sim 2 hours to get to the bar and now I'm tired and need to turn around and go home. Now I just load right in.
This is definitely my favorite of the series and I didn't expect it to be.
I know a lot of people bitched about toddlers and pools not being in the game, but I'm totally okay with this. For one, I never really bothered with pools in my houses, and two, toddlers were the most annoying part of live mode for my sims. Spending a week of their adult lives micromanaging a toddler was the worst. Kids in Sims 4 are awesome thanks to the ambition goal systems, now. I might also be biased 'cos you can age babies out of their bassinet as soon as you get them, too.
Like @Tulabelle said, this is my new favourite of the series and I didn't expect it to be. I hated having to rush my sim through his morning routine in sims 3 to make sure he was happy and fed and ready to face a day of work, but now I can have him cook some pancakes and sit his ass down in front of the TV while he scoffs them and have time over to boost his ideal work emotional state.
Steam profile - Twitch - YouTube
Switch: SM-6352-8553-6516
Morning were always a pain for me in Sims 3. Like even if my job didn't start until 10 and I got up at 6 I barely had time to do anything other than eat breakfast and shower.
Just go to your documents > Electronic Arts > The Sims 4 Create A Sim Demo and copy the save files from there and place them into the Sims 4 directory also in your documents -- not the main game install directory.
Steam profile - Twitch - YouTube
Switch: SM-6352-8553-6516
Also having completed two aspirations already i'm running out of things for them to aspire to.
Painting is lulz $texas, but Writing has been nerfed down from Sims 3; my max level Writer at the highest level of the Writing career cannot compete at all with max level Painter who doesn't even have a career. The bank you generate from 'In Demand' is insane: at least 1K from any large painting (as long as it's not Impressionist. Impressionist paintings sell for nothing, which I assume is a nod to all of the well known impressionist painters who died dirt poor). Masterpieces sell for 10K+.
Gaming is very top-heavy; it takes a long time to trek up the Guru track, and you have to max out the Gaming skill before you can reliably take home the jackpot payouts from tournaments. It's not a stable early career.
Also, if anyone else has been trying to figure-out the hidden physical fitness / weight gain mechanics, here's the gist of it:
Weight sets give your Sims muscle tones, but will not slim them down. Likewise, treadmills will slim your Sims down, but will not tone them.
Unlike real life, you don't have to do a lot of exercise to keep your Sims toned or slim, and if you get complacent and your Sims get fat, it only take 1-2 Endurance Runs to get them back in shape.
I wish they'd have included UI elements for that stuff; maybe it'll come later.
Also, i'd love for a DLC pack with additional painting images.
There will be a ton of them later. I think thats something thats easy to mod in
Steam - NotoriusBEN | Uplay - notoriusben | Xbox,Windows Live - ThatBEN
but they are there in game.
por que
They cannot. This is a result of each lot being instanced; there's only a limited amount of abstracted simulation that occurs outside of your lot. Sims still do randomly walk into the loaded instance & interact with each other, but the big stuff (moving lots, getting married, etc) must be played initiated (Sims do age & die on their own, which can lead to some interesting not-player-controlled happenings, but it's not on the same level as Sims 3's storyteller).
One dropped dead after he finished with the workout equipment in my main household, which was after he finished WooHooing with the older sister. She did show some concern though, she woke up and tried to seduce Death into sparing him. It didn't work so after he killed him she flirted with Death a bit before going back to bed.
He's still in her contacts, but all she can do is call to chat. Can't invite Death over or go on a date with Death or anything fun like that, unfortunately.
Some of it had been in the Sims 2 but it was reduced in 3. It was an annoying change.
Given that it sounds like the game has shifted towards the Sims 1/2 model of focusing on one family at a time, it seems like a good thing to turn off. I love what 3 did in terms of giving you a ton to do in terms of focusing on one family, but it made it impossible to jump around families in a neighborhood. I enjoyed having all the default teenagers in 2 do well in school and life and enter college together along with the sims I made.
Right now I'm still busy with 3 doing something I've never done in that game before, actually have a Sim with a normal family and letting generations age and die naturally. I've previously gone overboard with the Animal Crossing/Shenmue elements and especially all the stuff Supernatural added. I know I'll grab 4 at some point when things are more stabilized.
Steam Profile
3DS: 3454-0268-5595 Battle.net: SteelAngel#1772
By the way, the creation of these high production value Simlish pop songs is about the greatest thing ever done for a video game.
Not sure what you mean. I just grab my phone and choose find job, it then asks me if I want to quit my current job and I'm done! Seems easy enough.
Say you're a tech guru and you go into the entrepreneur career branch. There's not an easy way to instead go, "fuck this, don't like this career branch, let me go into gamer branch". You can quit the career and go into something completely different like, astronaut, but you can't switch easily into gamer branch from within the tech guru career.
The games have never handled switching careers well. It's probably not a high priority to fix either given that after the game's been out a bit people know the career paths well and are unlikely to need to back out of one.
I think the closest to some robustness in starting a new job was in 2 where applying via computer could get you a better than starter position based on your skills and a college degree also could jump you up a few positions.
Steam Profile
3DS: 3454-0268-5595 Battle.net: SteelAngel#1772
He means changing branches in a current profession. If you quit your job by your phone you'd have to start that career from the ground up, reach the 5th promotion and decide which branch you want to go down again.
Steam profile - Twitch - YouTube
Switch: SM-6352-8553-6516
Ah! Ya, I get it now!
That does stink.
The OP has pretty much convinced me to put this game on my watch list. I'll probably wait for DLC packages / sale deals, but this seems like a great title to dive into the franchise with. Nice job.
It's come a log way since then. They still don't have the most depth if you try to play "optimally" but this is the series where the girlfriend of a one of the teenage boys in a household was over visiting, grabbed a plate of food that had been sitting out too long and gone bad, and then started vomiting around town when she predictably got food poisoning. Few games start to generate stories like this when left to their own devices.
Steam Profile
3DS: 3454-0268-5595 Battle.net: SteelAngel#1772
- It gives great feedback with a simple, visually intuitive UI. Some of the UI elements are a bit clunky (the nested dialog options / contextual interactions can be tedious at times), but the interface & feedback overall are so far ahead of the pack for games in it's own genre that it's kind of remarkable.
- The nested goals it generates keeps the player engaged & chasing objectives. A lot of games could take a lesson from the most recent title especially on how to give players stuff to do & hold their attention. It's a time vampire for good reason.