What Can Make The Sims 4 an Awesome Sequel?

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EA officially announced The Sims 4 for 2014 last month and long-time fans of the franchise rejoiced upon hearing the wonderful news. In addition, it was confirmed that the game would not require players to be “always online” like the infamous SimCity. Truly, it would have been a risky move if the company did not learn from their past mistakes. The Sims has always been an offline experience, and I think they’re doing a good job by rolling out the online features gradually.

As an enduring fan of the series, I am excited for The Sims 4 especially now when Maxis is back and involved in the franchise once more. The Sims 3 had awesome features and expansions under its belt, which I hope would carry over to the sequel. Don’t get me wrong! I don’t want a carbon copy. I’m looking forward to a fresh entry to the series while retaining some of the features fans like myself enjoy. Here are some of the options I think would make The Sims 4 a great game. Let us know what you wish and expect for The Sims 4! You can also share what features you don’t want to return.

1. Friends can visit each other’s neighborhood and let their respective Sims interact!

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While I’m scared of the “always-on” idea for The Sims franchise, my friends and I are not particularly against having awesome online features. I have a small pack of loyal friends called the Bedlams and most of us have been fans of the series since the very beginning. It has been our wish to be able to visit each other’s neighborhood in the Sims. We want our sims to meet and interact with one another. We could even start a family with our sims! In addition, I was joking my friend one time that I would let my male Don Juan sim impregnate everyone in her household. The possibilities are endless and I am sure that at least a basic version of this is possible.

2. Realistic Looking Sims!

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Perhaps, The Sims 4 isn’t ready to be as advanced as this yet but I bet the realism will improve to some degree. It would also be cool if the aging was gradual instead of a sudden change. For example, you would see the wrinkles and grey hair strands appear as time passes by. Plus, I bet it would be so nice to see your baby sim actually grow old.

3. Thorough Family Tree Definitions

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I’m the type of player who likes to start off with a single sim, and grow a large family in the process. If I am not mistaken, The Sims 3 won’t recognize any relation after first cousins. I had cousin sims who grew up with each other and I was surprised to find out that the game didn’t recognize their children as family. I know that expanding the family tree too much can limit romance restrictions, but my neighborhood is big enough to find partners outside the family. One of the best aspects of The Sims is growing a family from generation to generation, so I maxis can refine this feature more.

4. Improve Story Progression & Sim A.I

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A handful of people griped about the story progression feature in The Sims 3. This enables the various households in your neighborhood to age and advance in their lives while you are playing one family. They can get promoted, fired, find a new job, enter or end a relationship, and even have a baby among many other things. This was very useful to me since I have large families that eventually branch out on their own. It can be both annoying and pleasantly surprising like real life. I couldn’t find my one female sim in the house I placed her, only to find out she moved in with a guy and got married. There are also sad moments when one sim unexpectedly dies and you can’t do anything about it. It definitely adds a sense of realism, which I like regardless of whether it is sad or pleasant. In the Sims 2, it was very frustrating how everyone around my family remained stagnant or frozen while mine aged and died. Not everyone plays like me though, sometimes players choose to just focus on one family and they forget about everyone else. The beauty of this feature is you can turn it on or off.

For The Sims 4, I want them to improve upon this feature in a couple of ways. I turned this feature on, and still I found it incredibly slow for sims to start their own families. Sims were nearing their elder stage and they weren’t getting married yet or giving birth to babies. I hope that the timing of life events will be refined. Lastly, it would be cool if these life events weren’t random and were actually driven by the personality and the actions of my sims. While it’s fun to control my sims, sometimes it’s exciting to see how they’ll act autonomously based on how you designed them.

5. Retain awesome expansions & introduce fresh ones

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The Sims 4 is expected to have a variation of Pets, Seasons, University, and World Adventures among other popular expansion packs by fans. I was quite surprised how there wasn’t an Open for Business expansion for The Sims 3. That was one of the popular ones among my friends, myself, and fans in the forums. EA and Maxis should definitely stick to the packs that fans love, but also introduce fresh ideas into the game. For example, I’m excited for the upcoming packs this year for The Sims 3. Island paradise looks great so far based on the promos and videos shown. In addition, it was announced that there will be a futuristic expansion slated for Fall release. It is neither a world or stuff pack, so I’m definitely interested in this new concept.

 

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14 Comments

  1. I’m afraid Sims 4 will not be a huge upgrade from the Sims 3. The art that was shown with the announcement shows that the Sims look kinda like they do now, possibly even more cartoony. I also thought the Sims 3 was very annoying to control, with Sims taking long to do what you want and stuff like that. I felt like if you’re meant to be pulling the strings of the puppets, those strings are constantly tangled up. I played Sims 3 for a while because I was curious about it, but to make it enjoyable for me it needs rigorous changes, to stop making it feel like a drag to get my Sim through life.

  2. There are two changes I’d like to see:

    First, I think the personality thing could be taken further. It was great having Sims do stuff when you weren’t there that fitted in with their personality, however there were some traits that either really meant nothing or the Sim ended up sabotaging their chances at success and relationships. I would like this to be more complex, maybe some interactions could be impossible for some Sims.

    Secondly, it annoyed me that there was so little furniture available if you only bought the original game. I understand they want to sell the expansion packs, but it should still be enjoyable before you get around to that. The original game should work as a stand-alone thing and not get boring really quickly when there’s really only one wallpaper you actually like.

  3. I don’t care for always on, but I think a big improvement would be an addition of local multiplayer. I have loved the sims for a long time and I think the ability to play simultaniously with someone next to me in a certain neighborhood would be a lot of fun.

  4. I would like to see better family interaction.

    In Sims 3 your main characters interacted with their children the same that they would with strangers. For example, I’d like to see father Sims teaching their sons to shave, or mother Sims going shopping with their daughters, stuff like that.

    I want to see family only behaviors and family only group activities.
    Like autonomously activated family dinners, family game night, family trips etc.

    Also family businesses, like a store or a restaurant.

  5. I love the Sims but there are things I wish they’d fix. One thing I’d like them to fix would be the amount of time used for things that should take only a few minutes. I mean, I never have any of my Sims brush their teeth or wash their hands since it would take them around 15 minutes of game time to do that!

    I love your idea about getting other people visiting your town but I’d be afraid about them just causing all sorts of trouble… even to the extent of burning down stuff with their bad cooking.

  6. Great suggestions on family interaction and on personality! I think that those two are definitely something they can improve. I would love to have unique experiences with other sims based on my personality or relationship with others.

    We all wish all the expansions are simply featured in one mega game! Oh wishful thinking lol

  7. Ah man, I still haven’t gotten 3 yet! I always gotta wait until the core game is packaged with multiple expansions and cheap before I get to Sim it up cuz I’m cheap like dat. A Sims MMO seems like an obvious thing to do, but then again opening up a game like that for the entire online community to interact in could have some….unpleasantness.

  8. Your sims would take forever to have kids on their own? When my sims children would grow up and move out the next time my sims would go and visit their kids there would be two or three grand-kids already. And none of them knew their grand-parents. I would like for there to be a way to keep track of close friends and family. Deaths are announced but not marriages or children being born. They have normal parties but maybe your sim can also go to an AI sims wedding or birthday party. I also agree that there should be some more family oriented interactions. Your sim can teach his teenager to drive a car but how about teaching your child to ride a bike.

  9. @Nick

    Yeahp, it would indeed be unpleasant which is why I hope that they will always leave us players with a choice of playing offline or online.

    @Mel

    Yeah, I often have to intervene to make them have children. I agree with you that it would be cool to keep tabs on family and friends (perhaps the game can make us create a list). It’s so annoying how my sim’s daughter got married and I (the parents) didn’t know about it or was even invited to the ceremony 🙁 Sadness

  10. The biggest improvement I want:
    Better loading times.

    Good god, with all the expansions installed, I can start the game, and then go make some coffee, have a sandwich, then go outside for a smoke. Once, I am done and sit back at the PC, the game might be ready to play.

  11. I would like to see more options for creating sims:
    -For example backgrounds, I think when you create an adult or a elder you should be able to add education( university and such) and careers( an adult starting at the bottom of the buisness hierarchy is not very plausible) all optional off course so you can still start with nothing and built it all up.

    -For the aging I would love to have just have (sims) years for an age just from 0,1,2,3 to way up, a teenager of 14 differs from a teenager of 17, and an adult of 40 differ from an adult of 55 same for al the other age groups.

    -Not just have one top, one bottom or an entire outfit, but to be able to use different layers, to match a blouse with different jackets and cardigans, and use those same jackets and cardigans to match a dress for example, and be able to tuck in or tuck out a shirt or roll up sleeves for that same blouse.

    -More accesoires for women like handbags and scarves.

    -Better haircuts, the haircuts in the basic sims three game were horrible, they were ugly and out of fashion.

    -Being able to not just decide the figure of your sims but allso their lenght, and then if you let them were (high)heels make them taller.

    -Adding a coat of arms, family history, social status

    -human beings are intricate so i think you should be able to give them more traits.

    Live options:
    – being able to add the family tree once you started playing with a family for example when you created some elder you can make them parents for adults you allready have.

    -Being able to friend curtain families with others in the idea of backgrounds maybe your idea for the two families was that they’ve known each other for ages.

    -adding more sports that you can play, like field hockey, soccer, football, ballet

    -maybe being able to let your teenagers take part in student councill or something

    -being able to actually go to work or school with your sims, optional off course so you dont need to take care of them all day long.

    -host parties with a certain objective like a dinner party, a cocktail party, a dance, a classy gala, a cortillion all sorts of things,

    – I love the idea of family dinner someone posted here allready that you can ahve your sims all have their usual place at the table

    -being able to add a butler or maids or cooks for your family that you can allso control.

    -having the gardner back.

    -being able to order a painted family portrait wich you can hang somewhere in your house.

    -being able to frame the works of art you create

    Building
    Ability to attache groundlevelrooms to platform level rooms

    ability to heighen your ceilings, windows and doors.

    how high you want your windows to hang

    being able to decide the height of platforms

    Being able to create landings for your staircase and how high and how big you want them to be.

    round walls

    circular staircases that ajust to the wals.

    furniture

    to be able to choose from different types of bouquets and put them in the vase you want

    being able to add pillows cushions and blanets for couches, arm chairs, beds etc.

  12. I would love to be able to create a neighborhood from scratch from within the game and not CAW, or at least make CAW a thousand times more user friendly. This is probably the one lacking feature that irritates me the most about Sims 3.

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