Sims rarely die unless you force them into dangerous situations in contrast, Sims in The Sims 2 could die by being attacked by a swarm of flies that would appear if they let their house get too filthy. The Sims 4 is like a beautifully decorated padded cell. This should not be happening in a $60 game. Furthermore, the Sims team is notoriously slow to respond to community complaints - one glitch that caused mirrors to reflect images behind the mirror was not fixed for nearly a year. A more recent glitch causes all toddlers to be born with the exact same face, regardless of their parents’ genetics. One infamous glitch caused toddlers to gain a romantic relationship with their parents, while another caused toddlers to transform into grotesque monsters. Toddlers were not added to the game until 2017, and even then, they were rife with bugs and glitches. In retrospect, it’s shocking that players found this acceptable. Imagine giving birth to a baby and watching it grow directly from a baby to a child with no toddler period in-between. In The Sims 4, Sims had babies that immediately aged into the child life stage. The Sims 2 and The Sims 3 had baby, toddler, child, teen, young adult, adult and elder life stages. Upon its release in 2014, The Sims 4 base game was priced at $60 USD, yet the game didn’t even include basic features like swimming pools or the toddler stage. One of its most recent releases, My Wedding Stories, was so horribly bugged that it was literally unplayable for most users, and some users experienced a severe bug that made it impossible to save their game. The expansion packs aren’t getting any cheaper, yet the quality continues to decrease. Yet, after seven years of disappointment, my faith in The Sims team continues to waver. Perhaps they have big dreams but were stifled and overworked by corporate, leading to shoddy bugged releases and unimaginative gameplay - EA has a history of heinously overworking its employees, after all. Who is making these decisions? I would like to have faith in the developers who are actually doing the work. THE SIMS 4 NEWS MODSThere are mods that add more clothing and hairstyles, mods that fix bugs the development team could not be bothered to fix, and mods that modify annoying gameplay features like the tendency for Sims to wash dishes in the bathroom instead of the kitchen. There are mods like “Wonderful Whims” that introduce an attraction system, where Sims are assigned traits they find attractive (for example, a Sim might be especially attracted to women with brown hair and green eyes) and will randomly develop crushes on Sims who possess those traits. Without mods, many people would find the game unplayable. Independent modders are the backbone of The Sims 4. Simmers have turned to their community to fill in the gaps. In comparison, The Sims 4 is flat, one-dimensional and limited at every turn, to the extent that players often call the fourth installment a “young adult simulator,” referring to how gameplay is depressingly empty for every life stage besides “young adult.” (The Sims 4 does not include this feature.) The Sims 2 and The Sims 3 were creative, wacky and innovative they gave players complete control over their gameplay experience. THE SIMS 4 NEWS SKINThe Sims 3 famously featured a “color wheel” where players could customize the colors and patterns of nearly everything - you could uniquely customize your Sim’s hair color, skin tone, furniture and more in a way that had never been possible before. Players had the ability to create towns from scratch, sculpt them by hand, build neighborhoods and upload them for others to enjoy. You could watch cars come and go, run errands, jog down the street or ride a horse through the countryside. Similarly, The Sims 3 featured an innovative open-world system where your Sims’ entire town could be explored without waiting on endless loading screens. The Sims 2 was a masterpiece it included zodiac signs that influence the Sims’ personalities, a “romantic chemistry” system that determined who your Sim is attracted to, wants and fears, and hidden cut-scenes that were triggered by playing out storylines in the proper sequence. Why has The Sims 4 fallen so far from the legacy of its predecessors, and who is to blame? Then, countless bugs, broken features, uninspired gameplay and overly expensive expansion packs made The Sims fans wary of any promises EA made for the future of the franchise. Up until the lackluster release of The Sims 4, the franchise’s popularity and success appeared to be well-deserved. Beginning with the release of its first installment in 2001, The Sims has achieved icon status in the gaming industry.
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