Mod The Sims - Sims 4 ideas

Glic2003

18th Mar 2012, 11:51 PM

Okay, every time someone mentions "The Sims 4", my imagination runs wild. So I apologize for the length of this post. But here is my fictional preview of what I would like The Sims 4 to be like....

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Despite being around for ten years, countless expansion packs, and millions of fans, The Sims series is apparently still going strong. After many expansion packs for The Sims 3, the Sims Studio at EA appears ready and confident they can make the magic happen all over again. Building on the strengths of the previous games, while improving on their weaknesses, The Sims 4 seems ready to take the series to the next level with deeper gameplay and incredible new options to make the series more compelling than ever before.

Building houses and neighbourhoods is still a vital part of the Sims experience, but the tools now offer a level of flexibility new to the series. Wall lengths and heights can now be adjusted, and a new curved wall option functions similarly to the curved pool tool from TS3. There's also a plethora of new architectural details that snap conveniently onto building exteriors for more realism and detail.

And the dreaded "rabbithole" buildings from TS3? They're gone...sort of. New "rabbithole doors" allow Sims to disappear to take care of tasks too boring to watch, such as classes in school and jobs in offices. But every building in town can be completely customized, allowing you to "rabbithole" parts of the game you're not interested in seeing or opening up those areas you want to focus on.

This all ties in nicely with the new careers and professions systems in The Sims 4. Unlike the mostly non-interactive career systems in previous Sims games, TS4 allows as much interaction or autonomy as you'd like. Not interested in what your Sim does from 9-5? Get them a "rabbithole" office job. Want them to get out in the community, meeting new Sims and helping them out? How about a job as a traffic cop or door-to-door salesman? Leave your Sim to his own devices and he'll put in an honest day's effort. But take complete control over everything your Sim does at work and he'll be eligible for faster promotions and more Simoleons while you experience more interactivity at work than ever before.

But besides building homes and going to work, the real focus of The Sims 4 is squarely on the Sims themselves. TS4 boasts an astounding variety of animations and interactions. The producers claim that their new technology can actually "evolve" new animations to suit the Sims' personalities, and I can believe it: even after 50+ hours of play, I saw very little repetition in the Sims animations, and watching the little virtual people act and react has never been more fascinating.

Speaking of personalities, TS4 also boasts an entirely new system for defining how your Sims behave. Each Sim has a complete "profile" that defines their personality in all the basic areas: cleanliness, bravery, social skills and so forth. But beyond this are a number of "quirks" and "talents" that further allow you to define what your Sims are good at or interested in. All of this stuff has a huge effect on how your Sims will react to situations, and react to each other. And if you just want to fill your town with a few stereotypes without diving into the details, there's also a number of "archetypes" to choose from, allowing you to quickly build characters such as "the jock", "the diva", the "mad scientist" and so on.

The new Dynamic Neighbourhood system goes far beyond the rudimentary "story progression" system introduced in TS3. To put it succinctly, towns in The Sims 4 truly feel alive. Every Sim in town has a network of memories that defines who they are, but the town itself also has a strong sense of history. You'll see closed-up buildings in abandoned parts of town, and overgrown lawns and weeds surround houses that haven't been lived in for some time. Don't worry, you won't have to deal with day-to-day chores like mowing the lawn or painting the walls, but you will see a distinct difference between your town's various social classes. And even more remarkably, your town can evolve with the passing of years: those lavish townhouses by the river might turn into a depressing slum after five generations of neglect. That gorgeous mansion on the hill might turn into a haunted house...or it might be completely destroyed in a fire. Everything in TS4 feels alive, dynamic, and evolving. "We wanted to create a sense of dynamic life in town that would allow you to keep playing the same town basically forever," said one of the producers.

Towns are no longer fixed to a specific size, either. New "districts" can be added on easily, and while the flow of time is continuous across the entire town, any non-active districts are rendered with less detail, allowing the game to run at a decent speed. It's an interesting and effective combination of the "open neighbourhood" from TS3 and the "sub hoods" from TS2.

There's also a whole new "scenarios" system, a natural evolution of the relatively bland "opportunities" system from TS3. Scenarios allow your Sims to participate in special events, such as helping a best friend move into a new home, or throwing a party to raise money for charity. Unlike the straightforward goals and rewards in TS3, TS4 scenarios can have a variety of different solutions and outcomes. You might be able to throw a successful party with a buffet table and music, but risking a big wad of money to hire a hot rock band from out of town might give your party (and your Sim) a whole new level of renown. In other words, TS4 constantly presents new situations and goals for your Sim to aspire to, while also giving you the flexibility to approach these situations with any solution you can dream up. It's a fabulously versatile system that gives The Sims 4 an incredible level of replayability and spontaneity and truly makes it the ultimate "sandbox game".

Scenarios are also tied into the game's all-new "karma" system. Do good things ever happen to bad people? Well in TS4, bad things certainly happen to bad Sims...and very bad things happen to very bad Sims! As your Sim interacts in increasingly good or bad ways, karma responds with good or bad returns. Unlike TS3 with its mostly meaningless "evil" trait, TS4 truly allows you to play out the life of a complete jerk...and also has you dealing with the consequences. It makes for challenging and often hilarious gameplay, and also affords the player a lot of control over how "dark" things can get in the game. Cheating on your girlfriend? Expect retaliation in the form of broken windows and slanderous gossip that could lead to a demotion at work. Crossed paths with a vicious crime boss? Don't be surprised to find your car has been sabotaged. Living out the life of a pariah has never been more fun!

But perhaps your Sim wants to be a goody-goody who helps out the neighbours and donates money to charities while adopting orphaned children? This is also possible, and increasingly good behaviours help to swing the fates in a positive direction. Perhaps your Sim will win the lottery, or inherit a fabulous mansion from a long-forgotten relative... In The Sims 4, it truly feels like anything is possible.

The interaction menu in TS4 has also been re-worked and feels much more organized, as well as more powerful. Click to have your Sim interact with another Sim and you'll see basic options like "talk" or "flirt", but mousing over those options will open up new sub-menus that contain more specific interactions. Interactions are also organized from "positive" to "negative", so you can easily find any interaction almost instantly and activate it with a single click. It all feels wonderfuly intuitive and efficient.

It goes without saying that The Sims 4 features an all-new graphics engine that looks fantastic. But what players might not have expected are the addition of new "rendering modes" that allow you to totally change the look of the game from within the options menu. Want your Sims to have a flat, cell-shaded cartoon look? You can. Want your Sims' town to have a gritty, Fallout style charm? That's possible too. With a number of powerful options for altering the game's visuals, it's completely possible for two players of The Sims 4 to have dramatically different looking games.

The Sims 4 is shaping up to be an incredible game. Powerful new technology, classic Sims charm and remarkable new options for varied gameplay should give Sims fans new reasons to get addicted all over again.

boored2death

18th Mar 2012, 11:52 PM

Definitely this. I don't want every sim living to reach old age.

I'd also want more intertwined interactions/ multitasking. I want my sim to be able to sit down, lounge, sit on the toilet, or lie in the bed while talking on the phone or using the laptop. I want them to eat while reading the newspaper and talk to sims while travelling. By doing this so much time can be freed up for your sims to do other things, and it makes things more realistic!

I also want that 'everything is explained' feeling back in the Sims 4. I don't want to automatically upgrade my sims via lifetime achievement points (really, who gets upgraded in real life?). I want them to have to undergo a process in order to earn that improvement, either through a wacky machine or a medical procedure.

The same goes for shops- modern day life is based around consumption and buying things, so a more accurate depiction of purchasing food and other minor goods should be in the game. I want EA to bring back back open grocery stores, phone dispensers, clothing stores and restaurants!

Ooor, we can simply call it: NO RABBIT HOLES EA!!! NOT IN TS4!!!! And for the first time in The Sims i want to see where my sims work and what do they do at work.... it's too boring just to see the work title, and the workplace.....

rkalanu

19th Mar 2012, 12:00 AM

Everyone wants "sandbox" play. I want "fishbowl" play.

I want to be able to put sims in situations or new environments and see how they deal with them. I want them to be more aware of each other, their surroundings, and their memories- MEMORIES SHOULD HAVE PERSISTENT EFFECTS ON BEHAVIOR.

I'd like a richer and more flexible traits system- younger sims should be able to acquire and drop traits the way pets do, in Sims 3.

nanisim

19th Mar 2012, 12:10 AM

I would like to have more customization possibilities, not only the ability to texturize objects, walls and floors (a good step up in TS3, no doubt!) but to model/remesh clothing, hair and buy/build objects by ourselves in game.

Splatedpumpkin

19th Mar 2012, 12:23 AM

While I would love more building, that is secondary to me. I love building in sims 3 because it is the most versatile tool, and the sims themselves are slightly robotic which makes the gameplay less fun. The idea of personality traits is wonderful, but I'd like them to have more effect and for sims to seem more endearing and do silly little things. Often it seems like sims are just differently-coloured versions of the same thing, and I don't think that should seem that way. I'd love them to be more whimsical too.
It would be great to have better story-progression and autonomy too. So that sims to interesting things, and things in their wishes without me making them do it.

Doc Doofus

19th Mar 2012, 12:26 AM

More user-made custom content. One of the worst things about TS3 is the amount and quality of custom content made by the fanbase took a big, big nosedive. Being part of the Sims world back then, for us, meant you got to talk about things you wanted to make or you wanted other people to make. They took a lot of that away from us with Sims 3.

I want the ability to make more realistic Sims. In fact, I demand it. I came back to Sims 3 recently (thanks to my new computer upgrade). I had hoped that the quality of the skins and the camera problems (like outdoor pudding faces) would be fixed, but there hasn't been much change since the first couple of months since TS3 in that regard.

There aren't enough sliders in TS3 to do anything useful with the faces. It was a step backwards from TS2. I understand it probably made it easier for EA to compress the meshes for the many additional sims that would show up in TS3 compared to TS2, easing the graphics demand, but in the process, the Sims we make in TS3 aren't as interesting or as fun to dink around with in CAS as they used to be. And, by the way, that's where I used to spend most of my time in TS2 -- in CAS or Bodyshop, making new Sims.

I'd like to get rid of the four stages of growing. I've tried to think of why Sims can't grow bigger gradually as they mature. I suspect it's because of the primitive style of animations EA has been using since TS1 that requires Sims to all be the same size so lips match up when they kiss, hands match up when they shake hands, etc. That's not a difficult problem to overcome, though. If they don't try, it's just laziness and low expectations.

I'd like an easy way to make new custom animations for the game. The community could go nuts with that.

I'd like the game to be sexier, the way it was in TS2. They really tamed it down below PG-13 for TS3, getting rid of the raunchy cut scenes, sex in cars and photo booths, and huge point bonuses for woohooing in public places or with service workers or with ten sims.

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Above and beyond this, the most radical suggestion I could make, one I've thought about a lot recently. I would like a First Person Shooter mode version of the game. One that would have the camera always over your shoulder, Quake style. Roofs and walls would always be up. It would be a fuller immersion in a virtual universe than what we have now, although there might be control problems. I've been wondering if it might be possible to do something like that with TS3, as it is, through mods.

Glic2003

19th Mar 2012, 01:59 AM

I would also like to see a totally new spin-off Sims game, but made for a mature audience. In other words, a game like The Sims, but with more options for adult content.

I know not everyone wants their games to be full of sex trade workers, drug addictions and what not, but I would at least like to have the option. I'm an adult, and I don't have any kids, and I would like to have an adult version of The Sims. But it really needs to be a totally separate game.

Periandre

19th Mar 2012, 03:44 AM

I've got a few things, so I'll try to limit myself.

First of all, I want better content management. I don't expect EA to support third party content, but I don't think it's too much for them to have a utility to identify problematic content.

I'd like to see more traits, but I'd like the traits to be influenced by other traits. For instance, Evil plus Flirty would be a deliberate home-wrecker. I'd like to be able to chart a course for my non-active Sims, if I want Joe to grow up and marry Beth, I'd like to be able to set that in effect and the game move them toward completion.

I actually like RH for some things. If one of your sims is pursuing the new Sims 3 style career, it's very handy that the other can vanish into the RH. But I'd like it better if you had a variety of building styles which you could place and then assign it's role.

As far as building... I'd like to see the ability to have walls of different heights, as was mentioned above, without cheats. I'd like a choice of regular walls or glass walls, also curving walls and I'd like to able to adjust the thickness of each kind. I'd like for the windows to be more adaptable -- sizeable, so you would only have to have one style and then could drag the corner lower to increase the height or outwardly to increase the width.

I'd like the ability to build true row housing as well as true apartments. And I'd like to be able to sub-divide a large lot with my own streets and have them tie into the worlds routing system.

EmotedLlama

19th Mar 2012, 03:50 AM

-snip for big post-

I feel like some of those might be going a bit too far, or might be infeasible for current gaming power, but I pretty much have to give a resounding YES to your entire post.

Glic2003

19th Mar 2012, 03:57 AM

I feel like some of those might be going a bit too far, or might be infeasible for current gaming power, but I pretty much have to give a resounding YES to your entire post.

Yeah, I would imagine that a lot of what I described would be difficult or impossible to do. But even if they could approximate most of that, I'd still be impressed. :)

henryV111

19th Mar 2012, 05:57 AM

I would love more realistic aging as mentioned above. I'm not really into a sim who's very attractive going from HOT to NOT in a matter of hours. It's quite sad actually. Anybody else wish there would be more realistic divorces? I hate that you can break off a marriage like that!!! I'd prefer a longer, one day seperation type event and then you can dissolve the union.

Redhead Creations

19th Mar 2012, 06:10 AM

How about clothes and hair that actually MOVE. That would be delicious.

19th Mar 2012, 09:34 AM

I want a city-like world, with diverse shops/businesses possibilites, so that sims can have an interesting life outside their home. Go watch a movie, eat in a restaurant, shop for CDs at the music store, pick up flowers for the wife at the florist, then go buy a couple of toys for the children to play, etc.

I'd also like to have better apartments, with the ability to have both residential and community features combined in one lot, like a pub downstairs, and several families living in apartments upstairs.

I want to see/play some of the things we only get to read about in TS3, like real ballet lessons, scouts clubs, movies, restaurants and proms.

More diverse (and suggestive) romantic interactions.

A lot more diverse one-on-one talking animations, plus better group conversations.

Arisuka

19th Mar 2012, 10:22 AM

How about clothes and hair that actually MOVE. That would be delicious.

I've always been baffled why we didn't have that in TS3 considering it's been done in the very first TS2 game! Also, the animations were A LOT smoother in general in TS2. So I hope for TS4 EA will get up from their behinds and start doing acceptable quality again!

And CAS in general:

-An filtering option for all items that would make the player be able to control what items appear on random game generated sims (no more socks with sandals with a shirt & tie top combined with a hat on a yellow haired, pitch black skinned sim with blue eyes)

-More natural proportions of the face. I want to be able to have my sims look the same level of realisticness & quality as in the other games out in the market. EA needs to step up their game big time to keep up with the great looking games out there!

-Skins that resemble actual skin texture. Nuff said. : P

-Sim height slider & hair length sliders. Other games have this type of stuff already!

-Clothes that don't look like straight out of 2003... and clothes that fit the body!

-More voice options for sims. And hey, accents would be AWESOME!

Worlds:

-Less harsh & less saturated outdoor lighting. Please no more neon green grass & foliage... And we all know how different TS3 sims look outdoors than indoors.

-Public transportation. Trains!!!!!!!! Buses!!!!!!! MORE TRAINS! Also, bicycles need to have their own little lane, not going in the middle of the roads.

-Don't replace all actual stuff to do with rabbitholes. Schools and workplaces are fine, but making all businesses rabbitholes just plain sucks.

-Radio station option on stereos and such. Like, an actual radio station in simlish! And while it's on, you'd get similar pop-up messages as when reading a newspaper in TS3. About weather, happenings around town, lame jokes, news, commercials...

-WEATHER.

Gameplay:

-More focus on the sandbox elements of the game. Epic adventure and fame systems and all that is all good fun... but please EA don't forget that this isn't just a task performing game, but a single player sandbox game about life simulation!

-More regular life free-time stuff to do. Sports. Swimming in the ocean. Doodling in a notepad in the park. Feeding birds. More elaborate romantic interactions and well, interactions with different animations in general.

McNum

19th Mar 2012, 11:19 AM

I want to lose being locked to lots.

I don't mean I want to lose lots, I mean I want to be able to play multiple Sims that don't live in the same home at the same time. Like a pair of siblings where one moves out to live with his girlfriend, you can still play as him while playing his little sister and their parents at home without having to switch active lots. Of course, this also means that you might have NPC Sims living on the same lots as your playable ones, but that'd be fine with me. Let me play the people, not the homes.

It's the next step up from Sims 3, really. In Sims 3 you can visit other Sims on other lots, but you can't split up a family and keep playing both parts at the same time. Ideally you should even be able to pick any Sim in the neighborhood and choose to assume control, adding it to your roster of playable Sims. You should also be able to release control, of course, and let the game do what it wanted with it.

The use of picture in picture and splitscreen would be nice to have, too. Divide the screen in two and follow two different Sims at the same time.

And, of course, I want EA to make a better story progression system for Sims 4, but I know just how taxing those can be on the PC. Full simulation of everyone is perhaps best, but it takes way too much to be able to run on any sane PC setup.

lisfyre

19th Mar 2012, 06:15 PM

Real apartment/condo living - multiple families in ONE building like in TS2 Apartment Life

High Plains Gamer

19th Mar 2012, 10:25 PM

Of course this assumes that there WILL be a Sims 4. Most gaming franchises have a limited lifespan. Most have only the original game, then vanish. A number will get a sequel. A very few have more than one sequel. Sim City made it to Sim City 4, but Sim City 5 was promised, it has not materialized to date (even though there is still some discussion about it). Microsoft Flight Simulator may hold the record for being the longest lived franchise, making it through version 10 (Flight seems to be a different game). But most franchises don't make it to a third sequel.

Also, the computer gaming genr appears to be dying a slow death. There was a time when you could walk into a store like Comp USA or Computer City and find new computer games every week. Now computer games seem to be limited to a single shelf at your local Walmart. The video consoles seem to dominate. The means that the Sims 4 may very well be an X-Box, Nintendo or Wii game, with no PC or Mac version being available. This would mean the end of mods and custom content; you play the game the way EA makes it.

For me, the real question is what they could do with a Sims 4 that could not be done in Sims 3. Just about everything listed here is something which could be implemented in Sims 3.

In many ways, Sims 3 seems to be what Sims 2 should have been. There were obvious improvements like the open neighborhood, and being able to recolor things in game. We are no longer required to maintain and catalog meshes and numerous retextures. So the question really is, what major changes can a Sims 4 offer that could not be programmed into Sims 3.

The obvious reason for EA making a Sims 4 is the opportunity to resell us the same content which appears in Sims 3. That is, they get to sell us another vacation EP, another pets EP and so on. But absent a real groundshaking paradigm shift, I see no reason to repurchase something I already have. And the inability to mod the game is a deal breaker.

jeffrompas

19th Mar 2012, 11:04 PM

A popular franchise is most likely to have sequels. I remembered i started playing Medal of Honor back when it first came out in PSX and it still being produced, with the latest one to be released being MOH Warfighter, although i stopped following the franchise a long time ago. And you need to keep up with the news, SimCity 5 is now called just SimCity because they are rebooting the franchise, and it already has a release date, it even already has pre-order page set up at Origin.

Computer gaming genre is still going strong. You just don't see products lineup in stores because now the PC gaming industries are boasting their digital distribution services. With services like Steam and Origin, the needs and cost of producing and distributing products to stores are cut down, and the risk of losing your purchases are minimised.

Game engines have their limits, so not everything suggested here can be implemented without changing the core programming which means they need to change the core programs from the base game up to the expansion packs they already released. It will be a development nightmare. So it's better developing a new one rather than modifying the old one.

Glic2003

19th Mar 2012, 11:46 PM

...
Computer gaming genre is still going strong. You just don't see products lineup in stores because now the PC gaming industries are boasting their digital distribution services. With services like Steam and Origin, the needs and cost of producing and distributing products to stores are cut down, and the risk of losing your purchases are minimised.

Game engines have their limits, so not everything suggested here can be implemented without changing the core programming which means they need to change the core programs from the base game up to the expansion packs they already released. It will be a development nightmare. So it's better developing a new one rather than modifying the old one.

Yeah. I know I purchased at least a dozen PC games in 2011, and only two of them came on actual DVDs. Discs just aren't necessary anymore. I know people are opposed to digital distribution because they're scared the item they paid for will mysteriously disappear someday because they can't hold it in their hands. But there are a lot of advantages to digital distribution, and if done right, it can be a good thing for everyone.

And PC gaming actually seems to be doing better than ever as a result of digital distribution.

novaminsulfon

19th Mar 2012, 11:51 PM

What I want are things that are probably way out there in terms of "doability", but are much needed and would make everything so much more realistic, for example gradual aging, including gradual growth (which would be the same as a height slider, basically).
Also, there needs to be a difference between haircuts and hairstyles - say, you have shoulder-length hair with bangs, but you can put it in a ponytail/curl it/pile it up/braid it/refuse to comb it :P and so on.
We need more clothing categories: shirts seperate from jackets!

WEATHER.

and I hate the fact that every sim owns every damn piece of clothing there is in the whole world... what happened to buying clothes?? It's not like it's impossible, has been done before... they could improve it by pricing stuff differently ( a simple shirt is cheaper than some elaborate, lacy designer thingy)

NightFall-1

20th Mar 2012, 02:59 AM

I want the content from all the previous Sims game to be in the base game for Sims 4, that way it would force EA to give us something new.

Doc Doofus

20th Mar 2012, 08:48 AM

I just thought of another must have item for Sims 4.

BOOB PHYSICS.

http://www.destructoid.com/boob-physics-comes-to-psp-will-totally-reinvigorate-system-113664.phtml

Supposedly this is very big with Japanese gamers. Well, I'm not Japanese but i'd like it too! EA, be greedy and do it.

I read the comment above about hair that actually moves. That's kind of along the same line. Implement one and you can probably do the other very easily.

PoisonFrog

20th Mar 2012, 10:31 AM

I'd be into it if they had separate animations for each bewb. I like the way it feels when my eyes move independently of each other :lovestruc

Really like your R. Crumb avatar

rkalanu

20th Mar 2012, 02:14 PM

BOOB PHYSICS.

I remember a well-known sims2 modder actually demonstrating this a few years ago.

Tempscire

20th Mar 2012, 03:07 PM

I'd like the ability to rotate buy mode objects a full 360 degrees, the way we can world objects in CAW. Either by holding down a certain key unlocking those axes (the way holding down a key unlocks grid-free placement) or some sort of official angled-OMSP like the ones Silent Lucidity made for TS2. Here we have a fully 3D game in which all (or nearly all) objects are meshed to be viewed from any angle yet there's no good way of taking proper advantage of it.

In addition to hair animations making a come-back, it'd be nice if the upper layers of hair could be animated to squish down under accessory hats-- no more hats locked onto to hair meshes, and no more accessory hats that only work with a few hair styles or have to be made oversized to look semi-right. If they can make hair bounce and sway with motion, "smoothing" the hair down seems plausible enough.

BOOB PHYSICS.

http://www.destructoid.com/boob-physics-comes-to-psp-will-totally-reinvigorate-system-113664.phtml
Goodness gracious, that poor cartoon girl desperately needs a bra.

EmotedLlama

20th Mar 2012, 04:22 PM

AdamantEve

20th Mar 2012, 04:35 PM

If you hold down the mouse button to rotate, then hold alt (or whatever button you have set to turn off the grid), you can do that.

They want to be able to control an objects roll, yaw, and pitch. Why they said "360 degrees rotation" I do not know.

zigersimmer

20th Mar 2012, 06:01 PM

Meals that take more than 8.36 seconds to eat.

EmotedLlama

20th Mar 2012, 07:58 PM

They want to be able to control an objects roll, yaw, and pitch. Why they said "360 degrees rotation" I do not know.

Oh, okay. I guess that would be good for storytelling.

Tempscire

22nd Mar 2012, 04:46 AM

They want to be able to control an objects roll, yaw, and pitch. Why they said "360 degrees rotation" I do not know.
Yes, that is what I meant. I was thinking of 360 degrees in a three-dimensional way, not just left-right, 2D rotations. A swivel chair can turn left or right a complete 360 degrees, but you can (with varying degrees of difficulty) tip it forwards or backwards or turn it completely upside down so the wheels are in the air (at the 180 degree mark). I couldn't at that time think of a clearer phrase to describe that range of motion.

Oh, okay. I guess that would be good for storytelling.
It could be, yes, but also just plain decorating. Like, if you want to make a messy kid's room, would you rather have 5 objects depicting the same doll standing upright, lying down, and leaning at a few angles, or would you rather 1 object that you could turn this way and that (as we do in real life) to fit all 5+ positions?

EmotedLlama

22nd Mar 2012, 03:58 PM

It could be, yes, but also just plain decorating. Like, if you want to make a messy kid's room, would you rather have 5 objects depicting the same doll standing upright, lying down, and leaning at a few angles, or would you rather 1 object that you could turn this way and that (as we do in real life) to fit all 5+ positions?

Well, that could technically fall under storytelling, as it's not actually going to effect gameplay. :P

But yes, I see your point, and that'd be a great feature to have.

Miko09

22nd Mar 2012, 04:24 PM

I just thought of another must have item for Sims 4.

BOOB PHYSICS.

If they do that, then EA will also have to implement PENIS PHYSICS as well. Most of their fanbase is female and I doubt they want to look at jigglies all day. Just think all the new clothing option male sims would get to incorporate this feature: skin tight swimming trunks, billowing sweat pants, v neck boxer briefs, etc.

Llihnae

22nd Mar 2012, 04:37 PM

Something I've always wanted in the sims is to be able to layer clothes. I want to put my jeans in the boots or be able to wear a mini skirt on a jeans.

I want to be able to create my own recipes like in the sims 2 console. My sims need their apple pie.

I want hats as accessories.

I want to be able to put windows and doors without beeing stuck on one tile or two.

I want to be able to create doors and arches that are larger than two tiles.

calisims

22nd Mar 2012, 04:46 PM

If they do that, then EA will also have to implement PENIS PHYSICS as well. Most of their fanbase is female and I doubt they want to look at jigglies all day. Just think all the new clothing option male sims would get to incorporate this feature: skin tight swimming trunks, billowing sweat pants, v neck boxer briefs, etc.

They'd have to give us an actual penis, first.

AdamantEve

22nd Mar 2012, 04:56 PM

did someone say "billowing sweat pants"?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ViftZTfRSt8

Redhead Creations

22nd Mar 2012, 04:59 PM

I would say those are quite the opposite of "billowing". HAHA

But still one of my favoritest movies evar.

Miko09

22nd Mar 2012, 05:12 PM

did someone say "billowing sweat pants"?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ViftZTfRSt8

yea like Redhead said, that's the exact opposite.

I wouldn't advise you to look up "billowing sweating pants" in Google unless you want shots of PENIS PENIS PENIS in your face

They'd have to give us an actual penis, first.

Yea and if that happens, we jump from the Sims into Leisure Suit Larry territory.

Just imagine a mother buying the game for her kid and she walks by to find a surprise.
"Hey Suzy, are you playing your simulation game? Are you building something or tel--O MY GAH THAT'S A PENIS! You are grounded, young lady!"

AdamantEve

22nd Mar 2012, 05:15 PM

But there's penis penis penis in your face in that video! ;-;

Miko09

22nd Mar 2012, 05:19 PM

But there's penis penis penis in your face in that video! ;-;

But the face attached to the penis is no bueno :(

Redhead Creations

22nd Mar 2012, 05:20 PM

Aww, that's David Bowie, man. Have some respect for the legend. =)

Miko09

22nd Mar 2012, 05:27 PM

Aww, that's David Bowie, man. Have some respect for the legend. =)

I know who he is. Aretha Franklin, Elton John, and countless others are legends. Does not mean I find them attractive lol

ON TOPIC(so the mods won't come with their pitchforks)

I think Sims 4 needs more recipes with add on properties. Like I can make a simple milkshake. But if I add strawberry to it, I can make a strawberry milkshape. Add a banana to that, and I can make a strawberry-banana milkshake. I've seen rpg games do it and it would fit in well into the sims world

r_deNoube

22nd Mar 2012, 06:00 PM

...strawberry milkshake...I concur! It would be fun to concoct things by adding already-available ingredients, and it wouldn't necessarily have to complicate the animations, depending on what was allowed. Then any mood-affecting qualities of the ingredients could simply be added, unless the developers wanted to make some special cases. I do love strawberries, but I love them best with something.

As well, and not to be disagreeable, but I like Sir Elton's looks, at least at some points during his fabulously-stylish life. Us geeky people with glasses got to stick together, eh?

DigitalSympathies

22nd Mar 2012, 09:46 PM

Back on topic, they did just start base modelling on the 1st of March for TS4 so YES it is a thing and YES it is happening. I can has people who know people who know people who know things.

I am still a heavy advocate for Heavy Rain-style graphics in the game, as well as motion capture for some of the more difficult-to-picture animations like, say, a fight. The ability to have apartments is a must, and I also think that there should be these things included.

- Weather. Not just sun and rain and snow, but things like lower elevations getting deep puddles and gutters being clogged and "harsh/mild" winters depending on the year.

- A clock you can set yourself. Actual time, sim time, somewhere in between - it's all there. Maybe a built-in real-time clock with no effect on the game, just so you know what time it is in the real world.

- The ability to found a company and choose the staff on each level as well as their jobs, what the dress code is, etc. Same goes for schools - choose the subjects, the teachers, the grading curve, the uniforms, and maybe have more than one so it goes Primary, Middle, Secondary, College, University (or the American equivalent). The ability to get school pictures as well as being on sports teams and participate in clubs like Diversity Club (LGBT club, kinda, but with more focus on "sim life diversity"), debate club, drama club, stuff that was in Generations like Scouts and Ballet . . . I feel like my sim children are really left out and I'd LOVE a semi-open school. Maybe a choice - washrooms and the cafeteria and some rooms like the office not open, but the gym, theatre, library, etc open for your sims to use and hang out in.

- More than just bikes! Learn to rollerskate and hope you don't fall on your ass when you're coming home with the groceries and have to go up the front steps! Skateboards and scooters, maybe a sim Segway and a sit-down motorised scooter you can choose to use for the elderly. Canes of course, maybe even something fun like a hoverboard. x'D And your sim wears a helmet when they use these, except for the rebellious ones.

- Car animations OMFG. It's not that hard. Need for Speed can route a vehicle just fine without a preset path (kinda), so can you, Sims. I'd love to see public transport like the Underground, a bus route, maybe those trams like in San Francisco that your sim can try to hop onto and you can follow them to their destination. Trains, planes, helicopters.

- In the cities, you can hear sirens and emergency vehicles. Neighbours can call the police/fire department/social welfare people/animal pound/ambulance service in the event of a robbery, obvious child and/or pet neglect, a heated argument (with fighting), a fire, a flood, or even if you don't maintain your lawn.

- A search/categoriser function in the catalogue. PLEASE.

- Elections! City hall meetings over issues. Set laws, curfews, hold protests over stuff.

- The ability to foster a child, or give your child up for adoption.

kristie91

22nd Mar 2012, 10:20 PM

So since you know people who know things.. Do you know if they ever go to sites like this one to get ideas?

Arisuka

22nd Mar 2012, 10:40 PM

So since you know people who know things.. Do you know if they ever go to sites like this one to get ideas?

Well, this site is a very big, long-standing community and on top of that, a very vocal yet well articulate one too. Opinions and ideas go around the internet and at some point, must get to developers too. But if they make that stuff actually happen is a whole another story...

Anyway, somebody above mentioned the skateboard. Can you imagine your suit-dude riding home from the office on a skateboard... ah, this is what The Sims is about! Or if you live in Portland, then the thing about skateboards and suite-dudes is just everyday stuff. :lol:

Lenne224

22nd Mar 2012, 10:43 PM

Oh oh I have a list too, some have been mentioned before :p

- Weather
- Body shape sliders (you know like hourglass, pear, melon(?), apple, collum shape(?) forms)
- Height sliders
- If a sim wears high heels, they do become taller
- Layer clothes in a better way
- Better designs on swimmingpools and diving boards
- Better aging, like not getting so dragged in the face.
- Swimming in the ocean and sunbathing on the beach
- more households in apartments
- Better gender swapping, the sliders dont match on the genders in sims 3, a small round mouth on a female often looks really weird and even smaller on a male xD

DigitalSympathies

23rd Mar 2012, 09:06 PM

So since you know people who know things.. Do you know if they ever go to sites like this one to get ideas?

I honestly don't know, but I don't think they're allowed to directly rip off a user's ideas unless it's the TS3 Store people, those criminals. I think they just stick to whatever forums you see consistently invited to EP previews and suchlike - T$R, Edenstyle . . .

rian90

23rd Mar 2012, 10:05 PM

They could 'rip off our ideas". :) You can't copyright ideas......which is the reason most games have similar elements.

crocobaura

23rd Mar 2012, 10:51 PM

They could 'rip off our ideas". :) You can't copyright ideas......which is the reason most games have similar elements.

They can't copyright "ideas" simply because they aren't tangible elements. Finished goods on the other hand are the products of such ideas so you are, in fact, copyrighting ideas. Why do you think TV stations buy rights to various show formats instead of just putting together by themselves a similar show?

rkalanu

23rd Mar 2012, 11:00 PM

Your *presentation* of an idea can be copyrighted, but the idea itself cannot be copyrighted.

You can't copyright a name, either--- you have to trademark it.

crocobaura

23rd Mar 2012, 11:09 PM

Your *presentation* of an idea can be copyrighted, but the idea itself cannot be copyrighted.

You can't copyright a name, either--- you have to trademark it.

Yes, but if the presentation has to be different it forces you to change your idea around a bit and add a twist to it, which sucks because people just get similar ideas once in a while.

zigersimmer

24th Mar 2012, 01:17 AM

You can patent an idea.

DigitalSympathies

24th Mar 2012, 01:32 AM

Guys, you all know what I mean . . . if someone was like "oh, this will be like this and work like this and blah blah blah," it is their intellectual property and is protected by law (I looked this up, my dad does legal stuff between countries!). I remember a huge controversy over a couple of things in AL where people had working, great-looking CC and they ripped off the animations/functions, slapped them on something else and gave no credit at all. So if I were to give a huge detailed explanation of EXACTLY how something should be implemented, and it IS implemented, then I can sue for lack of credit because I "own" that -exact- idea. Just like them taking functionalities of major TS3 mods and sticking them in the game later on. However, if someone said "add a diving board!" and they did, that doesn't count because it's a mass-ask-for.

jje1000

24th Mar 2012, 05:02 AM

Random thoughts: A more procedural/experiential way of generating your sim's traits and characteristics. A points-based graduated trait system (are you a little bit of everything, or have you stuck all your points onto insanity?).

Nicolabean

24th Mar 2012, 05:13 AM

They need to get rid of Electronic Arts and not use Origin. Electronic Arts has the reverse Midas Touch - everything it touches turns to dirt. The game continues to add more social aspects that are more gimmicky than functional.

rian90

24th Mar 2012, 05:14 AM

I would not compare the conflicts between various CC makers with a large company like EA. If they want to 'steal' your idea that you posted here on the forum, I doubt very much you would have much clout in a court of law. And the finished presentation of an idea, such as a patent or a published design document is a lot different than an idea posted here on the forum. Honestly, I would be flattered if EA used one of my ideas UNLESS I was planning to use it for a future game I was creating. In that case, I would not post it on the forums. Also..remember that different countries have different laws about all of this.

Tempscire

24th Mar 2012, 04:51 PM

[1]They can't copyright "ideas" simply because they aren't tangible elements. Finished goods on the other hand are the products of such ideas so you are, in fact, copyrighting ideas. [2]Why do you think TV stations buy rights to various show formats instead of just putting together by themselves a similar show?
1. No, you're still copyrighting the product. There is no copyright for ideas alone, only the expression of those ideas. Patents can show ownership of an (detailed, original, unique) idea. 2. They buy licensing and production rights, not copyrights. The copyright owner is temporarily giving the TV station permission to produce or broadcast an adaptation of their work. After an agreed amount of time and conditions, all rights revert back to the owner. It's not a matter of ideas or even expression of ideas; it's a matter of the original owner having rights to all expressions and displays and reproductions of their idea.

So if I were to give a huge detailed explanation of EXACTLY how something should be implemented, and it IS implemented, then I can sue for lack of credit because I "own" that -exact- idea.
You own that particular execution of the idea, not the idea itself. Similar executions that are not just a direct steal of your work may or may not be acceptable, depending on whether it can be shown the alleged infringer had exposure to the original to be able to try reconstructing it. (And even if not it may still be determined too similar, but there's actually more leeway in copyright than in patents in this regard.)

AdamantEve

24th Mar 2012, 05:01 PM

They need to get rid of Electronic Arts

http://www.bumarcade.com/gf/img/virtual-families-lrg1.jpg

RedCherries

24th Mar 2012, 06:57 PM

I would like to have an adult version of The Sims. But it really needs to be a totally separate game.

I think if EA did anything like this it would just be an Adult game but with Parental settings.
Although I would like the age rating to be raised so that EA can make the game more creative and realistic. I would enjoy that more, but EA doesn't want to lose their younger game audience.

:rolleyes:

ViolettaVie

24th Mar 2012, 08:47 PM

If they produce Sims 4, they really should not come out with a late night EP or a pets EP or vacation EP, etc. It's been done 3 times over. They should rethink the mold and concentrate on enhancing gameplay. If we have lakes and oceans then why can't the sims swim in them or drink from them, bathe themselves or their pets in them. Heck, why can't they pee in them? I was just playing a sim as though she was homeless and I really didn't want her to have to walk all the way across town just to use the washroom at the gym. There was a lake on her lot and I thought if EA could make horses drink from the lakes what's so hard about adding more things yours sims can do?

EA is so fixated with having sims become rich and famous, that they overlook the simple, basic things. Why aren't there collections of trashy broken down, worn out furnishings and rubish? I would actually like to see shitty funiture laid out on the curb as a collectable. Your sim could take it home, clean it up, fix it or paint it or not (depending upon their skill set) to furnish their ratty shed of a house or worn down apartment.

How about sims are able to own apartment buildings and so an evil sim becomes a slum lord? When things get broken, he won't have it fixed, nor will he call for exterminators to solve the rat problem. His tenants hate him but are too poor to do anything about it. He'll raise the rent 'cause he has the greedy trait. A hot-headed tenant could have the desire to get even and so confront the slum lord. Things get out of hand and the slum lord is knifed to death in a dark alley. Your cop sim, who doesn't work in a rabbit hole is required to walk the streets to make sure all is well.

He discovers the body, which cues the oppurnity to take the case of catching the killer. Sims on the street don't cooporate because that is what sims do. This isn't the suburbs. You may have to shake down a few bumbs or use your investigative skills. So you go aross the street to local dive bar where a biker gang hangs out. They don't want trouble with the cops and they know pretty much eveything that goes on in this side of town. Maybe they're feeling talkative. A round of drinks won't hurt your cop's chances neither.

There is a science facility. Maybe they research infectious diseases or genetic modification. That chem lab that came with GEN is actually used here. There be no rabbit hole here either. Your sim goes to work and is required to research, perform experiments, or collaborate with fellow lab assistants. It can be competative so you have to make sure your sim only works with sims who like them. Yes, sims can be deceitful now and take credit of other sim's work. But wait. Experiments can be deadly. Don't unwittingly release a plague and kill off half the population or start a zombie apocolypse. Or was that your intent all along?

There is also a robotics industry that is booming. Sims can work to make helpful robots that do almost all menial tasks, like feeding your pets, taking out the trash, making the beds, or electrocuting burglars and shooting them with fire. These robots are of various types and they are NOT like sims. They do not socialize. They work. If they become defective they can be repeaired or scraped depending upon their level of damage. They can also be made to do evil biddings from their evil creator or reprogrammer, because they can also be stolen, bought and sold.

But all this dynamic gameplay can be configured by the user, the level of chaos. Are the sims pacified drones or are they individuals who do as the please to wreck havoc or not?

We also get to have control over the way the sims dress. Clothing can be tagged: poor/bumb like, posh, western, punk, suburban, etc. and we can specify which type to appear in our hoods. So if we are playing a poor town with vagabonds the sims there can reflect that.

I have more ideas but I'll leave it at this.

AdamantEve

24th Mar 2012, 09:24 PM

Why aren't there collections of trashy broken down, worn out furnishings and rubish? I would actually like to see shitty funiture laid out on the curb as a collectable. Your sim could take it home, clean it up, fix it or paint it or not (depending upon their skill set) to furnish their ratty shed of a house or worn down apartment.

You mean...like the furniture in the junkyard? Or furniture damaged by pets?

eskie227

25th Mar 2012, 12:14 AM

All I want for Christmas is a set of stairs that are the proper length for placing from a basement through a foundation to the first floor. Is that too much to hope for, or has game development still not reached that level yet?

ViolettaVie

25th Mar 2012, 04:55 AM

You mean...like the furniture in the junkyard? Or furniture damaged by pets?
Worn or broken, similar to TS2 Uni dorm furniture. I haven't seen furniture damaged by pets yet.

Arisuka

25th Mar 2012, 12:41 PM

ViolettaVie

25th Mar 2012, 04:23 PM

ViolettaVie Oh yes, these ideas about options for users to flag stuff themselves, to create a world which looks and functions in a style chosen by the player!

Like flagging the clothes which appear or don't appear on game generated sims, and clothes having flags which represent social class... but all flags would optionally be able to be designated by the player. This would be a MAJOR help in creating more certain vibes to different worlds. Right now worlds only look different, but function the same.

So flagging would also be optional for stuff that relates to how the world and sims in it function. Is there a lot of crime? Is it an urban, suburban or rural world? So sims would live more accordingly to these styles. And it would be visible in both small and big things, from subjects of socializing with sims to stuff happening around the neighborhood.

And in new EPs, they would of course add new flags and options!

That's exactly what I was thinking. In this way, maybe we could get some unique EPs, perhaps scifi themed ones or industrial age. With those tags we can truly have unique worlds. I really enjoyed the look and feel of Lunar Lakes, for example, but because it didn't come in an EP, it was superficially different. There were not many unique clothing or furnishings. I had to install the Futureshock sets in order to make my sims homes feel like they were on a faraway planet. When the strays started coming around, it got to be annoying. I would have liked weird alien animals or unique careers. I didn't like seeing the sims there wearing normal clothing.

QueenJimmyIV

26th Mar 2012, 06:28 AM

I'm all for:

-Advancing body shaping and customization tools
-more sliders
-color wheel for skintones
-adding on hats with a slider rather than clogging up CAS with four different hairstyles for each hat
-sliders for muscle groups rather than all over
-hair sliding tools, placing moles, tattoos, and birthmarks in a way similar to placing the spots and stripes in CAP
-adding different ways that a voice can be pitched, such as adding gruffness
More hobbies
More items with interactions
Opening the rabbitholes
Giving us the ability to run our own business
More interactions
Blending of the traits so that my Insane Dog Lover can attempt to speak to another sim in barks and growls
Learned traits
Add ownership to objects, such as a room, bed, computer, etc with possessive sims getting angry about their usage
Memento/keepsake box that keeps items such as prom crown, collectable gems, diplomas, photos, toys paintings, etc (anything that is able to go into a sim's inventory other than food) so that a home doesn't become cluttered after several generations going on field trips, getting tons of flowers from their loved ones, or otherwise
Ability to place objects in ways similar to CAW rather than being confined to an X-Y grid of squares
Advancing personality creation
-scaling personality traits such as Mean/Nice, Slob/Neat, Sane/Insane, etc (similar to the way Sims Social does it) and then adding natural talents (such as cooking, art, gardening, etc) and then quirks
-adding in fears/phobias
-interests, like paranormal activity, keeping up with the neighbors, gossip, the latest local crime, etc
-adding in Least Favorites to compliment the Favorites and add in the categories of Weather, Traits (in other sims), etc
-adding in different heritages/cultures, or social niches, such as Asian Culture, High Society, Goth, etc
-the ability to add 5 points of skill to adults, 4 to teens, 2 to children, 0 for toddlers upon creating them in CAS
Lots of harvestables
Creating your own recipes
CAW program and the ability to adjust at what rate NPCs, creatures, traffic, animals, etc spawn
Being able to choose which insects/birds/animals a spawner will spawn so you can create spawners that only spawn tropical birds, ones that only spawn rats, ones that only spawn crows, etc.

Those would be what I'd like in a Sims 4 base game. As for expansion packs, there would be too much to list.

sierrakusterbeck

26th Mar 2012, 06:53 AM

I just want my sims to be able to flush the toilet and spit out their toothpaste when they brush their teeth (not really all I want, but it annoys me that they didn't add those tiny details) :x

simsample

26th Mar 2012, 12:50 PM

I want to be able to join up worlds. So when EA bring out a new world, I want my sims to be able to drive down the road to get to it.

crocobaura

26th Mar 2012, 12:54 PM

I want to be able to join up worlds. So when EA bring out a new world, I want my sims to be able to drive down the road to get to it.

I don't want to wait for TS4 for that. We need that option in TS3.

kennyinbmore

26th Mar 2012, 02:10 PM

I don't want to wait for TS4 for that. We need that option in TS3.

With the whole idea of a living world, you'd think we'd already have that capability. Good ole EA :)

simsample

26th Mar 2012, 03:13 PM

We need that option in TS3.
I was sadface when we first got Sims 3 and I found out that the road out of Sunset Valley didn't go anywhere!

crocobaura

26th Mar 2012, 03:22 PM

I was sadface when we first got Sims 3 and I found out that the road out of Sunset Valley didn't go anywhere!

Me too! :lol: I'd love it if we could have multiple neighbourhoods linked together, like the TS2 sub-hoods, that way we won't have to put each and every lot type into one single neighbourhood just so to be able to experience all aspects of gameplay. And rabbithole buildings should be able to cater to all the linked neighbourhoods, even if they are placed in just one hood. That way, if I want to play a quiet seaside village and one of the sims wants to be in the military career, I won't have to place down in that neighbourhood the military rabbit hole.

Arisuka

26th Mar 2012, 05:12 PM

zigersimmer

26th Mar 2012, 09:04 PM

Considering that already the first EP WA gave us the vacation worlds as sort of "subworlds", it sucks that no other worlds can be connected like that in TS3. :/ So definitely bring back the sub-hoods or make the worlds linked in some other way!

Yeah, I'd love that. Even better if I could "stitch" worlds together with no loading screens. My new gaming rig could handle bigger worlds, as long as I can set a cap on population.

GnatGoSplat

27th Mar 2012, 04:55 PM

Try Twallan's Traveler. It lets your sims travel to any other neighborhood just like they can with WA hoods. You can create a new "Superhood" and drop all your existing .nhd files into it. The new sims you made for Starlight Shores can then visit the sims you made years ago in Sunset Valley. Your sims can invite them over to visit just like they could with sims in the WA hoods. Sims from all your other hoods will occasionally show up in the active one as tourists. Changing active hoods is as simple as using the travel interaction, but sending no sims. Really, really clever mod and really surprising that the entire mod is only around 188KB in size.

snowyhitsugaya

29th Mar 2012, 11:45 PM

I would really like to see:
-Adjustable Height function
-less separation between floors ( I love to build houses with entryways two stories high, with lofts and would love to be able to mess with that in new ways)
-changing weather
-and other minor changes

jeffrompas

30th Mar 2012, 05:11 PM

Better traffic that no cars pass through sims or other vehicle. Cause traffic jam, making working sims late for work.

Rachel Potter

6th Apr 2012, 11:26 AM

Exactly. I mean in real life you're not going to get everyone in time for work. It's nearly impossible. I think you should be able to actually see what you buy like in Sims 2. Sims 3 lacks in a lot of things that players liked about the Sims games and EA and Maxis are focusing on adding features we don't really need. They should bring the things back that made Sims popular in the first place, not adding things that we'll complain about. Can't please everybody I guess.

Charlie4

22nd Sep 2012, 04:02 PM

I know No one has posted in a while but I need to share my thoughts for Sims 4 somewhere. I also Really apologise for the length, I'm really bad at writing short messages, I could go on forever about Sims, and when i think up ideas, I think them up in detail. So here it is;

2 Main Changes:

1. Changes to the Career system:
- Slider in create a Sim, for Genius, and Dumb. (effects schooling systems, Academic skills speed, Jobs)
- Schooling system has a bar that you need to feel out, in Exams (every Friday, or every fortnight) Want to fill up bar as much as possible to get best marks. Sim that is a Genius already starts the bar ¾ way up (goes down for not doing homework), Average person ½, and dumb, ¼. In primary, H/w gets you a little less than 1/2 way up bar (maximum). So Dumb person will need to study, or get a tutor. (hire teenager/Adult Sim)
- In high school H/w only gets you ¼ way up the bar. So high school Sims will need to study. Studying gets you a further (maximum) ¼ up the bar. So a dumb Sim will additionally need a tutor.
- Additionally in high school, can choose 2 elective subjects that help skill level and work towards resume for jobs.
- Throughout schooling can have opportunities (e.g, competitions, volunteering) that earn you credits that go towards resume.
- Can drop out of high school but will prevent you from getting some jobs and may need to do additional courses to get them.
- Some jobs at a certain level (e.g. job level 5) will require a course, or university degree, and cannot be promoted until achieved. Maybe they need to do job experience in or out of school to get a job. (volunteer or very low pay) Can do part time course, part time work but takes longer.
- A Sims resume: has their relevant skills, school achievements, like top scores, winning competitions, other Achievements, volunteer work, ect. When applying for a job. (each achievement adds up in points) (mastering a skill also counts as a point)
- Jobs have a required amount of points to be able to get hired. (Additional points can be earned out of school). Additionally each job will have it’s requirements. E.g. relevant skill level, finished high school/done a course, uni degree. Many jobs will allow you if u has enough points but not the requirements, but only up to a certain level in which then you would not be able to be promoted until you complete the requirements.
- Some jobs would require more points than others. E.g To get into the Medicine or law career, you may need a total of 20 points, whilst the education career may only need 12 points.
- For example, A sim wants to be in the education Career, and the sim has 14 points so can get a job there. They’d be able to be a lunch lady, Sim on lunch duty, and maybe helping out in the preschool, but they would eventually need a degree if they want to become a full time teacher, or principle.
- If a sim does not have enough points for the career they want they may do voluntary work in relevant fields for extra points, as well as courses, or mastering relevant skill areas. E.g. Athletic Career. Can volunteer as a children’s coach, help out at the games, be a ball boy, master the Athletic skill, enter Athletic competitions, do some additional courses. Completing a degree, Graduating from high school, and Private school (gives more points) counts as a couple of points, as their major events.
- Sims with the ‘Good’ Trait will have additional opportunities for volunteer work.
- Sims who go to a Private school may go up the bar a little faster, and may have more opportunities for points, as well as graduating from high school will give you more points.
- Need university in base game, with a bigger map (Around half size of GTA IV) you can have all the facilities in one place.
- Private, public schools, job locations, university’s should still be rabbit holes, as well as places where Sims don’t have much to do. E.g. Art Gallery, theatre, as it slows down game play. Either you can control your Sims at jobs/schools but that makes game play too hard, or you can watch Sims recording of learning or working but that is dull and unnecessary. However other places, E.g. Restaurants, salons, supermarkets, bookstores, Business stores should not be rabbit holes.
- Must haves to make new Career system work best- Private schools, Universities/university dorms, Bigger map.
- New Abilities to Make Career System Work- Slider from Genius-Dumb (in create a Sim), A bar in schools (much like in Sims 2 University), Points System, Resume.

2. Changes to ageing:
- Sims age gradually, (maybe changing slightly every day in their sleep).
- Birthdays symbolise the next stage of life, unlocking new actions/abilities ect. Although sim will not look so different because they aged slowly.
- A certain points between birthdays age appropriate activities also unlock (because having too many birthdays is disruptive to the game) E.g. When toddler looks around 4 years of age may be allowed to attend preschool. When teenager looks around 16 allowed trying for a drivers licence. (in which the Vehicle is controlled by the player, Like switch to 1st person mode when driving vehicles. Like GTA IV driving) Teen can only drive a certain speed, and if speeds can be caught by cops and taken away their licence for a certain amount of time).
- To make each game play different and unique from the other: Anything a Sim does may have consequences later in life. E.g. If spend a lot of time in cold, swimming in cold may get sick often, increasing chances of an illness arising at an older age. As well as healthy eating and Exercise, healthy weight, smoking may affect Sims (as it does to people in reality) later in life by increasing/decreasing chance of Sim gaining a serious illness or disease that may end their life early.
- Another example is if Sim gets burnt a lot by not applying sunscreen and spending too much time in sun, they would get a lot more wrinkles than others at an older age. If a male sim is born with a little or no hair then will lose their hair again when their old. (But there is a solution. Wigs, or special hair cream)
- Different types and levels of illnesses and diseases. Some of which you may have to Visit your doctor, go to the hospital, or call a doctor to your house (unless Sim in family is qualified doctor and can treat you). If left alone too much, may become serious illness/eventually die, or if it’s a ‘cold’ and you stay warm will get better on it’s own. Types of Illnesses and diseases could include. Cold, fainting, vomiting, chicken pox, Respiratory diseases, heart diseases, ect.)
- Sims don’t need to all die at the same time. If they were unhealthy all their life, it will increase chances of dying earlier. If very healthy increase chances of living a long life.
- Injuries: If doing a lot of dangerous silly stuff or Sim has a ‘clumsy’ trait increase risk of injury, may need to spend night in hospital. Have a broken arm/leg, or be in a wheelchair for a while. When driving if you crash or if another car hits you, you’ll need to spend another night in hospital. If have a lot of broken bones through life, May need a walking stick/walking frame, or walk slowly, with bent back, or If healthy whole life with not many injuries, walk very well.
- Things Needed to Make This Advancement work- Gradual ageing, Constantly growing hair (gets longer, messier) (or losing it/going grey when old), Need a salon, or another Sim to cut it, WEATHER AND SEASONS, Illnesses/injuries, Player control of vehicles (Also attracts another audience, especially if can add in street racing component…) Doctors surgery, Hospital (for proper use, injuries, births, serious illness/diseases, ect.), walking sticks/walking frames, wide range of vehicles, illnesses/diseases of different levels. Being able to swim anywhere (sea, pool, pond, lake…) Maybe in winter water freezes over but occasionally ice can crack (usually near end/beginning of winter) where Sim can fall in if ice-skating or walking across it, which can cause injury or illness.
- Adding These essentials increases unique game play were players will not have a boring moment.

3. Adding a multiplayer component is very difficult, as Sim fans want to see the familiarity with that of the other Sims games, and may change the game too drastically. Need to keep core components, Players love to play god.
- The only thing I can think of is maybe being able to put your houses when selling as an option on the ‘Sim market’ where other players can actually visit the house as a Sim and see if they want to buy it in Similions (as a part of the actual game, not put on a site like the Sims 3 community). The player can choose to auction it off or not and choose their starting price. This way the sim can make a profit on their house, and other players get beautiful houses. Maybe can make it an official sim job, as a builder/architect.
- Other than small multiplayer interactions like this, I don’t see how it won’t completely change the game.

Other Things I’d like to See:
- Stronger story progression. E.g. Bot sims Get married, kids, proggress career, skills
- Proper relatives, relative relations. E.g. cousins, grandparents, step parents.
- Calculation of death based on health through life, as well as consequences later in life.
- Bigger map, (½ size of Grand theft auto IV) with suburb/city, or 2 parts to it.
- Option to change mode to first person mode, (using arrows) (full control in 1st person)
- Address obvious problems in past sims game. E.g. Freezing, lagging, major glitching.
- Able to change height, hip size, body tone, strength, Breast size (women), Body hair (men), Slider to control hair length.
- Unwanted pregnancies (teenage pregnancies), or infertility. But can adopt children.
- Bills broken down, so you know how much you spent on different things.
- Proper school activities- School clubs, exersions, band (help improve skills)
- Have proper weddings, honeymoons, anniversary’s, proper divorce.
- Being able to control vehicles. Have street races. Can drive on side walk, through parks, run over people. (changes to first person mode). Boats!
- Formal, graduation ceremony, summer camps, school holidays. Boarding schools
- Can go camping with family/friends, for example near a lake. Collect wood for fire.
- Public/private schools. Private has school uniform, Private school expensive, but can get scholarship, Dinner with principal.
- Can drop out of school.
- Need to go to hair salon to get haircut, or can get Sim to cut it but may turn out bad
- Proper Dating.
- Classes to learn skills, tutoring for school, Teenagers can tutor kids.
- Can swim in lakes, sea.
- Need to buy new clothes from shops
- Can buy and give gifts to people (flowers/chocolates, birthday presents)
- Teenagers, or rebel like personalities can escape from jail, or help friend escape.
- Parents can strap their baby’s to them/prams, so parent can do things without leaving the baby (outings)
- Funerals
- Can smoke cigarettes, cigars, teenage pregnancy, drinking, drink driving, Casino
- Teenagers can babysit, (parent call them up and ask to babysit kids at night). Can tutor younger students as jobs.
- If ‘Evil’ can rob people’s houses, keep items (Only steal realistic things), Steal cars, pickpocket, stab/shoot people (but either pre-recorded action, or proper shooting like in Shooting games) If shot, end up in Hospital.

Thanks,

pentabet

24th Sep 2012, 05:19 PM

I agree with a lot of what is on this thread, and I really wish that EA would see how similar our wants are...

1) Sims have more age stages (baby 0-1y, toddler 2-4, small kid 5-9, tween 10-15, teen 16-20, YA 20-40, adult 41-60, early elder 61-80, late elder 81-end).
a) And make babies/toddlers/children less boring/helpless. Babies can Learn To Walk & say a few words (a partial Learn To Talk skill), toddlers can climb all over the furniture and grab things off surfaces/out of cupboards to bang them on the floor, and kids can make sandwiches and cereal, check the mail, etc, come on!
b) Also, changeable baby clothes anyone?

2) Varying heights between Sims, yes! Even if there are only two heights per age, so much could be done with that! Three would be better, short=5 feet, medium=5.5 feet, tall=6 feet. It's not exact, but I figure it would be easier to work with clean fractions than to break down the precise averages of human s/m/t.

3) The base game needs to come with the pool accessories, playground equipment, and freaking weather right off the bat.
a) The option to toggle on/off the weather and adjust intensity would be great. If you want two cities with all four seasons, but one is like a Lemony Snickett tragedy 'hood, you should be able to move a slider up to ensure that this one gets more deadly heat/floods/blizzards than the other.

4) NO PUBLIC VENUE RABBIT HOLES. Shops etc that my sim visits should be open. However, I like the idea of some choices with the careers. If some jobs start out as hands on, like the medical-minded sims start as an ER doctor or nurse that you need to order around, then you'd get that hectic feeling like in real life, but if you do well, you also get to feel the same relief when you move out of that position and into a more calm (and less directed) level. As you get promoted you have less need to direct them until the last half of the career levels are the normal rabbit hole style we're used to having.

5) There needs to be a Community College option with the base game, even if it's simple. Add an expansion with higher schooling additions if you want, but give my sims the chance to go back to school if they need to, take classes online, SOMETHING resembling what humans do in real life. It's not just UCSD or nothing, guys!
I want to know that if my sim isn't good friends with the boss/anybody, I can still get him some extra education through night classes or some such, and he could get that promotion he wants regardless.

6) No outside social connections, I am the ruler of my sims and no one else gets to interfere with them!

7) Broken arms, heart attacks, reasons why we would use a hospital -- after all who didn't either break a limb or know someone who did growing up? Falling off bikes, scraped knees, bandages, it doesn't have to be gory to make me happy, just give me real consequences! If my toddler didn't Learn To Walk, maybe you could have made her clumsy as a child+. Didn't Learn To Talk? She's going to get worse grades in school unless she works harder and gains some charisma. No empty goals, no useless buildings!

8) If my sim gets a job as a cop, I want a reasonable chance that HE may come to a neighbor's house to stop the burglar.

9) I want an expansion with adult behavioral and situational options. It would be rated for adults, not teens, and it would give options for better romantic interactions (not necessarily graphic and crude, but not something that assumes we are 12). It could offer bloodier fights and purposeful ways to kill your sims (not the ridiculous maneuvers or outside mods you have to use to kill a happy, healthy sim). The nectars could actually exaggerate your sims' personalities and make them more outgoing or grumpy. With an EP like this, the game could still focus on the general audience they hope to keep, but it would please the mature crowd that feels ignored when looking at a Katy Perry candyfluff theme.

Midnightfantasy

25th Sep 2012, 12:36 AM

I want to be able to place my lots the way that I want them to.
I want create a world to be far less complicated than it is now.
Going from town to town would be really nice too.
An easier way to switch between families.
More interactions for babies, toddlers and children because after a while it gets freaking boring.
When they age up give traits from the parents and then add some new one instead of always choosing.
Bring back the ability for children to play the piano.
More pool features.
I want to be able to take my sims on vacation without having to do adventures first. I'm all for adventures but give us the option to go on vacation as well. I want my sims to go on a snow vacation like in Sims 1.
I would like my sims to be able to pass on recipes; I mean within my active family.
A different school system than boarding school. It doesn't work half the time anyway. Imaginary friends are fine but once they reach teen years get rid of it.
More family oriented games where they can learn skills, like the domino table but different.
If my sims go on "vacation" at least leave everything in their inventory.
An easier way to share stuff between sims.
Maybe a more challenging way of careers and schools; maybe a tad more difficult that requires the skills you need to earn a promotion like in Sims 2.
Holidays in the base game. Like Christmas, thanksgiving, Halloween ... i don't know just something to have an idea of what time of year it is.
Change the celebrity thing. Only apply it to those who actually want to become a celebrity; not by having a million friends but just that it comes with certain careers or something.
Pets: allow to teach tricks and just make it let boring to have a pet.

I think that's about it for now

DigitalSympathies

25th Sep 2012, 03:49 AM

All of what Charlie4 said. ALL OF IT. Seriously.

I'd like to see a bit of a thing where you have to go clothes shopping, and each sim has a TS2-style wardrobe menu that isn't shared with the family (example, two sisters living together wouldn't share their clothes), and you can outgrow clothing and shoes with the gradual ageing process.

Also, after a while, toddler sims won't like getting picked up, will want to do more stuff on their own, etc. Kind of like in Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life, where the kid gradually grew up and grew out of a lot of interactions over time.

I'd like to see an option to choose a parenting style for each couple based on traits, with the ability to alter it through reading blogs and books.

The ability to have a news team go around town and report on stuff like marriages, deaths, etc, that you can read about each week (you'd see it in a pop-up) would make it easier. (Read . . . Obituaries, Read . . . Marriages, Read . . . Births, Read . . . Sports, Read . . . Classes, etc.)

Homeschooling! Parents report to City Hall every Friday to hand in their child's work, or they can mail it off to Social Services.

Social Services isn't just for adoptions and removals. They can be of assistance in a fire, they can help the elderly, etc.

I'd also like to see private schools return, or at least uniforms. Gendered schools would be nice, too. It's frustrating going around town, only to realise halfway through your pick-up lines that you're hitting on a 15-year-old and not a 21-year-old. A uniform, different for each school, would work out well. Secondary and primary divisions are also a no-brainer. How many goverment-run schools have you gone to with every grade in that small of a building? (I mean, I have, but the entire school was around 100 people.)

Replica616

26th Sep 2012, 07:47 PM

Well, a great portion of the things many people seem to want, but the things I really want myself:

Age stages: One that's about, say 10-15 and maybe a middle-age one, as both child-teen and adult-elder are a little ludicrously large gaps. It looks like they go from an eight year old to a sixteen year old at best, and it could be wise to make more of adult life. Broody teens and mid-life crises possible.

More in-depth and effective personality. I don't care how, I just want it. Maybe with options that allow one to decide a personality fairly simply or go into pretty huge detail.

Clothing working rather differently. This is probably a "I really want it but it would be too much work in every aspect" thing, but well, wishing is wishing. How I would like it to work is that clothing could 1:be layered and 2.be moved. The way 1 would work is that when choosing the outfit you would basically start with them in their (naturally customisable) underwear, then maybe add undershirts, leggings, tights, etc and over that some kind of shirt and some legware then over that maybe some kind of sweater or jacket or that thing where one wears a long-sleeved shirt under a short-sleeved shirt. Also one could add accessories to a higher degree, like belts, watches, pendants, necklaces, etc. The way 2 would work would be that clothing moved more naturally. Hoods could go up or down, jackets could open, sims would pull their trousers down when they went to the toilet, etc. Maybe this could have interactions, like (and I can only think of mean ones but there is probably more potential) pulling one's hood over their eyes, giving them a wedgie, etc. Again though, this would be far too convoluted, requiring a lot more coding in how clothing worked, and for both the devs and modders to make clothes.

High Plains Gamer

27th Sep 2012, 11:07 PM

First off, I am NOT looking forward to the Sims 4. I hope EA does not do it. I would prefer that they just make fixes to the Sims 3. Moreover, if they do make a Sims 4, I fully expect them to screw it up.

If they do make a Sims 4, I want it to be a 64 bit game. This means that gamers using older computers won't be able to play it. But, I think they have gone about as far as they can go with a 32 bit game. To take it to the next level, they need to go to 64 bits.

Second, I want the entire game available from day one. I don't care to wait five or six years to have the same level of game play that we currently have. Either sell the thing complete and charge $1,000 for it, or sell it in pieces, but make everything available from day 1. One of the major problems with the game, is they have been selling it in bits and pieces, and all of the bits and pieces don't play well together.

I want to see more Sim City in it -- combine both games. I want my city to change and grow, rather than having the game stuck in some time bubble. Maybe the game starts in the 1950s -- maybe earlier than that. As time progresses, new items are invented. Perhaps one just starts off with radios but no television, wall phones but no cell phones, slide rules but no computers. Car styles, furniture styles, hair styles and clothing styles change with time. This might make the inventor career more meaningful because the inventor can unlock new inventions. Fashionistas could unlock new fashions, musicians could unlock new music styles and so on. Just as the Sims 3 opened up the neighborhoods, the Sims 4 should open up time.

Along with this, new buildings are built, and old buildings are torn down. Rather than having fewer rabbitholes, we have more. What you can do in those rabbitholes changes with time. If you are working in City hall you can change how the town grows by controlling the zoning.

Some professions should be opened up more. For example, cops should be allowed to write tickets for other sims and conduct investigations, much like the private investigators.

But I really am expecting EA to produce something lame, which forces us online, where they try to control us and how we play the game, and which is totally messed up.

Shizzy356

27th Sep 2012, 11:47 PM

Actual 3rd person movement instead over-head controlling, and mouse movement and keyboard movement as well, it'll spice the Sims series up,but also have a toggle to go from over head view, to 3rd person view, and open-able and close-able curtains and windows and also, realistic driving, and also, have rabbits for pets and every other animal for pets, and zoo's and fix the parent system, make it more realistic, like make the mother and father make the kids do their homework, and please make the language of the sims English, I'm kind of tired of Simlish, and add weather changes, and paving the roads, and also make more jobs and businesses, and flashlights, guns, but only allow certified hunters and Police officers have weapons, and make sure they are on good behavior ,and rivers and also make better clothing and better work out types, I mean the work out types in TS1-TS3 are sad, your character does not look like he worked out, Make it realistic, and also make the paper come daily and make the bills come once a month, and make the global economy high, so it's easier for sims to get jobs, and then make the cars a little bit more realistic looking, make the cell phones better, and also, if you can, make it multiplayer, it would be fun goin to other peoples places in the sims, make the mating more realistic as well, it just doesn't seem like it's real, and the music, make it so we can import songs for guitar and piano and other hobbies or skills, and also, make the store's and businesses see-able from the player's point of view, and make planes fly-able and helicopters, make more weight lifting utilities, and make animations for poses and other things, and make it so that, Your boss calls you to find out when you will be at work, and make it so you can take walks and go for bike rides and get into actual 3rd person fights, and make a DMV for teenagers so that they can train and get their license instead of just automaticly knowing how to drive, But dont make it easy to obtain an angry friendship with somebody, and make it so you have to go to court in order to get a divorce, or somebody has framed you for murder, or any of that stuff, and make the currency flow very good. More Ideas soon to come :)

shadedgrey63

28th Sep 2012, 03:51 AM

I want to see more Sim City in it -- combine both games. I want my city to change and grow, rather than having the game stuck in some time bubble. Maybe the game starts in the 1950s -- maybe earlier than that. As time progresses, new items are invented. Perhaps one just starts off with radios but no television, wall phones but no cell phones, slide rules but no computers. Car styles, furniture styles, hair styles and clothing styles change with time. This might make the inventor career more meaningful because the inventor can unlock new inventions. Fashionistas could unlock new fashions, musicians could unlock new music styles and so on. Just as the Sims 3 opened up the neighborhoods, the Sims 4 should open up time.

Along with this, new buildings are built, and old buildings are torn down. Rather than having fewer rabbitholes, we have more. What you can do in those rabbitholes changes with time. If you are working in City hall you can change how the town grows by controlling the zoning.

Some professions should be opened up more. For example, cops should be allowed to write tickets for other sims and conduct investigations, much like the private investigators.

But I really am expecting EA to produce something lame, which forces us online, where they try to control us and how we play the game, and which is totally messed up.

I think opening up time might require it to be online. No matter how long they'd work on a physical version, eventually we'd have experienced all changes, and time would then be stuck. Online games are constantly worked on and revamped, so reaching the "end of sim time" would likely be less probable to happen. They would always be adding things. (Though this is EA we're talking about, lol) Plus, once we'd experienced everything in a physical game format, would we likely start another save game? I doubt I would. While reading all of that, all I could see that as is a proposed idea for an online game. If it were a physical game (more like now), they'd be releasing EPs probably every month to prevent the end of the passage of time. And I am fully against the idea of an online Sims 4, or possibly even a physical version.

ButchSims

28th Sep 2012, 05:29 AM

Hell, I wouldn't care what new features were added, just as long as it worked 100% correctly out of the box.

High Plains Gamer

28th Sep 2012, 11:53 AM

I think opening up time might require it to be online. No matter how long they'd work on a physical version, eventually we'd have experienced all changes, and time would then be stuck. Online games are constantly worked on and revamped, so reaching the "end of sim time" would likely be less probable to happen. They would always be adding things. (Though this is EA we're talking about, lol) Plus, once we'd experienced everything in a physical game format, would we likely start another save game? I doubt I would. While reading all of that, all I could see that as is a proposed idea for an online game. If it were a physical game (more like now), they'd be releasing EPs probably every month to prevent the end of the passage of time. And I am fully against the idea of an online Sims 4, or possibly even a physical version.I

I hate to tell you this, but the Sims 4 will be online. You will have to log into EA's site to play the game, and you will save your game on their servers. They will charge you a monthy subscription fee to access your game, in addition to what you pay for the game.

They will justify this by saying it is necessary to prevent piracy. But the real goal will be to extract more money from us and to micromanage our game play.

Meanwhile, we will not be able to mod the game, and will have to play the game as EA makes it, bugs and all. This means living with their crappy story progression. The people who dislike cc, will be happy, however, because their will be none. Well we will be able to do things like change the color of a chair from blue to red, but we will not be able to make a new chair.

The online moderators will be there to make sure we play the game EA wants us to play it. If they don't like how we play the game, the moderators will ban us from their site. No criticism of EA will be tolerated.

Meanwhile, we will get to go back to playing the base game in a town which looks an awful lot like Sunset Valley. All of the neat stuff we have obtained in the Sims 3 and the Sims 2 will be gone. But every few months, EA will dribble out a few new items, which we need to buy on their store. Maybe after five or six years, we will enjoy the same level of gameplay that we now have.

But the Sims 4 will not last that long. Gamers will look at this game, and see it for the corporate lobotomized garbage it is. After six months, it will fold. EA will shut down the website, declare that the Sims is dead because no one likes it, and leave everyone high and dry.

That's why I am not eager to see the Sims 4.

shadedgrey63

28th Sep 2012, 08:02 PM

I hate to tell you this, but the Sims 4 will be online.

I was replying to someone who said they'd only play Sims 4 if it weren't online, only their ideas seemed to require it to be online. I'm not exactly looking forward to a Sims 4, whether or not it's going to be online. I probably won't play it either way.

itsamariokart

28th Sep 2012, 09:35 PM

Seasons as part of the base game, a height slider, more diverse personalities, MUCH less rabbit holes, flus/colds and let babies DO SOMETHING rather than staring into space

crocobaura

28th Sep 2012, 10:12 PM

.....

I think there will be both players interested in an online sims game, and there will also be mods, just that they will be different kind of players and different kind of mods from what we presently know. I can see them doing something where you can play as any life state and that involves a lot of quests like grow garlic to ward off vampires, or abduct 3 human sims if you play as an alien, or find Bella if your sim is an investigator or something.

Gleeksims1998

5th Oct 2012, 04:24 PM

Hi, I'm new here. My name is Alex. I'm 14 and I've played the sims since I was 5 years old.

Things I want based off of all three games combined----

1. Tween/Preteen sims
2. Working Wheelchairs
3. Pets in the base-game
4. No Rabbitholes
5. Collage returns
6. More realistic sims
7. For Sims to go to jail for stealing object or doing something bad
8. More cars!!!!!!
9. For Sims to be able to get in Car accidents
10.Longer lives
11. For Homosexual females to go to the hospital to get pregnant with their girlfriend/Wive as the other parent and not step parent

Thing I don't want

1. No more gnomes
2. No stupid looking sims

I can't think of anything else.

Thanks,

Alex:):)

lil bag2

5th Oct 2012, 06:57 PM

Sims already go to jail for doing bad stuff. I can't even begin to tell you how many times my sims have been arrested for murder XD

Zerbu

5th Oct 2012, 08:30 PM

10.Longer lives

You can do that using the age slider, and if you have Generations then you can specify more specific age lengths.

ArianaPinkKisses

6th Oct 2012, 12:40 AM

There's a sims four?!

Gleeksims1998

6th Oct 2012, 12:41 AM

Sims already go to jail for doing bad stuff. I can't even begin to tell you how many times my sims have been arrested for murder XD

How do you murder sims????? I've played it for many years and I never knew that..... Lol

Gleeksims1998

6th Oct 2012, 12:42 AM

You can do that using the age slider, and if you have Generations then you can specify more specific age lengths.

I want it to be in the basegame..... I don't have Generations because my family can't really afford it... I was lucky to get two of the games and my Mom doesn't even like me playing them.....

misslaheela

6th Oct 2012, 02:14 AM

How do you murder sims????? I've played it for many years and I never knew that..... Lol

You have to have mods to do it. EA doesn't include it with the regular game. The "Dexter the Bear" mod is a popular one.

Gleeksims1998

6th Oct 2012, 03:43 AM

You have to have mods to do it. EA doesn't include it with the regular game. The "Dexter the Bear" mod is a popular one. What I meant before was without modding the game...

misslaheela

6th Oct 2012, 03:55 AM

I know. You can't murder other Sims without modding the game. lilbag2 was referring to the mods he/she uses to kill other Sims.

Gleeksims1998

6th Oct 2012, 04:25 AM

ok thanks....

jesusismyairbag

6th Oct 2012, 11:50 PM

A bigger focus on Architecture and Landscaping. Seeing as the Sims 1 started off as an architecture game, EA REALLY dropped the ball with 3. I'm going to make list of crap I want, but we really do need mroe architecture with the base game, and we shouldn't have to wait years on end for something really simple. It took a years for us to get mutli-story features (columns, arches, etc.), where the Sims 2 base game game them in the base game.

Even if it's decorative, we shouldn't wait forever to get it.

that'll never happen, expansions will get worse. its EA...

also, wouldnt be suprised if they stripped the base game even more.

matrix54

9th Oct 2012, 02:25 PM

Also, I hope EA LEARNS from User built homes and sees what we use most often (build buy mode) and chucks that into the base game, like they did for the Sims 3 base game. About half of the items were from Sims 2.:rofl:

Like, I know we're already going to get those colonial windows, with the round top, that have already existed since the Sims 1 - that's to be expected. But, for example, we use those walls from WA (those who have it), with the dirty base and sides very often. It's a very versatile set, and I'd love to have it in the Sims 4 base game.

Also, the lot decor from Supernatural + the patch would be great as well, even if redesigned. Drainpipes... Roof Fans... ACs... Fuse Boxes... Those 4 items alone opened up many doors for detailing our lots (and EAs) very much, and I'd love for them to carry on in the Sims 4 as something "standard" to a lot.

Railing + Column Combo. They get limited use, yes, but something that the Sims build mode can do well is Victorian homes. Always has, always will (unless that change it). We eventually use columns to to act as posts anyway - why not cut out the middle man. Being honest, Supernatural added a bunch of stuff that I can't create lots without. The railings, the lot Deco, the multistory windows, the furniture - it's the EP for EA to study later in Sims 4 development.

Which reminds me - Eco Friendly gameplay in the base game, please. Or at least patch it in later. The Eco Friendly set adds and entire layer of gameplay to the game. That'd be great to have in the game, and maybe, expanded upon. :)

crocobaura

9th Oct 2012, 04:47 PM

Which reminds me - Eco Friendly gameplay in the base game, please. Or at least patch it in later. The Eco Friendly set adds and entire layer of gameplay to the game. That'd be great to have in the game, and maybe, expanded upon. :)

What's Eco Friendly gameplay?

fraavio

10th Oct 2012, 06:05 AM

One thing that just occured to me is that even though it is, albeit unlikely, possible for them to put this in the game, I think it'd be better for TS4. I was thinking that one thing that could be attached to a trait system or anything similar is a way of walking and doing stuff in general for each "trait". For instance, a snob type of sim would walk all stuck up and with the nose all high in the sky, while a shy type of sim would walk awkwardly and stuff like that. It'd give the sims more personality and would even open to the possibility of having something that helps them tell what kind of traits or whatever the other sims have my paying attention to them and stuff like that.

matrix54

10th Oct 2012, 06:33 AM

What's Eco Friendly gameplay?

Sims prefer Eco-friendly things over other, like efficient water usage and laundry, air drying clothing, Solar Panels, Wind Turbines, etc.

masaothedog

10th Oct 2012, 06:40 AM

-Gradual aging, like others have said. That's a super cool idea, and I'd love to see it happen. Especially if there were differences in how young children and older children looked, and the same for younger and older teens.

-I think it would be awesome if there was some way to implement technology that changes over time. It would probably be pretty difficult to fit this into the game, but I'd love to see an option where your sims start out in a certain era, and as the generations progress, new technologies come out. It would make legacy gameplay less repetitive. Maybe your sim could even invent something new! You could turn it off or select an era to start in.

-No seamless story progression. It makes having multiple families and legacy gameplay so difficult. If the town is going to be full of rabbitholes and these random interactions have such little impact, what's the point? I liked how the story and aging progressed in Sims 2. What I really want is the ability to have more control over a handful of families so that it would be more convenient to play more than one.

-More complex genetics, possibly genetic abnormalities and illnesses? More realistic illnesses that can affect your gameplay, too.

lil bag2

10th Oct 2012, 06:50 AM

I know. You can't murder other Sims without modding the game. lilbag2 was referring to the mods he/she uses to kill other Sims.

1. He
2. Yeah, I was talking about the mod :P

High Plains Gamer

10th Oct 2012, 11:54 AM

I think it would be awesome if there was some way to implement technology that changes over time. It would probably be pretty difficult to fit this into the game, but I'd love to see an option where your sims start out in a certain era, and as the generations progress, new technologies come out.

Aactually, this is incredibly simple to do. You basically have a game clock -- i.e. the game keeps track of how many days the world has been played. I believe the game already does this. Then two additional fields are added to each item in the game: a start date and an end date. The item is not available until the start date, and becomes unavailable again after the end date.

Mootilda

10th Oct 2012, 04:43 PM

The problem is not implementing a clock, which is dead simple. The problem is creating technology for each time period; the number of items required increases with each time period added.

pico22

10th Oct 2012, 05:42 PM

Lots of great ideas here; if a tenth of them would be implemented, Sims 4 would be a great game. We are talking EA, however, so I'll just wait until I see what they are offering. One thing is sure, though: clouds or no clouds, fees or no fees, I am not going to play TS4 if the base game does not offer all the things I believe it should. I am not prepared to wait for seasons for three and a half years and for a decent shop forever again, period.

masaothedog

10th Oct 2012, 11:29 PM

The problem is not implementing a clock, which is dead simple. The problem is creating technology for each time period; the number of items required increases with each time period added.

I think the biggest problem is that they would never spend time developing something like that. Legacy play just doesn't seem where they want the emphasis of the game to go><. But it would make it more fun, I think. Since I posted, I thought about how cool it would be if fashion and home decor could change as time goes on. You could even let your sims sell stuff to a (non-rabbithole) antique store for later generations to pick up for a retro theme in their house.

DragonSaint

4th Jan 2013, 06:57 AM

If there's going to be a Sims 4, I hope it will be a huge step forward for the series and not just a means for EA to start over and regurgitate the same crap all over again. That being said, here's what I'd like to see:

Pets: At least give us cats and dogs and a few wild animals with the base game. The world seems empty without any animals in it. If they at least give us the bare bones pets experience, they can always expand on it later; maybe give us some farm animals or even a zoo.

Weather: We need weather right out of the box. If every day is a sunny day it just gets monotonous. It would also be great to see more destructive weather, such as tornadoes, hurricanes, and floods.

Careers: NO MORE MEANINGLESS CAREERS! Every job should serve a purpose. If I hire a maid, she should be a sim that actually lives somewhere in town and actually has a family to go home to. Same goes for cops, burglars, firemen, and any other position that is currently handled by NPCs. And, If my sim becomes a reporter, he should actually be seen in town with a news crew and actually appear on TV when my sims watch the news.

Crime: Let's give the cops something to do other than break up parties and apprehend burglars. I mean didn't we have a guy who picked pockets in Sims 2? Let's bring that guy back. I'd also like to see car thieves, cyber-crime, shoplifting, and maybe even muggings. Sims should also be arrested for starting fights in public. There should be an actual jail to keep these offenders in when they get arrested and maybe a prison for the more dangerous sims.

CAS: Clothing should be layered. I want my sims to be able to just put on a jacket when it gets cold instead of putting on a whole other outfit. I'd also like to pick out their underwear like in Sims 2 and have them actually wear it under their clothes.

Worlds: Custom worlds should be easier to create. No matter how good other people's custom worlds are, none of them seem to fit all my needs and I just don't have the skill or the patience to make my own. Also, I'd like to see much bigger worlds that could accommodate hundreds of sims or at least twice what is possible now. I want my world to be busier and more alive.

Lots: First of all, no more of that "unable to place on un-routable terrain" crap. I can't begin to tell you how many lots I've downloaded over the years that I've never even used simply because I couldn't find a place for them. In fact, maybe we should just do away with lots as we know them in favor of something more flexible. I'd like to see "lots" that can be both residential and commercial as well as have multiple households.

Destruction: Buildings should be more destructible. I think it's dumb that a fire can rage on all day without even singing the wallpaper. If a fire is left unchecked, I want the whole damn building to eventually burn down and maybe even spread to neighboring buildings.

Visuals: I could go on about graphical improvements but it should go without saying that Sims 4 is going to look better than Sims 3, especially considering that the graphics haven't been updated much since Sims 2 and multi-core processing has pretty much become standard by now. I will say however that I hope grass actually looks like grass and isn't just painted on.

I have other ideas, but I think I'll save them for another time. I've gone on long enough.

ViolettaVie

4th Jan 2013, 08:29 AM

-color wheel for skintones

This would be great but it would also have to have an added option for skin type. Creators can make as many skins as they want, skins that could look Asian, African, etc. and we could choose which one and then apply the color. It would also be great if we could then apply molds or freckles and such stuff, almost or exactly like we can for customizing pets, but not just for the face. We could add eye bags, definition to the nose, scars, burn marks, wrinkles, veins, etc. When done, it becomes that sim's skin, which we could save as a preset as well. So each sims in spite of their skin type and color can all look unique.

When it comes to genetics, the baby can take a blending of the parents or skin from the grand or great grandparents without a percentage for mutation, unless game play directly exposed the family to something that causes mutation.

I would also like to see genetic hair and dyed hair. So if we have a sim with brown hair and we want to dye their hair purple, when they try for a baby, the baby will only be able to receive brown hair and not purple. And if the genetic hair is purple, the baby can get purple hair but not brown.

CleoSombra

4th Jan 2013, 05:21 PM

Worlds: Custom worlds should be easier to create. No matter how good other people's custom worlds are, none of them seem to fit all my needs and I just don't have the skill or the patience to make my own. Also, I'd like to see much bigger worlds that could accommodate hundreds of sims or at least twice what is possible now. I want my world to be busier and more alive.

I absolutely agree with this. In TS2, when you made a neighorhood, there were a bunch of physical landscapes that you could actually choose from. It's a shame this wasn't done in TS3. I appreciate that world-building is hard, even the physical landscape and routing and whatnot, but if it's hard for the game makers, it's going to be infinitely harder for the players.

saeda

4th Jan 2013, 05:25 PM

All I want is for the game to be better optimized. I'm fine letting them have creative reign.

BloodyScholastic

5th Jan 2013, 02:00 AM

Gradual aging if the animations could be done possibly.

Opening the door animation. Sims could really open the door by their hand, not just passing through "automatic door" open and close by itself. Other games have been giving this animation from long time ago, why not Sims?

Sims could have their own indoor and outdoor appearance. For example, Sims not wearing sunglasses, hat, backpack, boots in house go outside from their house door then after the "changing outfit animation" done, they wear sunglasses, hat, backpack, boots. Female sims can wear their handbag outside, not inside their own house. When they go back to their house, they switch to usual indoor appearance, not wearing sunglasses, hat, backpack, handbag, boots. It is indeed a functional appearance feature since in TS2 and TS3 you should change appearance using mirror every time you want to switch outdoor to indoor appearance and vice versa. It's a bit silly looking at Sims wear sunglasses, backpack, other outdoor appearance that should be wear outside; inside their own house, right?

Sims could actually cleaning their own house with broom and vacuum cleaner. This animation could be optional without sacrificing time in-game.

Realistic jobs, for example: housekeeper, cement mixer, translator, video editor, software developer, bank clerk, security, salesperson, cashier, bus driver, more normal average jobs like in real life people have. Not everyone would become firefighter, doctor, scientist, businessman, criminal, chef.

More realistic financial management (bank, insurance, divide the income and outcome by daily and monthly cash-flow; water, telephone, tax, rent, internet, electricity) if they can be done possibly and every activity that involve money should be buyable, not free. Sims should pay for their video games on their computer, pay for using gym equipment, swimming pool on community lots, pay for taxi, pay for their new clothes, pay for private school. What's the point of simulation if in (newest Sims series) TS3 almost everything is cheap (not make sense if it's compared to real life as comparison) and some are not requiring money before using it?

Earn skills not just from books. In modern era, why Sims should spend their times reading books all the time? Sims could actually learn something from their computer. Like in real life, there are many e-books offered online, Sims can pay the e-books like physical books in-game to earn skills.

Bus, boat, and underground train.

Hot dog booths, pop corn booths, candy booths, souvenir booths, video game booths, magazine booths, shoes/sandal booths, fast-food booths, accessories booths, plant seed booths, other mini booths Sims could buy something from them to get different items for each, like in Sims 1.

If Sims couldn't pay their bills, house electricity gone off. Sims cannot do anything in their house, all stuff that using electricity in their house cannot be usable. Lamps cannot be turned on. So Sims living in dark in their own house, struggle to do anything to get money to afford bills as soon as possible. (I know not everyone agree with this, but this is my personal idea, I think this is more realistic than some random guys pop to confiscate our Sims' stuff with their funny gun.)

Again, this is my personal idea. I want male and female Sims have different height, if the height slider couldn't possibly done. Male Sims should be a bit taller than female Sims. Like in real life, overall men are taller than women by natural. Different height isn't mean male Sims are more superior than female Sims and proving sexism to female gender in-game, but it is more realistic to have Sims have natural appearance like us humans have, isn't it? Like in-game, only female Sims have breast, male Sims haven't. Female Sims can be pregnant (by natural, not with alien thingy), male Sims can't. :heyhey: Other games also have been giving this different height between male and female characters in game, so they are more natural looking than having the same height. It is weird looking at sims couple, they're having the same height.

Sims could travel from one world to other worlds, using "rabbit-hole" plane. From Sunset Valley can go to Twinbrook for example. Sims live on their temporary place as a tourist, rest and sleep in hotel. Different neighborhoods/worlds in TS2 and TS3 have been treated as different planets that can't be reached for each other. :wtf:

More simulation features. Not doll house.

DragonSaint

5th Jan 2013, 11:54 AM

Here's a few more ideas I didn't get to before:

1.) Sidewalks that aren't flat. I'd like to see actual curbs.
2.) Traits that are actually interesting. Good and evil are pointless and daredevil should have been combined with athlete or party animal. I could go on but I'm trying to keep this somewhat brief.
3.) The ability to visit other players' worlds like in Nintendo's Animal Crossing. Or at least something similar to the online functionality that will be implemented in the new SimCity, but I don't want an actual online game. There's really no reason to revisit The Sims Online.

That's about all I can think of at the moment. I'm trying to avoid repeating things that have already been suggested on this forum such as more sliders, gradual aging, or whatever. There's just no point in saying what's already been said.

Arisuka

5th Jan 2013, 04:05 PM

Sim making and sims in general definitely need to be brought up to meet modern standards of gaming!

-Textures need to look crisp, and hair and clothes need to be animated again like they were BACK IN TS2. :faceslap:
- Maybe a hair length slider too? This wouldn't have to be for all hair styles, so custom hairs could be created in the same way as now.
- Height and various body sliders (like for waist & neck)
- Adjustable skin effects, like wrinkles and body muscles. TS3 medieval has this!
- Tattoos need to be able to be moved everywhere on the body freely in the same way as the fur patterns for pets
- A lot more different sim voice options!

- More realistic face proportions... Right now it's really difficult to make realistic looking faces, CAS just isn't made for that technically. A player needs to be able to create realistic looking sims easily, as well as goofy looking sims! Both sides need to be catered to.

-Smooth, natural and detailed animations! Seriously, please. I despair for what I see in TS3... Sims' lips don't even remotely touch when they kiss, how sad is that! Also in general it would be nice if it actually looked like sims had muscles in their faces creating the expressions. Right now the expression are very jerky and clip with different parts of the face...

DragonSaint

10th Jan 2013, 11:19 AM

I think I would also appreciate a new user interface; something that doesn't take up almost half the screen (especially when playing on lower resolutions). There has got to be an easier way to keep track of wants and needs without cluttering up the screen quite so much.

supersimoholic

10th Jan 2013, 11:53 AM

Less ugly pudge-face genetics. Better looking kids and teens.
I read somewhere that the eye and hair genetics aren't linked the same in offspring as they were in sims 2. I liked the way the genetics worked in sims 2. I don't like having a family of blonde and red hair for one of the children to be born with that ugly default poo-green hair colour. Bring back sims 2 genetics.

Lonelywillow

10th Jan 2013, 12:56 PM

-Traits should have a real influence on a Sims's life. Evil Sims should be able to commit crimes, Good Sims could help seniors to cross the street. Your trait should also have an influence on friendships; Evil and good Sims should have a harder time becoming friends that sims with similar traits.
-Carrers should be more realistic and promotions optional. It's redicules to promote a nurse so that she end up as a doctor, I want to be able to just play a nurse or teacher until retirement.
-Short and tall Sims, if not with a slider at least several height options
-less restrictions for children and teens; I want the kids to be able to play instruments, wear the same clothes adults do, teens to live alone (without Mods)
-Natural disasters, accidents, sickness

BubbelsDarling

11th Jan 2013, 02:09 PM

I was thinking about this the other day and I would really like a kind of sim 'world' where you would load up the game and have a view of an entire region, then each neighbourhood would be placed in the region, from here you could enter the different neighbourhoods and control sims etc. this would also mean you could vacation to other neighbourhoods and your sims family members could leave their hometown without breaking all relationships and family ties, for example you could bring your kids up in sunset valley, but one of the kids grows up wanting to be an actor, so they pack up and move to Bridgeport, but you can still phone your family and friends back in sunset valley and go visit them when you get a chance.

Also I would like if it seems actually changed gradually during their ages, it's kind of depressing to see a healthy adult sim that exercises daily suddenly turn in to an old hunched over pensioner, it was also be nice if we could get things like botox for older sims, I hate the way they suddenly turn in to a raisin..

I would also like to see the ability to go out and buy clothes, jewelry, cars etc. and I don't mean just buying things from the shops that you can already buy from the catalogue for shits and gigs, I mean if shops stocked things you could only get from there, like a designer clothing store where your sim could buy a §1000 dress that you don't get in CAS, or go to car dealership and buy yourself a car that isn't in the catalogue.

Another thing I would like is weather and pets to be included in the game from the start because its just lazy of EA to sell these things as an EP for the FOURTH installment of the game, TS1 had pets and TS2 had weather, why would TS4 not start out with them? They should focus on innovating the game, not recycling the same stuff as before, what was the difference between the sims 2 seasons and the sims 3 seasons? seasonal holidays? Wow how innovative, that must have taken you a lot of effort, definitely worth £30!

DragonSaint

11th Jan 2013, 09:06 PM

Couple more ideas for Sims 4:

Martial Arts: It would be nice to see martial arts become more of a lifestyle instead of just being another skill. Maybe they could practice with nun-chucks, kendo sticks, and other martial arts weapons. Highly skilled martial artists could have their own dojos or star in martial arts movies. On a related note, Fencing would also be a pretty cool addition although there's always a chance it could just be added to TS3 in an expansion pack (Most likely University Life).

Religion: Yeah, yeah. I know it's a touchy subject but bare with me here. After finally getting a chance to play The Sims Medieval this week, I realized it would be a shame if EA didn't do more with the Peteran and Jacoban religions that they created simply because they were too afraid to implement them in a modern day setting. I especially like that goofy "wax on, wax off" prayer that the Peterans do. I can see why many people wouldn't want a religion based EP, but maybe it wouldn't be as controversial if included in the base game with an option to disable it for those who prefer a more agnostic world. This would also make good and evil traits a lot less pointless (although we most likely won't have the same trait system in TS4).

DragonSaint

13th Jan 2013, 02:42 AM

A few more thoughts for Sims 4:

Alcohol :beer: : I don't understand why they had no problem with alcohol references in Sims Medieval and yet they substitute it with "juice" or "nectar" in the Sims 3. Seriously, we all know alcohol paraphernalia when we see it and I'm more than just a little irritated that University Life will have sims doing keg stands to drink juice. Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the point of a keg stand to get the alcohol to reach your brain faster? And who drinks juice out of a keg anyway? Why is alcohol considered okay just because it's in a medieval setting? They still have to declare it in the disclaimer next to the ESRB rating and the sims series has always been rated T from the very beginning. I want to see my sims get so hammered that they get arrested for being drunk and disorderly in public, especially since the cops have it way too easy. It would also be great if sims could eventually build up their tolerances to alcohol or some some sims could be total lightweights.

Woohoo :luff: : Come on EA, we all know what it really is. I'm not asking to stop using the term entirely, but it really seemed out of place in The Sims Medieval and calling it some silly name doesn't change the fact that "sexual themes" needs to be listed in the disclaimer. And back to my first point, the inclusion of sex makes avoiding alcohol references completely pointless. Like I said, it's already got a T rating.

Murder: Sims should be able to kill other sims in certain situations. If an evil sim declares another sim his enemy, he should be able to make an attempt on that sim's life. There would be penalties of course. That sim could get arrested if he gets caught or his victim may end up killing him in self defense. And when I say "get arrested" I don't mean the cops take him away and then he's back on the streets in a few hours; I mean he goes to PRISON, where he'll either serve his time or find a way to break out. Maybe we won't see murder, but an actual working prison would be pretty cool. Also, sims who have been arrested before would tend to avoid cops.

Vampires: Vampires should operate in secret instead of being out in the open. If their secret gets out, they could be persecuted or hunted by other sims; especially if a sim in the community has died from a vampire attack. This could also apply to other occults such as werewolves, witches/warlocks, and fairies. I'm just a little tired of their existence being common knowledge. However, occults could safely reveal their true nature to close friends. In fact, that would be recommended; because if those friends found out on their own, it could end badly for the occult and other members of his/her kind. After all, wouldn't it be more of a shock if your friend found out on his own that you're a vampire than if you had just confided in him and told him the truth? But be careful who you tell though. The rest of your kindred may not take too kindly to you revealing their secrets to every Tom, Dick, and Harry you meet.

Baiaana

13th Jan 2013, 08:09 PM

Ideas for Sims 4? Mmm... don't make it O_O

crocobaura

13th Jan 2013, 08:22 PM

DragonSaint

13th Jan 2013, 08:57 PM

Ideas for Sims 4? Mmm... don't make it O_O

Sorry Baiaana, but we all know it's coming sooner or later. Any profitable franchise is going to continue to make sequels and the Sims series is the most profitable of all time. The best we can hope for is that Sims 4 takes a huge step in the right direction instead of just taking a step in a huge pile of crap. EA can't keep releasing new expansion packs for TS3 forever, especially since the game had stability issues from the very beginning. Hopefully Maxis will be free to work on it this time.

The nectar ages in TS3 and you could pretend to be making some nice wine or vinegar depending on your preferences. I like to name it based on the fruits that went into its making, so if I used apples, the product is apple juice or cider. I don't really care to see sims passed out from drinking.

I think your missing the point, Crocobaura. People don't generally drink juice from kegs. They certainly don't do keg stands for juice either. I can live with my sims not getting drunk. I'm just sick EA's ridiculous double standards. They have things like dive bars, bartenders, and (as of University Life) kegs; and yet they refuse to include alcohol even though TSM had alcohol. I'm not saying there shouldn't be juice; I'm saying stop using it as a flimsy substitute for alcohol. Like I said before, the game's already got a Teen rating.

crocobaura

13th Jan 2013, 09:15 PM

I think your missing the point, Crocobaura. People don't generally drink juice from kegs. They certainly don't do keg stands for juice either. I can live with my sims not getting drunk. I'm just sick EA's ridiculous double standards. They have things like dive bars, bartenders, and (as of University Life) kegs; and yet they refuse to include alcohol even though TSM had alcohol. I'm not saying there shouldn't be juice; I'm saying stop using it as a flimsy substitute for alcohol. Like I said before, the game's already got a Teen rating.

Well, maybe not fruit juice, but fizzy drinks do sometimes get bottled in kegs. Anyway, I kind of see your point, why include keg stands if they are not going to call the drink beer or whatever. But just the same, it really doesn't bother me, I believe it's easy enough to just rename the thing and it's associated moodlet with a mod. Nectar is code name for beer and woohoo is code name for sex. Sims are prudish like that so their language reflects this trait of theirs. :giggler:

Periandre

13th Jan 2013, 09:23 PM

Sorry Baiaana, but we all know it's coming sooner or later. Any profitable franchise is going to continue to make sequels and the Sims series is the most profitable of all time. The best we can hope for is that Sims 4 takes a huge step in the right direction instead of just taking a step in a huge pile of crap. EA can't keep releasing new expansion packs for TS3 forever, especially since the game had stability issues from the very beginning. Hopefully Maxis will be free to work on it this time.

Maxis is working on the Sims 3 now and has been since before the release of Seasons. All of the Sims Studio is now considered Maxis. And so what...

Maxis was bought out by EA and only exists as a subsidiary of Electronic Arts. Maxis has to comply with the same business decisions, protocols and policies-- or lack thereof, of every other EA department, subsidiary, faction... what have you. If you follow the tweets of people working on Sims projects you will get a sense that most of the problems in this game are not due to ineptitude or a lack of care but are a result of the way EA budgets time and resources for projects. The way the teams are silo'd one from another so that there is no cohesive project developed, the way there is no standard operating procedure or protocol that every team has to comply with.

There is no time machine. You can't go home again.

Can we give the Maxis saves the day theory a rest?

DragonSaint

13th Jan 2013, 11:24 PM

Maxis is working on the Sims 3 now and has been since before the release of Seasons. All of the Sims Studio is now considered Maxis. And so what...

Maxis was bought out by EA and only exists as a subsidiary of Electronic Arts. Maxis has to comply with the same business decisions, protocols and policies-- or lack thereof, of every other EA department, subsidiary, faction... what have you. If you follow the tweets of people working on Sims projects you will get a sense that most of the problems in this game are not due to ineptitude or a lack of care but are a result of the way EA budgets time and resources for projects. The way the teams are silo'd one from another so that there is no cohesive project developed, the way there is no standard operating procedure or protocol that every team has to comply with.

There is no time machine. You can't go home again.

Can we give the Maxis saves the day theory a rest?

Here what Wikipedia says:

"Particularly, Will Wright and Maxis were not involved in the development of the latest title in the series, The Sims 3, although many developers of former Maxis products remained involved in its production. This third generation of the main series was developed entirely by The Sims Studio. However in 2012, The Sims Studio became a part of EA Maxis, which made Maxis involved with the development of The Sims franchise once again."

I see what your saying. I wasn't aware that The Sims Studio was reintegrated into Maxis last year. However, different studios have different ideas, even if they do have the same parent company. And, while the Maxis that reemerged in 2011 isn't the same Maxis we once knew, Sims 4 could still benefit from Maxis being more hands on. TS3 could probably benefit as well.

And by the way, I'm not looking to "go home again"; I just think the next Sims game could benefit from the kind of thinking that's going into SimCity.

Periandre

13th Jan 2013, 11:41 PM

And by the way, I'm not looking to "go home again"; I just think the next Sims game could benefit from the kind of thinking that's going into SimCity.

Well, if the general belief that TS4 will be online is correct... I believe it will definitely get that kind of thinking. Good? Bad? Too soon to say. Everything looks great in previews.

The Wild Turkey

13th Jan 2013, 11:46 PM

I'm looking forward to hearing more about Sims 4, and there's plenty of things that I'd like to see in the new game, but one of the main things I want is a new and more flexible building system that would enable us to make more interesting houses and buildings instead of having to wrestle with tricks and workarounds.

I was just doing a google search for any news on the Sims 4 and came across the some discussions on Adam Murguia's resume where he lists The Sims Unannounced project. I think there was some discussion here previously on it, but I didn't have much luck with the search tool. Looking at his LinkedIn profile, he has since left EA, but I think there's still much that the few sentences can tell us. I haven't been able to find any information on whether this post was confirmed as real, or that it directly relates to Sims 4, but I'll work on the assumption that it does.

It seems quite clear that the Sims 4 will feature a new art style, one that might possibly be radically different to the previous games. He states that they've created high quality hand sculpted maquettes that will define their new 'look'. This might mean the use of new technologies to create more realistic looking sims, and perhaps trying to give them a hand crafted appearance. He also states their focus testing throughout multiple countries has received universal praise, so we can probably expect the new style to be appealing across many different cultures and appreciation of art styles. A new art style may help breathe new life into the franchise. It brings to mind how different the look of the new Simcity game is compared to its predecessors. It looks very nice and detailed, and we may see a similar level of detail in the art style for Sims 4.

However, more importantly than the art style is what appears to be a new direction that EA looks to be taking with the franchise. He states the he is helping to "'Reinvent' what EA's CEO has called our future flagship title." I think this tells us a lot about what EA has planned for Sims 4, that they see the potential to make the Sims 4 an even bigger market success than the previous Sims games, and that they're prepared to put a significant amount of money and resources into the game. However, I think the keyword that we need to focus on here is 'Reinvent'. EA is probably thinking about how to expand the franchises appeal so that it can capture new players, and by using the term 'reinvent', it means they might be considering a rebuild of the gameplay to try to make it appealing to a new demographic of gamers. He states that he has redefined the characters in an attempt to 'make the Sims franchise cool again'. I think this tells use that, while EA recognizes the success of the Sims franchise, it doesn't think it has the 'cool' factor to appeal to a wider market. Who is this wider market that they're trying to appeal to? That is a very difficult question to answer. My initial reaction was to guess the COD and Battlefield audiences that so many other publishers seem to be chasing these days, but that ignores the fundamental differences between these two genres, and I can't see how they could reconcile them. However, I do think that EA will be trying to expand the audience for the Sims 4 by appealing to new gamers who likely aren't interested in the franchise in its current format. What this means is that there is a risk that some of the gameplay that makes it appealing to current fans could be dropped in favour of new or different styles of gameplay.

Mootilda

14th Jan 2013, 12:44 AM

I just think the next Sims game could benefit from the kind of thinking that's going into SimCity.I'm exactly the opposite. If the next Sims game is anything like the new SimCity, I won't be buying it either.

Forced online, forced to agree to having your hard drive scanned, forced to move on when EA decides to shut down the servers, tiny unrealistic villages pretending to be cities, forced to deal with nasty people who want to destroy your city... no thank you!

DragonSaint

14th Jan 2013, 05:29 AM

I'm exactly the opposite. If the next Sims game is anything like the new SimCity, I won't be buying it either.

Forced online, forced to agree to having your hard drive scanned, forced to move on when EA decides to shut down the servers, tiny unrealistic villages pretending to be cities, forced to deal with nasty people who want to destroy your city... no thank you!

First of all, I was actually talking about the Glassbox Engine; things like factories not opening on time when workers get stuck in traffic, neighborhoods turning into slums if there isn't enough police coverage, etc. I was talking about how you can see what your city needs without having to read any charts. Second, I don't know where you get this idea your "forced to agree to having your hard drive scanned." I've played online games before and have never had my hard drive scanned by any of them, nor have I heard anything about Simcity doing any such thing. Third, where do you get off accusing Simcity of "having tiny unrealistic villages pretending to be cities?" How can you possibly know that almost two months before the game comes out? And Finally, you don't have to play with anybody; you can have the whole region to yourself and build as many cities on it as you want. Or, you can invite friends to build cities in your region or even open it up to everybody, so you're not "forced to deal with nasty people who want to destroy your city." I suggest you actually try reading about the game before you start making a bunch of assumptions.

gege_sml

14th Jan 2013, 09:29 PM

The romantic relationships on Sims 3 are really annoying, I just wish we could control better that part of our sims life. To begin with, the love interest is mutual and IMO that's so so wrong. Also, I want the sims to have different levels of "love".. they could have:

-an attraction based on common traits/interestings
-a crush on someone they knew a little better
-a platonic love
-an affair with someone they've been seeing/hanging out with
-and the highest level could be something like "love of your life", that would be achieved after you do a lot of interactions with your partner etc.

Also:
- just because your sims flirted with other sims, it doesn't mean they're automatically on a date
- just because your sims had a romantic relationship with another sim, it doesn't mean that all of their partners are jealous and accusing them of cheating
- just because your sims have 2 partners at the same time, it doesn't mean they must have a bad reputation

KittyCarey

14th Jan 2013, 10:41 PM

Spiritbw

14th Jan 2013, 11:59 PM

First of all, I was actually talking about the Glassbox Engine; things like factories not opening on time when workers get stuck in traffic, neighborhoods turning into slums if there isn't enough police coverage, etc. I was talking about how you can see what your city needs without having to read any charts. Second, I don't know where you get this idea your "forced to agree to having your hard drive scanned." I've played online games before and have never had my hard drive scanned by any of them, nor have I heard anything about Simcity doing any such thing. Third, where do you get off accusing Simcity of "having tiny unrealistic villages pretending to be cities?" How can you possibly know that almost two months before the game comes out? And Finally, you don't have to play with anybody; you can have the whole region to yourself and build as many cities on it as you want. Or, you can invite friends to build cities in your region or even open it up to everybody, so you're not "forced to deal with nasty people who want to destroy your city." I suggest you actually try reading about the game before you start making a bunch of assumptions.

I think the scanning hard drive thing is in referance to Origin, which does have many problems from a privacy point of veiw.

As to the rest, your really sounding like an EA PR rep. Specially with the whole"If you don't want to be affected by others you can set your own region to you alone". To which the response will always be "Then why do I need a constant connection?"

DragonSaint

15th Jan 2013, 12:21 AM

I think the scanning hard drive thing is in referance to Origin, which does have many problems from a privacy point of veiw.

As to the rest, your really sounding like an EA PR rep. Specially with the whole"If you don't want to be affected by others you can set your own region to you alone". To which the response will always be "Then why do I need a constant connection?"

I'm not trying to promote the game; I just don't think people should be talking trash about things they clearly haven't bothered to research. As for needing a constant connection, that pisses me off too. Up until a couple of years ago, I couldn't even get broadband in my area; so I sympathize with those who can't play certain games because of paranoid game developers and their anti-piracy bs. I also hate putting in those frickin' registration codes every time I install a new game, or that I have to have the cd in the drive in order to play. Bottom line, PC gaming used to be a lot simpler.

ButchSims

15th Jan 2013, 12:58 AM

I'm not trying to promote the game; I just don't think people should be talking trash about things they clearly haven't bothered to research. Believe me, we have "researched" the hell out of this game. It has been talked about left and right since it was first announced. There is even a whole thread full of info about it.

Mootilda

15th Jan 2013, 01:06 AM

I'm not trying to promote the game; I just don't think people should be talking trash about things they clearly haven't bothered to research.I've probably done as much research as you have, if not more.

PunchDrunk

15th Jan 2013, 01:13 AM

I don't know if this has been covered in this thread but what about height? Say for example the shortest a sim could be at 5'0 and the tallest sim could be 6'5.

What do you guys think?

DragonSaint

15th Jan 2013, 10:31 AM

Sorry, Mootilda. I was completely out of line when I said that. But, I still don't understand what you mean by "tiny little villages that try to be cities". What exactly is this based on? I've been to IGN, Gamespot, Gamespy, the official Simcity website, and have run a search on Bing, but nothing I've read gives any clear indication of how big cities will be. Maybe if you could tell me where you read this I could see what you're talking about. Otherwise, I'd really like to get back to talking about Sims 4.

I don't know if this has been covered in this thread but what about height? Say for example the shortest a sim could be at 5'0 and the tallest sim could be 6'5.

What do you guys think?

Yeah, I think we all can agree we want more sliders, especially the height slider.

darkhorus

15th Jan 2013, 02:40 PM

1. More traits
2. Less rabbitholes
3. Interactive jobs and professions in the base game!
4. Weather and seasons in the base game!
5. The ability to build walls on half of a tile/half of a grid tile!
6. The ability to put windows on half-tiles instead of only by full tiles!
7. More different window choices in base game
8. More different furniture choices in base game
9. More modern furniture in base game
10. More options and sliders for the appearance of our Sims in CAS
11. More interactions between kids and grown ups
12. Pets in the base game
13. More different fireplace choices, also modern ones
13. Teen Woohoo
14. Relationships ans romantic interactions between children
15. Toddlers being able to talk and walk by default, as toddlers are already at an age on which they should be able to walk, and talk a little bit
16. The ability to wash toddlers, like in TS2
17. Setting more than 3 outfits per outfit category
18. Split-level functionality, without cheats!!! and without any of the problems we have with it now like with the lighting and stuff cuz the game right now treats split-levels as different levels

Lots more!!

Mootilda

15th Jan 2013, 04:28 PM

I still don't understand what you mean by "tiny little villages that try to be cities". What exactly is this based on?Here's a link which discusses city size:
http://community.simtropolis.com/topic/48300-simcity-city-tile-size/

eskie227

15th Jan 2013, 04:28 PM

What I want is stuff that needs to be built into the game engine. Other stuff can come from the community if it means EA puts the time into a proper base engine.

1. A 64 bit game engine. These open worlds are too large and complex for the game to be limited to the memory space of ~3.5 GB (at best). Granted that means pulling buyers up to recent hardware, but jeez Win 7 has been out a few years now, and we already have Win 8. Supporting Win XP makes no sense.

2. Better build tools. I shouldn't have to jump through hoops to get a basement built under a house on a foundation. Is it so hard to allow a set of stairs to have an extra couple of steps?

3. Better building placements (maybe this should be under #2). I should be able to place a house anywhere on a large enough lot that I want to, not always dead center.

4. Flexible careers. That is, I should decide if I want to manage a career as an open, interactive career, or leave my sim to work at the equivalent of a RH. That should apply for all careers, as there are times I want the "work" experience with my sim, and times I'd rather concentrate on someone else in the family.

5. Improved animations. Face it, capturing animations is not nearly as difficult as it used to be. Give sims more variety in movements, so things like conversations don't all look the same. The same can be said for Simlish, their vocabulary could be larger and more varied. I hear the same damned Simlish words over and over no matter the topic of conversation.

6. Real life stages. Like, a baby that's really a baby, not a larvae. Maybe I can then keep them around for more than a day. And no, a changing table alone does not make them any more lovable.

7. Height adjustments are a maybe for me. My reservations stem from the issues of complicating clothing design, as well as sim-sim physical interactions. A tall sim should be able to bend down to kiss a short sim. If that can't be done, I'm not sure it's worth it.

8. Improved content management. Let me EASILY group and sort my content, whether clothing or furnishings. And let me delete content in game, where I can actually see it, and realize that I hate the sofa I downloaded I can just get rid of, instead of hunting through some outside program like the launcher looking for an icon that may or may not be the sofa I really hate.

9. Community development tools. Let's face it, what makes the Sims so successful is all the custom content folks make for the game. Without it, the game would be of limited appeal for many. So share your tools with the community. It's in EA's best interest to have high quality content and yes, even worlds, out there for folks to choose from. They can never offer the variety in the Store that the community can, and their players will never have enough money to buy all the stuff they want for the game. And that does mean a better CAW tool. EA has one. Their own developers use it. Why share a crippled down version that makes it so difficult for a creator to finish a world before the next EP comes out? Even with the crippled tool, some amazing worlds get turned out, extending the game play for their customers, so why not encourage that (I know, I'm dreaming, but that's what this thread is)?

10. I want the game to run on MY CPU and be saved to MY HARD DRIVE. If I need to have net connection for DRM reasons, I'll hate it, but probably go along. If it's a Sim City model, where my save games are on EA servers, I'll pass.

DigitalSympathies

15th Jan 2013, 11:27 PM

I don't know if it was in this thread or the other one, but I said that I'd like to have loading/saving screens with a cancel/go back button.

DragonSaint

15th Jan 2013, 11:54 PM

A couple more ideas. one of them I'm sure you can all get behind; the other's probably a little silly if not completely absurd:

Clothing: High-heeled shoes that ACTUALLY MAKE WOMEN TALLER. Bloom managed to do it with a pair of platform shoes; there's no reason why Maxis/The Sims Studio can't pull it off. And while I'm on the subject of women's clothing, how about dresses and skirts that don't have those weird "disks" under them.

Superheroes and Supervillians: Hey, why not? We've already had vampires, werewolves, fairies, zombies, aliens, ghosts, mummies, robots, genies, gypsies, imaginary friends, unicorns, and even Bigfoot. I doubt it would be in the base game, but it would make one hell of an expansion pack.

eskie227

16th Jan 2013, 01:26 AM

A couple more ideas. one of them I'm sure you can all get behind; the other's probably a little silly if not completely absurd:

Superheroes and Supervillians: Hey, why not? We've already had vampires, werewolves, fairies, zombies, aliens, ghosts, mummies, robots, genies, gypsies, imaginary friends, unicorns, and even Bigfoot. I doubt it would be in the base game, but it would make one hell of an expansion pack.

Oh, I can just see EA's version of a Superhero's costume right now, and it's not pretty.

DragonSaint

16th Jan 2013, 05:28 AM

Oh, I can just see EA's version of a Superhero's costume right now, and it's not pretty.

Yeah... on second thought, screw it. EA would just butcher the hell out of it and then someone would have to come up with a bunch of mods just to make the damn thing remotely useful. I just suggested it because in TS2 sims dress like superheroes when they reach the top of the law enforcement career and supervillains when they reach top of the criminal career. Plus, there's also the heroes and villains pre-order incentive for Simcity; although I doubt it's anymore useful than any of the other pre-order bonuses I've been suckered into over the years. Seriously EA, if you're gonna take our money before the game's even out, at least give us some incentives that don't suck.

DragonSaint

21st Jan 2013, 07:10 AM

Just had another idea that I think everyone can appreciate. Okay, so one of the bigger downsides to moving on to Sims 4 would be losing all of the content we purchased from the sims store. But what if we could transfer those items to our Sims 4 account in some way? Now, obviously that wouldn't be possible with everything, especially worlds. But, if EA was willing to allow us to bring some of our favorite store items over into TS4, it would make a lot of people more willing to try TS4. I think for every item EA has on the sims store they should go ahead and make an equivalent item for TS4.

Also, we need more/better voice options. I want to make my sims' voices range from Bobcat Goldthwait to Nathan Explosion from Deathklok: Metalocalypse. I would greatly appreciate an option to make sims' voices sound rougher and more distinct. It would be funny as hell if you could give your sims really obnoxious voices. Imagine all of your sims screaming at each other like Gilbert Godfrey.

And speaking of obnoxious, it would be nice if sims were more reactive to other sims that tend to behave a certain way. If a sim tends to act like a complete jackass, it would be nice to see other sims avoid him like they're thinking, "Oh, not THAT guy. Let's get out of here before he sees us."

And finally, I had a few ideas about traits. Instead of choosing five traits that could be positive or negative, we should be required to pick positive and negative traits separately, like the "fatal flaws" from TSM. I also think every sim should have at least one "fear", because everyone's afraid of something. We already have hydrophobia, and "hates the outdoors" is similar to agoraphobia (fear of open places). Sims who are afraid of death would be unwilling to visit graveyards or go to funerals, germaphobes would freak out every time another sim sneezes or shows other symptoms of being sick and be unwilling to eat at restaurants or use public bathrooms, and arachnophobes would freak out if they saw a spider or felt one crawling on them.

M.y.s.t.A.n.g.e.l

21st Jan 2013, 07:42 AM

I'm gonna talk a little more about organisation features.

Like I said in this (http://www.modthesims.info/showthread.php?p=4044206#post4044206) post, I would really like some kind of ingame search tool, especially in build/buy mode [but wouldn't mind it in CAS], a place where I could type an item's name [or part of item's name] and get a result, that shall save me from pointless scrolling walking tour through kilometers of EP, SP, Store and CC content. I would die for something like that. Yep, short nerves. :p

I would also like collections in CAS, which would allow us to combine tops, bottoms, accessories and shoes [maybe even include hair and make-up], just like we can combine furniture for easier room decoration.

And last but not least - improved launcher. More efficient CC installation and uninstallation, better sorting in categories, clearer review of the items, search tool of course :D.. All in all, make everything better and easier to [un]install, find, sort, and view.. and have better player control and customisation of those features. Like some sort of improved and better game-connected CC Magic (http://www.modthesims.info/download.php?t=461888).

TheTimeVortex

24th Jan 2013, 08:50 AM

Okay, every time someone mentions "The Sims 4", my imagination runs wild. So I apologize for the length of this post. But here is my fictional preview of what I would like The Sims 4 to be like..
<truncated to avoid "quote monster">
Wow! :gjob: That's an awesome description! I really mean, totally awesome! It's ike, you were visualizing the way you'd like Sims 4 to be, and I fully agree and think you ought to hold onto that, and other people who like it should too, and maybe if enough people hope and it gets back to EA then they'd make it like that and we could all :beer: !!

(also it's 2am and I am totally confusing myself so if that seemed awkward, then I have no idea what I am doing but that was just EPIC :anime: )

DragonSaint

25th Jan 2013, 06:59 AM

I had couple more ideas:

1. Vermin: Remember in TS1 and TS2 when roaches would infest your lot if you had too much trash lying around the place, and your sims would freak out and start stomping on them? They should bring that and the exterminator back for TS4. There should also be other pests for the exterminator, such as rats and termites. And, if the infestation gets really bad, your sims will go stay in a hotel while their house is tented.

2. Construction: I think it would be cool if when you made changes to your lot in build mode contractors came to your lot to make the changes instead the changes being instantaneous. If you had a swimming pool put in, you would actually see them dig out the spot you chose for the pool. And if your sims' property is damaged by weather, fire, vandalism, or the previously mentioned termites, you'd have your sims call the contractor for repairs I don't know if you'd actually call a contractor for repairs; I'm just using the term "contractor" for lack of a better term.

Both the exterminator and the "contractor" would be actual sims living somewhere in the neighborhood and not NPCs. They should also bring back gardeners (also not NPCs) and houseplants that actually need to be watered.

Winterayne

25th Jan 2013, 07:42 AM

DragonSaint

25th Jan 2013, 09:06 AM

@dragon - I think the first idea is cool but i don't think they should added the 2nd options because its very annoying have to wait for something and for machinima/drama/shows makers, they don't have time to wait for everything to be done by a contractor

Okay, fair enough. I kinda figured it wouldn't be a very popular idea, and I can see how it could cause a lot of problems for some people. But I still stand by everything else, though. I'm sick of NPCs doing all the real jobs while sims just disappear in a rabbithole somewhere. And I still think "contractors" would be an interesting addition to the game; even if it is just to repair property damage. I'd like to see fire cause damage to the building itself, or heavy winds blowing shingles off the roof; requiring sims to call a contractor for repairs. They could even stay in a hotel if the damage is particularly extensive. But if people don't want to use the contractors they could always do the repairs themselves in build/buy mode. It might cost a bit more, though; just as it would if you replace a dishwasher instead of just fixing it. Or sims could just do the repairs themselves if their handiness skill is high enough.

In fact, maybe vacant homes could eventually become dilapidated, and sims could buy them cheap and fix them up to save money.

Also, while I'm on the topic of buying homes, I'd like to see sims be able to buy multiple residential lots and rent them out to other sims. But they had better treat their tenants right though; or else they could be labeled as slumlords and end up going to jail. Landlords will be responsible for hiring contractors and exterminators when needed. And, if a tenant is late on his/her payment, the landlord will have to go down to collect.

gege_sml

25th Jan 2013, 09:23 AM

Johnny_Bravo

25th Jan 2013, 10:22 AM

Curved walls, windows, fences, roofs and stairs. An option for shallow/deeper pools.

Lord Vetinari

25th Jan 2013, 03:40 PM

I'm deviding my ideas in categories.

Required (I won't consider buying the game without these):

- Better and more simulative AI/StoryProgression. No need to explain, we all know why TS3 SP sucks. By "more simulative" I mean that it should at least try to take in account a sim's skills, status and wants.

- Better pathfinding. Seriously, I can't stand any more sims spending an entire hour to decide who should pass through a door first, and then both take an entirely different route. Not to mention paths blocked by a feather on the floor, or similar stuff.

- Better build mode. Courrently you have to use cheats to build pretty basic stuff like L-shaped stairs, half floors, two floor high rooms with the light coming from the chandelier on the ceiling, etc.

- Options, options, options. A game like this requires customization. There are too many playstyles possibles, so EA's "one size fits all" style of balancing usually results in "one size doesn't fit anyone". Tax level, wether clothes and food can be bought at home or not, cost of public transport, how hard is to befriend/court someone, earn money, raise a skill, gain career levels, which creatures can appear in game, etc.

Very important (I'd like to have some of this in the game, but there's nothing mandatory):

- A world feature. Basically, Twallan's Traveller: you should be able to visit and/or have a vacation in any neighborhood installed, move your family without starting from scratch, keep old friends etc.

- Bring back the double relationship bars. Just because you like someone, doesn't mean that s/he likes you back. Only one bar for both sims oversimplifies things. Also, it would be great to have different bars for friendship and romance.

- Let players define rooms, not just by adding furniture. Since it seems that it's hard for the AI to distinguish between different people's rooms or the dining room from the living room or whatever, just let players, if they choose so, define the kind of room and maybe the ownership, so that we won't have to babysit our sims to avoid themn going in the toilet to read a book just because there's a chair, or prevent the dad from using the children's desk instead of the one in his study.

- Bring back dislikes and give more importance to a sim's tastes. For example, what's a favourite music genre for if you have the "listening to good music" moodlet no matter what you are listening to?

- A different way to define a sim's personality. There are things that every sim should have an opinion about, like good/evil, friendly/shy, likes hot/cold, believes in supernaturals or not, clean/dirty, etc.
Sims 3 style traits should be reserved for special things like the genius, special artistic talent, etc. Use sliders for common personality elements and give them to all sims, and a limited amount of optional traits for some personality quirks.
It would also be interesting if you could earn new traits, lose old ones and alter the sliders' values during the gameplay, because of things you do in your sim's life.

Good to have, but not that important

- A different way to handle clothes. Instead of havign fixed outfits, with slots like underwear, pants/skirt, shirt, jacket, hat, gloves, shoes, accessories you can have a larger amount of outfits just using a small starting amount of base clothes.
Also, if you could add conditions to clothes you can have your sim remove hat, shoes and jacket when he enters home, or something like that.

- Better, more user friendly CAW. Also, more flexible content: with bridges, retaining walls, far land, rails, etc. that are fixed objects instead of spline objects, you have to find workarounds when building your custom worlds.

- Diffenrent lot shapes, following the landscape and the shape of the road, like the new SimCity. It would also be great if you could expand the lot after you bought it, either towards unclaimed land or by buying an adjacent lot and joining the two.

I can't think about anything else, for now. Maybe I'll update the list later.

DragonSaint

30th Jan 2013, 09:07 AM

I really like the ideas of regions they're implementing on Sim City.. it represents well the reality of hundreds of people nowadays and I think it would be cool to have our Sims living in a city and working/studying in another

I was actually selected to play the beta for Simcity last weekend; and while it was fun, I saw a lot of room for improvement. The city areas were way too small. I only had an hour to build my city and in that time I easily used up more than half the space I had to work with. Once again I owe Mootilda an apology. Clearly she DOES know what she's talking about.

As far as regions being used in TS4, though, it would be nice to have the ability to move seamlessly from one neighborhood to another without having to sit through extensive loading screens. It's a real bitch trying to shoehorn new lots into existing neighborhoods every time an expansion comes out. And some lots just don't make sense in certain worlds. Movie studios, nightclubs, and venues from Showtime can seem really out of place in Appaloosa Plains or other small town worlds.

Sojourner

31st Jan 2013, 02:41 AM

I just thought of another must have item for Sims 4.

BOOB PHYSICS.

http://www.destructoid.com/boob-physics-comes-to-psp-will-totally-reinvigorate-system-113664.phtml

You have got to be kidding. Of all the suggestions I've read here, this is both the dumbest and the most distasteful. Not all of us want to be modeled as vehicles for our boobs. Only boobs care that much about breasts. For those of us who are NOT 8 year old males, I'd like to see more realistic body proportions - ACTUAL "boob physics" as opposed to the wishful fantasies of guys who just want to beat off watching their sims. Talk about creepy ...

Sojourner

31st Jan 2013, 02:57 AM

I

I hate to tell you this, but the Sims 4 will be online. You will have to log into EA's site to play the game, and you will save your game on their servers. They will charge you a monthy subscription fee to access your game, in addition to what you pay for the game.

Well that simplifies things for me. I just won't play anymore then.

Sojourner

31st Jan 2013, 03:41 AM

1) curved walls, foundations, etc.
2) BRIDGES, for **** sake! I should be able to get my car from the road to the garage without having to resort to Sims Magic, just because there's a pond or a pool in the way. And in that vein - RAMPS in place of stairs. People in wheelchairs can't handle stairs, just like cars can't. And sometimes a ramp is just more attractive.
3) Lots that actually snap to the road!
4) The ability to place lots that doesn't trap Sims on existing lots - for example, I can't put a lot ANYWHERE near the Goth mansion that doesn't end up trapping the Goths in their house. My experiences in that regard have made me reluctant to place a lot ANYWHERE using the in game editor lest future routing issues ruin the whole progression of the game for me once I'm 2 generations in to a dynasty.
5) COORDINATES/ORIENTATION information so that having once place a lot, I can accurately place it again later. C'mon, it isn't rocket science. All it takes is two corner coordinates and an orientation vector. Don't try to tell me the information doesn't exist in the game, I won't believe you.
6) The ability to shift a house from the library on a lot left and right and front and back. This is ridiculous. EA gives us about a dozen pre-designed houses, but they're all for 20x30 lots and there are only about 2 or 3 of those pre-defined in the game. If the house isn't oriented appropriately to start with you end up with side-ways houses (eg the front door is nowhere near the actual road/sidewalk) and nearly all of them are this way. Or you have to plop them in the middle of a larger lot and waste all that front yard space. I'd settle for snapping to the front, left, right, back. As long as we don't have to settle for plopping it in the middle and wasting all that space. Landscaping MATTERS to me.
7) stairs that WORK - it shouldn't be rocket science to get from upstairs to downstairs.
8) MUCH BETTER ROUTING. I am sick and tired of Sims who won't step past each other and dump their action cues because somebody - or something - is in the way. Especially when it's something tiny that THEY dropped there. For example, recently a kid Sim of mine wouldn't go to bed because SHE PUT HER OWN TEDDY BEAR in front of her bed. BULL****! I've seen reports of Sims trapped because a pet dropped a FEATHER in their way. GET SERIOUS!
9) FIX THE DADBLASTED BEAUTIFUL VISTA BUG! It's ridiculous that more than half the lots that come with SV can't have library houses installed on them without destroying the BV buff. Also, it's stupid that you can't modify the size of any of those lots - there's at least one that has space for enlarging the lot from 30x30 to 30x50, but doing so requires totally bulldozing the lot which (grrrr!) destroys the BV buff.
10) Stop letting sims starve to death or die of exhaustion because they're too stupid to go to sleep or feed themselves if there's a sprinkler around! Or anything else of this nature!
11) NO AUTONOMOUS ACTIONS for active Sims! Or for Sims that you designate shouldn't have them, when you're playing more than one family.
12) When I first heard about "Generations", I thought this might be the ONE EP/SP that I might be willing to pay for. Then I found out about autonomous scolding of parents to children. That can't be shut off. Needless to say, I don't want it any more.
13) Weather for those who want it; no weather for those who don't (I don't)
14) Frickin' rabbit holes! 'Nuff said.
15) The attraction system is royally screwed. Get rid of it or fix it.
16) I'm tired of the whole "woohoo" thing. If you want to watch your Sims getting it on, more power to you. *I* don't. It's enough for me to set a flag that says "trying for a baby" - I don't need to watch even a toned-down version of my Sims actually "woohooing". Jeez! If I cared about crap like that I wouldn't be playing a video game, I'd be rotting my brain watching so-called "Reality TV". Or actual porn.
17) I am sick and ***** tired of it taking 2 hours for my Sims to go to the toilet or take a shower. Bull**** EA! Get with it! I don't want to have to download a manager like Awesomemod or Twallen's Master Controller/Story Progression because you can't get your simulation sh** together. The name of the game IS "Sims" - SIMULATE for heaven's sake! Don't waste my time on the can just because you can't be bothered to actually simulate!
18) Better skins, sliders, facial construction, hair, beards, etc etc etc. For ****'s sake, this is 2013 (and counting). Why am I stuck with the same cartoonish avatars I've had access to in various games for over 15 years?
19) DO NOT TURN THIS INTO SECOND LIFE. Turn this into a non-optional online game and I guarantee you I can't be bothered. There's a reason I don't play Second Life. It's called "play to pay".
20) Fix the basement tool. There is no reason why basements shouldn't be exposable, eg connectable to S2 type "basements" or walk-in/out on their own.
21) FIX THE FOUNDATION TOOL. There is no reason why you shouldn't be able to have a graduated foundation. EG on a sloped lot, the foundation tool should allow for stepped foundations that CONNECT. So you don't end up with a 20 story high foundation at the bottom of the hill. Stairs, walls, and floors should be able to cross a foundation/wall boundary - and there should be tools that easily let us make sure that things are level going from one step to the next. Even if I can line levels up so that floors would be level, the game forces a no-go zone between foundations or wall tops and the surrounding terrains.
22) give us total control over raising/lowering ground levels so we can make sure that different floor levels are even on slopes. There's no reason why we should have to resort to constrainfloorelevation tricks.
23) Fix the stuff that makes you rely on skin-tight clothes. I'm sick of my Sims having 90% of their clothing options looking like they came out of Hookers 'R Us. If everybody dressed like that (which they don't, thankfully) it's no wonder there are so many celebrity beaver shots all over the Internet. If you WANT to dress your Sims like that, (again) more power to you. I'd rather have more options though.
24) More realistic and in-depth babies, toddlers, and elders. The sight of my elders in skin-tight black leather, looking disturbingly hot, really sets my teeth on edge (I had an elder that this was her "uniform" for work). As it is, babies look like insect larvae, toddlers are depressingly uniform and uninteresting (seriously, toddlers can't play with each other??? Does anybody at EA HAVE actual children, or, if their spouses have had them, actually ever SEE them for more than 15 minutes at a time?) and elders all look like stooped over adults. With creepily young faces. And the "age spots" EA provides look like leprosy.
25) In that vein, define actual business attire or let us define it during CAS. Recently my YA scientist was put in Hot pink short-shorts and a hot-pink super-short super-tight top as "appropriate" attire for her high-tech job. Not to mention the afore-mentioned skin-tight black leather attire for my elder going to her part-time job at the bookstore. *SHUDDER*
26) Graduated life-time wishes. If you're playing an elder Sim (which I do A LOT) LTW like "become the leader of the Free World" and "reach Level 10" of whatever profession are no longer appropriate.

There's way way more but I can't remember everything off the top of my head. I have to say I've been sooo disappointed in how sadly lacking S3 is compared to where I THOUGHT it would be after S1.

KittyCarey

31st Jan 2013, 06:09 AM

Mootilda

31st Jan 2013, 06:12 AM

Once again I owe Mootilda an apology. Clearly she DOES know what she's talking about.Apology accepted. I'm really sorry that I was right. ;)

DragonSaint

31st Jan 2013, 07:22 AM

I like rabbit holes for jobs anyway - I have to spend all day sat at a desk working at a computer and don't want to watch my sims do it thanks.

I agree that rabbit holes are a necessary evil. Some jobs are too boring to watch and others would be too difficult to include in the game otherwise. However, as I've said before I don't want to see anymore meaningless jobs. It's just ridiculous that our sims just disappear for seven or eight hours a day while all the real jobs are handled by NPCs.

Personally I think The Sims Studio dropped the ball when they made ambitions. Maids, repairmen, and cops should have also been made into professions. Hell, even the tattoos kinda suck. It would have been nice if I could have taken "accessory" tattoos and re-designated them to be treated as actual tattoos instead of accessories.

Also, I'd like to see terrains and textures become more three-dimensional. I've already mentioned that I'd like to see sidewalks that have actual curbs separating them from the street, but I'd also like to see grass that isn't just a terrain paint. Black & White 2 had grass that actually looked like grass; and that game came out LONG before Sims 3 did.

A few more ambient touches would be nice, too. I'd like to be able to hear the footsteps of my sims as they walk across hardwood and tile floors or through sand and dirt.

Sojourner

31st Jan 2013, 11:44 AM

I agree, SOME rabbit holes are probably inevitable - but a lot of things that are rabbit holes right now shouldn't be. The restaurants for example. And the way you "buy in" to businesses but then can't actually simulate actually RUNNING them. Home based businesses need to come back.

How about rental properties where you actually have to interact with your tenants?

as for these points:

10) Stop letting sims starve to death or die of exhaustion because they're too stupid to go to sleep or feed themselves if there's a sprinkler around! Or anything else of this nature!
11) NO AUTONOMOUS ACTIONS for active Sims! Or for Sims that you designate shouldn't have them, when you're playing more than one family.

I'm not sure why you think those are mutually exclusive or in conflict - the whole starving-to-death/exhaustion thing happens when your active sims drop whatever they're doing to run and play in the sprinkler. I HATE it when my Sim drops his or her whole action cue to run off and do something out of the blue, like call someone you've never heard of and who didn't appear in their friend's list before, yet they can't manage to feed themselves. I usually play with high autonomy but lately that's led to a lot of insane behavior on the part of my sims, including getting up in the middle of the night after I've put them to bed for no reason and then standing there with a blank look on their face until its time to go to work - with an empty energy bar.

The other thing that gets my goat about autonomy is wrapped around the whole attraction system. I'm really tired of the game breaking up couples in just a few minutes that it took me hours to put together. I really don't know how other people play this, but *I* like to take the time for my Sims to actually get to know each other and not have to ride herd on them or shorten the getting-to-know-you phase because the game is going to get one of my sims out of a sound sleep at 2:30 AM and send her over to some bare acquaintance's house for some simulated activity or other that ends up disrupting the story line I'd like to follow. If this game is really supposed to be teen-rated, then why is sexual activity treated so lightly and why is the game so perverse about it? Bed-hopping sims really put my teeth on edge. For those who want to play the game that way, that's fine, but I'd like to be able to turn that down to a simmer instead of the pot-boiler it usually is. They won't mention alcohol in the game (euphemisms aside, teens aren't stupid, they know what a "juice bar" is serving) but they've got it set up so Sims will actually SLEEP together before one can even ask the other out on a date!

And I've thought of a couple more wishes -

Give us back our custom music stations! There's way more to the music world than Kids, "Classic", "Pop" (that plays awful sounding stuff and no pop I'd actually care to listen to), "Indie" (ditto that), etc. Give me at least 3 custom stations. I'd like to have Big Band for my retirement home denizens, ragas or Bollywood hits for my Indian Sims, and MY type of Rock playing in my Sims homes. I understand why better music isn't packaged with the game - licensing and compression being of high concern - but I should be able to point the radio stations at my own play lists or directories/folders that are OUTSIDE the game. It would actually be a lot easier than the weirdness they're using right now. The system should let you set any of the default stations to play lists you set up, and it shouldn't matter whether it's MP3 or WAV. If they don't want to unpack the in-game music that's fine, keep using that weird semi-encrypted format - but let us set up in options pointers to folders where we keep copies of the music we want played. Not just the one "custom" channel they have now that's so temperamental we can't get it to work half the time (seriously, having to strip the tags off MP3s before they'll get played is ridiculous).

Get rid of Origins. I had to disable it because suddenly after I was forced to install Origins (I bought this game on Steam) my game would start crashing to desktop - I don't know what that piece of junk was doing but it would start running itself and every time it did my game would crash. The only reason I installed it was because somebody at EA "forgot" to fix CAW to run with the Steam version. CAP runs fine but not CAW. I'd rather give up CAW than have to run Origins, though at this point it doesn't look like I really need it running to run The Sims, their "uninstall" scare message notwithstanding.

And I'd like to see some more realistic goals in the game. I really don't need all my Sims to be at the top of their careers making gobs of money that I don't really have anything for them to spend it on anyway. Let's be a little more realistic about the money flow if we choose to be so. If I create an elder Sim he/she shouldn't be expected to follow the same life-paths as an adult or YA sim, nor should they be started out with nothing. I'd like to be able to play a grandparent scenario where the elders are retired school-teachers or firefighters or what have you and not necessarily retired at the pinnacle of those careers (which don't really exist ATM in Sims 3). I can do this with a mod but I don't feel something that basic should require a mod.

While we're at it, 16k for a single Sim as starting capitol, but only 20k for a family of 4 or 5???? SERIOUSLY? There isn't a home in town that the Funke's can move into on what they've got. I can build them a home they can afford, but only because basements are free in Edit Town. I'm pretty sure that was an oversight on the part of the developers since they cost mucho simoleans to dig in-game. I can build some odd looking homes super-cheap, but only by taking advantage of what amounts to a game bug, when the correct in-game scenario would involve renting a place until you could afford to buy.

And please please please PLEASE give us a whole game to start off. Let's not repeat the whole Sims 2 base-game plus EPs (only with reduced capabilities and less play-value) in Sims 4 yet again. Give us a base game that has more career options, allows for self-employment and home-based businesses, puts more options for generational interaction in-game THAT WE CONTROL so we aren't slaves to things like grounding teens for going to school, and better babysitters - babysitters are at a JOB and should never ever be sitting around watching TV on a different floor than where the baby/toddler is, or outside jumping around in the sprinkler. I have to lock up everything a sitter might play with or my baby goes into the red while the babysitter makes squeaky noises running through the sprinkler.

So far I haven't seen anything in the Sims Store, including EPs, that I feel like letting loose of the $10 worth of Sim Points or whatever they're called that I got for free, let alone adding any actual money into the kitty, especially when you only sell Sim Points in $10 increments. Beef up the offerings. I won't pay extra for pets when the game does things like let the horses walk through the house, routinely intersect with each other, etc. Fix the bugs BEFORE you release the EP. You know what I'd pay for? Sims in different historical periods, or in other countries (or both). And I DON'T mean vacation worlds.

This last has nothing to do with what I wish I could get in Sims 4, but I've noticed people have some really weird ideas about what constitutes cheating in this game. It's child's play to get all the money you want at startup - between kaching and familyfunds that's pretty well covered and probably explains some of the less than brilliant planning for funding at game startup. It's even easy to set your sims up with skills and what not. Too much of that takes all the fun out of the game, but that's just my opinion, for the way *I* prefer to play. But it kills me when I see people who think store items that confer super-buffs (like the stroller or the baby swing, or the iPod like things that let Sims boost skills at work while they're wearing them) are fine, but CC or codes that confer the same benefits are "cheating". That's not just pay-to-play, that's pay-to-win, and I HATE pay-to-win.

jesusismyairbag

31st Jan 2013, 04:20 PM

a llama told me the sims 4 is gonna require a constant internet connection!!

Mootilda

31st Jan 2013, 07:37 PM

Are you calling High Plains Gamer a llama?But I really am expecting EA to produce something lame, which forces us online, where they try to control us and how we play the game, and which is totally messed up.

Shadow99

31st Jan 2013, 08:29 PM

-The controlled ability to visit the Sim towns of other players AND interact with Sims within those towns including but not limited to, making a baby from a Sim from another town, receiving a gift, painting a picture from another town and bringing it back home etc.
-Large plantable indoor areas
-household bills related to environmental impact. (Solar panels, wind energy, energy efficient car and lights out more often decreases monthly bills.)
-expand impacts related to job loss
-add drinking alcohol and associated impacts

DragonSaint

31st Jan 2013, 08:33 PM

a llama told me the sims 4 is gonna require a constant internet connection!!

What is it with sims games and llamas anyway? Just once I'd like to see an actual llama in one of these games.

eskie227

1st Feb 2013, 12:13 AM

What is it with sims games and llamas anyway? Just once I'd like to see an actual llama in one of these games.

See what happens when you don't pre-order all the EPs?

DragonSaint

1st Feb 2013, 06:26 AM

See what happens when you don't pre-order all the EPs?

Actually, I DO pre-order all the EPs and feel like a complete jackass for doing so because most of the pre-order incentives are crap.

DragonSaint

1st Feb 2013, 10:52 AM

Okay, so I think I've made it pretty clear on how I feel about careers that have your sim just disappear for a number of hours and then just reemerge later with a paycheck, so I thought I would present a few ideas on how to make careers more meaningful:

Law Enforcement: Cops could patrol the town and respond to reports of public and domestic disturbances, vandalism, burglary, or children and teens out after curfew. If they're "evil" (assuming TS4 still uses traits in some way), they can accept bribes, plant evidence, or extort money from townsfolk.

Education: I think sims that are teachers should work in a way similar to how Peteran or Jacoban priests give sermons in TSM, but substitute popularity or fear with interest. It will be your sim's job to keep his/her students interested so they can learn the material. If the teacher gets too boring, students will fall asleep at their desks or act out by throwing paper airplanes, shooting spit wads, and otherwise being disruptive to the rest of the class. Also, rebellious sims will be more likely to act out. I imagine your teacher would have a few other responsibilities as well, such as grading papers or disciplining problem students. Teacher's would also have the option to hire teacher's aids.

Government: In this career track, your sims will be able to move up the ladder and eventually become mayor, although he'll have to be elected for the position. This would mean having a high charisma skill and winning over voters. Once elected, your sim will be responsible for things like sanitation, road maintenance, and setting tax rates.

Journalism: When your sims watch the news, wouldn't it be great if the anchorman/anchorwoman on TV was actually a sim who was in the journalism career? I'd also like to see reporters go around town with a film crew and interview different sims when they accomplish certain milestones or after certain events. Imagine if your sim fulfilled a Lifetime Wish and a news crew actually came by to interview him/her.

Criminal: Actually, it would probably make the most sense to do away with the criminal career as we know it. What's the point of being a criminal if you're still doing the usual nine to five every day? I think sims that are designated as criminals should have the ability to click on someone's house and rob it if no one's home, hot-wire a car, mug other sims, or rob banks, museums, or convenience stores. I suppose they could also eventually build gangs or even go into organized crime.

Generally, I'd like to see jobs focus less on promoting your sims all the way up some corporate ladder and more on having some kind of impact on the community.

Sojourner

1st Feb 2013, 02:22 PM

What is it with sims games and llamas anyway? Just once I'd like to see an actual llama in one of these games.

It's a running joke that started with the first SimCity. It may be based on the llama running gag by Monty Python.

Mootilda

1st Feb 2013, 04:19 PM

I believe that it's based on the llamas that one or more maxis employees passed every day on the way to work.

Sorry, no references. I just seem to remember an article by a maxis employee discussing llamas.

DragonSaint

2nd Feb 2013, 08:49 AM

I decided to do a little research to get to the bottom of all of these llama references. Unfortunately, all I've been able to find is speculation from various forums. All I know is the references started from the very beginning with Simcity, and will continue into the latest Simcity (I know this first hand because I played the beta. The medium speed is still called "llama speed" and probably won't be the only llama reference). Some boards say that llamas are Will Wright's favorite animal, others say that the llama was chosen in a company-wide vote as the unofficial mascot, and a few have even speculated that it's a Monty Python reference just as Sojourner suggested.

Now, just for the sake of getting things back onto the topic on hand, I thought I'd present another idea for Sims 4. Everyone keeps talking about how Sims 4 is going to be online. Well if that's the case Maxis damn sure better do it right. I read that Civilization V actually allows you to download and install mods while in game. I would certainly like to see this kind of functionality in a sims game. I would also like TS4 to be more moddable and easier to make mods for. Also, if TS4 has to be online, I'd like to be able to download sims and custom content in game, and maybe the game could populate my neighborhoods with sims that people have uploaded online in a way similar to how Spore works. I would certainly prefer that over having my neighborhoods populated with randomly generated sims that are dressed like complete idiots and have the most ridiculous names you ever heard. Seriously, where do they get these stupid ass names anyway?

Mootilda

2nd Feb 2013, 06:24 PM

When I think of Spore, I can't help but think about how people's universes were populated with all of those auto-downloaded penis-people. And you want that for Sims 4? Sigh.

crocobaura

2nd Feb 2013, 06:35 PM

When I think of Spore, I can't help but think about how people's universes were populated with all of those auto-downloaded penis-people. And you want that for Sims 4? Sigh.

It would be fun if they made sims like in Spore, and just sort of piece the different parts together, make them taller or shorter, and have them move according to the parts used in them. But I doubt they would do that. Anyway, the sim equivalent of the penis creatures would be sims with lots of bad CC on them.

Mootilda

2nd Feb 2013, 06:50 PM

Or perhaps the equivalent is:randomly generated sims that are dressed like complete idiots and have the most ridiculous names you ever heard.

heat33330

2nd Feb 2013, 09:16 PM

Have it actually work on Macs!!! I wish The Sims 3 had a neck so I could ******* strangle it!!! :faceslap:

DragonSaint

3rd Feb 2013, 05:06 AM

When I think of Spore, I can't help but think about how people's universes were populated with all of those auto-downloaded penis-people. And you want that for Sims 4? Sigh.

Okay, maybe auto-downloading sims isn't the best idea, but I would definitely like to be able to download custom content and sims while in game. Point is if they're gonna make us play online, then they had better give us some damn good online features. If they make us play online just because they're paranoid the game's gonna get pirated, then I'm gonna be so pissed.

MalcolmSims

3rd Feb 2013, 07:25 AM

For starters give Sims a standing posture that doesn't look awkward. One of the things that bug the hell out of me in the Sims 3 is the way Sims stand. They have their hip all slung out to the side and their head always slanted at an angle. It just doesn't look right.

Also for the music, please don't abuse the angelic choir. IMO that got really annoying really fast.

Smoother animations: In TS2 when a sim would, for example, grab something from the fridge and eat they would do it somewhat seamlessly. In TS3 it goes something like this: walk up to fridge, pause, grab food, pause, walk to chair, pause, sit, scoot chair, pause, eat. I'm not sure if that's the fault of the animation engine or the open world itself.

Also, bring back fears. Those added a little spice to the game.

And make traits actually mean something none of that "take extreme shower" or "eat cereal evilly" crap.

AJLOVER01

3rd Feb 2013, 07:39 AM

Don't know if this has ever been brought up but how about different walking styles, I'm getting tired of every sim walking the same way.

MalcolmSims

3rd Feb 2013, 10:43 AM

Don't know if this has ever been brought up but how about different walking styles, I'm getting tired of every sim walking the same way.

Agreed with you, right there. And speaking of walking, please get rid of that stupid robotic looking "fast walk" in TS4. Seriously, it looks really bad.

And then there's walking up and down the stairs. Seriously, how did we go from a smooth stair walking animation in TS2 to... whatever the heck that's supposed to be in TS3? But I guess that goes with my smoother animation complaint/suggestion...

DragonSaint

4th Feb 2013, 12:28 AM

A few more things I'd like to see:

Extreme Sports: I would like to see sims be able to wear rollerblades and skate anywhere. I'd also like to see skateboards and skate parks. It just doesn't make sense to me that they made a half-pipe for snowboarding and yet it never occurred to them to do the same with skateboards. Maybe sims could do other extreme sports as well, such as skydiving, hang-gliding, or bungee jumping.

Smarter Autonomy: I get so tired of sims performing the same actions over and over again. It would be nice to see sims make smarter choices on their own and perform actions that actually make sense for the given situation. No more telling ghost stories when there is no one around to hear them, or preparing a meal when another sim is already cooking for everybody, or sims constantly getting their eyes scratched out because they keep trying to bathe the cat. I would also like to see sims go out on the town on their own more often. And, most importantly, I'd like to see less instances of sims standing around doing nothing because the game can't decide what to do with them.

simzfreek89

4th Feb 2013, 11:03 AM

After reading this whole thread, I noticed there have been plenty of things I'd LOVE to see put into The Sims 4 (including weather and pets in the base game, better graphics, etc). Whether we get any of them or not is a completely different story, but I can't help but think of wanting to see these things/scenarios when I imagine how The Sims 4 is going to be *I've seen so many posts I'm not sure if any of these have been said, so if they have, then excuse my ignorance XD*:

I'm presenting my ideas in scenarios, so beware! I'm in a writing mood! LOL Yet there is a point to all of it! I'd like to see all/most of this in the base game, even though I'm pretty sure I won't get it. It's just my imagination going crazy. Just imagine this stuff happening in the Sims world, and see how it goes. Warning...it's a long story, but entertaining IMO. :rolleyes: :giggler:

- Our sim's name today is Steve. Say hello to him, wave, chat about jelly beans, what have you. He is a contractor, and every morning he has to be at the construction site at the crack of dawn so he can oversee houses/office buildings/etc being built. As he's just about ready to leave, he checks the weather, and he hears it's going to be a blustery, rainy day. He makes sure to bring an umbrella. His wife is up, and right as he's heading out the door, he gives her a peck on the cheek and yells goodbye from the car (this would be automatic if any household sims are nearby when he gets in the car) As he drives to the construction site of the day, he makes sure to stop at the red light, and also brake when a kid accidentally runs out into the street to fetch a runaway ball he and his brother was playing with. When he gets to the site, he parks the car and walks across the parking lot. He sees a coin on the ground and decides to pick it up, knowing that heads means good luck. Unfortunately, it's tails, and when he realizes this, he grumbles and puts it in his pocket anyways.

Little does Steve know that this little decision has changed his entire day.

He watches all the workers building the house, making sure they aren't slacking and makes calls pertaining to the project throughout the day. It's about noon when the sky gets dark, and thunder rumbles in the distance. The storm that was predicted is here, and that means construction needs to stop until it passes and it's safe to work again. Steve and the workers all huddle under an open air tent, shielding themselves from the rain that's pouring down. The wind picks up, making the tent completely pointless. Some sims start to shiver from the wind and rain, and a couple yell as if they're saying "WHEN IS IT GONNA STOP?!" and "THIS SUCKS!" :rofl: . Some decide to sit in their cars (if they came to work with one) and wait out the storm, which is what Steve decides to do. He reaches his car and tries to open the door. Locked. Makes sense, right? Well, Steve decides to unlock the car with his keys............which are in the car. He looks into the window and sees them, and screams in frustration. He calls home to see if his wife has a spare set. Luckily she does, but she's in the middle of a book club (or any other club for that matter...like a Llama Appreciation Club :llama: :up: ), and can't leave for another hour. He waits out the storm in another car, and while waiting, he chats with the worker that's in the car with him.

Suddenly the wind picks up, and it almost seems like a hurricane because of how strong the winds are. Then there's a loud crack...and then another....and then across the street, we see a tree falling down from the wind. It's a pretty decent sized tree, and it blocks the road.........and crushes Steve's car in the parking lot (thanks to the unfortunate parking spot he chose **side note: That could be another form of death....natural disaster.....the ghost could be white with blue, yellow, green in the center, with leaves, wind waves, etc particle effects in the middle to represent it :cool: ). Immediately after the tree falls, the rain and wind stop, and the sun comes out, birds chirping and a rainbow appears in the sky. Steve sees his car and cries. The workers laugh at the car, and make jokes about it (but only with each other, not in front of Steve, or they'd be out of a job!) Cars are blocked from the road thanks to the tree, and a couple of sims get out of their cars to point and yell at the tree for being in the way. A couple of those sims are pretty angry, and two of them start a yelling match in the middle of the road, with other cars honking their horns. One sim waiting in his car sees the argument, and yells out the window the Simlish equivalent of "FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT!". Shortly after, we see a crew truck come by to work on removing the tree. They remove the tree from Steve's car, which is now just junk, and pull him off to the side to ask a few questions and other random stuff. As this is happening, a hobo walks by and sees the former car sitting there. Seeing the potential for valuables or scrap metal, he starts picking apart the car, and ends up pulling off the passenger door. (the crushing making it easy to pull it off) He laughs as he runs off with it, and Steve turns around just in time to see the hobo disappear. He tries to start chasing him down, but it's pointless. Needless to say, Steve's day just got pretty bad.

After calling the wifey and explaining the crazy situation, he asks if she'll pick him up from work today. She says yes, and he calls for a tow truck. When one comes, the tow man laughs at the crushed car, despite Steve's pained face. It comes time to pay for the tow service, and when he reaches to get his wallet, he realizes it's not there. He checks all his pockets and the ground, but it's nowhere to be found. He calls the wife AGAIN to check for the wallet at home, but alas, it's not there. He immediately thinks of the hobo (maybe in a thought bubble with a '?' beside it :D ), and cries again. The tow man just stands there, hands out and waiting for the moolah, and Steve asks his wife to bring some money. She gets there and, instead of just giving the man his money, decides to FLIRT with him and try to get out of paying for the service. The tow man falls for it, and waives the charge, continuing to flirt with the wife in front of Steve. Steve tells the two of them to quit flirting, but they keep doing it. Suddenly his wife gives him the keys to her car and says that she's gonna go spend some time with Mr. Tow Man, and they both drive off together, leaving both Steve and the crushed car in the same spot. Steve just stands there in shock, not knowing what just happened. He then drives home in his wife's car, but just as he's almost home, he gets a flat tire. He gets out of the car and screams at the sky, (screaming at us, the player lol), and changes the tire. Just as he's getting back into the car, another car speeds by and splashes water from a nearby puddle right onto Steve, soaking him to the bone. He just sighs and grumbles all the way home, and continues when he enters his house. Just before he does though, he pulls out the 'unlucky coin' he picked up that morning, yells at it, and throws it off into the distance, realizing it was the source for his terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. :jest:

I could probably go all day with that, but I'm tired, and it's late here, so I stopped there. Now it doesn't have to be a contractor job or anything that specific, but I would be thrilled if any of that stuff happened in the next Sims sequel. I mean yes, it'd suck for the Sim, but when has that stopped a lot of us before, right? :p I'd like it if just a little thing like picking up an unlucky coin could ruin your sim's day/life, and vise versa for a lucky coin. It's similar to the Lucky trait I guess, but I'd like it if it was more extreme.

That, and I really want to see a hobo do random stuff like stealing crushed car doors and giggling as he runs away with it.....and later having a sim remember the hobo as a culprit for something. :anime:

simzfreek89

5th Feb 2013, 09:55 AM

Why do I get the feeling I killed the thread with my novel of a scenario ^^ up there? :faceslap: :jest:

eskie227

5th Feb 2013, 10:08 AM

Why do I get the feeling I killed the thread with my novel of a scenario ^^ up there? :faceslap: :jest:

I would not yet draw that conclusion. But I'm only up to chapter 3.

simzfreek89

5th Feb 2013, 10:19 AM

I would not yet draw that conclusion. But I'm only up to chapter 3.

Better make sure to grab some tissues for Chapter 4! It's a real tearjerker! :cry: ;)

DigitalSympathies

5th Feb 2013, 11:21 PM

I adore that mini-novel up there! My main wishes are for traffic similar to SC5, in which they stop at lights and stop signs and don't drive through each other. Parking lots could have templates (6 cars, 12 cars, 18 cars) that have preset animations for your sims to turn into and park in.

Mr. Newbie

5th Feb 2013, 11:28 PM

- Natural disasters and minor weather included with the base game. I'd like tornados and such to come about and make my little Sim's lives harder. Oh, and the option to turn them off.
- No more rabbit holes. Granted, The Sims 4 will probably be more comp-imploding than The Sims 3, but I'd still like there to be much less rabbit holes then there were.
- More than one neighborhood post-game installation. Riverview might've tided this, but The Sims was released in the early 2000's, so I'll leave it there. The Sims 2 had THREE neighborhoods. The Sims 3 started with one.
- Sims that are not boring and wooden. Every premade-Sim in The Sims 3 is either single, happily married and "looking to settle", or boring as watching a documentary on pants zippers.
- A sequel to The Sims 2 timeline. I'd like to see more non-wanted Lothario children than the Martinez family cloned x 1,000,000.

And that's all, really.
(The Martinez family. http://sims.wikia.com/wiki/Martinez_family. And yes, at this point, I think The Sims 3 has SEVENTEEN EA-developed towns, but most of them are as bland as Sunset.)

MalcolmSims

5th Feb 2013, 11:39 PM

Maybe a little minor but it kinda bothered me how cars phased through objects. I know it may produce routing problems and whatnot, but I think I'd like to see car accidents. It's a silly idea, but it would be hilarious to watch Sims get out of their cars after a wreck and fight each other because they both thought they had the right of way or watch your Sim get plowed because he decided not to look both ways before crossing the street.

DragonSaint

7th Feb 2013, 06:37 AM

Why do I get the feeling I killed the thread with my novel of a scenario ^^ up there? :faceslap: :jest:

I'm still quite invested in this thread; I just haven't had any ideas worth posting. Your "novel" is actually a pretty interesting read. It's nice read something a little different once and a while, especially from someone who actually took the time to read the other posts. Couldn't help but notice that your lead character was a contractor. Did you get that from the post I made about contractors? If so, I'm glad at least one reader liked the idea; it didn't seem to go over so well when I suggested it.

baloon

7th Feb 2013, 09:33 AM

There's already so many thing to do in Sims. I don't really know what can be add in sims 4. Maybe better architecture? (However i already can't decide what to buy ;))

simzfreek89

7th Feb 2013, 07:24 PM

I'm still quite invested in this thread; I just haven't had any ideas worth posting. Your "novel" is actually a pretty interesting read. It's nice read something a little different once and a while, especially from someone who actually took the time to read the other posts. Couldn't help but notice that your lead character was a contractor. Did you get that from the post I made about contractors? If so, I'm glad at least one reader liked the idea; it didn't seem to go over so well when I suggested it.

Well, in all honesty I just thought of a random occupation off the top of my head, but I DO remember the suggestion (it was with the workers coming out to actually build the building you made in real time, right? I think that was it lol) . That might've helped in my thought process. It really isn't a horrible suggestion....EA just has to execute it right....and that is where I think the problem is. Their track record isn't all that reliable. :p I think a way to make that work (without being time consuming and yet still being enjoyable to watch) would be to have the building all made, and then the workers come, but build the lot extremely fast, almost like fast forwarding, but not entirely XD. It could take like...30-sim mins for a simple house, and for a mansion-like house, about 2 sim hours. I can just imagine it though, them rushing around, hammering, and little dust clouds are everywhere, hiding the loading objects and such. :giggler: I mean, it wouldn't be TOO realistic, but for those that want more realism, it would add something. And if you don't want the feature, you can disable it in the options menu, and you can have an instant house, and the construction career would make up for it in some other way (I can't think of a way atm :rofl: )

Lonelywillow

8th Feb 2013, 01:07 PM

I think what Sims4 could really benefit from would be difficulty settings.
A game played on "hard mode" could mean you start with less money, less or more complicated traits, bad luck, a boss who hates that Sim, higher rent/college costs, natural catastrophes, alien abduction etc.
A "Easy mode" on the other hand would give more Simoleons, a big group of friends,
promotions you didn't have to work hard for, always nice weather.
That way you could play the same Sim several times, but it would always be different depending on which setting you choose.

Another idea would be an "adult setting". Some Simmers would love proper names for things like "nectar" or "whoohoo", teenage pregnancies, accidents, sickness. Others don't. Why not give us the choice?

That's what I've noticed most while reading the posts on "University"; Simmers want the choice to play the game the way they imagine, not the way that EA thinks they have to make the game so as not to offend anyone.

dressingupskittles

8th Feb 2013, 01:29 PM

Okay, so I'm really hoping for all of this in the base game, but sadly, I don't think that's going to happen. *shakes head sadly*

I'd love, love, love a university/college right in town. I'd also really like that university not to be a rabbithole. Oh, and speaking of rabbitholes--I wish they'd all disappear in the Sims 4! They annoy me so greatly. :D But, even if they don't go away, I'd like a little more interactions inside them.

I definitely want more neighborhood choices. I've been playing Sunset Valley and tried to download Riverview but lost interest, and I'm SO bored of both of them! Why not give us something interesting like an Australian rainforest? How about the Sahara? Come on, Electronic Arts, you can be more creative than that!

Now that my ideas have been shouted from a soapbox, I want to say, I really agree wih LonelyWillow. It'd be a great idea if we could have a hard mode and an easy mode, and if we could turn on or turn off adult settings. It would honestly make a Simmer's life so much easier. What do you guys think?

-Simmy Silly Holly
Check out my 100 Baby Legacy!
http://www.100babylegacy.wordpress.com

Lonelywillow

8th Feb 2013, 02:20 PM

Another idea: I think rabbit-holes should be a choice as well.
Sure, my Sim may have a job that is not much fun to watch (like sitting at a desk all day), but what if I want to anyway?
Maybe it would be pointless for me as a player to follow my Sim into the cinema if all he does is watch a 2 hour long movie, but what if I want to use that as an opportunity to flirt with another Sim or bother the other movie goers?
A day at school would probably be boring, but I'd like the chance to see my Sim kid during recess where he plays and interacts with other kids.
So for Sims4 I'd still like rabbit-holes to exist, if I can see what's happening inside them whenever I choose. Half-rabbit-holes, so to speak. ;)

DragonSaint

10th Feb 2013, 10:50 AM

I think what Sims4 could really benefit from would be difficulty settings.
A game played on "hard mode" could mean you start with less money, less or more complicated traits, bad luck, a boss who hates that Sim, higher rent/college costs, natural catastrophes, alien abduction etc.
A "Easy mode" on the other hand would give more Simoleons, a big group of friends,
promotions you didn't have to work hard for, always nice weather.
That way you could play the same Sim several times, but it would always be different depending on which setting you choose.

I don't think conventional difficulty settings such as "easy" or "hard" would be a good fit for the sims series. I would hate to sacrifice something like alien abductions, bad luck, or more complicated traits and have nice weather all the time just so my sims start out with more money and pay less on rent. I'd rather have the option to choose and adjust the features I want individually.

Lonelywillow

10th Feb 2013, 07:19 PM

I don't think conventional difficulty settings such as "easy" or "hard" would be a good fit for the sims series. I would hate to sacrifice something like alien abductions, bad luck, or more complicated traits and have nice weather all the time just so my sims start out with more money and pay less on rent. I'd rather have the option to choose and adjust the features I want individually.

Well, you're right, it would again be too restrictive. Maybe what we need is sliders and check boxes on more of the content. Aliens: Yes or No? Crime: Yes or No? Age of your Sime before he/she can have babies/woohoo?
It would be hard to implement, especially as we can count on the programmers to forget the most important options (like turning off zombies in Supernatural), but this will be a completely new game, so there is a chance they can get it right.

Sojourner

10th Feb 2013, 07:23 PM

I don't know what would be so hard about it. All they have to do is download Twallan's mods and stea... errr, MODEL the new software on that basis ...

Artimis

10th Feb 2013, 07:34 PM

A way for sims from previous games to be imported into sims 4 then we could have are favorite sims in the new game without trying to remake them in cas.

quietone04

11th Feb 2013, 07:02 AM

I would want the CAS system to be like it was for the sims 2. It only needed to load all of your clothes and hairstyles once per game, then whenever you went back to it, you didn't have to wait for everything to load all over again. It made changing my sims appearance so much faster, and more fun.

lisfyre

11th Feb 2013, 05:00 PM

Worn or broken, similar to TS2 Uni dorm furniture. I haven't seen furniture damaged by pets yet.

Have furnishings degrade over time and have the option to replace or buy a new piece of furniture. Just like when your sim over repairs their computer from constant hacking and being caught. Eventually they get a menu to either Repair, Call a Technician or Replace. I'd love that.

Another idea: I think rabbit-holes should be a choice as well.

Great idea!! Not everyone wants non-RH's. I'm one of them. I get that certain professions/careers are interactive - PI, Stylist, Interior Designer, Firefighter, etc., but if my sim is a CEO of a mega corporation, going to work with him/her and attending meetings would not be on my list of things to do. That is boring. Besides, what's the attraction? EVERYONE LOVES SIMS 2 and how much we MISS this, that and the other thing. In Sims 2 we couldn't go to work with our sims let alone SEE where their work venue was. They went off the lot and came home at the end of the work day. Unless of course, they had a home business like a bakery, deli, restaurant, clothing store, etc.,

Please EA, make sure we have an OFB style capability because we need it!!

Mr. Newbie

11th Feb 2013, 11:43 PM

You know what else I want? A magic expansion that has a TRUE Magic Town. Moonlight Falls doesn't count. Although it is probably one of my more favorite Electronic Arts developed towns.

dbland3

12th Feb 2013, 05:59 AM

I want to be able to join up worlds. So when EA bring out a new world, I want my sims to be able to drive down the road to get to it.

EXACTLY!

This has been one of the greatest limitations of the game, IMHO. There is little to no openess and connectivity between towns. Opening up a connection between two to three cities would change the dynamics of the game and give much more exciting gameplay opportunities. I hate that I can't grow up in Riverview or Sunset Valley and then simply move to Bridgeport and still be able to con tact my friends and family back home - or visit better yet. It's a shame that when I packed up my wife and myself and started anew in Bridgeport, my character's entire family was wiped out and he was a virrtual orphan without even memories of his family. That's ridiculous.

I would also love to see the following:

** MORE EMPHASIS ON FINANCIAL ASPECTS! **

- This is the BIG one for me. As I said when we had this same conversation before
the development of SIMS 3, we neeed many more financial transactions such as

Savings and checking accounts for family members
The ability to take out loans
Banks
Safety Deposit Boxes to store snd keep deeds to commercial property
A rental property system perhaps
Financial invetments (e.g. stocks, bonds, and mutual funds)
The ability to tranasfer financial assets to others
Inheritances (wills)
A way to keep individual family member's fundfs separate if desired

These would add SIGNIFICANTLY to the fun and realism of game play!!

- Bring back features of TS2's Oopen for Business and let us start our own businesses

- Bring back slow dancing for goodness sake. That's a no brainer!

- Bring back the more realistic looking Sims of TS2

- Bring back the natural emotion and affection for babies & toddlers. In TS3 a child
can literally grow up a stranger in his own home.

- Expand community interactiveness and place more bodies in public gatherings and
venues. Not so many rabbit holes.

- Enable aging in stages between adulthood and olg age - maybe a "young, middle age,
and late adulthood" stage instead of going from glam to glum in a single bound. It's
downright depressing.

- Include health states, even common medical conditions in the game with bonuses
or incentives for remaining healthy

- Add more careers - particularly financial careers (banker, brokers, fund managers)

- Stop having cars drive through each other. More realistic speeds

- Have more interactions with the environment such as the ability to sdwim or fish
in any body of water, or to put fish in a pond or lake.

- Stop the ridiculous pathing actions. I should bne able to set my child down in the
room and not have to travel to the front door to do so.

- Add variable controlds to the rate of skill level building and lifetime rewards as they
finally did with lifespans.

If EA addressed even half of these additions into TS4 I would personally not only buy
every EP they came out with, but would buy them for my best friends as well!