The Sims 4 — Where Did It All Go Wrong?

The first sims game I ever played was The Sims 2. I'll admit I've never played The Sims [1], but I've grown up with The Sims 2 to 4.

When the Sims 4 first came out in 2014, I wasn't interested, at all. I loved The Sims 3, despite its bugs and rushed packs (Into the future...) and I still do. This game will forever have a place in this gamer's heart!

The reason I finally left the Sims 3 to go to 4 was the release of The Sims 4: City Living. I thought the apartments looked fun and I loved the fact you could collect little My Sims figurines. (Violet was forever my favourite, and I loved her sister Poppy! 'My Sims Agents' was my go-to sims Wii game!)

Before I start calling the game out on why people are going back to The Sims 3 (and maybe even The Sims 2!) I do want to mention a few features which I do like compared to past games.

You own pets and don't control them.

While I found it weird at first, I love being able to have a cat or a dog and not have to worry about controlling their actions as well as my sims. It's a feature I do wish The Sims 3 had, especially when my pets would be wide awake during the night, slowing down the time skip.

Moving individual rooms in build mode.

While I do enjoy building, I certainly don't love it; but being able to pick up a section of the build and move it to a better location has been a massive time saver.

Two features are enough, right? Anyway, time for the flaws.

The Sims Team Don't Listen to Their Audience.

It has taken six years for the Sims Team to turn around and say that they are finally looking into adding more skin tones, and even now I'm not holding my breath for anything too impressive.

Instead of bringing out content that simmers have been waiting six literal years for, they release packs that people don't want, or bring nothing to the overall game. Take their latest games pack as an example. The Sims 4 Star Wars: Journey to Batuu. Not one person asked for that, and instead of fixing many bugs, we get a Star Wars game which probably doesn't have much replayability. (I say that as a guess, I, like many other simmers have made the choice to not buy it due to being so disappointed in the creators.)

I mentioned bugs above, so many features in the game do not work or cause regular frustrations where you have to keep reloading the game to fix it.

One that comes to mind, that I have to deal with on several households is the Fabricator. Not only is it programmed to give even the highest skilled sims issues (pulling them into the machine, or just breaking down with zero upgrade options to fix this) but when your machine does throw a fit and cause you to scrap the project, it won't give you back the materials you used.

For example, I tell my sim to fabricate a bookcase using the Sage Green Dye, I have plenty of bits and pieces and I also happen to have a total of 3 Sage Green Dyes in my sims inventory. The machine breaks, I scrap to get my items back and restart the annoying process, and I'm unable to make the green bookcase because 1- The Sage Green Dye never came back into my inventory and 2- Despite having 2 spares, they've disappeared too.

The only fix? Saving and going to either edit world or the main menu and reloading the household. I one did this 3 times within 10 minutes because the fabricator kept having a fit for my sim who had level 8 fabrication skill.

It sucks because I really enjoy this skill, despite having an option to upgrade or even a simple, "this machine cannot fuck this sim over because they have reached level 6 fabrication skill,"

Modders Should Not Have to Deal With Performance Issues.

The number of times I've seen people saying how modders are having to create mods to fix bugs and other issues instead of making fun content as they should be is honestly disappointing. It is not the consumer's job to fix the creators issues. You wouldn't go to a store, buy something for it to only be faulty and feel as if you have no choice but to fix it yourself because the maker won't.

Stop Breaking Things With New Packs.

The Sims 4: Seasons is released, hooray! (More like 'about time' but that's another story...) and since it's seasons, they've changed how gardening works to a degree. So plants will now only grow/change at 5 am so long as you are in that area? Sure, not a problem. But now I'm in Granite Falls from The Sims 4: Outdoor Retreat to work on my herbalist skill, and I can't harvest unidentified herbs in the forest when I'm in a different part of the world asleep... But now I've stayed a night awake there and headed back, there are no new plants to harvest at my tent/hut because I wasn't there at 5 am...

It works until it really doesn't.

Toddlers, Children, and Elderly sims are Boring as Fuck.

I hate how fragile the elderly sims become. The healthy active sims suddenly become fragile and unable to throw a basketball for more than 5 seconds.

Toddlers are just, well, blegh; and children have barely anything interesting to do.

Because of this, it's come to the point that I just play a single housed sim, usually a young adult, and have ageing turned off. The second they end up with kids because I make the mistake of thinking "maybe this time, they won't become a bore," I lose interest and have to start from scratch with someone else. (I'm too caring to even consider trying to get the children taken away. I can't even sell puppies and kittens when I tell myself this sim will be a breeder!)

Loading Screens and Small Worlds.

I'm putting these two together because I'm certain the Sims Team have explained why they've done both of these. If I'm being honest, despite any explanation I still hate the damn things.

Even though I can still visit other worlds with that sim, it feels like a kick to the gut to see I've spent that much money on a world with so little value.

And the loading screens? I hated them in The Sims 2, never once missed them in The Sims 3, and it was one of my main turns offs from moving to the 4th version.

I'm going to stop here, otherwise, I will continue my rant overnight, (the lack of usable cars I'm definitely avoiding starting on) The Sims 4 for me is fun for a short while, and then it becomes repetitive and boring. I can only make things slightly interesting by doing essentially the same thing on each household.

I have recently gone back to The Sims Medieval, and love how interesting the game continues to be. I love playing this as a change, and I'm currently working on reinstalling my Sims 3 games (I'm having a few issues, but I will get back to that amazing game!)

How do you find The Sims 4? Do you feel the same? Or have you somehow found a way to make it continuously enjoyable?