More Awesome Than You!

I think we should make a topic that lists every annoyance and gameplay problem so that -if- Pescado and other modders here want to comb through what needs to be stomped like a bug, they have a handy list of varied problems and shit.

I will comb through more tonight and start a list of problems. Anyone have issues they found?

Kill the stupid tutorial tips.

God, yes. Kill the tutorial tips with nuclear fire.

• An option to turn off the tutorial tips would be nice, indeed.
• A curbstomp to musical chairs, i.e. the Sims switching chairs repeatedly in order to be closer to each other when talking. Close is good, switching chairs eight times only to end up where you started is ridiculous.
• Better control of townie population: I am seeing the town being filled up with a lot of elders, but that's not going to help me much when I need to find a potential wife for a sim. Randomization would be nice -- let's see some members of all age groups move in as family units, maybe.
• Speaking of townie control, I would also like to not have very overweight being the apparent default for townies spawning. I know it's probably realistic in some parts of Murrica, but...
• An easy way in-game to flag clothing as inappropriate for random spawning on townies (if that already exists, I can't find it at least). I really don't need to see the sombrero of shame or wassitscalled on every other townie.
• An option to turn off the sparkles on foods and flowers would be nice. That really annoys some players, I've noticed.
• Less queue-dropping. Get up at 3am to complain that you need to pee? No. Go pee, you idiot.
• A food spoil mood. I understand that food rottage is no longer dependent on the fridge quality, but seriously, whatever happened to freezing food? I want to be able to cook for a few days ahead.
• Cut down on gardening time. It can't take -all- day to weed and water eight plants.
• Better choice of bathrooms. If I have two bathrooms you don't need to walk in on your kid every damn time he takes a bath, you perv.
• No matter how energized my kid is when he goes to school, he never manages to meet the attend school while energized requirement for a higher grade.
• Can't quite tell yet if this is required, but I bet it is: A mod to prevent sims from reading the same book over and over.
• Dafuq? Get married to boyfriend, name does not change for either?
• Upon death, inventory needs to be transferred to a living relative. Burning all remaining aspiration points on potions only to have them disappear into the urn kind of sucks.
• Guy sees his dad and friend die, and grieves for two days. Wife is at work when mum and friend dies and thus does not grieve. Sense, there is little.
• The coffee machine needs give a higher energy boost. At the moment it costs more energy to make and drink coffee than you gain from doing it.
• Gardening is a pain in the backside. We really need a garden sprinkler or the like, so we can at least water a bunch of plants at one time. As it stands, the only way to keep gardening sane is to splice pretty much everything into one tree.
• Socialising at work builds social need but does not introduce you to people. We seriously needs some kind of fix in this regard, particularly for the kids in school.
• Excercise away and a female sim will get ripped and toned -- and stay fatter for every day. There has to be something wrong in the formula somewhere. Males stay thin -- and women get fat no matter what they do. A sixpack over a belly the size of a hippo looks very odd.

On the wishlist:

• Normal careers. A mod along the lines of Nraas' career mod for Sims 3, that allows people to create custom careers. I don't want to be a rocket scientist or a space pirate, I want to be an accountant.
• A mod to slow down time. I want longer days, longer nights. Too accustomed to playing with Nraas' time slow thing, days go past before I know what hit me!

That's it from me at the moment. Will edit to add if I notice other blatant infractions. On the whole though, less horribly broke from start than I feared.

a way to kick other sims out of conversations would be nice too.  trying to chat up a potential husband/wife at the bar and bam! 5 other sims suddenly invite themselves into the conversation! Suddenly flirting attempts previously well received are creating awkward conversations.  Less cockblocking!

Bought the game this morning.  Installed it through origin. Cant activate it because origin is offline and no matter what I do it wont work. ???

There is a way to turn off the tutorial from SimsVIP (http://simsvip.com/2014/08/26/the-sims-4-turning-off-the-in-game-tutorial/).

Not having the ability to delete CC / recolours from inside the game.

- The tutorial. 'Nuff said.
- The stupid jingles for everything. Emotion stings have already been nuked by a mod, but loading a lot also plays a really irritating sting.
- The maid barely wears a maid's uniform. Most of the time she wears generic clothing, though she randomly showed up in a more traditional maid's outfit with apron.
- As said above, the maid sometimes never shows up.
- We need a gardener NPC. My Sim's relatively small garden takes way too many hours every day to maintain. Weirdly I noticed a gardener Sim (with appropriate uniform) tending to the neighborhood allotments, so there's no reason why there couldn't be an identical NPC for hire.
- Every time you load the home lot, you are charged for the maid (she supposedly visits while you are out) even when there is absolutely nothing to be cleaned.
- When sims get married, the spouse doesn't move in nor do they change their last name. In fact, there is no way to change a Sim's name whatsoever.
- You can't plan a party in advance, like in The Sims 3. Once you set one up it begins immediately.
- Relationships no longer recognize step-family, like in The Sims 3. My Sim married Katrina Caliente, but apparently her daughters Nina and Dina aren't family to him (now there's an opening for a story...) Also half-siblings are considered full-blooded brothers/sisters for some inane reason.
- No biographies for Sims!
- You can't view any information about a Sim while they are at work or school!
- Random Sims cockblocking when my Sims are flirting with each other.
- Despite the allegedly improved AI, Sims will watch TV/play a game/learn a skill until they drop.
- My game crashes when travelling if the simulation speed is higher than 1.
- A skill journal to keep track of all the skill level unlocks would be great. I can't remember what special abilities they have earned.
- A Sim can't Change Appearance using a mirror if it's over a sink...
- What do you do with all those Frog terrariums? They take up a full tile each and can't be stacked.

Also, do any pirates know how to unlock the bonus content, or is that not possible at this stage?

My geek sim was sad because I didn't throw her a birthday party.  I never throw birthday parties for my sims - the last one I threw was years ago, in TS2, for Johnny Smith the last time I restarted Strangetown.  I only threw that party because it's unavoidable if you want to play the Smith family.

Can we have a stomp on that moodlet, I don't see why a geek sim (who doesn't know anyone outside her household anyway) should be sad because I ~didn't~ invite a ton of strangers around to help her celebrate her birthday.  It seems to me that not having strangers about is a reason to be happy.

Get rid of the white outlines on mouse over and being forced to walk like a gorilla when slightly tired.  (Found a mod for the first thing!)

I also agree there is a need for generating more random townies - townies seem skewed toward old and fat.

For people who want to build more than play - unlock all the build/buy career objects without having to play your sim to the top in every career.

Need Octagonal roofs

Daimon wants a mod to slow down time:
Read this at Nraas (don't shoot) there appears to be some time control built in:
Cheat Code:  (following is a swatch of the post there)
"clock._set_milliseconds_per_sim_second X where X is a number of milliseconds.
Setting it to 1,000 makes each sim minute take one real world minute, which seriously ridiculously unbalances the game, but still.
Keep in mind this isn't EA stealing a modder's ideas, the ability to set the clock rate was available in every game somewhere in the game files, it's just this time there's actual proper PC game console commands and this is one of them. It's probably available as a result of relativity.   Also I do not know what the default value is. Sim minutes are a tiny bit longer than real seconds this time."

First thing I did was turn off the tutorial using Origin but you have to exit the game to do it and cannot turn it back on on-the-fly for someone who wants it.  A possible issue here is that this method requires using Origin - which may not sit well with all players.

Am I the only one that wants the repo man back my sims can't afford these out outrageously high bills. I understand its more real to life but I am about not to care if the water and power get shut off. They don't make enough in the jobs to afford to live anywhere apparently

Actually, that sounds hilarious.

Apparently the idea is that you need to go out and collect stuff to sell in order to be able to save up funds to move. I managed, but it took three weeks before my sim couple was earning enough dough to pay the rent and start getting better stuff. Some adjustment may indeed be viable.

In order of importance:

1) Cut out universal time, and allow for rotational play (the good way). This could be done in several ways. One is to have a global save file where all the sim info for your played households is stored (relationships, etc.), and upon saving a household, only the info for the sims in that household would be changed, thus stopping the advancement of the other sims. This would allow you to have one save file for each household, and a global save for the stats that need to be retained. Good enough for me, I think.

2) The randomizer in CAS. Either the detailed mode needs to be included in the randomize options, or we need actual sliders/numbers to help adjust these details.

In the interest of not wasting my time, I have not played the game long enough to uncover any other travesties that might exist.

I can live with most parts of the game after one day of having it - mostly it is dropping his "old" S3 ways to handle things. That means: no I spent not much time with it yet, and did not try to get some sexy time so far.

But, what I yearn for is a way to get rid of this fucking origin crap client, the way awesomemod made it possible to leave the disc in the box.

Fix the "headlineeffects off" cheat. EAxis broke the damn thing. It hides the speech/thought bubbles fine but not the plumbs(even though it says it's supposed to hide the plumbs). It also hides things I need - like pop ups for Sim names, plant states, meal info and others.

No music in build/buy/CAS.

Teens can no longer live on their own; an elder or adult must be part of the household. You can't split the household to get rid of the elders/adults, and elders won't die if there are no other adults on the lot. 

I want to stab EA in their stupid faces so HARD for getting rid of CAST.  >:(

Family trees seem to be a thing of past for some reason, it's immediate household only, you don't seem to be able to see the previous generations

Make teens shorter, why do they suddenly need to be the same size as the adults

Normal careers

More available empty lots to build on

stop the appliances breaking once every few days and all at the same time

When they're sad, make it so that it doesn't take them 2 hours to eat a meal

A way to change the first name once the sim is out there in the game

stop the Zzzz when they're asleep ... and for goodness sake stop them laughing in their sleep

Stop the singing in the shower, it's like a broken record, the same thing over and over and over again!

More realistic wages otherwise they will never afford the 300+ weekly bills, and that's just a small starter home with bare minimum cheap furniture


This, 100 times over!

...

Really? Is this what adults do? Do all the 30+ year olds I know actually leave at night in their busy schedules to go collect rocks and frogs? Am I living wrong?

I feel in the middle on bills. Every time they come now, I actually get sad because I know a huge chunk of money is going to be gone. In Sims 1, 2, and 3,  I literally never cared about bills. So, I think it's a step in the right direction.

----

- Definitely a method to turn off those tutorials. Sometimes they just stop for a good minute then they bombard me again.
- I also don't like how the pregnant sims give birth. Nor do I like how when they go into labor, they can go to sleep. My sim slept through labor. Powerful woman.
- This bothered me in the Sims 2 - when they do CERTAIN THINGS on their own and I direct them to do something else, they completely stop. Washing dishes? They stop, put the plate on the floor. Taking out the trash? Trash pile. But damn, if they're watching TV and I tell them to go pee, they'll just watch the damn television until I cancel it.
- A mod so when you hover it will tell you the age of the sim.
- Normal careers.
- Stop talking so damn much and eat your food. You have work. Seriously, they talk so much it takes them over an hour to eat half the time, unfinished plates everywhere.

This might be a bug you're experiencing, but just in case you misunderstood the objective, "energized" in this context doesn't refer to the energy motive.  The sim needs to be in the "energized" mood when they attend school.

I found that my Geek Sim was perfectly happy when I baked him a cake and made him blow out the candles; he was Happy about his "birthday party." So I don't think you have to go through the whole party thing.

I keep micromanaging the sims to clean after themselves and to stop them from stuffing themselves with chips. Ah, macrotastic. Those were the good times.

The same thing happened with her son when he grew into a teen.  I was trying to squeeze out the last point of mental skill for his childhood aspiration, so didn't want to age him up until the last possible minute.  Aging up a sim using cake takes my sims away from whatever I've told them to do, and is a waste of time since the sim will age up anyway without one, so I'd really like the "sad moodlet because I didn't get a party/cake" thing stomped regardless of the sim's traits or age.

I gave him the loner trait when he turned 12, but his social is draining faster than anyone else in the family.  I would have thought a loner would have had a slower social drain rate.  This is my first household in the game, and this is the first 12 I've played so I don't know if the faster social drain is a glitch with the loner trait or if it's because he's a 12.  If it's a glitch, it needs to be stomped.

IIRC, there was a mod in the Director's Cut for Sims 2 that would stop sims from traipsing all over the house to find a chair to sit & drink coffee, the mod forced the sims to use a closer chair.  I think we need a version of that for eating in Sims 4.  Don't take your food into the living room to eat sitting on the sofa just because there's someone to talk to in there, when there's a perfectly good chair & table in the room you're in.

The above along with a reduction in the number of people dropping in the street to do pushups and situps. Maybe only athletic aspiration sims should be so inclined.

I hated this in TS2, and another strike against playing TS4 until a mod is released to stop it.  My sims would often die from hunger in TS2 because they were too busy talking to eat and it would often take 2-3 hours to eat one plate, in some cases the food would spoil before they finished eating.

This is sounding more like they took the worst aspects of all the series and mashed them into the new game, rather than taking the best bits and making a killer game.

At the moment what annoys me the most is that I can't download the new patches manually.

They just released a second patch that fixes the demon baby glitch and I need that baaaaaaaaadly .. dang it!

I agree, I like that it actually costs money now and you have to worry about bills.  However, it would be nice if there was some sort of "You are going to have a bill of $x,xxx.xx due next Tuesday", so that you could budget for it and not spend it on something new.

Also, as a random note, I wish the daily tasks for work/school were a little less buried.

I've just acquired the game and I hope I'm not tarding here but where the hell are the customizable colors from Sims 3?

EAxis didn't carry the Create-A-Style tool forward from TS3 in the name of 'game performance', and according to them it's gone forever because the game engine won't work with a color wheel. As a result we're back to TS2 style recolors and mods that you can never find in the exact shade that you need.

Nice. Well, Sims 3 does run like crap but I'm not sure if stripping out all the features out of the game for better performance is that much better.

If any of you are rotational players, you might run into issues. I changed households during gameplay for the first time and ran into several problems. The first was that switching back to the house that you switched from caused both occupants to be grayed out even though they were in the house doing things on their own. The second major one being that a whole household disappeared from the neighborhood. Their house is still listed as occupied, but they are not inside and going to manage households shows a blank screen for them. --I didn't try switching from a neutral point like exiting and then playing a different family. But seeing as the game was advertised as being easily able to switch families, one would think it would actually work.

I play rotationally, but when I'm going to switch to a family I first make a "save as", then go to neighborhood management and then go to the new household. I haven't ran into issues with this yet.

More queue - 6 is not enough.

kill the notice board - or run it as a ticker tape - or (at the very least) make things you 'x' out not go to the board. If you play with it open it takes up too much room and if you play with it shut it eventually fills up and you need to empty it.

I miss the social reactivity from TS3. Your sims could congratulate each other if they got a promotion, or got engaged, or whatever. It created the illusion of smart, self-aware sims...something that is sorely missing in TS4.

You don't need to empty it. New messages will just replace the oldest.

Good to know on the message board.

I think we're going to need some kind of fps limiter again if the noise of my video card fan earlier today were anything to go by.

Turn off tutorials: (If the game is listed in Origin)

• Step 1: First you have to open the Origin Client.
• Step 2: Then Right-Click on the The Sims 4 game's box art cover.
• Step 3: Next you must select the "View Game Properties" options, followed by clicking on the "Game Properties" to open a popup box.
• Step 4: In the text box below the "Command Line Argument" you can type a code to turn off the tutorial. Copy and past the following code into that text box: --no_tutorial
• Step 5: And finally, click on the "Apply" button to save the change and turn off the tutorial right away.

I tried to live with them, but they just kept coming and were totally irrelevant to what I was actually doing. ---Game: Hey, we noticed you rotated the camera 180 degrees so here is a tutorial about checking friends in the relationship panel.

The put away all books action needs to be streamlined. If there are five books on a table, the sim makes five trips between table and bookcase to put them away. It took one sim four sims hours to refill the bookcase.

I miss automatic hand of god.

The automatic hand of god still exists. You can still drag and drop items just like in S3.

The not-cleaning-up-after-self issue is especially annoying in my opinion. I've seen Sims put dishes down anywhere except the sink, including in bookcases. To get them to clean up, I often have to stack "Clean Up" commands two- or three-deep, as usually they'll complain of route failure at least once. (True, the Hand of God does work, but even in TS3 I use an Always Wash Dishes mod.)

Complaining of route failure when none should exist plagues gardening also. "Water" works OK and the Sim in question will usually water all plants that need it, but then will complain of route failure for "Weed," "Harvest (or Harvest All)", or "Evolve" when there are multiple free tiles surrounding the planter in all directions.

I'd like to be able to tell my sims "clean all," "put away all books," "fertilize all plants" without having to queue up each book or dirty object. Fertilizing is the worst, as you have to tell it to fertilize each plant, and select what fruit/fish/whatever you want to use. I'm definitely missing being able to click "fertilize all with best fertilizer."

I'm both annoyed at and confused about the purpose of child skills. I had my sim child earn a 4 in all 4 skills (and he got to level 5 in one of them, possibly social), yet when he aged up to a teen, he had zero skills. When I sat him down at the chess table, he earned logic level one. I thought his mental skill of 4 would carry over, but I guess not. What's the use of having your child sims skill, then? Are their skills solely for grades? That seems like a waste.

I also feel like the loner trait is bugged. My loner sim's social dropped like a stone. I was constantly having to have her run outside and talk with people to keep her social out of the red. The whole reason I made her a loner was so I could have her focus on gardening, not to spend the majority of her day stalking her neighbors and requesting pen-pals.

That's very strange. I haven't seen much route failure complaining at all except that one time I accidentally dropped a fossil in front of a door in a one exit only room. I am not particularly generous with space, either, I like my houses small and compact. I wonder if it could somehow be some bizarre memory thing?

You could be right. Although my laptop isn't particularly weak. I've read some comments at MTS about route failure, but not that many. Normally in my case one would want to implicate tight pants, but of course at this point there are almost no pants of any kind.

Anyway, some kind of thermometer indicator for when schoolchildren do their homework would also be nice. Also, along the lines of being able to tell teens from adults, I'd also like to be able to tell young adults from mature adults. Sure, people in their 20s can and do marry people in their 50s, but I'd like to know ahead of time whether I'm setting up something like that or not.

Route failure has always been an issue in every sims game to date, why is everyone so surprised it still exists in the latest reincarnation?

Because they promised it would be improved in TS4.

Is there some way to get part of a family to move out of a household? I have 4 sims, two who are married and just had a baby. Obviously it is logical that they would want to move out and start their own household but when I try to move them out, the whole family is set to move.
I've had several jumpbugs but nothing I can't live with.
Hate the tutorials.
HATE, HATE, HATE the men's hairstyles. Srsly, it just looks like a lump of dough set up there on their heads. This was the best they could do?
And of course the men get screwed again with lack of clothing options.
My neighborhoods are all populated with the fat and the elderly. I didn't know TS4 would be set up in God's Waiting Room.
I miss the Strangetown/aliens aspect of the game.
Normal careers would be nice.
No dishwashers? what??
omg, quit push upping, sit upping every.freaking.where.

On the plus side, fast loading times. ::)

To merge/split/move out/delete, go to manage world and click on an occupied house. There is an option with 3 dots, choose that one to manage households. A popup will show played and unplayed households. When you click on the household you want to edit, a secondary popup have options at the bottom and choose the one to split/merge households. From there it runs like Sims 3 but if you want to split the household, you have to tick the new household box. Hope that is clear.

And everyone knows the value of an EAxis promise.  Given all the things they promised to fix in TS2 and 3, yet didn't, it is clear they don't know the meaning of the word.

I'm not sure if this is what you mean, but there's already rotational play in the game. Under the gameplay options, just change "Auto Age (Played Sims) to "Only Active Household." Any families made in CAS will be recognized as "Played Sims" and they will no longer age when inactive.

According to EA, there is no story progression in the game so they will not change jobs, get married, etc. when you are not playing them.

That makes me want a way to set played households to no longer be considered played. That way, I can return a family to the townie pool when I tire of it, instead of having it sit around forever.

The constant amount of people just walking around on the street way out in the burbs seems a bit high. But then again I guess that's what happens when they can't own cars.   ::)

Seriously though, it really should be fine tuned for zones with more people in the parks and commercial areas and less in the residential.

Ideally, I think the game should encourage going to other lots for sims with social wants and job requirements but you don't have to at all. The sidewalk is like a conveyor belt sushi bar of Sims constantly streaming by.

Well, when you go to "Manage Households" you can use "Transfer Sims Between Households." Move the family into an unplayed household in town or even "Not in the World." That way you might still see them around town but they don't live in any of the houses.

But it would be nice if there was a way to just unset a played household so you can keep them in the same house.

As well as Sims clipping through furniture and their own clothes, which I see is alive and well. I plan for routing stupidity in house design.

Pfft, I suppose you believe in fairies, too?

I hate how you get a popup every time you use the camera in live mode, asking you if you want to make it a memory.

My loner doesn't get a negative moodlet from low social, but it still decays.

You can turn off the memory popup in the gameplay options.

My loner sim loves chatting with everyone. I get a tooltip saying otherwise, but if I leave her alone for a second, she's off to chat in a large group.

I propose a mod in the spirit of JMP's TS2 mod "Bathroom Uses You": Dishes Wash You.

I'm seeing an awful lot of inventory stuck-and-brokenness lately. As for the route fails with dishwashing, I read somewhere on the internet that Sims expect a trash can in or near the kitchen, so I added one. It now seems about 10% more likely that my Sims will bring dishes to the sink as opposed to leaving them in the bookcase, on the piano, etc.

I don't even wait for them to wash their dishes. Ain't nobody got time for that. I throw them out myself in the trash outside.  :P

I do wish I could Hand of God the leftovers into the fridge though. It's annoying having to wait for them to do it.

That particular Hand of God works for me, at any rate. Check to see if there are any intervening stairs or other objects between your camera and the fridge, as even if they've gone invisible due to camera distance, I often find they block my Hand of God.

Also, I'm sure I'm not the only one that is really sick and tired of the lack of real edge scrolling. 8)

The HoG works for leftovers. You don't have to hover the food exactly over the fridge, just let the fridge highlight and the food will go in from any position.

That's good to know and I will have to give it a try. Another thing I've noticed is that the mailbox is broken. The mail carrier will complain he can't reach it, but "somehow managed to throw the mail in, hope you can get to it" or something like that. At such times the mailbox looks to be in a perfectly good location with free tiles in all directions. If I move the mailbox to a place where the mail carrier doesn't complain, then sure enough, my Sim complains of route failure when trying to get the mail.

I've also read about bills not being delivered and the power and water being shut off for nonpayment, which though kind of funny, must be frustrating. I've had the same thing happen, but so far can still pay the bills at the mailbox to turn the water and power back on.

Having to tell my teens to put their finished homework back in their inventory makes me crazy. Otherwise, they just leave it on the desk and traipse off to school without it (although I do wonder if it does anything).

I want more random names. I've had about 80 Kaitlins (with various spellings) in my neighborhood. Also, I have a townie kid named Parker Parker.

Getting up to pee in the middle of the night is also getting old. I could solve it by sending them to the bathroom before bed, but I'm not interested in taking up potty duty.

But I have to say, there is a sense of humor in the series still. One of the things that made me laugh out loud was sending my Angry Sim to the toilet and one of the options was Take an Angry Poop.

The answer to that seems to be No. My teen left his homework on the picnic table in the little park next to his house, and though he might have lost some school performance the next day, I didn't get any notifications about it.

Sounds like a feature rather than a bug to me. :D

It's pretty much pointless to try for elders. Perhaps just like in real life. I also worry that my Sims might die of hunger in the middle of the night. Part of the problem is that the needs bars seem to go from green to yellow very suddenly, giving the impression that things are worse than they are.

There are entire threads on this at MTS, unsurprisingly. I've not found it to make any difference in terms of visual or audio effects, thankfully. :)

What annoys me the most:  Their motives drop faster than panties at a KISS concert.  We need stronger caffeine and macro-caffeinate.  A pee bush wouldn't be amiss either; because when my Sim comes home from work, he's either ready to pass out, piss his pants, or both.

Before the game released, EAxis claimed story progression wasn't possible; but on the official site, SimGuruGrant is asking how the players would like to see it implemented.  I don't know if they're going to patch it in or we have to pay for it.  Either way, they're gonna screw it up somehow.

ETA:  It's hella dark indoors.  It's improved with a lighting mod I just installed, but it still needs some work.

Agreed.

'Write a song' seems to be totally borked - sims start but can't stop (usually needing to be reset entirely to pry them away from the instrument), and although songs do sort of complete (at least enough to register for the Music milestone), you don't get the completed sheet music as an object, so can't send them off to be licensed.

The lack of a fire department.

See and this is why I think they would be better off if they just leveled with people instead of bullshitting them. It's like how they insisted Sim City could not have an offline mode due to how it was made. And then they made one.  ::)

Yes, this. I hate that I can't tilt the camera. I also hate how the camera resets every time I come back from another lot.

Anybody else having issues with Sims standing around? They'll get a plate of something out of the fridge, set it on the counter, and then stand there slack-jawed for half hour before remembering what they were doing and picking up the plate to eat.

Off topic here, but when did they modify sim city for offline play?

About 6 months ago.

http://www.simcity.com/en_US/blog/article/simcity-offline-play-now-available-for-pc-and-mac (http://www.simcity.com/en_US/blog/article/simcity-offline-play-now-available-for-pc-and-mac)

The camera can be tilted with the scroll wheel button.

Hate that step-family is not recognized. Ugh.

The only problem I'm having so far is no family trees  :'( . And the fact that family relationships are restricted to "basics": mother, son, wife, grandfather... No step-family at all, and once someone is gone in the afterlife... He's gone forever, no reminder of him whether it be in a cemetery or a family tree.

Dead sims do stay in the relationship panel of other sims who knew them with their portrait greyed out and listed as deceased, but yeah it's not much.

I had my first crash last night. Lost several hours of play and then I realized the autosave feature is utter useless shit.

Oh well, I guess I get to play alternate reality what if.  :P At least I can throw that one sim a damned birthday party so he can stop moping endelessly about not getting one.

The autosave "feature" is worse than utter useless shit. It's evil. Use "save as," and often.

I don't mind the unlockable buy mode items and outfits as they encourage me to actually experience all of the game instead of making my same hippie garden/writer sim over and over, but why on earth are they only unlocked per household instead of globally?

My main annoyance is my one of my sims having some sort of drinking problem and constantly making drinks. If I get rid of the bar so she can't, she just gets drinks out of the fridge instead and then gets all annoyed that those drinks suck.

I also really hate the faff of splitting households. I miss the "Kick out" option so, so much.

I agree about the lack of family trees sucking too, I always liked being able to see extended family.

Got another one that looks like a bug. My babies will stay green, not crying, and I get a nastygram, such as, "X is very hungry! If you don't feed her soon, this baby will be taken away!" It doesn't happen all the time, and I haven't really found anything that triggers it yet.

This weight gain thing is so bad that even death has gained weight.

The grim reaper has just turned up, and he's getting wider. I don't even understand how death could gain weight. But he has, so there you go!

All dem souls just collect around his waist area, obviously!

Anyone else having an issue with time speed? I'm not sure if this is a bug or if it's something I'm doing wrong but sometimes the time speed doesn't go to the fastest setting (where the minutes blur) when there are no sims on my lot. It's annoying because I have to sit and look at an empty house for five minutes until my sim returns from work, and hitting the 'ultra speed' button doesn't do anything to fix it.

• Having trouble with conversation dialog (the box at the top with the sim's name and relationship bar) sticking around long after the conversation is over and the other sim is gone from the lot.
• Birthday celebrations sometimes sticking in queue. They aren't still trying to celebrate and are doing other queued actions, but the celebration action is still in the queue and can't be cancelled.

In both cases, these are fixed by taking at least one sim off-lot.

Collision control is buggy. Generally routing is better, but I'll still have situations where sims will be right next to each other with nothing around on a flat surface and actions will drop because they show they can't get to each other. Also, sims clipping through things is still an issue (you would think by the fourth game they could fix this but this is EA) including the normal hands through clothing but yesterday I had a sim blowing out the birthday cake who ended up halfway through the kitchen counter.

Well, a little OT, but as to clipping, I play many games from many different companies and quite frankly most of them have clipping. So, while EA might be evil, in this case clipping seems to be an industry standard. Examples would be all of the Fable games, Assassins' Creed Black Flag (the rest too, but that is most recent), all of the Mass Effects (oops, still EA), GTA, etc. Basically, anything that lets you change clothes. 

I have been getting this a lot lately.

I think sometimes the game thinks there's someone on your lot when there isn't? I've tried to invite people over only to be told they're on my lot, when they're nowhere to be found. Try going to the slowest speed for like, a ten count, then to the fastest a few times, that might help? It also just might be coincidence though.

From the Manage Households window, click on a playable household, and there should be a stupid little plumbob in the bottom left.
Clicking on it makes the house unplayable.
No clue why they didn't put it with the other buttons along the bottom.

I started getting momentary freezes every so often and went to look it up thinking maybe it was the autosave. Apparently, it's playing the game in online mode on Origin (so you arred guys will probably not notice it)

http://forums.thesims.com/en_US/discussion/comment/12684965#Comment_12684965

It set it to offline mode and sure enough they went away.

Theoretically there's no reason the game should be phoning home constantly unless you are browsing the gallery. There's really no built in connectivity features in the game itself outside of the gallery to browse for downloads.

anyone else find it's difficult to rack up aspiration points or reward points or whatever they are called? it isn't ike ts3 where you are constantly ticking them away just by having sims in the game...you have to complete whims to get points and that is the only way. and i can't get them knocked up!

It phones home every few minutes to give you hundreds of notification spam about what other people are uploading and favoriting. It does it even if you turn off notifications. So playing in Offline mode is recommended and only go online for putzing around in the gallery, then turn it off again. Those stutters are annoying.

That's ridiculous. I don't mind some of that while I am browsing the gallery for content but I don't need or want it while I am playing the game.

Speaking of the gallery I like the idea of it but the implementation is slow as molasses in January going uphill and it's not my computer. The game itself runs fine even on all the high settings so there's no reason what amounts to basically a built in web browser should be that damned slow. It makes me wish we just had a true web version of it because it's got to run better than the in game one.

Last night, sim teen mopped up a puddle. Mop was stuck to hand after interaction. She showered with it. She read with it. She fished with it. Going to another lot (via the magic loading screen) removed it.

Mine do that all the time with forks and paint brushes.

This shouldn't be possible. It's also kind of creepy.

(http://i.imgur.com/bfuEgSc.jpg)

I adopted a child and he had the romantic woohoo the town aspiration. I'm almost certain kid aspirations are mediocre. Too bad the little guy can't do anything about it right now. LOL

--I always have flirty children. At this point, I think it's a feature.

In sims 2 and 3 the relationships were ordered in such a fashion that it was easy to see who was better friends with my sims, not only did they remove the numeric value of this they also just tossed all aquantances in there randomly.., would be nice to be able to sort who of the aquantances is more towards being a friend than another at first glance.

That and also having numerical values when you hover the cursor on the relationships bars.

I would kill for door locks... that would solve half my peeves.

Guests just do whatever they want in your house, anywhere they want.
They'll go in your daughters room and troll forums from her computer while she is sleeping.. creepy
they'll eat all your leftovers in the fridge right in front of your face while you are cooking a delicious meal.
They will leave a huge stinker in your master bathroom AND break the faucet.... while there is a perfectly well decorated and conveniently located guest bathroom.
AND.. AND..  nobody barbeques their worthless babies anymore  :(

we need
no autonomous computers
no autonomous stargazing
no autonomous microscope
stop eating when you're full
talk while fishing
start job at base level unless returning to previous employment (I just had a sim get and leave three jobs while standing in her kitchen to achieve the level 2 in 3 jobs desire). She never moved a step.
no 'no birthday party' sadness
bad fish make bad food
take pregnancy test does not negate first trimester
overstuffed houses
STORY PROGRESSION

In other words we need an actual game instead of a stripped down beta?

I doubt they will release much more improvement to this stripped down beta without making you fork over something for it.
I'm pretty sure that this is what it is until somebody mods it.. or they release an expansion for it.

Learning things the hard way...

I have a teen who had a girlfriend. Both relationships were really high, and they had exchanged promise rings or whatever. Next thing I know, one of his wants (to make out with her) has a llama in it. Apparently, she was culled by the game. Honestly, wtf? I guess if I have townies I want to marry, I better move them into one of the houses. This seriously hoses my plans for that teen.

Doesn't seem to matter if they live in a house or not, sims just randomly come up missing.  They disappear from the game totally, no longer related to anyone, no memory of them, no evidence of ever existing at all.

http://modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=535559&c=1&ht=&page=1&pp=25#startcomment (http://Modthesims) user MasterDinadan has a beta out to hopefully solve part of this problem.

After a modder found a way to do what was supposedly impossible...

I've been playing quite a lot since release. These are the things I'd like to see modded:

1. Plumbing breaks much too frequently, even after objects have been upgraded for less breakage.  EDIT: Someone on MTS has made a mod for this.
2. No ADHD. Seriously, I love the multitasking feature, but sometimes I just want Sims to sit the fuck down and concentrate on the task at hand. Also, you really don't need to take your breakfast into the bathroom to chat with your Mom when she's on the toilet, you sicko.
3. Slower motive decay while sleeping. All Sims are afflicted with over-active bladder and have the metabolisms of gerbils on crack. I would like them to JUST SLEEP THROUGH THE NIGHT ALREADY. Having said that, though, it comes in handy to have them be the only one awake at night, ie kids and teens will DO THEIR HOMEWORK ALREADY without trying to chat with every Sim on the lot.
4. Less stalking. Dude, I know we're friends and all, but do you honestly need to show up on the doorstep like 5 times in a single day?
5. Maids wear uniforms and LEAVE ALREADY when finished cleaning. Also, no maid "showing up" at 3 AM while you're at the club and not actually cleaning everything.
6. Sim gets job at 3 PM on Thursday. The job has 9-5 hours on Friday, but the game makes me wait until MONDAY before the Sim can go to work.

Up until now, my sim family seemed to share my convictions that townie/neighbor sims were only for marrying and using as fodder for their spawning. Which means no outside friends. The marry-in only had a couple buddies and only one who came over every day. Usually twice a day. Fine, I figured he must have a personality trait that made him a little stalker. After his friend the marry-in passed, he's still come over, though not as frequently. But now the newest marry-in, Alexander Goth, has so many stalkers I'm about to get his seed and kill him off just to make the visits stop. Cassandra once a day is okay. Bella every other day, fine. However, there are also 3-4 guys who come over once or twice a day who Alexander has barely any friendship points with, and they aren't even a good age or single to be candidates for the one girl I still need to pair off. Their sole purpose seems to be to get in the way and annoy me with their buzzing the door.

My young Sims have turned into black widows, and then Users. The only one who married in (Since their grandmother married Alexander Goth) is my one male progeny. The girls used to find an old man to marry and spawn off of and infuse family coffers with funds. Now they don't even bother with the marry. Spawn are started and the males ignored. I don't think any of my Sims even generate interaction wants outside of the family - unless you count the flirt and romance desires of my two forays into flirty Sims and they're not usually for anyone specific.

This thread seems to be heading South.

(http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Football/Pix/pictures/2010/03/05/banjos1.jpg)

I just want them to stop carrying their plates all over the fucking house so they can chat with Uncle Bob while they eat. Is it too much to ask for them to just eat at the fucking table!?

True, there should be a distance limit to the 'I'll go eat there instead'. Something like 5 meters maybe.

I have yet to be able to even click on the Gallery without CTD ... EA says its not my computer, but cannot figure out why ;/ Fuckers.

As a part of multitasking, queuing them to sit at a particular place while holding a plate will make them eat there.  Though you'd think after 14 years they'd programme sims smart enough to sit at one damn table.

The one thing I miss the most, high above and beyond anything else, is being able to immediately jump from family to family in Live Mode, ala TS3 with Awesomemod.

I've found a use for the mystery maid visit - when she comes and cleans right before you load the game even if everything was clean? She's the only being in the game that can clean the vomited into toilet.

That has never happened. Seating selection has been wonky since the beginning. In TS2 and TS3, I had to make a thing to fix this.

Has someone made a mod for a gardener that is probably the most time consuming thing in the game and I hate to garden. But I want the fresh ingredients for food.

YES.

MTS has a shorter gardening mod. It downtimes weeding and watering - http://www.modthesims.info/download.php?t=536590 (http://www.modthesims.info/download.php?t=536590)

I don't even care if they go across the house to eat. Just effing stay there! I'm sick of them all sitting at the dining table, some reading, some eating, and periodically getting up to play musical chairs. Sit. the. F. Down.

The only oddity I'm noticing since the 10/1 patch (besides those detailed elsewhere about tiny eyes and lantern jaws) is that all of a sudden harvestable plants do not highlight when I hover the mouse over them. All the options show up as usual when clicked on, and work as expected, but no highlight. Yet frogs, diggable rocks, and so on still work fine.

Normally my instinct would be that this is a "personal problem, soldier," and it very well could be. I have heard from only one other person who sees the same problem. I do know that it's not due to mods since the problem is still there with a brand new Sim in a brand new game, with the mods folder removed. So this is the extent of my learnings on the matter.

ETA:
Yes, that's exactly what I meant. It seems most others are not getting this bugged outline thing though.

Having problems when I click on my sims to interact with them,I can click on an action but it wont let the sims do it.    Though that was happening before the last patch.

If you're talking about the outline around the plant when you hover the cursor on it, then yes it disappeared for me too. The pots have their outlines, but not the plant. That makes gardening harder when you have a lot of plants cluttered in a tiny space. The info box with the text is still there though, it's only the outline that was FURBARed.

- not changing the last name when marrying.
- the musical chairs is an issue, but we seem to have a musical bed as well. I have my guy sim go to sleep earlier than the girl, but about half the time when she goes to bed, he gets up, she lays  down where he was, and he goes to the other side and lays down to sleep.
-Am I missing something? There is no nanny or baby sitter, and no maternity leave? WTH?
-my sims won't wash the dishes when I select clean up. They pick up a plate, walk somewhere and set it back down. Half the time when the clean out the spoiled food from the fridge they just set it on the counter. Where are our dishwashers?
-would like to be able to see the age of sims we are trying to hook up with. My young adult just married a guy who is half way to elderly :-/
-I want to be able to see my sims motives and queue stuff while they are working.
-bills are WAY too high
-I can't even FIND my mailbox on my lot... I have to stalk the mailman and see if I can figure it out...
-having to clean up trash after every repair is annoying
-my sim got pregnant in the evening and by 5am she looked like she was ready to give birth... craziness
-no queue dropping mod would be nice. If she auto eats I don't want it to drop because I queue her up to pee...
-even the ts3 camera option sucks, especially if I'm trying to move the camera back. The camera operation that it comes with is bogus
-agreed on the motives dropping way too fast. I understand my pregnant sim having to eat and pee more often, but they need to slow down for the rest, especially when sleeping.

This.  If I want my Sim to read, I do not want them dropping it to go play with the Microscope before they even get one more skill level.

We need macro...concentrate. I really do miss many of the macros from Sims 2. (I never really got into Sims 3- too many problems!)

Well, unattended babies poof into netherspace and children are allowed to be home alone for their parent's entire work shift with no repercussions. So there is no need. Gah. I do not like how the spawn are handled.

Seems like it's one magical plate placement that causes this. If I choose another plate to clean up first, it's fine.

I'm actually cool with the amount, but I still don't find it hard to amass huge amounts of money without really trying. My legacy family's 3rd gen heir is only a teen and they have about $200k.

You can move the mailbox in build mode and also pay bills from the computer. But I miss saved camera views, which is related.

Fucking A.
And don't quit playing on the damn monkey bars when all your motives are near max and you have the aspiration want for 10 motor points.

For the longest time I thought you couldn't pan back, the spot your mouse has to be in is so freaking tiny.

the game is the way TOO raw made, and so much usual things cut out, like cars, toddlers, kitchen appl,  loungers
also too small of fun objects, sims do not know how to spend time but play PC

Here is my list of annoyances:

- You can't view any information about a sim when they're at work or school.
- Musical chairs when eating. This extends to beds, too. EVERYONE SHOULD SLEEP AND NAP IN THEIR OWN BEDS, DAMNIT.
- Too much talking while eating.
- Please stop stalking people while eating.
- Consistently walking in on someone who is in one bathroom when there are at least three other bathrooms to choose from.
- Last name does not change upon marriage.
- Someone said that their Sims will skill/watch tv/game until they drop. Mine seem to have ADHD. They refuse to focus on a given task (watching tv, skilling, etc) and instead run off to do something else... like read that romance novel for the hundredth time. I have to micromanage to keep them going. This seems not to apply to certain things like cooking, the chess table, and painting. ADHD extends to reading books for pleasure as well. My sims like to read for 3.5 seconds before putting the book down. Rinse and repeat.
- Speaking of books. Would it be so damned hard to put the book up when you're done reading it? My sims will consistently walk into the kitchen to drop the book on the table where it will stay, for all eternity, until directed to put it up.
- Sims refuse to pick up certain dishes and wash them -- they must be dragged by the player to the sink or clicked on individually. Also, no dishwashers? I want them back, please.
- Less queue-stomping. I'm getting really tired of them doing something sensible by themselves and then having it dropped from their actions because I tried to line up another.
- WAY too many old people and people who are on their way to being old. Seriously. My game is filled with old people and people who are three days from being an elder.
- Is it just me, or are the multiple birth odds really high? In two different saves, both of my girls sims had NATURAL TWINS on the first go -- and no one had the fertility boost. I certainly don't have a mod installed for higher twin chances, either -- I don't even think one exists right now.
- The. Jingles. For. Every. Freaking. Thing. Did your sim pee? JINGLE! Did they find a shiny? JINGLE! STOP WITH THE MUSIC.
- More careers. How many careers do we have? Eight? I think even TS2 basegame had more careers than TS4. I'm getting really sick of seeing those same careers over and over and over...

That's pretty much it for now. I'll add more if I think of any.

There's a fix for that at simlogical, here:

http://www.den.simlogical.com/denforum/index.php?topic=3285.0

I consider that one of my very most essential mods to the point where I just can't play without it. For one thing, it helps if you can switch over to that sim and see what their current work performance is so you can decide if you want them to continue to work hard or not (ie if it's maxed already you really don't need to).

I kind of wish he had put it up somewhere slightly less obscure though. Sorry Inge.  :P

Is anyone else crashing when a child returns from school?

Edit: It happened twice and never again, so nevermind.

If you go in to manage household, there is a small plumbob at the lower left-hand corner of the family photo that if you click and turn gray it will set the family as unplayed.  You can also click it green on an unplayed family to make it count as a played home.  When you move a person out, you can add them to an existing household or you can create a new household.  In the event that you create a new one, you can select the sims in that household and have them move into an empty house in town or to remain "homeless" but they will still be seen in the neighborhood.



Every time you send your sim to "Write a Song", a sheet of music is generated in their inventory.  If you need to stop your sim from writing the song for whatever reason (as it seems to take them a very long time to write it and they have to pee every ten minutes) then they only have an unfinished song.  To finish a song you need to go into their inventory and click on the sheet of music to instruct them to work on that song again, otherwise the "Write a Song" option from the instrument only causes them to write a NEW song and not complete the old one.  Once the song is actually complete, you are able to name it and then get the song licensed at the mailbox.  Licensing a song works the same way as publishing a book in that once you do it you will get royalties from it for a bit.


My List -

- Toddlers!  I want them back!
- A way to tell teens, YAs and As apart!
- I miss having an open neighborhood, dammit!
- Last names when marrying?
- Musical chairs. Also, your sim can do so much crap while holding their food, inviting someone in is no exception EXCEPT that when you invite them in, your sim gets the interaction to GO HOME which, of course, makes them drop their damn plate!
- Too much ADHD.  I tell my sim to skill from a book, exercise or play on the monkey bars and they stop doing it for no apparent reason.
- Once again with too much computer.  The sims have always been really bad about hogging stuff.  At least they don't hog the musical instruments so much now.
- Just like eating food and it taking hours because they have a need to talk, doing homework is the same thing.  Stop talking to your kid while they're trying to do their darn homework!
- Dropping queues when you instruct them to do something next.  I've even had my sims cut what I told them to do for something I told them to do next.
- Losing the ability to do anything with my family while they are at work / school.  Losing control of my family shouldn't ever be an issue.  If I want to look at inventory / relationship / work info, I should be able to.
- Sims making forty drinks at the bar and never drinking any of them.  They just sit there and go bad.
- Many interactions and information being nested really far down inside of things.  Like you want your sim to eat a certain leftover because it will go bad or they have a want to eat it, you cannot just click on the fridge and choose to eat leftovers, you have to open the fridge and then choose the stuff you want to eat...  Or you want to find out what your person needs to level their career and you have to mouse over stuff to check on it.

I know I have other issues but I really can't think of them at the moment.  I came here to MATY to see if there was an Awesome Mod out for the game yet.  :)  I will keep waiting.

Yeah, I've decided not to jump on the early-adoption bandwagon this time around, and instead use the relative peace and quiet granted by not having to worry about being hammered by another update to finally go to town on TS3 instead. Once the situation is more stable, and the game less...bare...I'll see what there is to be done in TS4.

Okay, so I'm apparently a guy easy to satisfy and think that in general TS4 isn't that bad. At least, what is there, if few, is done well, and I couldn't ever go back to TS2 with all expansions except AL. The animations of the sims flow better into each other-- Oh wait, this is the the complain thread...

Yeah, my biggest annoyance is:

Boring Whims!

I found interesting and challenging to fulfill wishes for my Sims in TS2, and eventually I resorted to make my play style fulfilling their wishes, and it was fun.

Yadda yadda.

However, with TS4 it's not very interesting. Despite the great amount of possible interactions available for the sims (despite the little difference between the animations they carry when executed) they keep rolling the same mood-related ones over and over.

A happy sim will want to meet new people, dance to the stereo, and hug someone, over and over and over. You get the wanting to joke now or chatting now and then, but that's it.

I'm not even asking for much, just, roll "watch TV", "Play Sims Forever on the PC", "Joke about Politicians", "kiss X sim", "eat hamburgers", or something! I'm not even asking for depth here, just more variance.

And I would like whims that seem to be locked depending on the sim's traits to appear more often, just because your sims isn't materialistic doesn't mean they can't admire their new pricey stuff now and then.

Basically, I'd like if TS4 Whims were like TS2 Wishes, because currently a given Sim is locked to a very few ones, and if you choose the playing style of fulfilling their whims, you'll see them making the same few interactions over and over.

Hah, if you knew how TS2 wants worked, you know they work exactly the same way. In fact, you could easily rack up huge scores by manipulating them into loops where the same wants would chain over and over and over.

You're right, now that I recall, TS2 wants worked the same, and I had to download a mod to make them interesting (did we have an awesome mod that affected wishes? perhaps it was from here), but I haven't found one for TS4.

Still, it's a bummer that the Whims seem so very limited on their variance (even more so than in vanilla TS2, unless the Whims are there but their random number generator sucks and they keep rolling the same ones.) I guess what I'd want to see is a Whim editor.

This link is a dead end - is the mod available somewhere else?

If only there was a website that MODs THE SIMS. Scratch that, if only there was a website that lets you search for shit.

I think I saw one at google.com

There was one from here, yes.

It's probably because the amount of crap that sims have to do, period, is so reduced compared to what was in TS2, especially towards mid and end-life, whereas TS4 is basically a bare-bones stripped-down game shoved out the door too soon, and won't really be interesting for a good several expansions.

I think it's here:
http://fogity.boards.net/thread/10/menu-enabler (http://fogity.boards.net/thread/10/menu-enabler)

Yes, but there's so many things that the Sims can do, and interactions that they can have with other sims, but they never Whim for them. Simple things like "play on chess table with X" or "play Blicblocks" are absent, and I reckon from all available stuff a given sim only whims for 0.1%-1% of stuff available (as restricted by traits and mood).

And I never thought I'd miss wishes like "see a ghost" or "be saved from death", examples of things the sims can still do but don't whim for (the sim gets confident when they save the life of someone else, it'd be fun if sims got the whim to save someone else's life, so one could start a fire and have them put it out, or something).

Social interactions Sims never whim for:

Compliment appearance
Pick-Up Line
Ask Risque Question
Start Preposterous Rumor
Gossip
Ask to Hang out
Tell engaging story
Chat about X
Complain about X
Discuss Interests
Ask if Single
Get to know
Ask about day
...

And that's just in the friendly/romance menus (and I don't think the list is complete). Would like to have an otherwise nice sim to wish to be mean or treacherous to a sim that they don't get along with.

Sims could also whim to eat certain foods even if they don't have food eating treats (I still remember my Sims 2 wishing to eat cereal the next day so I'd just go and give them that - what happened to that? TS4 does have more food variety and snacks foods than vanilla TS2, but without whims you could just give them Green Salads for life...)

Finally, what about making whims a little bit challenging? The developers have it backwards: having a certain mood (er... "emotion") unlocks certain interactions, but the sim never whims for any of the unlockable interactions unless they already have that mood, so you can basically ignore them for life.

It's backwards because it's expected you'd want to do the happy interactions before being happy to become happy, instead of only wanting to do them when you're already happy.

Would be very cool to have a Tense sim whim to brighten the day of another sim, or have their own day being brightened, so that is interesting because you have to make it happy, or to make another sim happy, before being able to fulfish the whim. This is valid for all emotions and their specific interactions, the sims would whim to unlock them and do them.

So I hold the framework is there, and what's there has a lot of potential, but it's currently decorative, and you basically have no reason to deviate from just talking (already have a mod that deviates in interesting ways on its own anyway), but from what I've read around the communities, I'm from the very rare people that care about whims at all...

So basically you're complaining that EAxis has actually made the traits of sims slightly more meaningful this time?

This is what I was hoping to hear. In the early days of TS3, you said there were a lot of things that you could do, but wouldn't bother trying until the game was final. TS4 isn't for me. The non-open neighborhood and no Puppet Master mode are dealbreakers. I'd be happy to wait until TS4 matured, if those two things existed. I'd like to think that the best days for TS3 are still to come - and moar awesomeness is worth Showing Up for.

Yeah, here's a thing: A large number of these interactions are completely inappropriate. You don't remember in TS2 when sims *DID* constantly roll these inappropriate things until I quashed it and limited those wants to moments where it would actually be appropriate and fitting? You don't remember how talking to ANYONE of the appropriate gender immediately resulted in one of your want slots being blocked by Flirt With X wants, even as your sim was repulsed by said other-sim? They're also probably procedurally generated and therefore don't actually exist as a specific interaction in the table, instead being lumped in with some general class of action.

Since when there's only ONE kind of people that gets a whim to eat something? Most people do it all the time, or base their eating decision on what they want to eat. Specifically, if you were forced to eat salad for a week, wouldn't you want to eat something else? It's fine if there are sims with a trait where they're obsessed about food and want to cook and eat all day, but that shouldn't mean the rest of the sims would never want to cook or eat.

Heh, not even when the sim is dying of hunger will it wish to eat something...


Yeah, but there's a difference with "sims should only roll some whim when it makes them sense to do so" and "sims should never roll this whim". Like the "be saved from death" wish. All Knowledge sims in TS2 would roll this wish all the time, which was annoying, and the mod fixed it so that only sims whose lifes sucked would roll the wish. With TS4 it's just something we'll not see them rolling even if it's the most pathetic sim on earth.

And, huh, probably a simple fix would work, like "Whim limiter" so that, if a sim had already had the whim to dance to stereo music today, and they already fulfilled it, that whim doesn't appear again for 24 hours. So that this play style doesn't produce sims that are dancing all day, which is currently the case (I guess my complain is that the sims world is very easy to turn into a sugar bowl (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SugarBowl)? I guess it fits, what with the sims already speaking their own inscrutable language at all (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/SelfDemonstrating/SugarBowl)).

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Two more complains:

1 - My play style leads to most sims being happy most of the time, which further restricts their whims to the happy ones. I guess this problem may be a "fix it yourself" problem: if you want your sims to roll more interesting whims, keep them miserable.

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And:


Which makes the most sense because whims are absolutely useless. Yeah, in TS2 vanilla, at the end of the line, if you fulfilled enough wishes, you'd have enough to buy cool objects for the house, which at least was fun for a while, or could have some potential use.

With TS4, I didn't see a single object worth buying. Oh, you can buy one so that a sim doesn't need to socialize again, or eat again, or pee again, or sleep again or bath again... or stuff that just fulfills a need instantly.

What's the point of all that anyway? Isn't this a life simulation? Didn't they put stuff in there on purpose? Why would one get rid of it with objects? It would be different if these were actual objects, say, a super bath tub with shinny liquid that would make the sims clean when they used it, or a game so fun that playing it for 1 minute sent their fun through the roof. But, magic potions they use to solve all their problems?

So what's the point in making whims interesting if fulfilling them doesn't have a point at all?

I dunno, man. My eating habits are straightforward: Today, raw meat. Day after tomorrow: Raw meat. Always raw meat. All the time. I never really get tired of this.

As for sims not specifically having wants for things that are actually critical to survival, I don't think the want system is normally meant to be quite that pushy. It's not meant as a minute-to-minute walkthrough of things your sim needs.

I'm sure that at some point when the game becomes worth getting and playing, I will go on a smackdown crusade of all the things that annoy me, though.

But if you were on TS4, then only YOU would want to eat raw meat, and only sims with the
raw meat treat (if it existed) would ever have a whim to eat it. My claim would be, that all sims, no matter their traits (unless there was some "dislikes raw meat" treat) should now and then want to eat some raw meat. But they will never do it (paraphrasing: having a trait there that makes it want to only eat raw meat: GOOD. The existence of that trait meaning that only sims with that trait may ever want to eat raw meat: BAD).

It's like the "dance to stereo music" whim that currently every happy sim rolls (there's so few variance that I keep giving the same example), if only sims with the "loves music" trait were able to whim it, it'd be an annoyance ("you don't have the loves music treat? it should mean you hate music"), and this applies to the trait-centric whims, which should happen more often with compatible traits, not disappear entirely with incompatible ones.


It kind of is with the new emotional system. At least the first whim, which is always tied to the sim's current emotion, which can change minute-to-minute. So on bad emotions you get a whim related to that emotion, except it may not be related to fixing the need that is causing the bad emotion (I downloaded a mod that makes sims have the Dazed emotion when they have low energy, so at least they wish to take a nap, as opposed to going like "YAWN! I'm in a very bad emotional state because I'm SO tired!... I know! What if I took a bath?")

Also, I think the game is worth getting and playing already, as long as someone else goes through all the hassle to getting it. I was originally planning on passing too, but then a friend arrived to my house and told me he had already downloaded the thing, so I went and installed it, and despite the problems it's fun to play. I bet if THIS was TS2 (with TS2 and TS3 not appearing at all), people would be loving it. It's when compared to TS2 and TS3 when it feels so barren and empty, so there are so many things still to do in those other games that going through the hassle of downloading and installing TS4 just for curiosity doesn't feel worth it.

But if one woke up and it was already installed in one's computer ready to launch, what would one lose checking it out?

Your proposal simply creates the opposite situation: That every sim in the entire universe will desire to shovel any weird thing they come across into their mouths at random, which is even more annoying than the situation where only sims that actually give a shit about the subject ever want it. I, for one, have no desire to ever do a very large number of things.

No, I'm pretty sure that's the annoyance, that EVERY SINGLE SIM EVER reacts exactly the same way.

I think you're seeing this slightly differently from what I see it. The way *I* see it, if a sim doesn't roll a want for something, he is simply indifferent to it. If the action is forbidden or harmful to him specifically, he hates it. Therefore, the way *I* see it, in your example, every single sim in the universe is a dancing fool.

We see a similar annoyance, only you see a failure to roll a want as an active hatred of something, whereas I see rolling the want as a fixation on said thing.

Of course. That's why I'm choosing to sit on it, rather than reject outright.

A significant amount of time and disk space, apparently. The important thing is that I don't have to check it out. I have you people to do this for me, and the verdict is that while it's okay on its own, it fails to presently stack up against what is already there, so for now I am going to focus on what I already have, rather than trying to put out a raft of mods that will then be mangled in the next patch or expansion. From what I learned in TS2 and TS3, it's best to see how exactly expansions and patches will affect the process before committing.

There's a reason why this site is the sole origin of obscure Sims utilities pertaining to patching that nobody else would really care to use (hackdiff, dificil). I made them specifically for my own usage, because the process is otherwise THAT ONEROUS. Of course, the latter one has a number of creative misuses as well, like core-mod merging.

I'm looking for a common ground, some point in the middle where you don't have most sims being dancing fools (increasing the appearance of other traits would help with the stereo one appearing less often) but where it doesn't disappear entirely from their whims, ever (which would make them more likely to roll the rest of few whims, leading to even less variance. Presumably, they'd become "wants to know new people" wishing machines, unless they have the Loner trait).


I guess if it was there and your sim only got the "wants to eat raw meat" when happy, and was made happy when eating raw meat, leading to a vicious cycle of raw meat and happiness and the sim only doing it all day if the player keeps fulfilling whisms, it'd be okay? Because, that'd be like a raw mean eating fool not different from the dancing ones, and I think the only way to combat this is with variety.

The thing with whims is sims will get fixated with something, a solution where each unique sim gets fixated to a different thing doesn't sound interesting to me, as that would lead one to just have a sim doing the same thing over and over (but a different thing from other sims!) which sounds like grinding. Getting a given sim "whimming" for 20% of stuff available depending on their traits and emotion would be very cool, would be from 20 to 200 times more interesting than how it's now.

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My closing comments about whether it's worth it to get TS4, I say, get it if you get bored of TS2 and TS3. Some people will never get bored (there's always something new to do, which is the point of open-ended games) so they would only get it when there's actual full content to see. Though I can say despite its huge holes it's more fun to play than vanilla TS2 or vanilla TS3 (heck, it may be more fun than TS2+Pets) that's about it and its disadvantages when compared to the fully "expansionated" previous versions are insurmountable.

Will continue reporting (I play TS4 so you don't have to!) but I don't think there's anything else that hasn't been said in the thread. I'm looking forward to seeing someone complain about something new.

Honestly? A single sim being obsessed with a singular specific thing that is NOT like what other sims are obsessed with is way better than EVERYONE being obsessed with the SAME things. At least The Carnivore has character. So yes, I actually would prefer for everyone to get stuck in a different rut over everyone being stuck in the same one. A single individual sim fixated on a single individually unique thing still has character. Sims that are generic and fixate on the same boring shit everyone else does, flipping randomly from meaningless trash to meaningless trash...has no character at all. I actually produced this effect in TS2, where I had a sim that was basically a violent drunk based on its wants.

I have a copy of TS4, but am in no hurry to install it.  While those that installed it, along with Origin, haven't been bitching about any bizarre behaviour from Origin, the responses from others about the game and its limitations, then add that to your bizarre love/hate relationship with the game (you seem to love it, but hate almost every aspect of the game play), it doesn't sound like anything to bother with for the time being. 

Maybe if/when EAxis produce a couple of EPs and the FOJ starts fixing shit, it might be worth while giving it a spin.  In the mean time I'll keep exploring TS3 and enjoy the improvements the FOJ is now able to make because there are no more patches to drive him crazy.

Wake the dead!
I am annoyed by the culling that occurs since Population 180 is reached.
The game has sims move out by it's own choice.
I remember the sims 2, when the bloated neighborhoods exceeded Memory, but 180 is a very small Population in my eyes and I would like to choose the sims to give up.
Thank You for your Attention :-)

I would rather give up the open world. This is one more little thing that was sacrificed for that overly hyped "progressive" feature. It totally wrecked the sims for me.

Someone on MTS2 already fixed this, so this is gonna be a won't-fix. No need to reinvent wheels.

Anyway, locking this to collect the new, current annoyance list without being buried in old list.