Poll: How do you feel about accidental deaths in the Sims 2?

[amjoie]

Please vote your choice, within the range of your actual physical age. All ages can choose the "meh" vote, in place of an age group vote. Only one vote per person. No changing of votes. Vote in order to see the total.

I have not voted yet. 

[Mirelly]

I was only thinking today that we just don't have enough automotive mayhem in TS2. Given that driving is shockingly dangerous for the average moron who is utterly incapable of driving more than 30 feet without hitting something or drive at speeds greater than an asthmatic tortoise with gout without needing the length of an international airport runway to stop safely in the unexpected event that something appears in its path. If nothing else, the occasional sim should get offed in a car pool pile up.

[J. M. Pescado]

I was only thinking today that we just don't have enough automotive mayhem in TS2. Given that driving is shockingly dangerous for the average moron who is utterly incapable of driving more than 30 feet without hitting something or drive at speeds greater than an asthmatic tortoise with gout without needing the length of an international airport runway to stop safely in the unexpected event that something appears in its path. If nothing else, the occasional sim should get offed in a car pool pile up.

Yeh, but then we'd need things like a "driving" skill, and all my sims would take to driving armored vehicles. Why do you think *I* drive a TANK?

[witch]

Because you're too fat to fit in an ordinary car?

[Metalkatt]

The "accidental" deaths in the sims aren't that accidental, imho.  You have to have a complete slob to die by flies, for example, or lay off the macro long enough for them to get splatted by a satellite.  It takes so long for them to get to death conditions that it seems one either has to be a poor need-manager, or has to cheat to achieve that result.  For a person who likes to play idyllic families, that's cool.  Some people want to be benevolent deities, and provide their pixel-people with everything they need to be happy.  Largely, I fall into that category.  It's not very realistic, but some people like that escape.

Other folks want to have a little more realism.  There's danger everywhere, especially for children and teenagers in that "I'm invincible/immortal" mindset.  Every parent knows that there's no such thing as childproofing, completely safe driving, or partying, whether the child is a child, a teen, or in college.  In my game, I would like a greater chance of accidental death, not because I get a thrill from it, but because I like a little reality in my game.  Not every child lives to be an adult.  Not everyone who attends a college fraternity escapes alcohol poisoning.  Not everyone who has a heart attack survives it.  If I can't bear to lose a sim, I'll turn its aging off, and if it dies accidentally, I'll use the GrimmyPhone.  Not everone plays like that, true, but it is an option to achieve the results.

[MsMaria]

Because you're too fat to fit in an ordinary car?

[Velda]

I haven't had a truly accidental death since one of the neighbors passed out in front of the pool ladder way back in Sims 1.  Even then, it wouldn't have happened if I'd actually been paying attention instead of looking at a magazine.  I usually let my Sims lead relatively uncomplicated, tragedy-free lives, but sometimes I want to get rid of someone for story purposes, or pare down a certain age group (way too many fugly teens when you add a Downtown), or because they're a Maxian atrocity with no redeeming qualities.  I don't give them a lingering gory death, I just click on various deaths with the Insimenator and get colorful ghosts for my cemetery.  I don't even sit there cackling over it.  Not always.  

[kewian]

Because you're too fat to fit in an ordinary car?

again: 

[J. M. Pescado]

Because you're too fat to fit in an ordinary car?

Shows what you know. Tanks are more cramped than ordinary cars are. Cars don't use their internal space for anything, whereas tanks need that space to be tanky. Stupid Witch Puffs.

[neriana]

I can't remember the last time I had an accidental death in the game. My problem with them is that they are all so stupid, not that they occur often. I wouldn't mind life being a little more hazardous for Sims, I just object to having Will Wright's personal fears about fire projected onto my game, especially in the form they take in the game. And the running with scissors, and pool death, and Sims playing instruments till they starve to death. Dumbness. I think a lot of it is laziness on part of the programmers and developers.

There is so much potential in the game, and instead we get spontaneous combustion from working out.

[ZiggyDoodle]

What accidental deaths?  My Sims seem to be invincible and so far have survived setting themselves on fire, heatstroke, and lightning.

[Kyna]

I'd like to see an accidental death that wasn't caused by glitches.  The only truly accidental death I ever had was due to a Maxis bug.

To get an "accidental" death (i.e. not by old age) I have to take extreme measures to ensure it happens.  Hardly an accident if I'm doing that.  I'd like my sims to die by other means than old age, but I don't like having to choose which sims to kill off.  I'd like some randomness in the process - even sadorandomness would be better than none.

I did use the decimate function on the lot debugger once pretending it was something like a plane crash for storyline purposes, but I got some funkiness in the game when one of the sims it selected was a baby.  For my larger neighbourhoods I've been considering making a list of my playable, killable (i.e. no babies or toddlers, who can't die) sims in a spreadsheet, then using a randomise function to choose how many to kill off, which of them will die, and what they'll die of.

35-55 age group.

[J. M. Pescado]

What accidental deaths?  My Sims seem to be invincible and so far have survived setting themselves on fire, heatstroke, and lightning.

Lightning is probably the deadliest due to its instant hunger hit, which can kill. Sims hit by lightning also have a high likelyhood of peeing themselves as a result of the bladder hit. It's a bad thing. The lightning itself, however, appears to be nonfatal.

[Katie]

The only time I had a Sim die of something other than old age without me planning it was way back in the base game. I was busy paying attention to something else, and one of my Sims managed to starve to death in that time. Negligence on my part, not really accidental.

I didn't answer the poll because none of the answers really apply. It's not that I want more death, I just think it should be handled differently. I was trying to kill off a household once, and it happened when a Sim started a kitchen fire. Of course she just ran around for hours on end waiting to be engulfed, while her housemate was upstairs in the bathroom rocking out to her MP3 player. She didn't come downstairs until the first Sim perished, and then she eventually died in the fire. While the whole scene was quite amusing, it's also not really the type of death I'm looking for. I want more random death. I like the occasional element of surprise.

[J. M. Pescado]

I think the problem is that in real life, people only accidentally die through intentionally destructive acts or extreme stupidity on the part of themselves or others. Everything else is natural causes. Since sims doesn't include acts of lethal violence nor self-destruction, accidental death is understandably somewhat more rare.

[Lorelei]

I tend to be benevolent in my role as She Who Smites And Rewards At Whim. It takes a lot to piss me off in real life, and that patience carries over to the game. I also don't want to risk BFBVFS by indulging in wholesale Sim slaughter.

Exception to usual Kind Deity settings: willfull and incorrigible stupidity and arseyness. But you couldn't call those banishments / deaths "accidental".

Accidental deaths involving annoying Townies would be grand, but they tend to target useful or appreciated characters almost exclusively.

[sudaki]

I don't know if I want MORE or LESS deaths, but I would like some changes in the methods of death, I guess.  A lot of things just seem so weirdly unbalanced; it's apparently very easy to die of hyperthermia in Seasons, but totally impossible to freeze to death.  It's relatively easy to be scared to death on a lot with multiple ghosts, but practically impossible to die of plague.  I don't have a huge problem with how it works, but if I were making the game, I'd tweak this stuff.

[dusty]

Put me in the "what accidental death?" camp - I think you have to be a fairly incompetent player to have any non-bug-related accidental deaths to speak of.

[Soylent Sim]

Another "tweak, please" here.  I've never had an "accidental" death that didn't involve either a nasty bug or else my going far out of my way to set it up, and I would like a bit more lethality to risky actions.  (Even if proper precautions should prevent or limit said risk; fixing an appliance with 10 mechanical should have a very small chance of a minor shock, fixing an appliance with 0 mechanical while standing in a puddle should kill you no matter what your motives are.)  And on a tangential note, I do wish there were more nonlethal bad things that could strike our sims.  Suddenly having a sim kick the bucket can kill your inner storyline as well, but something to occasionally shake up their little pixelated lives is needed to keep it from the usual utopian daily cycle.

Just for the record, BTW, Maxis already implemented a "no deaths, thank you" cheat in the game.  Turn off motive decay and the major causes of death can't bother you anymore.  You're then left with satellite, flies, disease, cowplant, and old age.  The cowplant is entirely voluntary, old age can be turned off with a separate cheat, and it's almost impossible for disease to actually strike a sim down.  Flies can be bypassed if you just hire a maid, which leaves only one very rare "oops yer dead" that can't be disabled by base maxian code.

[Gwill]

I have never lost a sim unintentionally.
I had a pregnant woman almost die from glitchy deadly morning sickness, but I saved her by normal pleading.  The only other close call I've ever had was when skilling a sim manually, and using the red-bulb-machine thingy to boost him when all his motives were low, when a ghost came by and spooked him to death.  Again, saved by pleading.

It took me two generations of constant cloud watching to kill a servo by satelite.
A fire alarm or sprinkler takes away any chance of dying in a fire.

With nouniprotect I have lost a few dormies to starvation and fright, but I wouldn' mind seeing more of them die.

[Orikes]

One of the primary themes of Sims2 over Sims1 was the whole generational thing. In the original game, you had children and adults, period. There was no growing up or getting old. That pretty much killed the game for me after a month, maybe two. It got incredibly boring in a very short amount of time and pretty soon I was spending all my time building lots that were never played. With Sims2, there's suddenly this whole circle of life (cue Disney-fied music). Now I'm completely addicted to the game and have been playing for almost a full year straight (I do sleep once in a while.. oh yeah, and there's that whole work thing).

With adding old age and dying from old age, they also had to add in the accidental deaths. First off, they were in the original game, and second off, if sims could die one way, they had to have a variety of ways for them to go as well. While the accidental deaths aren't really so accidental, they do exist for a reason.

I actually think they fit with the tone of the rest of the game perfectly. Sure, they're exaggerated and a little cartoony, but honestly, if you look at the rest of the game play, it's exactly the same way. They've introduced supernatural elements in the game from the get-go (aliens) and in each expansion have added something else. Each time, it's been a little bit silly, but completely fitting with the tone of the way the base game is designed. It's all a little silly and cartoony. And personally, I love it. I like that little bit of silly thrown into the soap opera drama of living the daily lives of my sims. It's what I find to be fun. For people who don't like the way the game itself is designed, there are mods a plenty out there given an open invitation to muck with the game as much as you want. Don't like the way something works? Go change it and more power to you. It's the way the game works on its most basic level and is one of the things that lets it thrive.

I get really sick of people bitching about how stupid Maxis/EA is for doing X, Y, or Z. It seems like in some communities (this one's not as bad as others), any time there's something that a player doesn't like or wishes was different, they go on about how horrible and evil Maxis is for not thinking exactly like they do and designing it their way. Oy. Hell, in some communities, if you even give an inkling that you might like something that Maxis did, you're instantly tagged as a sheep. It's like it becomes uncool to actually *like* the game you're spending an inordinate amount of time playing.

Anyway, I'm rambling. I'm content with the way the game is right now. I generally never have accidental death except for some free roaming cow plants here or there. I'm not sure I'd want to increase the number of accidental deaths, but I sure as heck wouldn't want them to disappear either.

[Diala]

The only real accidental death I had was by the pregnancy glitch, and I managed to save the mom in a plea.

I am not certain that I want more accidental death, per say, but what Soylent Sim said: more nonlethal bad stuff. Not ALL the time, but once in a while, to throw my gameplay into a loop. That is why I like the chance cards: they end up negatively sometimes. However, I don't know if I trust the game's sadorandomness enough to make these Bad Things come up only once in a while. I also wouldn't mind that these Bad Things can be increased/decreased based on how the Sim lives.

Now what I want is more townies/dormies killed. It would be hilarious if one did something stupid and got killed as a result. Not ALL the time, of course, but once in a rare while, just for immature giggles.

[Moa]

My current count of death types for my main neighborhood (not counting Sims that died and were sucessfully given a second chance through Reaper pleadage):

Old Age: 8 (I allow my Sims liberal use of the Elixer of Life, with the requirement that they have to be Platinum at night to take it)

Disease: 2 (Both Sims dropped dead unexpectedly shortly after I loaded the lots - game glitches.)

Starvation: 2 (Non-playeable Uni Student dropped from starvation via piano playing - shades of the Red Shoes. Probable death of an NPC maid in one of my dorms. I didn't know he was dead until I ran across a death memory in one of my Sims memories. I assume he never got the 'time to leave' message and cleaned until he dropped, in the girls bathroom.)

Electrocution: 2 (I make my Sims repair their own appliances)

Lightning Strike: 1 (Season townie outside hottubbing in the rain. I think he may have been hit twice.)

Scared to Death by Ghosts: 2 (Families should have moved the tombstones out to the cemetary rather than leaving them about for gloating/knowledge-sim-wants-to-see-a-ghost purposes.)

Cowplant: 3 (Secret Society)

The only really "accidental" and non-glitch death (not counting the Old Age deaths) is the one townie hit by lightning. Probably I could have prevented that by shooing everybody inside when the rain hit.

I'm generally a benevolent overseer (see liberal allowances of Elixer of Life) but I like my Sims to tell me their own stories as much as possible. The few glitchy deaths definitely added memorable milestones in the history of the neighborhood. So for me, more unexpected deaths, more randomness (at one point I ran my list of Sims through a random number generator to select 10 to have babies), more unexpected 'good' but very rare events (a Sim could discover an oil well in her backyard). SimCity used to have a Disaster mode that could be turned on and off at will. That sort of thing could work nicely in context of the Sims.

Count me as one of the fans of the fantasy silliness of the game. I can't wait to give the wishing well a try. (Although I'd welcome a very nasty troll at the bottom of the well too.)

[gali]

My sims get old, but NEVER die - always resurrected.
I always can restore the original hood, and choose another story line.

[witch]

Count me as one of the fans of the fantasy silliness of the game. I can't wait to give the wishing well a try. (Although I'd welcome a very nasty troll at the bottom of the well too.)

There is a troll at the bottom of the well, Mrs Crumplebutt.