Author Topic: Sims 4 - First Impressions  (Read 53896 times)

Offline Carl

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Sims 4 - First Impressions
« on: September 02, 2014, 01:20:08 AM »
Share your first impressions of The Sims 4 here, once you've got the game in hand. This will help others decide if the game is right for them and give us all ideas on how to use the new systems!

If you have something to talk about that deserves its own topic, feel free to create one on this board.

Offline Saltypaws

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Re: First Impressions
« Reply #1 on: September 02, 2014, 02:30:41 AM »
All in all I find it very entertaining.  The facial expressions and emotions are really different than we are use to.  It is time for bed now, but I did manage to take a couple of screenshots.  I love the sitting on bed interaction.
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Offline MissTrips

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Re: First Impressions
« Reply #2 on: September 02, 2014, 03:28:36 AM »
Played  around for an hour and goodness.  With free will on high you have to *monitor* your sims if you're trying to achieve something, like talk to someone long enough to make a friend.  They will quickly decide they'd like to wander off and look at a painting or read or anything other than keep up the conversation and chess game you queued up for them.  Building a friendship is much slower too, especially if you've gotten used to meeting someone and getting married in the same sim day.  There is an option to turn free will off for whatever sim you're directly managing, allowing the rest of the household to go on with their day while you keep your targeted sim on task.  Very useful, especially if you're trying to get job related tasks done.

Haven't played much with the build menu yet, but it is very easy to pop in, grab what you want to buy and pop out again.   Took some poking but use the . or , to rotate an object before placing, was a frustrating few minutes key pressing to find it.
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Offline Zyffyr

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Re: First Impressions
« Reply #3 on: September 02, 2014, 06:40:17 AM »
Just some thoughts after ~4 hours of play -

Emotions : The system is fairly intuitive. The only complaint I have with it is that it by default only shows the moodlets that are associated with the current mood. The rest are just thin bars. Fortunately you can expand them. Unfortunately, the moment anything at all changes in the listing, they all collapse back down to the colored bars. If I opened them up, they should stay open until I close them.

Skills : I rather like the fact that the higher level books can (technically) be read at low skill levels. Of course, they don't actually help you. Instead you get a negative moodlet from the confusion of trying to understand something WAY over your head. Also, from a Sims3 point of view we actually have far more skills than the list looks like as the current skills are in some cases a combination of multiple S3 skills. Handiness, as an example, is the S3 handiness PLUS S3 sculpting.

Loading Screens : They only lasted around 10 seconds or so for me, so I am perfectly happy to live with them.

Action Queues : Sadly, they only allow 5 actions beyond whatever actions(s) you are currently engaged in. Additionally, the game does some rather bad things with managing the queue. Getting out of bed seems to always clear the queue, which means my old habit of setting up the first few actions of their day while they sleep must become a thing of the past. Orders to go eat something seem to get pushed to the top. As an example I ordered a sim to use the bathroom, eat, then go out and do a few gardening tasks. Instead of doing them in that order, eating came last, even though his hunger was already down at the low end of the yellow range.

Relationships : I have mixed feeling about the apparently lower speed at which the relationships improve, but I really like the split Friendship and Romance bars.

CAS : Not really fond of the changes, probably never will be.

Library : There is one big flaw in it. If you want to reuse a household, it requires you to save a new copy before you can place it. I really don't need more than one copy of a given person in there. Sure, I can go back and delete it later but that is just bad design.

Offline _Annika_

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Re: First Impressions
« Reply #4 on: September 02, 2014, 07:08:37 AM »
Yewww, I'm not going to be happy with the moodlet panel either, and will be seeking a mod/fix. Same goes for the action queues. I think many simmers like to queue up a list of actions for sims to do after getting out of bed. The dual relationship bar is similar to that of Sims 2, as is the handiness skill and the library problem.

I look forward to reading more of everyone's observations! Keep me entertained while I wait for my own copy :D (either from hubby as a *surprise* or for Christmas when I get spending money).

Offline MarianT

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Re: First Impressions
« Reply #5 on: September 02, 2014, 08:58:02 AM »
I've been doing an 8-person household in Sims 3 and then this morning in Sims 4 for comparison.

8 people in Sims 3 get $30,500 to begin with; in TS4 it's $34,000.
A 50x50 lot in TS3 is $5000; in TS4, a 40x30 lot (the largest empty lot I could find; it was in Oasis Springs) is $5500.
I used blueprints in TS3; the cheapest bathroom, 2nd cheapest kitchen, and 3 of the 2nd cheapest bedrooms came to $19,268.
In TS4, I used 2 of the cheapest bathroom, the 2nd cheapest kitchen, 2 of the 2nd cheapest bedrooms, 2 of the cheapest bedrooms, and the cheapest living room and put together a house that cost $25,136.

I still haven't put a roof on. When I tried, I screwed up the interior of the house somehow. I don't know if that's a glitch or my ineptitude. I'm getting used to the camera; the most annoying thing is that you can't edge-scroll at the bottom of the screen. Putting siding on the outside is a mixed bag. You can have it automatically finish off the corners, but holding down the shift button only covers the exterior of a room rather than the whole house.

Being able to put a foundation underneath is wonderful; so is being able to move the whole house. I think I'll like being able to rotate objects by using the . and , once I get used to doing that; it works much better than what I used in TS3. (Now if I can just figure out the roof...)

I've put each of my sims in each of the 8 career tracks. They pick up skills very quickly, mainly because you're notified of that as soon as they start working on one. In my TS3 game, it took me until 5:30 pm to get everyone employed (the self-employed painter and writer had to get their skill points). In TS4, everyone was employed by noon. In TS3, I gave them a computer, an easel, a chess set, a treadmill and a gnubb set. In TS4, they have a computer, an easel, a chess set, a punching bag, and an observatory.

Sims get focused by using the observatory. My painter sim has the perfectionist trait, and he got embarrassed by how awful his first painting was (it was only okay) and had to go hide under the covers. I gave him a pep talk at the mirror, though, and he's fine now. It costs money now to paint -- $50 for a small, $75 for a medium, and $100 for a large. On the other hand, my sim's first painting sold for $74, for a profit of $24.

I really like the look of the game, and I'm going to enjoy playing with emotions. Are they smarter? Apparently they don't react to fights or deaths in their vicinity, and someone reported that a woman walked in on her cheating husband without reacting either. On the other hand, last night when my sim started a conversation with a woman in the museum's bathroom and several other people walked in as well, making it quite crowded, my sim and the person she was talking to exited on their own. There might have been some clipping; I didn't notice because I was so surprised.


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Offline Metropolis Man

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Re: First Impressions
« Reply #6 on: September 02, 2014, 10:09:29 AM »
Okay, I am going to ask a noob question after playing a few hours, but I am wondering if I can start on Sunday at 8:00 AM in one particular house for a 2nd household. I started at a given house played for 4 days, and then created another household and wanted to move them into the same house and start over fresh on Sunday. I had to evict the first family I created, but then when my 2nd family moved in it was Thursday. So I am wondering how to wipe the neighborhood clean and start over.



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Offline sweetmel

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Re: First Impressions
« Reply #7 on: September 02, 2014, 10:18:55 AM »
I play on my work laptop and although I can play Sims 3 on it, it is fairly jerky and I have to keep the graphics setting pretty low. Since I'm actually at work right now, I could only log on to Sims 4 for a few minutes but I set up a Sim, bought a house, moved in, bought a Cooking 101 book, read it, etc. - and the performance is amazing and the graphics are all set to high. So I thought I'd note that for people who might be wondering how well it plays on lower end systems. I notice the graphics settings have a laptop mode that will automatically lower certain settings but I didn't bother seeing what it was like since the game was so smooth and responsive. Can't wait to get off work! (Still annoyed they couldn't release 12 hours earlier for Labor Day, though.)

Offline _Annika_

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Re: First Impressions
« Reply #8 on: September 02, 2014, 10:25:13 AM »
@Metro In Sims 2 if you wanted to reset a neighbourhood you needed to

copy the neighbourhood from C:\Program Files (x86)\Origin Games\The Sims 2 Ultimate Collection\Double Deluxe\Base\TSData\Res\UserData\Neighborhoods

delete the corresponding neighbourhood from your documents folder C:\Users\yourname\Documents\EA Games\The Sims™ 2 Ultimate Collection\Neighborhoods

and paste the one copied from the progam files.

I don't have Sims 4 yet, but you could try looking for something like this, as from what I've seen it seems to function in a similar way.

EDIT: if you do find it, it might be very useful to make a back up of this file to have a fresh file for challenges ;)

Offline simchuff

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Re: First Impressions
« Reply #9 on: September 02, 2014, 10:41:37 AM »
My first impressions after only 2 hours of play (I waited til midnight and played til 2, and had to go to bed to work, ugh).

Not fond of the camera options, they drive me absolutely insane, I am so use to the sims 3 camera angles and I love them. I hate that I can't get a full view of the neighborhood I am in like we could see the whole world in Sims 3. I also don't like that I can't level out the camera angle at which ever zoom level I am at.

Neighborhoods, I understand why they did it, but it seems very Sims 2ish and to be honest after playing Sims 3 for so long when I tried to go back to Sims 2 I just couldn't handle the segregation of the houses and the load screens. The load screens in this game are not nearly as bad, thank goodness, but I hated the fact that if I wanted to visit my neighbors house it needed a load screen, if it will be open neighborhood for the small neighborhood it should be completely open, that bothered me. Also my load screens were about 15-20 seconds, so they were a bit annoying (especially seeing as I needed a load screen to visit neighbor and then another to go back home). I like that it is a bit easier to travel, you don't have to call each time you can click on the road, but after Sims 3 it is still hard to get used to.

I also disliked the collapsed moodlets and how long it took to get a relationship moving.

I am sure this is a lot more that I dislike but I only played for a couple of hours. Haha, I am sure however that I will grow to understand it better (I didn't know how to rotate my items that was so frustrating, I liked being able to move it with my mouse) and will like it. I do like the emotions, they are a little weird, but make the game a bit more interesting.

Again very first impressions.
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Edit: Gah, why can't it be time to go home? The new stuff might have some annoyances but I want to play with it!

Offline LenaLJ

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Re: First Impressions
« Reply #10 on: September 02, 2014, 10:42:33 AM »
@Metro In Sims 2 if you wanted to reset a neighbourhood you needed to

copy the neighbourhood from C:\Program Files (x86)\Origin Games\The Sims 2 Ultimate Collection\Double Deluxe\Base\TSData\Res\UserData\Neighborhoods

delete the corresponding neighbourhood from your documents folder C:\Users\yourname\Documents\EA Games\The Sims™ 2 Ultimate Collection\Neighborhoods

and paste the one copied from the progam files.

I don't have Sims 4 yet, but you could try looking for something like this, as from what I've seen it seems to function in a similar way.

EDIT: if you do find it, it might be very useful to make a back up of this file to have a fresh file for challenges ;)

I cant imagine they would do it this complicated, I sure don't hope so.

Offline _Annika_

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Re: First Impressions
« Reply #11 on: September 02, 2014, 10:45:36 AM »
With any luck they wised up and made it as simple as deleting the folder in My Documents like when we factory reset Sims 3, or better yet, a start over button in-game.

Offline Metropolis Man

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Re: First Impressions
« Reply #12 on: September 02, 2014, 10:46:53 AM »
I hope not too as it will be a nightmare to have challenge players start fresh which they'll pretty much have to. No dice so far. I cannot find similar named files. I did find the Origin Games folder, but nothing about neighborhoods in any of the sub folders. I tried deleting the household I started with but then the neighborhood was not reset and just continued.

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EDIT: Hmmm...okay I did find like 12 different save files all in the documents folder with today's date. I am assuming I can safely delete all of those. Maybe that will do the trick and a new neighborhood would automatically trigger?

Offline simchuff

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Re: First Impressions
« Reply #13 on: September 02, 2014, 10:55:19 AM »
If they need to reset, could they just create a new game file? I haven't played with this yet, so not sure how simple it is, but if you are creating a new sim, I would think under the exit screen there would also be an option for a new game file. Not in front of my home computer, just thinking about what I remember from when I played, so I could be off on what you're wanting.

Offline Nutella

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Re: First Impressions
« Reply #14 on: September 02, 2014, 11:17:16 AM »
I'm having trouble with neighborhood not resetting too.  I shut down the game, restart game, create new household, and I still see my OLD one in the house I left her.  I could evict that old sim, but that doesn't reset the neighborhood.  Will mess with it more later.

 

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