AIBU to think that Sims 4 is like HOMEWORK

[BernadetteRostankowskiWolowitz]

So I cut my Sims teeth on Sims 1, 20 years+ ago, peak Sims play Sims 2 at like 18 or so. Dabbled a smidge in Sim 3 never really that fussed then real life, kids etc came along and I totally retired from the sport.

Now my youngest is 8 and we have a PS4 which has Sims 4 for free

So, the odd evening I've dipped in and had a go. Fuck me. Its as challenging as real life. Its not escapism.

They have aspirations and wants along with their needs. They get sad if you don't fulfil their life goal of earning a million quid in a day, they get pissed off if you schedule too many actions in a row. Trying to get them on a sleep schedule is harder than it was for both my infants, and they just seem to piss themselves every day!

I've started creating sims with little to no real goals or interests, just so that the game play is less stressful for me, as I just want to switch off when I play, not have to babysit another family of kids I created.

Fuck me.

Take me back to listening to Pure Shores and smashing it at Sims 2 til the small hours on a pc in my folks house.

I remember I had an expansion pack where they could go on dates?! I can’t remember which one that was. Really want to start playing again…..

I couldn't get into Sims 4 and I think that it's pretty appalling that you would have to spend £1000 to get all of the expansion packs!

No, you wouldn’t. You can find the much older ones for under £15. Several are sold in sets (3 for 1 price). The new pack with horses and nectar is about £24 pre-order on some gaming sites. If you buy from EA games, it can be more expensive , but if you shop around and look at other gaming sites, it can be much cheaper.

Loved Sims 2, kind of glad I can’t play it anymore as that would mean me leaving the real world for good 😊

Admittedly, S4 is excellent for builds.

My son plays it sometimes, If I have a go I cheat their needs and leave them on max so i just make cool houses make them good at their jobs. Doing the aspirations is way more fun than managing when they pee and eat and sleep all the time

What's the Needs cheat?

I've stopped putting husbands in the game as it's ridiculous that I have to manage their wants and needs too. They need a setting where you have Main Character and a load of family NPCs.

Oh god why did you tell me that 🤣

I dread to think how many hours of my life I've lost to The Sims. I have a lot of mods and cc on my current Sims 4 setup which is such a fun time thief.

If your cheats are enabled, hold shift and left click on the houses mailbox, some options come up and you can select fill household needs and then disable house hold needs decay.
They just chill out with maxed needs and you can do other stuff.

i didn’t know you can do this cheat on all the household members at once😭 I’ve been shift clicking each individual sim and fulfilling their needs one by one. And I’m a boarderline obsessive sims player with like 1600 hours in the game; so this is shameful on my part!

what specifics do you need on a laptop for sims 2?
I miss it, it was the best of them all!
i have sims 4 for the PS4 but its so hard to use & with DH playing fifa I’d barely get a look in anyway.
would love to roll back the years with Sims 2!

I also was into SIMS back in the day and downloaded the free SIMS 4. I agree, it felt like a SIM of real life and I didn't enjoy it... Back to FIFA and GTA!

What was the absolutely brilliant sims where you were in a spooky hotel in the desert that you couldn’t leave and there were aliens?

I used to love Sims 1&2 when I was younger. I tried to play Sims 4 a couple of weeks ago and it was so difficult especially trying to bring up a kid and look after dogs while managing a wife and husband. Can you do the needs cheat on the Xbox? I use the money cheat but I still like to send my Sims out to work I don't play with an aim I still play it the way I did as a child but it's much harder now. I lost hours playing it the other week I wish I had the time to sit and play it properly and work my way up.

i have to admit I prefer Sims 3 overall. It's the open world design of it. Also if you use all the NRAAS mods it removes a lot of the annoying restrictions and so on. Also, it's the only version of Sims where you can build a jouse. IYKYK 😃😃😃😂

There's lots of stuff from S2 I'd like to keep though, the cutscenes, the complete animations, better woo-hoo dynamics. And S1 had that massive square bath! But S3 has the level of chaos that skips it above the others. After all, you can be holding a birthday party for your toddler, only for one of the guests to go into labour, two start a slap fight, another sets themselves on fire and then Death turns up and plays with the cat. Totally rocking partaaaaay!!!

This made me chuckle. I can't play it for too long or I get stressed out, probably a good thing so I can get back to taking care of my real life family and house!

Even a pet is hard bloody work! I didn't know about the needs cheat, might have to give that a go.

Remeber the heart vibrating bed

I do like that they give the options for the Sim to woohoo in the hot tub

I think you've answered my question of why I can't get on board with Sims 4 gameplay. I love the graphics, love the building aspect - have built my best house ever in my Sims 1-4 career - and yet the gameplay is just "meh". Fulfilling the Sims needs is just so unfulfilling, ironically. The needs cheat is a great tip though!

I adore 2 and 3. So much content, so much fun. I love the open world aspect of Sims 3.

I wish they'd do a re release of the original for the nostalgia!

I was happily playing Sims 4 on PS5 getting into my character and getting used to everything when my character suddenly aged and then died! It really upset me and I've had 2 more characters die since then and I realised I was fast forwarding too much! 🤣

How do you enable the cheats?

That's why I keep older laptop so I can run SIMS 1,Pharaoh,Age of empires 2 and rollecoaster1 tycoon without stuffing my new laptops😉

@Cheesusisgrate did you know Pharaoh A New Era is available on Steam? Basically the same game but shinier!

Go in thr settings and turn aging off 😁

Mu favourite character had a charm potion (or cupids arrow maybe) as well as youth potion, and he singlehandedly populated the neighbourhood with NPC children. His family tree had about 25 offspring belonging to many different mothers. He was abducted by aliens and was impregnated twice. Because I kept him young his children died off long before he did. I created more drama than a telenovela.

@CottonPyjamas thank you I didn't realise you could do that!

I still play Sims 2 and so good to see I'm not alone. It's on a laptop which is on its last legs so I've uninstalled everything else on it so the Sims runs ok and I'll be so sad when it finally dies and I lose my families.

I love this thread 😁I only discovered Sims 3 but loved all the expansion packs. My Sim lived a very promiscuous supernatural single life. Definitely no kids!

She was basically living my fantasy life in the baby raising years!