The Paradox Life Sim game Super-Thread

[Davisx3m]

Hmmm.... I don't want the game tethered to Steam.

I do. There is such a big player base there and it does easily have the best most accesible modding software.

 

[Mr. Capiatlist]

Paradox Tectonic is being overseen by Rod Humble who also oversaw the development of The Sims 2 and The Sims 3, that's why I'm not too worried about the new game being too complex or too simple if it's going to be a life simulation game. The execs at Paradox hired the right person.

Or, to be frank, seeing your later replies - it's because you think The Sims 4 is "vacuous" compared to The Sims 3, which I didn't really find better or worse. The Sims 4 big flaw is that it definitely feel parceled out for EPs and DLC, but I can't really say there's anything about The Sims 3 which is universally better, nor can I say really the same about The Sims 4. Both were honestly vapid, that's sort of the point. The Sims has always been pretty shallow.

If forced to pick between a "day-dream doll-house" and a "robust life simulator", I'm going to pick the day-dream doll-house every time. Maybe it's because I'm a girl and I don't get your big-brained simulators, or maybe it's because I'm a 30-something engineer who already has a 1:1 life simulator and games are meant to be an escape from that, but I am not compelled by the idea of everything in my life being complicated.

And someone brought up My Time in Portia? Maybe it's because I bounced during early access, but that game was extremely shallow - they just buried it deep under an ever-expanding catalog of stuff to "build" to progress the story. But there was really only one way to fight, one way to build, one way to chat with folks. It was the same issue with Grave Yard keeper. You'd finally "progress" but the status quo was enforced through a new set of materials to build a new ranking of tools that are to the new materials what the old materials were to the old materials.

Compare that to Stardew Valley - since the base cycle of "plant, tend, reap" remains constant, there is an actual reward to upgrading your tools, and you can upgrade your tools in any order, so you can prioritize your own gameplay style. But with games like Portia and Graveyard Keeper, you eventually get the blast furnace to make iron quickly, and also steel - but now everything to advance needs steel and iron is only used to make steel. So now your one-step process is two steps, and is effectively the same length or longer. If you want to speed it up, you need to build the super furnace, which call also smelt stainless steel... and everything now takes stainless steel, which requires steel and iron... so the process is more complicated, takes longer, but is effectively unrewarding, unless there's some players out there who find evermore complicated flow charts with no real end or reward in sight as fun, which, to quote another user, I find to be utterly "crazy".

 

[Tomciu]

Hi! I've joined this forum after a link being posted in the Sims forum - I would absolutely be in favour of a new Life Sim game! A game with depth, emotional connection, spontaneity and long lasting consequences for interactions and life events would be the new gaming love of my life! Something with a subtle cleverness at pulling at your heart strings(which I feel was visible in the Sims 2 (children sliding down bannisters, for example)) is desperately needed . Connecting with the characters is something I adore - charm is the word I'm looking for! After the Sims 2 I feel EA lost its touch with what was loved about the franchise in the first place - there was so much charm in the base game of the Sims 2 that just feels missing in the Sims 4 for some reason.

 

[UBERWASP]

I don't play sims type games but I know them and have friends playing it and hey, if anything, PDX can over do it for with so many modifiers and so on for some people's tastes rather than release something that doesn't meet expectations.

 

[TheGrinningMan]

If forced to pick between a "day-dream doll-house" and a "robust life simulator", I'm going to pick the day-dream doll-house every time. Maybe it's because I'm a girl and I don't get your big-brained simulators, or maybe it's because I'm a 30-something engineer who already has a 1:1 life simulator and games are meant to be an escape from that, but I am not compelled by the idea of everything in my life being complicated.

This did get me thinking and clarifying my thoughts. Others in the thread might disagree, but for my part, I don't want so much a "life simulator" as a "soap opera generator". If the boring parts of life are simplified to give more weight and focus to the dramatic parts, at least for me, that's a price worth paying. And I think everyone agrees on this to some extent -- the argument is where the line is drawn.

As to what that means, "soap opera generator" ... for my part, I don't want every one of my virtual dolls to have to manage the precise ingredients available in their fridge. Unless like, culinary expertise is their "Thing", their life's calling, and so ordinary ingredients just won't do it. I love Dwarf Fortress, but I don't need Suburban Dwarf Fortress. But I do want the little simulated blighters to be interesting creatures, whose traits matter (IMHO CK3 made the right call in limiting personality traits to three and making them "weightier") and who intermittently, through the whims of the RNG and their little eccentric calculations, surprise me and lead me down a path I wasn't expecting.

 

[National Pokedex]

For me, it's not so much that I want to be able to do my little character's taxes or meal prep their entire lives away. My Sims do have dramatic lives, so I'm not opposed to "soap opera" generator. The fact that TS4 is a "day-dream-doll-house" simulator is an issue for me because there are no consequences that make the rewards feel earned. And this is why usually when I talk about my personal issues with TS4, it's about how Sims don't have genuine life motivators, or wants/fears. It is part of the crux of the argument of why they don't have in-depth personalities (unless imagined by the player) which makes them feel like dolls, hence the "dollhouse" moniker. The Sims themselves are hollow which ties into the lack of consequences. Because they don't have life motivators tied to their personality, the game can not present consequences when events occur that push them closer to or farther away from achieving their life goal (because in reality, their life's goal is a checklist for the player to complete on the side). So when I say I want a challenge, I'm saying so much more about how I want characters with deep personalities and a reason to actually navigate them through their lives and for it to feel like it means something in a way that is recognized by the game itself and does not just exist in my imagination.

 

[Emerald Child]

Or, to be frank, seeing your later replies - it's because you think The Sims 4 is "vacuous" compared to The Sims 3, which I didn't really find better or worse. The Sims 4 big flaw is that it definitely feel parceled out for EPs and DLC, but I can't really say there's anything about The Sims 3 which is universally better, nor can I say really the same about The Sims 4. Both were honestly vapid, that's sort of the point. The Sims has always been pretty shallow.

If forced to pick between a "day-dream doll-house" and a "robust life simulator", I'm going to pick the day-dream doll-house every time. Maybe it's because I'm a girl and I don't get your big-brained simulators, or maybe it's because I'm a 30-something engineer who already has a 1:1 life simulator and games are meant to be an escape from that, but I am not compelled by the idea of everything in my life being complicated.

I'm a girl too (an RN which is also a stressful job), but I really don't want a life simulation game that won't let me customize it the way I want and have sims that are stupid and won't do what they're suppose to do - that is what The Sims 4 is. The previous games in the series were a lot better in that the gameplay features actually worked and the sims can take care of themselves if the player had to step away for some emergency or other - a much better AI system than what TS4 has.

What I liked about the previous games, especially TS2 and TS3 is that you can make it as complex or as simple as you want because you can customize their worlds (or create them) and customize just about all the items and gameplay (especially TS3). You really couldn't do any of that with TS4. It's either play it the way EA wants you to or go play something else. And that's what people did - they either never played it or just gave up on it to go back TS2 and TS3 or some other game.

As I had written before, Rod Humble oversaw all that in TS2 and TS3, so I'm pretty excited about this new game.

And someone brought up My Time in Portia? Maybe it's because I bounced during early access, but that game was extremely shallow - they just buried it deep under an ever-expanding catalog of stuff to "build" to progress the story. But there was really only one way to fight, one way to build, one way to chat with folks. It was the same issue with Grave Yard keeper. You'd finally "progress" but the status quo was enforced through a new set of materials to build a new ranking of tools that are to the new materials what the old materials were to the old materials.

Compare that to Stardew Valley - since the base cycle of "plant, tend, reap" remains constant, there is an actual reward to upgrading your tools, and you can upgrade your tools in any order, so you can prioritize your own gameplay style. But with games like Portia and Graveyard Keeper, you eventually get the blast furnace to make iron quickly, and also steel - but now everything to advance needs steel and iron is only used to make steel. So now your one-step process is two steps, and is effectively the same length or longer. If you want to speed it up, you need to build the super furnace, which call also smelt stainless steel... and everything now takes stainless steel, which requires steel and iron... so the process is more complicated, takes longer, but is effectively unrewarding, unless there's some players out there who find evermore complicated flow charts with no real end or reward in sight as fun, which, to quote another user, I find to be utterly "crazy".

You did say that you left My Time at Portia early, but if you stuck with it you can get the factory and level 3 assembly station - those speed up production exponentially! If you knew how to run production efficiently, you could get all that by the end of the first year or the beginning of the second. I've read of other players getting them even sooner! So crafting and assembly of requested items is SUPER fast. Also, when certain missions are completed, you will get a daily shipment of wood/wood products from the Tree Farm and stone/minerals from Dana's Mining Company so that you wouldn't even have to log or mine if you don't want to. But you don't seem to know that.

My Time at Portia also has a lot of storylines that are revealed the more you work as a builder for the town and become better friends with it's citizens too. So besides all the building, you can participate in those storylines to make your playing experience of the game richer. It's also very rewarding to see the town grow and expand with all the building efforts you've contributed. It's not repetitive like that crazy TS4 player's game - you DO have a good reason to do everything that needs to be done in the game.

 

[Emerald Child]

For me, it's not so much that I want to be able to do my little character's taxes or meal prep their entire lives away. My Sims do have dramatic lives, so I'm not opposed to "soap opera" generator. The fact that TS4 is a "day-dream-doll-house" simulator is only an issue for me because there's no consequences that make the rewards feel earned. This is why usually when I talk about my personal issues with TS4, it's about how Sims don't have genuine life motivators, or wants/fears. It is part of the crux of the argument of why they don't have in-depth personalities (unless imagined by the player) which makes them feel like dolls, hence the "dollhouse" moniker. So when I say I want a challenge, or the game to bite back, I'm just saying I want to feel like....well I don't know how else to explain it except that I just want a higher difficulty than what TS4 offers.

I COMPLETELY understand what you're saying! I hate it when a sim in TS4 openly flirts or cheats in front of their spouse. The spouse MIGHT get angry for like a few seconds, but then act like they never witnessed it and is in good relationship with their cheating significant other. A good example of no ill consequences!!!

Meanwhile, in the previous The Sims games, if a sim witnesses their spouse or boyfriend/girlfriend cheating, OH MY GOSH! so much drama! Lots of angry words, crying, divorce/breaking up and even a burning bag of poop on the front porch! I love it, lol!

And your sim will have to actually work on their relationship with their ex if you want them to get back together.

 

[Emerald Child]

Okay, this is for the Paradox Tectonic devs! @National Pokedex just posted a great article to me over at the official The Sims forums on how The Sims 3 devs developed TS3 traits. I'm sure Rod Humble would be familiar with this as he was there when The Sims 3 was being created, but I hope the Paradox Tectonic devs would take a look at this to give them some ideas about why the trait system turned out so well in TS3.

Designing Character Traits in The Sims 3​

by Ray Mazza (one of the AMAZING devs for The Sims 3)


I really do love the traits system in TS3. You choose 5 traits (7 if you graduate from college and level up high enough in one of the three Social Groups, even more if you use a mod). There are about 63+ traits that will govern their actions so the combination of distinct and unique personalities is quite high resulting in which there are no sims that are exactly the same! Moreover, certain combinations of traits will produce unique actions that otherwise would not manifest if the traits were not together in the same sim.

Anyway, if the new project Paradox Tectonic is making is a life simulation game, I hope they consider something like the TS3 traits system. It is a pretty great system! Combine that with story progression and you'll have consequences for the actions/emotions/mental state that the sim's traits would govern!


PS: Later in the article, Mazza mentions that the devs were debating about whether they should include the "clumsy" trait since there was no actual benefit for a sim to have it. He noted though that they were glad they DID include because it turned out to be a well-loved trait that many of the game's players identified with. Including me, lol!

 

[Emerald Child]

If forced to pick between a "day-dream doll-house" and a "robust life simulator", I'm going to pick the day-dream doll-house every time. Maybe it's because I'm a girl and I don't get your big-brained simulators, or maybe it's because I'm a 30-something engineer who already has a 1:1 life simulator and games are meant to be an escape from that, but I am not compelled by the idea of everything in my life being complicated.

I don't know if you realize this, but TS2 and TS3 can also be played as your day-dream doll-house like you wanted. That is how flexible and powerful those games are. But TS4? You can only play it that one way. I would think it would be smarter for Paradox Tectonic to make a life simulation game that is a lot more flexible than TS4, because that would fulfill the wishes of every type of life simulation gamer out there and ensure success for Paradox over EA/Maxis.

An example of turning a sim game into something else:
There are times when I just want to play TS3 (and TS2 sometimes) "as is" without making any adjustments to it. But more often than not, I have even more fun turning it into something else. I've played TS3 as a zombie survival game - there's a NRAAS mod that Twallan made called "Vector" than can create a pandemic in the world you're playing. It has various types of illnesses that you can release into the world and one of them is the zombie virus! At the beginning of the outbreak, your household starts out in a home lot with nothing more than tents and/or sleeping bags. No water or electricity. They have to go outside of the home lot to get water, fish, look for food/seeds in the abandoned residential and commercial lots. All this while avoiding or fighting off the zombies. You can choose to add other non-infected survivors to your household. But if they "turn", you can keep them captive, set them free or kill them. While your sims try to survive, they also have to work on leveling up certain skills to make life more survivable, such as increasing their handiness, invention and/or logic skills so that you can introduce appliances that can now access water (so they wouldn't have to go out anymore to collect water), electricity (before this point you're only allowed candles for light for example) and other quality of life improvements. Your sims are also to research the alchemy book to find a potion that will cure the zombie virus. Once discovered, they're to grow the ingredients and start making the potions. You can either choose to save everyone in town or kill them all instead (there's a whole variety of fun and interesting ways to do this too) or choose some to save and kill the rest (where you set your own rules as to who gets cured and lives and who doesn't).

When you've cured or killed whoever, you can then build up the town again through a colony challenge!

Other ways:
I also like fleshing out careers that I've always wanted to live out but never had the chance to pursue. There's a fan made rabbit-hole career for marine biologist which can be turned into an active career with Zerbu's Ultimate Careers mod. So my sim starts out as a self-employed scuba diver making money from collecting sealife and consigning them or handing them in for diving work from various commercial lots. I wanted it to be realistic, so when my sim saved enough money from her job, I wanted my sim to go to university for a science degree. Well, I love the University Life EP but I wanted her to stay in her homeworld too (because I really love that fan-made world!). And as it turns out, you can create your own hometown university. It's great because if you do generational play, you can have whole generations of sims go to school and university together and still be able to take care of the rest of your sims households in that world. Plus you can design the university campus anyway you want! Want it to look super high-tech? You can do that! Want it to look more goth or like a Harry Potter mystical school? You can do that too! Really, the designs are only limited by your imagination!

So before I had my sim become a marine biologist, I had her go to university to earn a Science degree in her own home world. After a few weeks (you can set how many credits they earn in a semester so that the graduate faster or slower), my sim graduated and became a marine biologist. So in the morning, she scuba dives for specimens and in the afternoon, she does experiments on them. She also writes books on her research and gets them publish. To make her career richer, she also puts her specimens on display in the town museum which also gets built up as with an aquarium as she adds more sealife and seashells. It's really a fun, involving scenario!

I've fleshed out other careers such as chef, doctor, fortune teller. There's a new mod for a sewing machine so I'm thinking of fleshing out a fashion designer game. Just need to think about what to put together to pull this off.

Oh and being a cat-burglar is hella-fun! The Ambitions EP allows a sim to break into a house (from their detective active career). If your sim is in the criminal career and has the kleptomaniac and evil traits - they can actually break into homes and steal stuff! It has a basic stealth system if you want the challenge of stealing stuff while people are up and about within the lot and see if you can steal and get away without ever being seen. That is a thief simulator right there!

Those same breaking in and stealth mechanics can also be used in the Assassin career that came with Twallan's Careers mod. It has some challenging missions where it gets harder to get to your target without having to break in and off them and get away sight unseen within a limited time.

There's just so many more options with a flexible life simulation game!

So this is why a highly customizable life simulation game - which can also do dollhouse - like TS3 is better than a dollhouse simulator like TS4 which can only do that one thing.


You are free to stick with inflexible TS4 if that's what you want. But I'm not really trying to appeal to you - I'm really just hoping that Paradox Tectonic would consider making a powerful, flexible, highly customizable (and optimized) life simulation game - that would not only bring in the customers EA lost from the shoddy product which is TS4, but also bring over the dollhouse crowd.

 

[Susanna]

Good lord, how would these people react to the monetary system in Sims 1 or 2, if they think sims have a hard time making money in Sims 4? (Sims 3 is harder than 4 in this respect, but it's definitely a step or two easier than 2, let alone 1. Sims 4 is walking easy mode.)

ETA: My preferred simming style is BACC (Build a City Challenge). Not possible in either 3 or 4 (at least not to the degree of control which I prefer). I, too, hope for a very flexible life simulator.

 

[National Pokedex]

@Susanna

BACC is currently how I'm playing one of my saves. I did shift a lot of the rules and am using the concept as more of a guideline for my gameplay which has turned into Build a Civilization Challenge. I've found that I have to rework a lot of what exists in the game in order to suit my needs, and to also make sure there's still challenge and that it's sustainable as longterm gameplay.

Apparently, Maxis is looking to hire someone who will come in and do some core gameplay tweaks which makes me think TS4 will be around for a while longer.

 

[National Pokedex]

Hopefully there is actually a life simulation game from Paradox Tectonic someday.

 

[Susanna]

Yeah, I am not actually a fan of story progression. I find 4 easier to play a BACC than in 3, but neither lets me micro-manage to the extent that I want, or that 2 readily allowed. I am a serious control freak in my sims games. (I mean, I loved Vicky 1; I am definitely a control freak!)

 

[Emerald Child]

Yeah, I am not actually a fan of story progression. I find 4 easier to play a BACC than in 3, but neither lets me micro-manage to the extent that I want, or that 2 readily allowed. I am a serious control freak in my sims games. (I mean, I loved Vicky 1; I am definitely a control freak!)

You can always turn off story progression in TS3, both the in-game version and the mod, that way nothing absolutely happens until you want it to. That's how TS3 simmers can play the game rotationally.

But write out here on this thread specifically what you would like included in Paradox Tectonic's game if it's a life simulation game. For example, the greater degree of control that you want, the ability to toggle of and on story progression.

There are some specific things I've been hoping will be added, so I'm going to write about those things later.

 

[Emerald Child]

The Sims 3's Island Paradise expansion pack is hands down my absolute favorite EP of all time. I totally love all the new features it added to the game: active scuba diving with the option of creating your own diving lots and a fun self-employment career, the life guard active career, hidden islands to discover, water-skiing, windsurfing, lots of other beach and water activities, various types of above-water sea vehicles, awesome houseboats, creating and managing your hotel/motel/bnb to 5-star status, merfolk, lovely tropical environment for Create-A-World and matching build/buy items.

I was pretty disappointed with The Sims 4's version of the EP because everything was watered down - scuba diving and life guard career demoted to mere rabbit-holes, or even missing, such as the hotel creation and management gameplay. And of course you can't make your own worlds - you're pretty much stuck with what they gave you.

I'm really hoping that Paradox Tectonic, if they're making a life simulation game, will create an EP with this theme as well, but with fleshed-out gameplay and new features. For ideas, I've been playing Subnautica lately and I'm pretty much blown away by how amazing the environment and gameplay are. It is totally open world - seamless and without any loading screens just like TS3. But it is also optimized (the PC version - I don't know about the console versions). I didn't experience any lag! It would be really neat if the devs will allow us to actually scuba dive in this game, only this time, in an open-world setting and not just in specific diving lots, meaning that it can be created in Create-A-World as part of a world and edited in Town View. Here is a review of the game:

Subnautica Review - Its my Favourite Survival Game

The game itself can be quite scary, so please devs, if you're considering this, don't add too many dangerous sea creatures - maybe just one to three types that we have the option to add or remove and have the ability to adjust it's dangerousness. I do love Subnautica so much, but it is actually quite terrifying with all the dangerous sea creatures where I have to stop playing the game for a bit to de-stress me!

How Subnautica Captures my Greatest FEAR

It can be scary in TS3 too! In TS3 once, I made the big mistake of creating a dive lot that was especially deep. It was SO deep that even when my sim went diving in the daytime, as they descended deeper, it actually got quite dark and visibility was only a few feet all around my sim. It made it even worse because I placed a few shark in the lot and they spawn unpredictably with a reasonable chance that they WILL and DO attack if your sim inadvertently gets too close to them. So yeah, I scared myself and had to change that diving lot to make it shallower, lol! But I think it would be nice if we have the option to add some danger (not too much!) to our gameplay.


In terms of merfolk in The Sims, they live on land like every other Sim. I would really like it if the merfolk get to live in the sea in this game - it is their natural habitat after all. I don't have anything to go by to give ideas, but I know the creatives in the game studio can come up with great ideas for build/buy if they really want to. I think Mermaidia, a TS3 world, has great ideas for structures except make them truly underwater this time in the new game.

Mermaidia: New Sims 3 world!

In terms of normal characters living under the sea, perhaps as scientists and career scuba divers or even criminal organizations wanting to keep their HQ secret, I think Subnautica has some nice ideas about how to go about doing this. Here is a video showcasing a fan-made facility that is both below the sea and above the sea and on dry land. It is my favorite base and I will eventually build something like it myself!

Subnautica: Floating Island Resort

Another thing to point out are the underwater vehicles that you'll see in the Subnautica videos featured here - which is an idea for new transportation. There haven't been any underwater ones in any life simulation yet. The video shows the character using a Seaglide which isn't mentioned but it's a device that facilitates faster swimming.

All Vehicles In Subnautica

Anyway, I hope the devs will do a new "Island Paradise"-like EP if Paradox Tectonic is making a life simulation game and that they can get some great ideas from this!

If anyone has other ideas for an Island Paradise-type expansion pack, please post and share about them here on this thread!

 

[National Pokedex]

It would be really cool if there is news of whatever Tectonic is up to is revealed at PDXCon this month. I know, I know there’s no guarantee it’s a life sim that is being developed, and I know it’s a relatively new studio so a game realistically wouldn’t be finished or near finished by now. And I’m not expecting it to be the game they plan to announce from PDS. But just a small crumble of news would make my day .

 

[National Pokedex]

Apparently the showrunners of TS4 are interested in it lasting for a total of 10-15 years. That means at least 3-8 more years of TS4; as it turns 7 this fall. I would be so disappointed if it continued to be the only AAA life sim game on the market for this whole time.

 

[Whitaker]

Just wanted to share these hidden features in the sims games.

I'm still playing the sims 3 and have still so many things to discover. If only those old magazines with all the tips would exist so I could more easily discover them all.

 

[Emerald Child]

Apparently the showrunners of TS4 are interested in it lasting for a total of 10-15 years. That means at least 3-8 more years of TS4; as it turns 7 this fall. I would be so disappointed if it continued to be the only AAA life sim game on the market for this whole time.

I wish there was a reaction icon for "Sadness"