2024 was a 12 months of many occasions. The Sims 4if solely as a result of we bought affirmation that The Sims 5 is not coming. As a substitute, we’re promised a everlasting, live-service-like model of the sport we have identified and cherished for a decade. This 12 months we have additionally added a brand new death-themed enlargement. It is ironic that the love for the sport has waned due to the dwell service.
I have been a Sims fan for a very long time, so I’ve seen the worst of the collection. I defend all of the bizarre console spin-offs, together with The Urbz and The Sims 2 Castaway. I have been taking part in the sport lengthy sufficient to know that when The Sims 4 was launched, (in some way) within the title of promoting extra expansions, probably the most in-depth customization options had been stripped away and what was as soon as inside was stripped away. I knew it felt like a hollowed-out model of .
EA has by no means hidden its tendency to change into more cash hungry. However oddly sufficient, the worst factor about this new period of fixed on-line updates was the freebies. In Could 2024, The Sims 4 launched the primary of a brand new collection of dwell “occasions.” “Glad at Dwelling” rewarded you with free equipment, family items, and even traits should you logged in persistently sufficient. Is not it good?
Constructing on this primary run, The Sims 4 launched a second occasion to Digital Dollhouse. Reaper’s Rewards was rather more interactive than its predecessor, as you needed to full a collection of small duties to unlock prizes. Catch some fish, plant some timber, and you will get some trad goth denims. Flirting with the Grim Reaper will unlock new tattoos. You get the image.
For me, occasions like this are fully antithetical to how and why I play The Sims. The top purpose has all the time been to create, not purchase.
I am right here to design the charming unbiased 3-bed of my goals and dwell it in a Sim that appears precisely like me. Nonetheless, you’ve entry to limitless cash. I got here right here to hand-raise the proper cult leaders from delivery, solely to look at them flip to vampire worship and collapse a number of generations later. I am right here to assist bold center managers maximize their productiveness and see how shortly they will attain the highest degree of their enterprise profession in the event that they use WooHoo on daily basis.
In The Sims, I’m the grasp of my realm. I am a storyteller, artist, and inside designer. I’ve full energy over life and dying, happiness and despair. I’m all-powerful.
So you’ll be able to think about my dismay when an outdoor power got here alongside and handed me an earthly weekly guidelines to carry out.
After I was taking part in with dolls as a toddler, my mom would lean over my shoulder and ask the doll to do the laundry. Nobody else had the suitable to micromanage my private story. Latest occasions are doing simply that.
Properly, lots of the steered quests had been boring. Stopping to ask a neighbor about ambrosia or cooking one thing completely different for dinner will not destroy the world of the film I’ve labored so arduous to create. You may as well ignore the sport’s requests.
Nonetheless, the sport by no means stopped reminding me if I did that. The guidelines resided within the prime left nook of the display screen, often in the identical place the place in-game occasions like Love Day and Lottory Day would seem. These seasonal actions may be shut down should you do not need to take part, which was not a privilege Reaper’s Rewards allowed. You may reduce the occasion field, however it can by no means disappear fully and can reopen each time you turn management to a different sim.
This occasion launched new glitches to the sport and turned out to be much more damaging. Many gamers who really wished to take part in Reaper’s Rewards reported that it was extraordinarily buggy. For instance, a Sim couldn’t full a quest in the event that they had been current in a sure lot, however this was by no means clearly communicated as a part of the occasion.
One Redditor shared an anecdote about how buyer help advisable beginning a model new save should you wished to take part in occasions like Reaper’s Rewards. This takes this new dwell occasion from irritating micromanagement to fully dictating how we play.
As somebody who chooses to not get entangled with Reaper’s Rewards, I personally did not see any of its quite a few UI points. Nonetheless, I seen a rise in small bugs in the remainder of the sport. Sims stretching to insane heights, floating infants, and all kinds of little bizarre issues that may’t probably occur.
Reaper’s Rewards mercifully ended on November nineteenth, a number of weeks after the Life and Loss of life enlargement pack was launched. Lastly, you’ll be able to benefit from the spooky new flavors of The Sims 4 at your personal tempo. I might delve deeper into the world of Gothic inside design and discover new and weird profession paths, corresponding to taking up a literal Grim Reaper and even working as one.
That peace lasted two weeks. A brand new Christmas-themed occasion started on December third. A brand new replace to the sport introduces an unavoidable new guidelines for pageant busywork. The glitches began rearing their ugly head once more.
I am not mad sufficient about these new occasions to cease taking part in The Sims 4 ceaselessly. I’ve spent 20 years of my life with this collection, and it could take some fairly heinous modifications to interrupt that bond. However these occasions really feel like the primary roar of a coming storm.
Login bonuses and reward-driven targets reek of the FOMO-driven enterprise mannequin being utilized to microtransaction-heavy free-to-play video games. The reward is free for now, however it might simply be a carrot earlier than the stick.
I bear in mind within the early 2000s. On the time, every version of The Sims got here with a code that might solely be downloaded as soon as, stopping followers from buying second-hand editions. We all know that the present model of The Sims requires you to pay greater than $1,000 if you wish to entry all accessible expansions. I like The Sims loads, however I’ve by no means favored the best way it is monetized. I do not actually consider that these occasions will play out within the participant’s favor in the long term.
The Life and Loss of life enlargement might have breathed new life into The Sims 4’s enterprise mannequin, however I am nervous it might be the dying of my love for the sport. Masu. This Christmas, I am seeking to Father Winter for a way of optimism that I do not really feel proper now. Please do not let this new method change into a change that pushes me over the sting.
