#i wanna either hack or uninstall the game

[raccoonium]

It's bitter bitch hour

[antagonistchanremade]

So, one of the absolute best things about Sims 4 is that it kinda solved all of the disputes between Sims 2 and Sims 3. This is also why one of the biggest disappointments about Sims 4 is all the new disputes it created between itself and Sims 3.

Let me clarify. Sims 3 was a major departure from the way Sims 1 and 2 did things.

In Sims 1 and 2, you had one “save file”. The only way you could start over from the beginning was to uninstall and reinstall the game. If you changed something and saved the game, it was a permanent change to your installation of the game. So, if you played one household, then, say, got the parents divorced, and then played a different household, the parents from the first household would still be divorced, and the only way to undo the divorce would be uninstalling and reinstalling. This was both a good thing and a bad thing; having these changes be permanent things was interesting and let you explore the changes you could make to the whole neighborhood, but there definitely should have been a system in place to undo stuff beyond uninstalling and reinstalling.

Also, in Sims 1 and 2, the progression of time was nonlinear between households. Sure, stuff you did in one household would have an immediate impact on other households, but I’m talking about aging and the current date and time (and seasons if you had that expansion pack). You could play one household for several generations of Sims, and as long as you never played their neighbors, their neighbors would be the same for all those generations. As long as a Sim wasn’t currently being played, they were immortal.

Sims 3 changed both of these things, for both the worse and the better.

In Sims 3, you have multiple save files. Each one had a completely different world; the only connection you could make between worlds was to put a family from one save file in the Sim Bin and transfer them to a different save file, which was really only good if you wanted to transfer a family to a different neighborhood (since you could only have one neighborhood in a single save file). This sounds like only a good thing... except also, Sims 3 went out of its way to punish you for switching to another family in the same save file. Sure, you could play multiple households in one save file, but it’d make it harder for each individual household. The “play another household” functionality was far more of a commitment, more of a “I’ve changed my mind about which household I wanna play” thing or a “I’ve moved this Sim out of my original household and I wanna follow them” thing than a “I’m gonna switch to this other household for a little while, then this other one, then come right back” thing like in Sims 1 and 2.

And also in Sims 3, the Sims you aren’t currently playing are no longer immortal. They’ll age just like the active Sims. As an option, this’d be great; as a requirement, it’s a little alienating for fans of the previous games. I definitely remember hearing the news in, like, 2008 (when details about Sims 3 were just coming out) and being horrified. Thankfully, there were mods that let you change this, but, like... they were still mods, and mods should never count towards your rating of the game itself. And while there were also mods to solve the previous problem, they were self-admittedly not perfect and weird. Using those mods felt like a dirty hack.

So, like, there was a clear split between the way Sims 1/2 did things and the way Sims 3 did things, and it was a very uncomfortable split because they were both good ways to do things, but they suited completely different playstyles, which meant that people who were more used to Sims 1/2 would be uncomfortable trying to explore the new things Sims 3 added, while people more used to Sims 3 would be uncomfortable trying to explore the series’ history.

Sims 4 completely solved these problems in a way that was honestly kinda genius.

Sims 4 just... gives you options. You can do things in the Sims 1/2 way, or in the Sims 3 way, or even in a mix!

There are multiple save files, just like in Sims 3, that are completely separate from each other besides the Sim Bin, but you’re also not punished for playing multiple households within the same save. You can just play one household per save if you want to be like Sims 3, or you can just only have one save if you want to be like Sims 1/2, or you can mix and match! It’s all up to you! And it’s beautiful.

And then, time progression! In the options menu, there are time progression options, so you can choose to have the entire save file age equally (like in Sims 3), or only have the active household age (like in Sims 1/2), or even go somewhere in between and only have the households that have ever been active age!

And hell, Sims 4 also solved problems that people had had with the way both ways had done things! In both Sims 2 and Sims 3 (and I think also Sims 1′s expansion packs? I dunno, I only ever played 1′s base game), there were multiple neighborhoods you could explore. Except, a Sim could only explore the neighborhood they lived in, and Sims from another neighborhood would never show up as NPCs in the one you were playing. The neighborhoods were super divided in Sims 2, and in Sims 3 there could literally only be one neighborhood per save file- you wanted to explore another one, and you’d have to start a new save in that neighborhood.

In Sims 4, the neighborhoods are no longer so segregated. Not only can your Sim explore other neighborhoods, but the NPC Sims are taken from every neighborhood. You could be living in Sulani, hanging out with Mortimer Goth in Strangerville.

But, for some reason, Sims 4 introduced its own problems.

For instance, the open world.

In Sims 1/2, you were restricted to your current lot. In Sims 2 and some of 1′s expansion packs, you could travel to public lots, but there was a loading screen between them, and it was only public lots, not other people’s houses. And of course, the space between lots might as well have not existed.

One of Sims 3′s big changes that was unarguably an improvement was the open world. Your Sim could travel to other lots without a loading screen, because they were both loaded in simultaneously; this also meant you could split your Sims across multiple lots and they’d all be fully controllable. And the space between lots? Now full of various things to do, like finding collectibles. And if you wanna just focus on your lot? Then just... ignore all of that. It’s all completely ignorable if you want to.

But Sims 4? Does something kinda in between how Sims 1/2 did it and how Sims 3 did it... but this time, that’s a bad thing because A) the way Sims 1/2 did it was just inferior, and B) there’s only options to go halfway, not towards either extreme. There’s still space between lots, and you can go to other Sims’ houses instead of just public lots, but you can’t go to another lot without a loading screen, even if that other lot is fully rendered so there’s no real reason WHY it’d need to load anything; this also means that if you split your Sims up between lots, you lose full control over them, and the non-active members of the active household are just given basic commands like “Take care of yourself” and “Raise this skill”. And of course, you can only load, like, a third of the neighborhood at a time; want to go to another part of the neighborhood, and you have to sit through- guess what- a loading screen! And the Sims who don’t come with you are returned to limited control again!

And, like... Sims 4 totally could have done this a so much better way. They had the technology and the ideas to make it work. They just... didn’t. Probably due to a mixture of executive meddling, budget/time constraints, and misunderstanding some of the complaints people had about Sims 3. Sims 4 could have been the ultimate Sims game, but it isn’t, and that’s just... endlessly disappointing. And sure, we can hope for improvements with Sims 5, but like... I feel like we’ll get improvements, but we’ll also get regressions, just like in Sims 4, just because EA is involved and EA is literally the worst.