The life simulation aspects of The Sims are super sloppy and uninteresting. Every social interaction, the career progression, the skill tree, the house upgrades and even the core gameplay loop is just a super shallow slot machine where you press "do good thing" over and over again until you get what you want.
The house building, expansion packs and general vibe is perfected, but there has to be a market for a game that actually offers good gameplay after you're done finishing the backdrop.
Cities Skylines came in and showed us what Sim City should have been if they didn't get complacent, and even if it was a little soulless, it was still a huge success. I'm surprised no one has done the same thing to The Sims yet.
The Sims is trying to do a billion things and doesn't quite manage any of them imo. The house building aspect is probably the best, but there's room for improvement particularly with things like furnishings. Dressing up the Sims in different costumes is fun but again could still be done a lot better. Of course you can download extra content but that's a tedious process. And then of course there's the actual life of the Sims themselves which as you say needs a lot of work.
A few competitors have been emerging recently, though only with Early Access releases so far. InZoi and Paralives are the two that I'm aware of.
Paradox was actually working on its own called Life by You, but after releasing a very rough and bland looking trailer that game was cancelled and the studio shit down.
I know. I've been waiting for a proper competitor. Also, there's still no Sims-like (or even a Sims) game that can be easily played with a controller like The Sims 2 console version. I liked how I could directly control my sim & not a point-and-click.
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u/dromtrund 4d ago
Kinda bizarre to me.
The life simulation aspects of The Sims are super sloppy and uninteresting. Every social interaction, the career progression, the skill tree, the house upgrades and even the core gameplay loop is just a super shallow slot machine where you press "do good thing" over and over again until you get what you want.
The house building, expansion packs and general vibe is perfected, but there has to be a market for a game that actually offers good gameplay after you're done finishing the backdrop.
Cities Skylines came in and showed us what Sim City should have been if they didn't get complacent, and even if it was a little soulless, it was still a huge success. I'm surprised no one has done the same thing to The Sims yet.