While both modded and vanilla versions of The Sims have been known to offer up plenty of wacky glitches and hilarious occurrences that can transform any save into a terrifying hellscape, it seems life in sim-land is still too idyllic for some.
After all, while a wedding gone terribly wrong, a ghostly hug, or a conspiracy-laden phone call from Santa Claus are all pretty weird, they don’t really serve as obstacles to anything other than immersion.
Perhaps this is why one old-school Sims player on Reddit has suggested that the next game or expansion in the series should overhaul some of the game’s systems to give those who currently find it too easy more of a challenge.
Do you crave a more hardcore Sims experience?
This opinion is the subject of a thread in the subreddit r/thesims, which began with a post from the player in question, user jsscstm, who asserted: “The Sims 4 is too easy.”, before elaborating: “The reason why gameplay becomes stale so fast is because there really isn't a challenge and it's so easy to maintain your sims' health and achieve goals. There's no depth to the aspiration system and personality traits are nothing but mild inconveniences.”
Some of their fellow Sims stans seemed to agree with this assessment of some of the game’s mechanics, with user KlaireOverwood saying: “I find it's imbalanced: either it's all smooth sailing, or your sim dies because they laughed too hard or used the Murphy bed wrong.” and afternoon_cricket adding: “It's easy but frustrating at the same time. Sometimes it feels like all of the difficulty factors EA tries to add (fears etc.) are only difficult because of how irritating they are.”
Meanwhile, user kaptingavrin suggested that The Sims 4 is more akin to a “TV show simulator”, based on giving players the freedom to tell whichever stories they like, rather than a true “life simulator” that aims only to mirror the grounded twists and turns of real life.
User skettlepunk suggested a solution which might be able to satisfy both of these camps, saying: “I would love it if they had a difficulty slider. Like one (option) is ‘peaceful’ mode and another is absolutely chaotic with faster (decaying of) needs.”
On the other hand, user SomeGuy_GRM advocated firing up an older title in the series for a more challenging experience, saying: “Lately I've been playing Sims 2. It's easily the best Sims game. 3 had a lot of good gameplay improvements, but it lost a lot of the charm 1 and 2 had.”
Another possible solution came from user hbi2k, who recommended Carl's Sims 4 Overhaul Mod, which makes a bunch of changes to vanilla systems, as an option for those who aren’t satisfied with their current Sims 4 experience.
Regardless of whether you’re desperate to inflict more hardship on your poor sims, make sure to follow us for more Sims updates as a range of new content arrives for you to pick up.