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With 19 expansion packs for The Sims 4 so far, as well as dozens of game and stuff packs, you’d expect a title that’s been on the market for over ten years to have a wealth of content. And while there is plenty to do in The Sims 4, there’s stuff I miss as a veteran player.
I’ve been playing The Sims since the original game back in the early 2000s and have dabbled in every entry in the series since (yeah, even those weird console spin-offs), so here’s what I’d still love to see added to The Sims 4.
10 Bands
I Wanna Rock!
We’ve got an okay amount of musical abilities in The Sims 4 – guitars, violins, pianos (which are not the same as pipe organs), and a DJ mixing skill – but so much of making music is about sharing a creative experience! As a musician in the base game, you’re partaking in the Entertainer rabbit hole career, but there could be so many ways to see bands thrive.
You can already make groups with the Get Together pack, so why not give us some extra instruments like drums or something brass and let us make music with friends or family? Send your band out to busk on the streets of San Myshuno or to perform at one of the hot nightlife spots in Windenburg when you’re ready to show off your skills.
9 Boarding Schools
Let Me Schmooze The Headmaster Again
One of the more amusing things I ever did in The Sims 2, the entry in the series I’ve played the least of, was try to woo my way into shipping children off to boarding school. Maybe it’s because it’s one of the few things I remember from that game, but there was so much fun to be had in trying to make an impression.
You’d typically have the headmaster of the school over for a visit, trying hard to entertain and enlighten. But dammit if I didn’t occasionally try to flirt and/or bully my kid’s way into school. If it didn’t work, at least it was hilarious.
Either way, you could send your children to a private boarding school (which cost a pretty penny, of course), but it could tie in well with several packs we’ve already got like High School Years or Discover University. We’ve already got school campuses, dorms, and more, so this could easily give your kid a nepotistic leg up in life!
8 Better Townie Advice Optimization
Please Stop Calling Me About Your Hobbies…
When The Sims 4 originally gave us the ability to offer advice to townies we knew in the game, I was elated. It felt like a way to have more control over life in the neighborhood, weighing in on who was doing what even in families I wasn’t playing. Friends will call and ask for advice on everything from jobs to relationships to having children.
But maybe offer a way to change the frequency of these calls, if not an option to stop them altogether. I cannot count how many times I’ve had activities interrupted by grown adults calling for permission to change careers or make a friend — figure your life out, guys. I know you’re living in a simulation, but I’m not your mother.
7 Hotels
Meet Me At The Hotel Room
At any point in the last several expansion packs, EA could have allowed us to properly run hotels. Open for Business allows you to run businesses from a property on which you live, anyway, so I’d love a way to live at my hotel without needing mods or a creative gameplay workaround to make a rental property from For Rent feel kinda like operating Airbnb.
We’ve got plenty of destination worlds that offer all the trappings of old Vacation-centric expansions, anyway – Snowy Escape, Island Living, and Outdoor Retreat, anyone? – so why not let us dabble in property management?
You could even find ways to make the local culture work in your favor! Your Archeology skill could add pizzazz to your San Salvadorada bungalows, or maybe you could clock out from a shift at your ryokan-style property over in Mt. Komorebi and hit the slopes yourself.
6 Better Cross-Pack Interactivity
Some Features Could Pair So Well
It’s come up a lot already in my wish list, but with 19 full-sized expansion packs, I wish EA would let them play nicer together. Every time a new pack comes out, I’m eager to see what I can make it do with other packs, but it’s not always that easy.
I’ve mentioned using Open for Business in destination worlds. I’ve mentioned sending your band as a group from Get Together out to perform around the Sims 4 globe. The ways to make your packs crossplay-friendly should be more than just a few bullet points on the list of inclusions by now, though.
5 Cars
Even If They Don't Actually Drive
I guess I’ve made peace with the fact that we’ll probably never get a truly open world from The Sims 4; while I do hope for fewer, I know that no matter what, we’ll have loading screens someplace. But god, please just give us cars again, man…
The Sims 3 allowed you to purchase a moderate range of vehicles to cruise around town in, with the open road leading you through the open world. You could teach teens to drive, invest in nicer cars, or even construct lavish garages for your riches Sims who could afford the Vaguester in every color.
Now, though, if you want to build that garage, you could technically size up the toy cars. They never look quite right, so I never do, but I’d love to just pop a car in the driveway for show!
4 One-Sided Relationships
He Loves Me? Oh, No, He Loves Me Not…
A harsh truth in life is that you can easily care more about another person than they care for you, but your Sims are always congruent with their feelings for one another in The Sims 4. If you love your spouse, then they love you back. If you’re angry at your sibling and you have a massive fight, then they’re just as upset as you are.
Wouldn’t it be more fun if that were not true, though? Imagine the storytelling! Unrequited love for the Lovestruck pack, complicated familial relationships for Growing Together, or even just a pair of best friends where one always rolls her eyes when the other calls? The drama would be incredible, and the tea would always be piping hot.
That is something I would give you advice about, Bella Goth; please stop asking if you should get a job and start asking if I think Mortimer loves you.
3 Better Elder Gameplay
The Golden Years Don't Quite Get The Gold In TS4
With any luck, I’ll grow old someday, and I sure hope I find more to do as a real-life elderly woman than any of my elderly Sims get up to. There’s always been a bit of a challenge with Elders in the Sims series, but that’s nowhere as apparent as it is in The Sims 4.
It’s not apparent in The Sims 1 because you literally could not age into an elder. Enjoy young adulthood forever, unless you give your Sim one of the old people faces and outfits…
As it stands, Elders in The Sims 4 are basically just babysitters. Get Together gave us some opportunities to enrich our family bonds, but even then, retirement age was boring. Give us retirement communities, or 55+ plus clubs, or literally anything for Elders to do besides wait around to die.
2 More Active Careers
Outside Just Working From Home
The Sims has at least allowed us to start working from home for most jobs, but we’ve still only got a handful of formal “active” careers. Sure, you can run businesses and take side-jobs and make passive income, but I wish we had more involved careers other than just the ones from Get to Work.
It almost feels like The Sims painted themselves into a weird corner with that pack. The whole point was introducing interactive careers, but not only were they pretty repetitive before long, but how are they meant to give substantial career updates when careers were the focus of the pack?
I loved Open for Business, and it felt like the piece that Get to Work was missing (though I don’t love giving EA money for two expansion packs that could easily have been one). But I miss ing my Sims all over the place – I’m a micromanager at heart, I guess.
1 Autosave
Do Us All A Favor
EA, have you ever experienced a power outage? Have your programs ever randomly crashed? There’s a way you can prevent us from tearing out our hair when we realize the game has closed and it’s been hours since our last manual save, guys, please.
