This YMMV page is for the fourth game in the series.
- For the series as a whole, click here.
- For the first game, click here.
- For the second game, click here.
- For the third game, click here.
- Accidental Nightmare Fuel: On April 26, 2022
, Callia Maebey (aka the Ring Ring Girl) have made an appearance on the main menu (to remind you of the phone's features) and social media as a recurring character. However, this gave her notoriety among simmers due to her Unintentional Uncanny Valley expression being front-and-center which gave them quite a Jump Scare, and her wide-eyed stare (described in the site as "soulless") and her big, wide smile is comparable to that of a sim with a PØŞŞ€ŞŞ€Đ trait. So much that EA made her a ghost (which, due to the design, is definitely less scary than the living one) in the High School Years trailer. - Audience-Alienating Premise: The Star Wars: Journey to Batuu pack suffered from this for a miriad of reasons.
- It was a "story-driven" expansion for a sandbox game, which immediately made it unpalatable to many. Then it turned out that the story content was quite shallow and repetitive, consisting mostly of clicking the same interactions over and over againnote , which upset the already-small contingent of players who were actually looking forward to that aspect of the pack.
- In addition, the included world, Batuu, was a very small vacation neighborhood that Sims couldn't live in permanently, with the conveniences necessary to take care of needs like the Fun meter few and far between (if you didn't want your Sims to start playing smartphone games in the middle of Batuu, you were basically confined to the Cantina or the Sabacc table at the Resistance camp). It was also the literal Theme Park Version of a Star Wars planet, being based almost entirely off of the Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge part of the real-life Disneyland. As a result, the entire neighborhood was almost completely useless for anyone who didn't like the included storylines (or had already played them), and it was completely uneditable to boot! Many players had looked forward to building Star Wars-themed homes or venues, or living out typical Sims storylines in a sci-fi environment, only to discover that the structure of the Batuu world made this impossible. This caused the pack to be compared unfavorably to its fellow story-driven predecessor, The Sims 4: Strangerville, which had a central plotline for players to follow, but also a unique desert world that was editable and could be lived in and used well after the story arc concluded.
- Even the CAS items were disappointing—since the entire expansion was based on the sequel trilogy, none of the iconic costumes from the originals and prequels were included, alienating anyone who intended to buy the pack just for Leia's space bunsnote , Luke's robotic hand, or Padmé's beautiful dresses. The included alien limbs and heads also functioned as costumes and couldn't be used as body details, disappointing many who had looked forward to creating custom Star Wars aliens using the pre-existing alien mechanisms from Get to Work.
- By the time the pack was released, it had become a common joke that it only appealed to fangirls who wanted to make a family and settle down in suburbia with their Star Wars crushes like Kylo Ren... except Kylo Ren was specifically made to be non-romancable, so you couldn't even do that!
- Broken Base:
- When TS4 was first announced, the community was broken between players who were disappointed for the end of Sims 3, and players who were excited.
- After a demo of The Sims 4's Create-A-Sim was released, the fandom was once again split due to not everyone having received it.
- One has already developed over TS4 on whether it's a return to the good old days of TS1/2 with its character-centered gameplay, or whether the removal of some popular features (like open world and Create-A-Style) means it's just a giant step back for the series overall. The fanbase is split into two groups: Those that find it inferior to The Sims 3, thus already obsolete, and those who like the new features it presents and enjoy the fact that it still gives the same fun open-ended experience Sims fans can expect from the franchise.
- The series has always had a good focus on family however there have been complaints that 4 focuses too much on young adults. There's a lot of advertising themed around parties and less family life. People who like playing as children and raising children feel they're being ostracized. On the other hand, there is the other side who prefers the party atmosphere to families.
- The amount of expansion packs and stuff packs, combined with the lack of content the game had at launch, has caused criticism. People have always complained about how expensive the series can be, but it rarely reached mainstream gamer outlets until Sims 4. There's a split between fans who feel more expansions make the game more detailed, and fans who see the practice as money-grabbing on EA's behalf. It's probably a mixture of both.
- Realism vs fantasy. Some people want more realistic and immersive additions to the game, while others want more fantastical elements and occult states. With Sims 4 focusing on the former, debates have been heated.
- The StrangerVille game pack created a heavy divide between the fans for its RPG-style gameplay and story. Some feel like the change is a refreshing, bold new take for the series, with an interesting story. Others feel that a story-driven pack goes against the freedom and creativity the series' sandbox elements offer. Then you have other arguments, such as its short length, shallow activities, large amount of Red Herring in the plot and lore, (lack of) replayability, whether we should have had popular returning features instead of this, it being a pack not centered on realism, etc.
- The Star Wars pack has now done this again, as well as essentially dividing the Sims fandom between those who like Star Wars and those who couldn't care less.
- The introduction of the new item pack "Kits" have divided the fanbase again with whether or not it's yet another attempt to squeeze more money out of the playerbase similar to the Sims 3 store or if it's useful for people who only want some items in a pack but aren't interested in buying a whole pack.
- Contested Sequel: On one hand, there are those that bemoan so many of the missing features (two of them was the open world and Create-A-Style, which were featured heavily during the trailers for the initial release of The Sims 3), the redesigned interface (supposedly allow for more powerful and accessible gameplay features, but not only it looks increasingly complicated, but the iconic bottom-left dashboard is gone, with the button to toggle buy/build and life mode is now on the top right, while hotkeys largely remains what it is), and also the Art Shift toward a more cartoony style seemingly based from The Sims Freeplay (which many sees as a downgrade from the previous games and even the second game). On the other hand, there are those who found the mood-based gameplay reimagined from the Moodlets system from the preceding game, increased building features, and features gradually introduced by the expansion packs, refreshingly new to the series. One opinion common among fans is that the game is somewhat of a sidegrade to 3, and what one finds better will likely depend on whether they value the depth and open-world of 3 or the streamlined focus of 4 more.
- Critical Dissonance: Though the reviews are based around the launch version of the game, it received 7.0 from professional reviewers and 4.1 from user reviews, in Metacritic aggregate.
- Crosses the Line Twice:
- One of the achievements, "Til death do us part", which is awarded for having a sim die at their own wedding.
- Normally having your loved ones punch each other can be pretty horrible but if a holiday in Seasons has fighting as a tradition, then it becomes hilarious if two spouses keep fighting each other and their relationship will never go down in order to complete the tradition. The hugging that appears after the fight is just icing on the cake.
- Demonic Spiders: Due to how frequently they appear two notorious Fears stand out...
- The Fear of a Dead End Job. To many Sims players, this Fear was the one Fear that showed just how much of a Scrappy Mechanic the Wants and Fears feature is. A Sim gets this fear by not gaining a promotion in a long time, and to resolve it, the player has to click on their Sim and select "Regain Passion" before going to work. But with this fear, it seemed like it was the easiest fear to get, due to getting a job being a main mechanic in the game, and promotions already taking time due to factors like meeting requirements or leveling up a skill that's required for the career. Not only could a Sim could just get this Fear regardless of whether or not they have the Workaholic lifestyle, they could also get this Fear just when they're coming home from work and they've been promoted. The "Regain Passion" interaction is also a pain, only appearing when a certain moodlet relating to the fear appears. The moodlets for both the fear and the moodlet you get from regaining passion also only last for a few hours, and because a lot of jobs end in the afternoon, either moodlets won't last long enough for a Sim to regain their passion in the morning or for that passion to last until morning. Even worse is that the "Regain Passion" interaction can fail, and the moodlet for that also lasts for a few hours.
- The Fear of Unfulfilled Dreams is another notorious one for players who simply want to have fun with the game and not have to worry about the Wants and Fears system. If you do play like this, be prepared to see that notification for the fear appear every time you decide not to fulfill the Wants for your sim. Thankfully, a mod has surfaced that kills off all of the Fears entirely, leaving only the Wants.
- Ensemble Dark Horse: Several:
- The Voidcritters, a Pokémon expy introduced in the Kids Room Stuff Pack, quickly became popular with the fandom due to their cute appearances, interesting flavor text, surprisingly deep collection and trading based gameplay, and quite fun "battle station" where kids played their Voidcritters against each other.
- Out of all the Realm of Magic sims, Morgyn Ember is easily the Ensemble Dark Horse. Their high-level magic skill and good looks have made them far more popular than any other Spellcasters, including their fellow Sages. Players frequently make over (or delete) L. Faba and Simeon Silversweater, but leave Morgyn alone, as they're "already perfect." It's also not uncommon for players to have their Sims marry them and/or use cheats to have children with them. They're also alluded to being non-binary and gender non-conforming due to having custom gender settings in CAS (masculine frame, feminine clothing preference, cannot get pregnant or get others pregnant, and uses the toilet sitting down).
- Caleb Vatore from Vampires is also much more popular than other Sims in the game pack, being a Romantic Vampire Boy and an Expy of Edward Cullen. He's frequently paired with Morgyn Ember if the player has both Vampires and Realm of Magic installed.
- In the base game, Johnny Zest is incredibly popular and also commonly a suitor for legacies. His backstory as a Landgraab who was disowned for wanting to be a comedian is often filled with Woobie material.
- Epileptic Trees: A common theory is that Island Living was originally meant to be a game pack, but was sold as an expansion pack to milk the fans' wallets. The usual complaints of shallow gameplay aside, many noted that the cover shares the distinct border designs that are exclusive to Game and Stuff packs, rather than using the usual expansion pack borders. It also uses its own townies and was originally shown to have had rental lots, which are features exclusive to vacation-based game packs.
- Fan-Preferred Couple:
- The Sims 4's version of Don Lothario is dating Katrina Caliente, but fans who preferred the prequels' Love Dodecahedron melodrama frequently pair him with Nina and Dina instead (as well as Cassandra when she ages up.)
- Sergio Romeo and Siobhan Fyres are often paired up, as they're both Paragons. Wolfgang Munch and Morgan Fyres sometimes get this treatment, too, though their traits conflict somewhat.
- Yuki Behr and Hugo Villareal are usually paired together in Windenberg-focused playthroughs, since they’re the only teenagers in the city who don’t belong to the Paragons or the Renegades, they’re both members of the Avant Gardes club, and they’re both loners.
- Morgyn Ember from Realm of Magic and Caleb Vatore from Vampires are a very popular pairing. Considering that Morgyn is a Hot Witch and Caleb is a Romantic Vampire Boy, it's hardly surprising.
- Game-Breaker:
- The Book of Life, the reward for completing the writing aspiration can be bound to any sim except the writer. While dead, anyone reading the book brings the bound sim back to life. While alive, the sim has all their needs filled and any negative moodlets are removed. A sim can carry around their own book and never have to worry about needs or events ruining their day.
- The cloning machine from Get to Work can clone any collectible, up to and including ambrosia and the potion of youth. It has a chance to fail, but as the original item is not affected in any way, you can just keep trying.
- Becoming a Mother Plant Ghost with the addition of StrangeVille. Playable ghosts in general can be useful as they cannot age or die again, but becoming a ghost this way stops need decay entirely! You can have a sim that can build skills, make money, or complete most aspirations indefinitely without those pesky needs getting in the way. The only real downside to these as with other playable ghosts is the inability to have children.
- Keeping with Sims tradition, magic in Realm of Magic is completely broken. One of the earliest potions you can unlock is the Potion of Plentiful Needs, which fulfills all the Sim's needs, including a vampire's Thirst. Its only ingredient, an apple, is fairly common and gives four potions per batch. It only gets worse from there. Additionally, the "copypasto" spell can duplicate virtually anything, including potions with difficult-to-obtain ingredients. By duplicating potions over and over again, you can easily make your sim immortal for a very small initial cost.
- Financially, buying an easel and creating paintings gives stupid amounts of money per once sims gain enough skill (which they usually do very quickly.) Painting alone can easily replace a job. The writing skill can also be a game-breaker; once Sims get a high enough writing skill, they can sell books to publishers and collect daily royalties, which more than make up for the initial cost of a computer. As long as sims have a computer and an easel, they can make enough money to cover living expenses and most luxuries, making actual jobs pointless unless you want the career rewards they unlock or you need them for completing an aspiration. Get Together allows you to break things even further by making a club that encourages painting, so uncontrolled Sims will paint autonomusly, and your controlled Sim can sell the painting to claim all the money, and the club points can be used to buy club perks, including ones that makes any member during a gathering gain certain emotions, so inspired can be used for better overall paintings, and other emotions can be used to get mood paintings, and one that increases the rate at which the painting skill increases.
- Two aspiration rewards can also be game-breakers, especially for players who don't use cheats. One is the Potion of Youth, which resets the clock on your Sim's age, allowing them to live a whole life stage all over again. Although not the cheapest item in the aspiration points store, it isn't extremely expensive, either, and can easily be duplicated using the cloning machine or the copypasto spell. The other game-breaking reward is the "Never Weary" trait, which removes the sim's need to sleep. Using both grants your sim a life of immortality with nearly endless free time to do whatever they want.
- Pets. Treating them very well will allow you to basically farm aspiration/satisfaction points gained by "feeling the love" of your pets periodically, making them more than just a gameplay gimmick unlike the previous games pets. It's especially useful when whims and wants usually only gave little of those points.
- The dust bunnies from Bust the Dust can bring you valuable collectibles if you befriend them, including a golden frog worth around §10,000 if you have Jungle Adventure.
- Goddamned Bats: The Gnomes that appear during the Harvestfest holiday will become this at the slightest provocation, such as giving them a gift that they do not like, or Evil and Mean sims destroying them. They will zap your Sims with an Agony Beam and start destroying your house! If you think you can destroy them all and prevent this from happening, too bad, as they are respawning enemies!
- Good Bad Bugs: Before being officially implemented, It was possible for a Sim married to someone of their own gender want to try for a baby with their partner.
- Hilarious in Hindsight: From the base game, a pre-made Sim named Travis Scott? Hmm...
- Just Here for Godzilla: Most people who bought StrangerVille got it not for its story, but for the colorful and decently-sized neighborhood, the Military career (though somewhat underdeveloped compared to the previous two games), and laptops.
- LGBT Fanbase:
- Morgyn, Sage of the Untamed from the Realm of Magic pack, has one, largely due to the headcanon of them being either non-binary or a trans man. Being quite pretty helps, too.
- Rory Oaklow, the Wildfangs' pack leader in Werewolves, gets in on this too. With her grungy fashion sense, visible muscle definition, lantern jaw and blue dyed undercut/mullet, she's the exact kind of Butch Lesbian you'd meet at a Pride rally, so naturally lesbian players gravitate towards her.
- Memetic Mutation:
- A list of complaints about missing features in The Sims 4 popped up containing the line "Babies are mere objects," which caught on pretty quickly.
- When clubs were introduced, people were quick to abuse the system. Sex and bondage clubs became the de-facto joke about the clubs.
- The townies have a tendency to dress like fashion disasters because of the fact that their outfits are randomly generated. One commonly generated item is the "eyeball ring," a plastic ring that looks like something out of a gumball machine. This has led to plenty of jokes about Sims wearing "that @(>*@&! eyeball ring!" to bed, to parties, or to formal events.
- Making fun of how many sims will choose to smash dollhouses on their own.
- A list of complaints about missing features
- Older Than They Think:
- Some of the mechanics in Cottage Living, such as cows and chickens, originate from The Sims 3 Store.
- Baby Ariel's appearance is not the first time a celebrity made a cameo appearance in the main game. Drew Carey was a special guest invite in the original game's expansion House Party and a lot of real life celebrities at the time can appear at Studio Town in Superstar such as Christina Aguilera and Richie Sambora.
- Pandering to the Base:
- The February 2016 update's re-addition of the Kleptomaniac trait from The Sims 3. The same update also adds paintings of the infamous Tragic Clown and a Grilled Cheese sandwich for the older fans.
- Toddlers were added into the game on January 12 2017 patch. Considering the length of time it took for them to return, and that they were a free update, most gamers feel work only started on them after the outrage that they were absent rose up.
- People have complained about gender-specific clothes and hair for games on end. With the CAS update, that's no longer an issue, which vastly increases the clothes choices.
- Three years after the PC release, the console versions many thought would never happen were announced. Not only that, the console version is also confirmed to be a 1:1 port of the PC version, expansions and all, unlike previous console titles that were either completely different, or far smaller in scope, to make up for the difference in power.
- Ron the Death Eater: A lot of players give Mortimer this treatment to justify their hooking up with Bella.
- The Scrappy: L. Faba and Simeon Silversweater from Realm of Magic. Like Vlad, they have Nonstandard Character Designs that make them both look like Gonks. Their traits are also mostly negative—L is Mean and Dastardly, and Simeon is a Snob—so many players think they're annoying and not worth interacting with. They're also sometimes seen as Replacement Scrappies for their predecessor Sages from the trailer, as all three former Sages have more standard designs and better traits.
- Scrappy Mechanic: See the series' page here.
- Squick:
- For a period of time, a glitch in Sims 4 made it possible for family members to have romantic relationships with each other and even have whims to do so. This included children, meaning a parent could have the desire to "woohoo" with their child or vice versa. Not surprisingly, this was fixed rather quickly.
- Pets can eat poop and drink out of their own pee puddles!
- You can "woohoo" with the Grim Reaper... note
- That One Achievement:
- Alphabet Legacy, which requires you to play 26 generations in a single household.note There's no way to get this easily, even if you play on the fastest game speed, even if you take shortcuts with adoption, unlike every other achievement except...
- Triple Play, which requires you to have triplets. Even with Fertility on both Sims, it's still a total Luck-Based Mission with a low chance of happening.
- They Changed It, Now It Sucks!:
- Instead of having a world that's free to explore, the world map is limited to an amount of locations the Sims can travel to instead of letting them travel by themselves, returning it to what it was before The Sims 3. While this makes travelling from one place to another significantly easier, many fans complain that it came with the complete removal of Sim-ownable cars which (kind of) making it unrealistic.
- The removal of "Create-A-Style" was criticized heavily, with Mods and Custom content being created specifically to counteract this. Largely because it limits the players creativity, leading to every Sim looking more or less the same. It didn't help that even with the large amount of packs installed, the clothing choices are still pretty limited and the art shift that makes the clothing cartoony makes it look worse.
- Similarly, the removal of pools, swim clothing and toddlers was criticized so much that all of these features were put back into the game shortly after its release, since the features were there from the very beginning.
- For the first time since their introduction into the franchise, Teens are the same height as Sims in the Young Adult/Adult/Elder life stages, averting the Short Teens, Tall Adults trope present in the previous installments. Ironically, this led to a bit of a backlash from the fanbase, because it made them harder to tell their age at a glance.
- Underused Game Mechanic:
- The general consensus with expansion packs is that they don't do enough to explore the mechanics they introduce, instead giving players shallow gameplay with a quarter of the content seen in past versions of the pack. This is especially true of Island Living, which had almost no gameplay outside of one-note mermaids and... living on an island.
- The other major problem with expansion packs is that, aside from being generally shallow, they don't mesh with each other very well, leading to all kinds of missed opportunities and Fridge Logic. For example, becoming the Strangerville Hero will not make your Sim famous or give them a positive reputation, since the fame system was introduced in a different pack—simply having a lot of friends or coming from a big family will make your reputation rise faster than saving an entire town. There are no spells to gain fame or fortune, change the weather, or summon/banish vampires, since Realm of Magic is separate from Get Famous, Seasons, and Vampires. The weather and holidays from Seasons can royally mess with the festivals from City Living and various events from Discover University, as if the three packs were made completely independently with no expectation that they'd have to function together. Packs are occasionally compatible with one another—pets from Cats and Dogs can be made into familiars; famous Sims can flaunt their money to increase their chances of getting into prestigious colleges—but for the most part, cross-pack compatibility is extremely low.
- They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Strangerville's story actually has no story.
- The origins of the Mother, nor details about The ██████ Lab are explored, the infection never spreads beyond StrangerVille even at its worst, and the only character the story has is Erwin - who is completely interchangeable with any sim working at the Curio shop and has no real role to speak of. All of his plot-relevant moments and actions come from the tie-in comic or the Welcome to Strangerville trailer.
- The titular town itself also had the potential to be a nod to the previous installments of the franchise, specially The Sims 2 and Strangetown, explaining some unknown elements of the series canon such as Bella Goth's disappearance or the nature of the aliens Pollination Technicians, but the developers instead opted to simply make a Shallow Parody of Stranger Things.
- Win Back the Crowd:
- Maxis is slowly but steadily adding back features from past games, even if it's taking a long time. Took them over two years to patch toddlers back, but said patch quelled one of the largest criticism towards the installment. Adding Vampires confirmed the return of all supernatural beings from Sims 3, and in the 2017 expansion we get the deepest and most customizable pets ever.
- After the PR disaster that was My First Pet Stuff, the long-awaited announcement of Seasons was greeted with approval and excitement from the community. It went down pretty well too, although many people noted that snow now lacked 'depth'.
- Similarly, after the controversial Journey to Batuu pack was met with criticism, EA released Snowy Escape, a more grounded expansion pack that added Lifestyles, Sentiments, and other commonly requested features. Snowy Escape was then followed up by the announcement of a Paranormal stuff pack, which was voted on by the community.
- After early 2021 was filled with middling content and the introduction of Kits, in late spring the Cottage Living expansion was announced with great fanfare including the return of legacy character Agnes Crumplebottom. After its release, the general consensus was that not only was it focused on content that Simmers wanted, but also lived up to its expansion pack name by actually expanding several base game features such as Gardening and Cooking by allowing the former to be a viable career as a small town farmer and opening those skills up to children with sufficient mental skill and parental oversight respectively. Also praised was the expansion of wildlife and pets to include wild rabbits, wild foxes (that behave like foxes instead of reskins of dogs), wild birds, farmable chickens, cows, and the perenial running gag Llamas making their proper debut. And lastly, the world area of Henford-on-Bagley was praised for being a very large world space, having a well-executed character-driven storyline with mechanics to push it along, and even getting prominent builder simmers to design all the playable lots like previously done in Snowy Escape. The general consensus has been that its the first expansion in over a decade to neither tread old ground nor be controversial for not doing so.
- WTH, Costuming Department?: The Modern Menswear Kit was a collaboration with the high-end fashion label Stefan Cooke. The end product was several avant-garde men's outfits, which included skirts and loud sweaters. The kit was panned by the majority of the community because they couldn't imagine their Sims wearing anything like that.
