How is knitting not a hobby? They literally made a whole pack about it.

the question that keeps coming back for sims 4: "why do I have to do it all myself?"

So basically another case of: Sounds great on paper but thanks to the minimal effort they put into it, it's a letdown.

It's kind of getting really annoying that our sims will forever get more "complex" and the townies will forever stay a blank canvas. I get that people want to micro manage their games and have full control on what goes on, but it's completely one sided. I play Sims games for immersion and The Sims 4 keeps failing in that department. It's so annoying that you have to be such an active simmer and the only times you can ever be passive is when you set things up yourself. I want to be able to drop my sim into a world and just be pulled into everything around me but I can't do that because I have to constantly be the one at the wheel.

Imagine having to go into every family and play every sim to set their favourites in *every separate save game*.

It still rubs me the wrong way that dislikes are developed simply by doing something while being in a bad mood. You might be doing something that eventually helps you to get in a better mood and you find your new passion. For instance, your sim was very sad after someone's death, they started painting and found this as their new passion. This narrative seems realistic but impossible in the sims 4, as I understand

I fully expect there will be a mod very soon that gives every townie random likes/dislikes with multiple choices in both directions in each category.

just "an OK start" after 6 years is unacceptable 😞

Townies missing personality attributes has been around since the beginning. Only sims in Windenburg are in clubs, only lots in San Myshuno have lot traits, only sims in Brindleton Bay have pets, sims prior to seasons still get randomly generated hot and cold weather outfits, only sims in Del Sol Valley have fame and reputation, no sim at all has pre set character value traits, etc. Sims 4 has plenty of features to make the game as a whole more fleshed out, but the default save with it's default townies, even randomly generated townies, are husks of a character.

Tbh even as a control freak I cannot be arsed to go through all the worlds and edit every single townie. I'd just prefer them to be randomised or be generated in a correlation with the traits a sim has. Nobody got that much time or that much will to sit through loading screens.

This could be interesting and also unrealistic, my sims often came back "tense" from work, so if I play video games to lose the tense moodlet they will start to hate gaming? It would be funny if he could hate working instead lol. Also, let me voice my discontentment like everybody else, that townies should came with their default like/dislikes.

Sims 4 being born as an online game where everyone would be manually creating every character in the world rears its ugly head yet again. I'd ask how this can still be a problem how many years later, but my incredulity well has run dry so very long ago.

I've also noticed that even with certain packs installed, we're still missing a lot of potential likes and dislikes. For example: where's knitting?? Why can't I make my grandma like knitting!? There's a million and one options in the club system but less than half of that for likes and dislikes? Seems like an oversight on their part.

Something I noticed that even if you have a lot of packs, they didn't add every possible hobby to like or dislike, such as knitting or archaeology.

The list is also kinda weird. I see no stargazing, chess or cardgames in mine, even though all three are important parts of the base game and rocket science is kind of hard to do. Nor do I see any alternatives for occult sims.

One more way you can get asked about likes/dislikes: while NPCs are doing things around you. This is going to still require player input so doesn't change my feelings much. Also things NPCs already gravitate toward, such as fitness, cooking, will be more heavily prioritized. I'd like to discover Sims' likes and dislikes not set them. At the moment I'm being expected to decide if Eliza Pancakes hates fitness because she's sweaty. I don't want to be asked constantly to where I have intimate knowledge of all NPC's likes/dislikes. I'm not sure what is going on with this system. I also do not know how many of this type Sims can get, but it clearly needs to unlock many more via ASKING.

They keep releasing things clearly half finished (e.g. bunk beds), which just keep disappointing the Sims community. Like I don't think anyone would have cared if this feature was delayed or announced later, as long as it worked properly at release. Now they've just soured the community against something we've wanted for ages.

The default save needs an overhaul on so many levels and I feel this would be a good time to do this after so many years and updates. They could: -fix all their major build mistakes -sort out the missing skills and relationships -set proper cold and hot weather outfits -give sims likes and dislikes and if they wanna be really ambitious update some of the builds and families to include pools and toddlers in the base game. I don't understand why they are limiting the randomization for everyone, wouldn't that be the perfect time to lock the number in the legacy version and allow more to the normal version. Or give us the ability to switch certain things off for lower-performing PCs. If they can only have these 5 likes/dislikes it is another point in the long list of disappointing updates.

i play with base saves so once i set everyone's likes and dislikes it should be good for every time i play, but it does seem very lazy that they didn't edit all the townies. if we didn't like their picks we could just change, but now it's once again like only your sim makes any impact. this and not having any story progression yet.. meh.

It doesn’t bother me that the sims and townies are gradually developing likes/dislikes. But- I too am disappointed that all the activities from each pack aren’t represented as possible likes, like flower arranging or Selvadoradan culture. I expected for every skill to have an associated like/dislike. I’m also hopeful that food likes and dislikes will be added later in a patch.

Maybe you can go into full CAS for every NPC individually and set their likes and dislikes there? But honestly, would it have killed them to set official NPC Likes and Dislikes? You know what's infuriating? EA makes hundreds of packs, and then never caters to the people who buy them all.

Now I can make a Dance Machine that hates Dancing.

Sims Guru clicks off the positive moodlets to " show" the negative moodlet. Sigh. Sad how de- evolved the gameplay. But hey we can build smancy houses fill them up with all kinds of things, including flat feeling sims that ALL are erratic behaving with moodlets changing every second. Sigh

The problem here is the emotion system, it needs a total makeover.

I could see the appeal to go through all households in a world to give them unique likes and dislikes, if you play a small world like Forgotten Hollow. Like for storytelling but in any other case it would be a chore. Atleast for me. It's a shame that iconic townies don't have set likes and dislikes, because it would have been fun to see Vlad have a not so secret love for the organ and the color pink for example. Or maybe Elisa hates cooking and Bob loves it. I'm 100 % sure modders are working on it, but it shouldn't be like that. Was a little chaos too much to ask?

For a moment there I thought this was going to be like the turn-ons and turn-offs from The Sims 2, but nah, they just re-added the favourites from The Sims 3 only not as good. And that was a low bar to meet, mind you, because I never found that my sims' favourites had much of an impact aside from clapping when eating their favourite food (which got kinda weird and awkward after a while). But townies not even starting out with them? And being limited in these ways? And you getting new ones by doing stuff in the right mood? Somehow, that's still a downgrade. Not that I'm surprised of course, but even from a lazy business standpoint, I think it would have been easier and more well-received to make the romance slightly less random and artificial as opposed to just adding a system that really only amounts to yet ANOTHER emotion buff/debuff entirely under the player's control.

My game keeps asking me to assign likes and dislikes based on activities for Sims that aren't even actively played on that lot. For example I had a birthday party with about 15 Sims and I kept getting pop ups telling me they seem to like dancing and if it should be set as a like for that Sim. I get why it's happening but it got annoying after a while.

Jesthor has learned the following preferences about Carl: * Dislikes Violin

I've not even tried out the new update, because I've just got my hands on Sims 2 after more than a decade not playing it, so I don't really have time to be disappointed again in the Sims 4 😂😂

The production quality on your vids is always top-notch. Stellar editing, you're always very informed, and the custom animations are **chef's kiss**

Looks like they're going to be using players as testers once again.....

Over 370 sims... here we go again.... I hate it when the game turns to a job.

Great Video! I hadn't even considered the problems you mentioned, that's... not great.The issue that the livestream brought up for me was that likes/dislikes are really affected by how broken the emotions system is (they had to cheat away all other moodlets for disliking an activity to have any effect). With that and the problems of NPCs I can't really see this update having much of a noticeable difference on gameplay.

the likes / dislikes feature doesn’t even work for me lmao i’ll make my sims listen to kids radio yet they’re still bopping their head to it even doe THATS their dislike- it’s literally just another pointless trait

How did they forget foods/drinks? Plus the “color” like and dislike doesn’t affect my gameplay whatsoever

i appreciate how you always have captions as soon as the video is put out , it’s so helpful !!

Damn. The most interesting part of this update was the idea of discovering townies with complementary likes/dislikes to my sim, and therefore having a reason to befriend some sims and not others. If they're still all the same then, what's the point?

Sims Team: **introduces interesting game play concept into Sims 4** Also Sims Team: **half-asses implementation** This seems to be a recurring theme.

I love how you use Blender for the background effects, they look amazing.

I am one of those people that religiously works on a "mother" save file so that townies have a personality (clubs, relationships, lifestyles, seasonal clothing, ...), but the idea of having to manually set likes and dislikes for -every- NPC in the game actually disgusts me lmao. Why can't the devs actually implement the features they release is my question.

in my current main save, I am in total-control-freak-storyteller-mode. so it's great, but I see the problem in other saves. it's a really weird choice and I hope it's performance- and not design-based... if only there was a ui kind of... element or panel that would enable people to choose or somehow change how the game performs... they could call it... idk... options or something...

Like the other comments before said, the Sims Team really need to update the default save for the pre-existing NPCs to have their own setup already, including: - Lore - Pre-defined skills (based from lore/sim history and expected personality) - Relationship setup (w/ family and probably other pre-existing sims as well) - Sentiments setup (I know sentiments ain't permanent but some people like to use pre-existing households) - Likes and Dislikes setup - Hot and Cold weather outfits (it's added to the base game anyway) Then just kinda randomize the skills and L&D for randomly generated NPCs. And probably add Iggy Pancakes to the Pancake house officially since they cannoned him in the trailer. Like literally just assign one person from the team to do the whole thing for a week or two and do the same thing every time they declare they have this "game-changing update for your sims".

I get pop ups for non played households asking for permission on new likes and dislikes! Over all, I’m happy with the feature, as my NPS develop new likes/dislikes as my played Sims do.

I was cautiously optimistic about the likes/dislikes system. So far it hasn't made a bit of difference in my game. Now I realize why. The only sim with likes and dislikes is mine. :(

I could go thro the townies and personalise them.... But I WANT RANDOMIZED CHAOS!!!! Lol

I hadn't tested it that thoroughly, but I'm not surprised it's that surface. And of course "hey, they seem to like this" doesn't have any actual context to why they're in a positive mood.

Now I'm sad again :< I love this game so much but there's still so much left missing in it

I haven't missed anything, have I? Sim not reacting in any way to their favorite color? will he not react from clothes or decor around him? we are waiting for dlc to influence something

This was a step in the right direction but yeah they need to work on this now. It wasn’t what I thought it was but I’m happy. Every time they add something golden to the game they have to go back and fix it! 😂😂😂 I feel like I’m playing dolls because I have to set up EVERY setting and scene for the sims I’m not playing with🤦🏾‍♀️

Yeah, I can't be bothered to go through every townie and premade just to set their likes and dislikes. Pretty disappointing.

I was in the gym and the game asked about NPC the like for the fitness

This was an excellent opportunity to increase the lore of the sims 4, adding likes / dislikes to each neighbor and townie in the game. I understand that EA would not want to modify the games for those who are already playing but if you start a new game the likes / dislikes should already be implemented. Another possibility would have been to add them on the web page as part of the description of each character, in this way if the player wants to implement it, he could determine what those likes / dislikes are and assign them to the corresponding character.

i know its not great to have to rely on mods but i cannot wait to see what modders do with this system im sure it will not be hard and take this shell of a system they gave us and fill it out more into what we were all hoping for

Honestly while it's great that likes and dislikes affect their autonomy THIS is what traits are supposed to do! Why in the mighty world design a whole new system instead of fixing the one that already exists to do the exact same thing? It's infuriating and renders traits virtually redundant. If traits worked properly they would be able to be tied into likes and dislike. For example book worm sims would automatically like the reading hobby and maybe also dislike playing vidoe games, Natural cooks (or what ever TS4 equivalent is) would automatically like cooking ect. Then both systems would work altogether AND townies would all start out with likes and dislike based off their traits instead of being randomly assigned from a tiny list.

Wow Sims team, you've done it again! Given us a new feature that is half complete. GG.

And there I'd had my hopes raised a little.....now back down to normal :/ I wanted the likes and dislikes to be like the earlier Sims game, whether they like or hate the other sims that they meet and not just related to house decorating and hobbies ffs

See now had they put these features in the base game as they should’ve, every sim in every world would have more personality from the jump! This is like a quick fix to appease the community that wasn’t very well fleshed out.

So glad you covered this and impressively quickly. This is one of the reason Carl is the first place I go for Sims news. You've well prepared me for avoiding game play I wouldn't like. The biggest immediate positive reaction about Likes & Dislikes (for me): Control over sim behavior if there's a bug related to an action. The auto cooking was driving me crazy and, while it was fixed, if there's any future bug I have one more lever to try to stop the madness. Biggest downside (for me): I'm a "control freak" and I exhaust myself. I get so caught up on just naming sims let alone everything else in CAS. Side notes: I hope to see the return of having a favorite food.

My sim got a close sentiment when they introduced themselves to a sim (and they literally had never met before) who had some things in common 🤯 I was actually pretty shocked tbh😅 DID THE SIMS TEAM ACTUALLY DO SOMETING RIGHT!?!?

It seems it's the same old thing: They never go quite far enough with something. A concept might be good, but they don't spend enough time and energy on it to make it more interesting. I'll admit to being a control-freak. I almost always want total control over a town's population, right down to whether they can get a job or not.

I legit wanted to cry when i found out having dine out & the new pack doesnt give food likes or dislikes

This does make gameplay more interesting, so I'm pleased, Now considering using music streams to take the happy gloss off a few sims and make things more interesting :)

Hi, Carl! I love your work. I would love to know your favorite packs. I'd love to watch you ranking them. As I'm more like yourself, more interested in game play not on building.

Ok, so I've been playing the game since last night, and I also have noticed some things. I went to update my sims that were in that particular save and one of them was my Batuu character. I found that there is not an option under the music for the Batuu channel. Now, I know lots of people don't like Journey to Batuu, but I do play it and I can't even have them like the music for it. There are other things but I'm not going to go too far into it. Because I found another issue with the update. The bunkbeds. So, yeah, we can now place desks under the loft bed, but not a lot of the decorations and not single tile tables which are what I usually use for my sims computers. You can put a whole big desk but not a small table. Overall, I have to say that my initial fears were realized. Based on what you found and I found, it is NOT working with all the expansions. And so once again they only go about halfway. I keep being told "don't blame the sims team" and "things are changing in Maxis just wait" but over and over things are just halfway. I'm frickin' tired of halfway every time I get excited about something. My birthday is in a couple weeks and I'm pretty sure someone is buying the new pack for me. Now I'm not sure if I even want it.

I'm guessing this is something they'll come back to like they did with bunk beds. They just got it out there and will continue to improve on it.

Ey I've never been this early before, but I can already tell this'll be an awesome video!

UGH- I was so excited for this update! Not setting up the NPCs is a big letdown

I thought I could use that to properly fix the autonomy of my sims in their free-time. Play videogames -> Troll on the forums -> Exercise (I haven't removed my coffee machine). So I put them all in Dislikes one by one. It kinda worked early on. After that... they decided not to touch other activities, got bored from time to time and then did the same actions above even tho they don't like them. So it feels kinda pointless unless there is some sort of invisible limit I don't know about. (Also apparently there is a bug/feature when Perfectionist would scrap finished paintings on his own now. Not selling excellent paintings - scrapping them altogether.)

Thank you for captioning this as I am deaf. There is something that concerns me is that I dont see any record of discovered likes and dislikes for non player sims. I check their sims profile and see the discovered traits listed but not their discovered likes and dislikes. I understand that the interior decorator career does list some in the gig when you give an interview but only for that gig. Hope in the future that they record the discovered likes and dislikes in the sims profiles.

LOL! He says " What is going on? Why is it only these 5?" I laughed so hard. I logged in to test this system. I turned off all instruments, mischief, mixology & singing. I made sure to not have anything for a like to see if they would stop doing anything that was fun for them. It didn't work. It did work for instruments and them living all day at bar counters. The didn't interact with those objects and I was thrilled. The sims over emoting is annoying. Too bad they didn't add one for cleaning a desk non-stop or sim kids making a mess. Then before logging out I set 20 things to dislike just because I can. I see your point on limited npc likes and dislikes. Too me it's not that important except when they mix drinks all day long every single day. I wouldn't mind the instruments or signing if they had their own sound bar in settings and if I could just mute it. Certain appliances have mute options but the computer video games do not. It is a good start and does need more work for those who actually care about their fake people. I don't think they know what to do. They seem to want to improve the game but then get lazy with every project and make it worse. I hope it does pollute the town though. Then maybe the welcome wagon will stop showing up with that disgusting fruit cake if they all hated cooking / baking. Imagine being at the gym and all the sudden all the sims whip out a violin and play. Bahahahaha! I don't think it's intentional. I think they are a little stupid over there with a lack of communication and the time to test things out properly.

thanks for this. I never would’ve guessed that would even be an issue... but seeing people play with a pack is an absolute requirement before I buy any anymore because there are always issues and “features” that turn out to be not as good as expected

This was not my experience. Yesterday I downloaded someone else's save file and so now I have no original townies. My playing kept getting interrupted with messages asking me to decide about random sims' likes and dislikes. It was pretty annoying since my sim didn't even know them. I believe the "Message Folder is Full" is occurring more often with all these new packs, kits and updates.

I hope that the likes and dislikes can lead to turn ons and turn offs

I assume there will be some mod eventually, possibly an extension to or favorite story progression mod, to automate randomizing likes and wants of the townies. (Once the modders have finished fixing whatever this patch has broken in existing mods.)

There was an update that was terrible to the gameplay. Non controlled Sims out of your household not being automatically at work or school. Now, Cassandra and Alex are around my households at 11am in weekdays. An update I would like is adding NPCs as workmates. What's the point of flirting with a workmate if they don't exist? Also, adding the option of the partner to visit your Sim and discover their lover without controlling them. What's the point of not knowing your classmates?

I agree. I feel it's a gr8 step in the right direction and yet they have to keep working on it and refining it.

I thought this was going to happen. I asked Guru Ninja if it was going to be like that on Twitter, he didn't answered me. Thanks for testing it out. I don't wanna put like and dislikes into every NPC on my gameplay, I'm disappointed but not surprised that they, again, didn't went back into every pack and NPC neighborhood and set those up...

Turbodriver already had a way to randomly assign likes and dislikes to all Sims in your save, for his attraction system for Wonderful and Wicked Whims. I don't remember if it includes hobbies/skills, but it can assign likes/dislikes for every possible aspect of a sim, down to body type and favorite colors, to every townie and NPC in your save. Developers - I know you're under a lot of pressure. But if he already did it over a year ago, there's no excuse this time. The NPCs didn't have to be blank canvases. You could've given us a choice to randomize them. Once again, if I play (I'm playing Sims 2 right now), I'll be in offline mode, waiting for our talented modders to fix it.

i Played my sim for 8 hours today to test this new feature, and as i play with autonomy always 'on' i found my sim acted waaaay les illogicaly and it was nice to see the liking this activity thought bubbles when they 'chose by themself to logicaly go and do somthing they enjoy' , after 8 hours definatly liking the more logical autonmy very much , as Carl said the townies are still playing prety much the same , but so far im just happy my sims now seems to at least have half a brain FINALLY :D

I’m starting up a new LP town, which means I’m building houses with sims that I’m still playing with while I’m setting up new ones and if I’m playing a new household would get pop-ups for me to determine what my other households likes and dislikes are based on the autonomous activities that are happening outside the new household I’m playing.

My big frustration with this change is that while I would really like for my writer sim to like writing if I set that as one of her likes then the tiny sliver of challenge that used to exist in the career is gone. She gets video game levels of fun out of writing now. She never needs to leave her computer anymore at all except to eat, sleep, use the bathroom and take the occasional thoughtful shower.

Hey, I don't know if it makes a diff to you, but my sim is getting to know Morgyn the realm of magic guy, and so he's spending a lot of time at our place - the game went through the thing where you get to choose whether a sim likes an activity - for him, and he's not my sim! I thought it was odd, but I'll take it?

For expanding likes and dislikes in the future I’ve got an idea of two Food types and fashion If you have Dine Out you’ll notice that the custom menu has different categories of food and drink. For drinks the categories are: Cold, Hot, Fruit, Fizzy, Nectar, and Misc For appetizers and mains: Grains, Meat, Vegetarian, Seafood, and Misc And dessert has: Cakes and Pies, Chocolate, Fruit and Misc This means that there’s already code for sorting food into this specific categories. So in the future if they can’t give us the option to pick a favorite food they might be able to give us the option to like and dislike certain categories of food. Like a sim could like chocolate, dislike seafood, and love fizzy drinks and so on. It could be great for role playing as it enables different dietary habits so sims can be presbyterian or vegan of their own choice or a bread or chocolate lover. One could even make a sim “wine mom” with the nectar option I could go but basically it could give sims a whole range of foods to eat but still let’s them be a bit picky. Now fashion is a lot simpler, in CAS there’s an option under the tags called style. This is list of fashion categories considering of Basics, Polished, Preppy, Rocker, Country, Hipster, and Boho If used for likes and dislikes this could make sims more likely to wear their preferred style, make them uncomfortable when wearing their most hated style, and add new depth to social interactions by having sims specifically compliment other sims in their preferred style or insult sims in their hated style. It could be fun but for now it just a thought.

Rocket science is most definitely in the list of activities. It's even in your video footage at 1:47. It's just a different icon. Not sure why they did that, but it's there.

I've tested this, too, I got pop-ups for likes/dislikes for my played Sims' acquaintances & friends when they were visiting or hanging out together and they did acquire the corresponding likes & dislikes. So at least the townies I interact with so get some "personality". Hopefully they'll fix the new profile bug in the next update, too .. 🙄

Can't believe they didn't even bother giving known townies proper fitting likes and dislikes. The hell?

Now if there was only some kind of gameplay mechanic where a sim can develop specific whims based on their mood and personality. That sure would be an interesting system to refine and tie into a sim's likes and dislikes, as opposed to -- purely speaking hypothetically here -- botching the implementation and leaving it turned off in the options by default.

One problem I did find when playtesting the new patch was I made a random Sim via Story, then tried to access their likes and dislikes. It wouldn't let me. It didn't even randomly generate them. That's a big problem.

They've been overhauling the build/buy mode a lot in the last year and a half (platforms, window placement, sofas, bunk beds). They have improved tremendously with CAS. NOW they are slowly fixing gameplay... Lets hope this year is the gameplay overhaul and this is just the start aside from lifestyles. We can only hope

Thanks for being one of the most objective and informative reviewer of this game. Cindy's review was great as well. Personally, I feel this is a big step to the game, but it should have been added like extra secondary traits instead. That would have meant more traits like in Sims 3. For example, a Sim that hates cooking will have more changes of eating non properly cooked food and get sick or burn the kitchen. This system based in emotions will ruin my stories about Sims painting after a friend passed away. People have hobbies to improve their mood, not to begin hating them. I hope EA or modders change it or at least having the option to delete it in your game.

i Can't wait for modders to expand this feature lol

Another awesome video Carl. Thank you 💖

Like most new features, I'm just excited to see how the modders can use it

I just really wish they expand it on the idea why not have a favorite book genre favorite food preferences or preferences on the conversation topics. Even having weather likes and dislikes It’s just so one note again 🤦🏾‍♀️

IMO, in recent gameplay, 3 things that contribute the likes & dislike : 1. NAP in Eco Lifestyle. I have lotta Townies likes Gardening and Fitness cz my NAP. 2. Club Activities in Get Together. While in gathering, they gonna do their club activities. Some of my Cooking club member either likes or dislike Cooking. 3. Lot activities (either basegame or some DLCs). Try check in Sulani beach, Gym, Komorebi ski, or Geekcon. They do what they usually do there, like workout or gaming or dancing etc, and mostly either they gonna like or dislike it. Especially if you spend long time there. What so funny is, Townies preferences can conflict with their career. I met one Painter who dislike painting... 🤣

So basically, shovelled out in hopes the modders will fix it.

I think there are so many activities to like and dislike that aren't represented there. In particular activities relating to logic and charisma skill, crafting from eco lifestyle, stuff related to school "subjects" aka skill areas esp for kids and teens but also for the university stuff. Also I would love to see some specificity for things like fitness-- maybe they love swimming but hate running.

It's just like the bunk beds. Release a feature early and fix it later when the dlc comes out. We are the 2nd wave of testers and we aren't even getting paid for it smh

I think this update is broken. Someone on TikTok posted a video of her sim liking the color yellow and so she basically made everything for the sim yellow (clothes, house, etc) and the sim had zero reaction to it. I’m wondering if the color likes and dislikes will work with the pack coming out Monday. 🤔🤔🤔

Also if your Sim dislikes an activity and you have carefree the won't ever have any tense moodlet so it's kinda let down, the will complain about it but still be happy, it's a major let down. Carefree is an extremely overpower trait for any sim, vampires as well won't have any tense moodlet if the have negative purk, cause carefree pretty much remove any tense moodlet