In April, The Sims’ official social media accounts announced a new two-tone hairstyle female Sim update, and brought back the non-customizable PlantSim. Considering the number of mods available that customize players’ Sims to levels beyond what’s currently available in vanilla The Sims 4, there is a lot of room to grow. The developers at EA can take a number of different steps in future customization updates for its well-loved life-simulation title beyond just basic hairstyles.
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Improving Customization in The Sims 4
A quick addition that EA could make to improve customization in The Sims 4 is providing better color options. Currently, the new two-tone hairstyle comes with a pre-made set of color pairs with no further modification possible, and beyond that this new hairstyle is only available in two-tone colors. Underneath the aforementioned social media announcement are many positive reactions from fans, but just as many comments calling for a color wheel to provide a better experience to the hairstyle update. This could turn into a blanket update, providing a color wheel for any and all Sim customizations that do not currently have them.
Leaning into further realism for The Sims 4 should involve adding more content for male Sim customization in general. While the recent hairstyle update looks great, it’s yet another one that’s only available for female Sim characters to enjoy. Another thing that EA could add is various types of body hair that isn’t just beards. While there are plenty of The Sims 4 mods available, a good deal of Sims players don’t want to use mods in their gameplay experience. Yet community mods are good measuring sticks to see exactly what fans of the game want to see in the base experience itself, and EA would do well to pay a lot more attention to them.
Since the news of a free pronoun update, perhaps one of the biggest improvisations that EA could bring to The Sims 4 is to provide players with a larger variety of traits - or even better, it could bring back negative Sim traits to the game. One thing many fans agree on is that The Sims 3 was better than its successor via the personality depth that one could give to their Sim creations. The Sims 4 has a perfectionism issue, in which there isn’t an ounce of negativity in the world aside from maybe bankruptcy or death. No crime, no negative consequences, and no negative traits can be assigned to a Sim specifically.
Giving players the option to create Sims that are even more realistic could create a precedent for a more authentic life-simulation experience. While the above ideas would be great news for the next The Sims roadmap update, it seems more than likely the next iteration of the game could integrate them better. Since it will soon be May, fans might be able to look forward to additional customizations becoming available for their current Sims, or perhaps even start to anticipate The Sims 5.
The Sims 4 is available now for PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
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