No Toddlers in Sims 4?!?

One of my biggest disappointments with The Sims 4 is that there are no toddlers in the game.  As previously mentioned, I enjoy creating and playing families, and, fittingly, toddlers are often a part of those families.  Toddlers in previous Sims games haven’t had a whole lot of things to do, but I’ve always liked them because they made the game feel more realistic to me – people grow up in stages, and skipping that huge stage from newborn to grade school just seems so fundamentally wrong.  But that’s just my opinion.  In The Sims 3, one of my favorite things to do with toddlers was to read them skill-enhancing books and watch them develop their little minds and personalities, all before they hit childhood.  Plus, those great teaching moments of toddlerhood (like learning to walk and talk) were excellent opportunities for adults and toddlers to build their relationships.  I won’t miss those actions as much as I’ll miss the simple presence of something – anything – in between the littlest of babies and the most independent of kids, but it’s still something I enjoyed about previous incarnations of The Sims. 

So far on my Sims 4 journey, I’ve played a lot of families with babies and kids, including babies who have aged up into kids.  I’ve noticed that the lifespan of a baby seems quite short; they’re born and then only a few days later, it seems like these previously incompetent and dependent beings are fully able to live out their needs on their own.  Life doesn’t work that way, and this is a game after all (so it doesn’t need to be exactly like life), but I wish The Sims had something to bridge the lost time in between. 

I do like that sims (of all ages) can have a wider range of interactions with newborns in this game (including various social interactions, and even the choice to breastfeed or bottle feed the baby), but there are things I don’t like about The Sims 4 babies as well.  I don’t like that each baby comes with its own little bassinette and is pretty much confined there until he or she ages up.  It reminds me a lot of the original Sims game, in which babies arrived (spontaneously, albeit) in a bassinette and just stayed there until it was time to age up. 

No Family Trees in The Sims 4: My Thoughts

Family trees have always been one of my favorite user interfaces in The Sims game series.  

The Sims 2

The Sims 3

I know a lot of people play only one family or only one generation, but my preferred type of play involves creating large towns with many families, and watching them all grow and develop amongst each other over generations.  I have always loved seeing how kids age up and what kind of adults they become, and then I always want to know how they will parent, and just the same, how their kids will develop and change with age as well.  It’s always rewarding for me to see my sims’ relations over the years, and maybe that’s because I just happen to be “family oriented” myself.  Whatever the case, I was disappointed when I discovered that there is no “family tree” feature in The Sims 4. 

There are relationships – don’t get me wrong.  Sims still have “mothers” and “fathers” and “sisters” and “brothers,” they still have “grandparents” and “cousins” and “aunts” and “uncles,” but there is no visual representation of the interlocking relationships readily available for your own reference.  In the grand scheme of things, I’m sure this won’t really change my gameplay, but I know I’m already keeping track of my sims’ relationships independently from the game, on either some other computer program or on a spare piece of paper.  It isn’t important for a lot of people, but I do like to see how my sims’ families are comprised, and I like the visual nature of the family tree.  My sims know who their relations are – they know their parents versus other family members versus strangers – but I know that, if I do build a great town that develops and lasts over generations, I will eventually lose track of who is related to whom, and I’ll find myself frustrated by this missing feature.  It’s easy with just a few households of relatively simple, nuclear families, but once the kids grow up and create families of their own, I’m sure it’ll get more complicated.  That used to be one of my favorite times in The Sims, but I’m afraid this version of the game will bring with it a whole new stress that I have no interest in dealing with. 

I’m still learning to play Sims 4 – I’ve only had it a few days and I’m still not fully comfortable with all the new nuances of the game – so I don’t know whether this will really bother me, as I delve deeper into the game and start creating my own worlds.  Right now, it’s a little bit of a bother.