What we want to see from The Sims 5

The Sims Summit aired on Oct. 18, 2022, and unveiled a very early look at the next big Sims project called Project Rene.

Whether Project Rene is actually The Sims 5 is currently unconfirmed, but considering that it is the next project in The Sims franchise and called “the next iteration of The Sims,” it is likely that it will end up being called The Sims 5 further into its development. Due to this massive reveal, The Sims community is excited and speculating about the future of The Sims once more.

Project Rene’s teaser already has devoted Sims 4 players eager for what comes next as it showcased massive features like a color wheel, customizable furniture, cooperative play, and cross-play. Although these reveals are certainly exciting, they are very early on in development and The Sims 5 is many years away since EA has promised many more years of The Sims 4 with an infant update and two new expansion packs on the way in 2023. 

Based on what has been unveiled thus far, the future of The Sims franchise is certainly looking bright. But The Sims 5 has a lot of community expectations to live up to following the widely criticized structure and the plethora of issues that players have with The Sims 4. Thus, here is a breakdown of some of the features most commonly requested by players for The Sims 5. 

1) The return of open neighborhoods/worlds

Perhaps the most commonly requested feature by regular Sims players is the return of open neighborhoods or open worlds. 

The Sims games are all about life simulation and freedom, but the number of loading screens players have to go through within The Sims 4 to do just about anything completely breaks immersion. The ability to seamlessly wander around is a core aspect of life and realism that is severely lacking in The Sims 4 and very needed for The Sims 5. 

In The Sims 3, players could take a long stroll up to a park without a single loading screen. The world always felt full of life, like it was always moving, and like the NPCs were fully sentient with their own minds and lives to live. The Sims games are meant to be life simulators that offer players the freedom to “play with life,” as is one of their signature marketing phrases, so this feature is essential for The Sims 5.

Even if it is restricted to a specific playable area, The Sims 5 needs to see the return of open worlds or neighborhoods. The lack of this feature in The Sims 4 is one of the game’s biggest issues because it leaves the world feeling empty and lifeless since players are confined to small restricted areas that are generally desolate and forced to endure lengthy loading screens to do anything. 

2) More personality

The Sims 5 needs to return to a deep focus on personality because this is one of the biggest problems with The Sims 4. 

While past Sims games offered players a variety of traits, The Sims 4 only lets young adults or older Sims have three traits, while children are allowed two traits and toddlers can have only one.

The Sims 3 has five trait slots available for Sims and a massive list of over 100 detailed traits. The Sims 4 has around half as many traits and fewer slots for customization, which leaves many Sims feeling shallow. Thus, The Sims 5 needs to focus on detailed personalities for Sims once more.

In The Sims 3, players could select their Sim’s zodiac sign, and while such a small detail may seem inconsequential, it is tiny details like these that help distinguish one Sim from another. Personality aspects like favorite color, fears, favorite music, zodiac sign, and favorite food can help to deepen Sims’ personalities and should be core aspects of creating Sims in The Sims 5.

Another key component of this feature that is necessary for The Sims 5 is personality within NPCs. Every Sim should have their own unique personality and storyline regardless of if players choose to play as them. This is essential in bringing life to The Sims because NPCs without personalities feel empty and robotic. 

In The Sims 5, NPCs should have free will and act on their own accord. They should be able to ask other Sims out, break up with Sims, befriend Sims, cheat on Sims, and otherwise live a life by their own design based on their unique personalities. 

3) A color wheel

One of the best features of The Sims 3 is the color wheel that can be used for everything from hair to furniture. The furniture and clothing version of this tool is called Create a Style and is present both in The Sims 3 and the spinoff game The Sims Medieval. With this tool, players can fully customize details like the color and texture of clothes and objects, allowing for a truly unique experience from player to player. 

It is incredibly difficult to get anything to match in The Sims 4 due to the highly limited swatch system. Every asset has a different wood swatch and oftentimes players will find themselves liking a wood swatch but disliking the color of a pillow or other feature on an item but unable to edit or change it in any way outside of the very limited swatches items come with. 

The Sims 5 should allow players to fully edit and customize all aspects of every individual furniture item. Players should be allowed to choose the color of the blanket on a bed, the pillows, and the frame separately from each other instead of being confined to a small cluster of swatches. 

While a color wheel is important for furniture, the true necessity of it is for proper player representation. Features like skin tone and hair color should never be narrowed down to a handful of swatches because this will never be truly reflective of real life. Instead, players need to have an expansive color wheel that allows them to actually reflect what they as individuals look like.

The lack of a color wheel is easily one of The Sims 4’s biggest problems. Maxis has admittedly made strides toward correcting this issue by adding a color slider system for skin tones and makeup, but this simply isn’t enough. 

Hair swatches in The Sims 4 are still limited to a measly selection of 24 colors, nowhere near representative of the plethora of colors people have in real life. The Sims 5 needs a color wheel for better player representation and realism. 

4) Community collaborations

One of the best aspects of The Sims 4 has been Maxis’ continuous collaborations with the Sims community. Some creators have been asked to help build homes and families within new worlds shipping with Sims packs while others have had their custom content added as permanent game additions.

This is easily one of the best decisions that The Sims team has made and is one they should continue to expand upon when creating The Sims 5. Not only does it give them a chance to highlight their devoted community but it also drastically improves players’ experiences.

Many of the homes built by Maxis in The Sims 4 are empty and dull, with some even missing basic necessities like toilets, as is the case in the Bailey-Moon household in Del Sol Valley, or featuring staircases to nowhere, like in the Amicable Acolytes house in Glimmerbrook. The homes built by Sims players, such as those around Mt. Komorebi in The Sims 4: Snowy Escape and those around Copperdale in The Sims 4: High School Years, are detailed, very functional, and easy to live in because they are constructed by players who regularly play the game. 

Kit collaborations with actual designers and community members in The Sims 4 are easily better than those created by EA alone because they are more in tune with what players actually want. Community collaborations have continuously been one of the best choices EA has made within The Sims 4 and are a feature that should be carried over to The Sims 5. 

5) Better representation

All Sims players should be able to create a close likelihood to their actual selves in The Sims, but this is not the case with any Sims game thus far. Although The Sims games have definitely continuously worked toward better representation, there is still quite a long way to go before all players will truly be properly represented. 

Perhaps the biggest area that needs improvement is the Create a Sim feature. The Sims 5 could represent people far better with the addition of conditions prevalent in many individuals like Heterochromia and Vitiligo. 

Disabilities are also a very real and common aspect prevalent in many players’ day-to-day lives but not reflected at all in The Sims franchise. The addition of features like wheelchairs, crutches, hearing aids, canes, and walking sticks would be a massive stride in the right direction for better representing individuals within the game.

Every Sims game has also fallen short in representing a wide variety of body types. Better body diversity is a key feature Sims players desire to see moving forward for making strides toward better inclusion.

Going into The Sims 5, EA needs to focus on better representing its devoted audience. No Sims player should ever have to download custom content or mods to feel represented in a game that is built to simulate life. 

6) Different heights

While different heights is a very simple feature, it is one that Sims games are continuously lacking. Every Sim in The Sims 4 and all other past Sims games are the same height unless they are at an entirely different life stage.

The Sims 5 should implement some kind of height slider feature for better realism. Every single Sim of the same life stage being the exact same height is unrealistic and is yet another feature that breaks immersion. 

7) Cars

The community has long been vocal about their desire for the return of cars within The Sims 4. And while the functionality of The Sims 4 gameplay means this likely won’t ever happen, cars could make a grand return for The Sims 5.

Cars are only really a useful and sensible feature if The Sims 5 also allows players to use them to travel around, which means that cars go hand in hand with open neighborhoods or worlds. Because cars are a key feature in most people’s lives, this feature is one that should return in The Sims 5. 

8) Better relationships

One of The Sims 4’s most significant flaws is the restraints on relationships. There are very few relationship options between Sims and many of them feel shallow.

Players should be able to select more relationship options within the Create a Sim tool and more relationship types should be available. The Sims 5 should be built around relationships and have a deep focus on making them more meaningful and important in Sims’ lives. 

The addition of one-sided relationships in The Sims 5 would make interactions much more realistic. One Sim should be able to crush on another while the other Sim is only interested in being friends, a family member might despise their brother but their brother is clueless to this fact, or one Sim may be in love with their partner while their partner is secretly in love with another. The Sims 4’s newer sentiment feature somewhat covers this issue, but The Sims 5 should take this feature and expand upon it so that relationships can truly shine. 

The Sims franchise is a special game series that has been popular with a dedicated fan base for quite a long time because it allows players to play with life however they see fit. The Sims team certainly has a long way to go, but if they continue to listen to the desires of the community and players who know the game best, The Sims 5 could become the best game the franchise has seen yet.