Traits: An In-Depth Look

The Sims 4 takes a combination approach when it comes to fleshing out your individual Sims. It takes (and expands) the aspiration system from the Sims 2 and takes the concept of traits from the Sims 3.

If you haven’t already, check out my video done regarding traits. This was pre-Creators Camp so some of the information is a little guess work, but it is still worthwhile if you want to see a complete list of traits, as well as the animations associated with each of them. (And a bit of Lady Cheshire animated near the end)

But that isn’t anything new, so let me dive in depth a bit deeper and give you a closer look at a few of the traits I had the chance to play with extensively.

Let us first start with a trait related fact relevant to Legacy Challenge players: There is no in-game randomize button for traits. Plenty of ones for clothing and body looks in CAS, but neither CAS nor the age-up dialogue contains any randomize button. This is not a missing feature, this is a conscious design decision. They wanted to stress that traits are much more significant than they were in the Sims 3 (they are) and wanted them to be a deliberate decision of the player to pick. Of course, for Legacy Challenge Players, this presents a little bit of a problem as the challenge has always (and will) require random trait generation. Worry not! A plan for a trait calculator is already in development and will be ready at the same time the challenge rules are.

The three traits I have the greatest familiarity with are the three that belonged to Lady Cheshire, as I played her from day one. Note that this is by no means a 100% complete profile of each trait. There may be many other interactions and quirks that I simply didn’t stumble on during my playtime, so consider this just a taste.

Worry not! A plan for a trait calculator is already in development and will be ready at the same time the challenge rules are.

Art Lover:

Probably the most powerful part of this trait is the impact it has on observing art. “View” has always been a bit of a wasted action in past incarnations of the game. Your sim would stare for awhile and make some random reaction in regards to the piece of art they were looking at. Not for Art Lovers in the Sims 4. Observing an object now grants a little bit of fun AND gives you an inspired moodlet, making it very easy for art lover Sims to make themselves inspired. Even better, they can observe art *while* doing other things. Placing a centerpiece in my Masque family dining room would cause my art loving founder (and art loving husband) to observe the object while they ate, making mealtime fun. Art Lovers like talking about art, discussing favorite artists and frequently spawn whims to paint, visit the museum, talk about art, or simply to observe some artwork, making it a fairly healthy supply of aspiration points. Interestingly though, your Sims don’t gain fun from painting anymore in The Sims 4, not even art lovers. To make up for this, they get powerful positive moodlets upon finishing their painting

Music Lover:

Music Lovers love their music, they love hearing it, and they love playing it. Probably the most powerful part of this trait is the doubling of the mood impact of music. 95% of the time hearing pleasant ambient music in a room will be good for one happy emotional point, so getting two out of that is actually pretty significant, especially when those happy points are applied to another emotion. They also are happy to play their instruments and happier when playing for a crowd. Music lover does not automatically make them GOOD at music, but when they do get around to getting enough skills, they’ll be happier for doing it. Like with Art Lover, Music Lover Sims can discuss music, favorite bands,composers, and songs.

Insane:

Oh boy, do I love insane. This one was easily my favorite trait in the game of the few I had extensive play time with.
Insane comes with a few perks. The first one is some nice emotional instability. Randomly, about every-other-day on average, Lady Cheshire would get a moodlet. Nothing caused this moodlet to appear, it just showed up. The text of the moodlet, that normally explains what the moodlet was…was all in Simlish. The moodlet itself would show up as a completely random +1 moodlet of any of the emotions. This can make for some funny instances where you are carrying a few happiness points and they suddently all start applying to a random mood that came out of nowhere. I found this more beneficial than annoying. Insane Sims can talk to themselves, and you can order them to do this. They can also “Talk with friends” and begin speaking to random inanimate objects. You cannot command them to do this, it only happens naturally. This still falls into the multitasking aspect of the game. I remember a time when Lady Cheshire rushed to the bathroom after letting her bladder need get into the red. After she sat down and began to do her business, she began to talk to the toilet she was using. In fact, she began to speak to it very angrily and at the end of her rant, she displayed the double minus signs to indicate a large loss of relationship points…even though there was nobody else in the room. Insane doesn’t have much impact on whims directly, often only spawning a ‘talk to self’ whim which is very easily fulfilled. However their random moods can grant you access to emotions and their related hot whims even when you normally wouldn’t have anything to normally induce them into that emotion.

Oh boy, do I love insane. This one was easily my favorite trait in the game of the few I had extensive play time with.

Next up is her husband, Raheem.

His first trait was Art lover. In fact, this was probably the reason she ended up marrying him. Relationships are a bit tougher to get off the ground in the Sims 4 and it wasn’t until she found a fellow art lover that she was able to get close to someone. That’s not to say that you HAVE to have similar interests to be good friends with someone, but like in the Sims 3, having similar traits and using trait specific interactions will net you much bigger relationship gains than would normally be available. Also to note, the game had Raheem’s three traits hidden from me while he was still an NPC but talking about art to him revealed his art lover trait. The Observant aspiration reward is back too, but it is now much more expensive (as it should be for how powerful it is)

His Second trait made me wince a bit when i saw it…

Bro:

Of all the traits, the one that gave me the most pause was Bro. Luckily, the Bro trait was fairly subdued in its effects. Or at the very least, the fact that the family did not have another Bro in it prevented much of the Bro to Bro specific actions and interactions. He would occasionally get whims to give someone a Bro hug or something like that…but otherwise I didn’t see a lot of changes. Don’t write Bro off though… I have a feeling my playstyle didn’t allow the Bro trait to shine or allow me to discover some of its deeper effects.

Lastly is the return of Loner:

Loner returns in spirit but its effects are done a bit differently. They still like being alone, but they don’t get a moodlet buff the very second they are alone. They also don’t (or at least I did not observe this)get a ‘too crowded’ bad moodlet. The way to get the moodlet now is to not interact with other sims for a certain amount of time, after which the moodlet appears and gives you a few happiness points. Simply passing someone in the hallway or going to work does not automatically make you lose the moodlet, you actually have to interact with someone. Of course, with the new multitasking system, doing anything in a room with another person for much length of time will normally spawn a multi-tasking conversation which will kill the mood. Still, there are times where I could spirit him away from others to focus and be happy. And the warm-up time to getting the moodlet back is not excessivly long, so randomly losing it isn’t the end of the world. I didn’t do any calculations to back this up, but his social need seemed to go down a bit slower.

Their first child was Lance, and using a very crude and imperfect method for random trait generation, he got the Nature Lover trait. The only things I observed for little lance was a +2 happiness buff when outdoors and the ability to enthuse about nature and the outdoors. However, SimGuruRiley informed me that there is an obscure interaction unique to Children who Love the Outdoors. I tried my best to find it…but could not. So there is absolutely some hidden depths to the Love the Outdoors trait, it is far more than just a “Stand outside and get a buff” trait.

Their second child was Lady Fara, and she rolled up the Cheerful trait. I didn’t get much play time with Fara after she aged into a child at it was near the tail end of Creators Camp by the time she did, but I did observe something very important that gives some insight to other traits. Randomly, she would gain a “Cheerful” moodlet good for +1 happiness. This seemed to happen as often as her mother’s insane trait would spawn a random mood, except hers was always happy. Looking at the other traits in the ’emotions’ category, many look like they will work the same way. Hot tempered will probably spawn a random +1 angry moodlet. That’s not to say that that is the only thing going for these emotional traits, as they likely have unique interactions and reactions to things around them. Also, Fara did gain some benefit from it. When she was coloring in her mother’s inspiration room, feeling inspired from the objects in there, her cheerful moodlet popped up. As per the way happiness points work, her +1 happy point became a +1 inspired point…this was enough to kick her into the “Very Inspired” mood. So Cheerful looks to be a lot more powerful and flexible trait than it might look like on the surface.

I have one other mini trait to show: Neat. None of my Sims were neat, but I did have an invited guest come over. While the house wasn’t a mess, there were some books out of place. The guest autonomously started gathering up every stray book in the house and put them back on the bookshelf. One of the devs confirmed that wasn’t a bug. Visitors do not autonomously clean your house… except for neat sims.

With all the traits out there and all the little unique trait-specific actions and interactions, it will be quite awhile before you discover them all.