Legacy Challenge Family Wealth

Before we get started, please make sure to read the following from Graham Nardone:

“The consequences of not paying your bills is more severe now. Let your bills go without paying them? First your power gets shut off. Next your water gets shut off. It’s a fun scenario to put your Sims in on occasion (they recognize it and get some unique socials about it). The bill upkeep on more expensive homes is harsher than it’s been in the past as well, so you truly better be earning enough to support living in one. I hope both those things contribute to greater challenges when you put your Sims in those situations.” (to see the whole conversation, go here)

So what does that mean for the Legacy Challenge? Something *wonderful*. Let’s take this piece by piece.

The consequences of failure to pay bills on time are very interesting. Rather than just yank away a random item or two, you are actually put in an active failure state. This reminds me of going into aspiration failure in the Sims 2. And veterans of the challenge will know that I assigned a penalty if one of your sims went into failure, making you be vigilant about avoiding fears.

In the Sims 4, avoiding going into “lost power/water mode” is likely going to be in your best interests. I am leaning towards having a similar point penalty for going into “lost power/water mode” in The Sims 4 Legacy. The ONLY thing that would stop me from doing that is the ease of paying bills, or lack thereof. If bills come due and you actually don’t have the cash on hand to pay them, I want that to be a penalty. If the bills blow up only because you forgot to click a button, or because the pop-up warning you about them got hidden by something or never alerted you well enough…I don’t want that to be a penalty.

So why so much thought bills? Well look at the next part of his comment. “The bill upkeep on more expensive homes is harsher than it’s been in the past as well”.

That right there is probably one of the most significant facts we’ve learned in terms of how TS4’s Legacy Challenge is going to shape up. In both Sims 2 and 3, bills were never really large enough to ‘hurt’ much. Even when you had a massive manor full of expensive stuff… the bills were never anything that would put a serious dent in your family’s funds. Now that they are being given some teeth, they can potentially have a bigger impact on the challenge.

I don’t wan’t to discourage large Legacy Homes. Quite the opposite! I want you to build huge massive-lot-filling Legacy Manors filled with generations worth of stuff and history. But I also want money to remain relevant into the later generations of the challenge.

In TS2 and 3, a halfway decent Simmer could have their legacy family VERY well-off by the time the 2nd generation’s heir took over from the founder…at which point money matters were essentially a non-issue and it was smooth financial sailing for the remaining generations. Now that bills are going to grow more with your house, making sure you can bring in enough money to support the house you have AND have some leftover to continue building and buying is going to be a harder and harder task.

Assuming that the bills are going to be calculated based on your house’s net worth, I’ll likely make the points you get for wealth dependent on your HOUSE net worth, not just the family’s net worth. Meaning having a bank account full of millions of Simoleons won’t earn you any points, but having a multi-million Simoleon house WILL. And of course, as your home’s wealth grows, so will the bills. This could actually make the challenge harder for the later generations as their ability to earn income will be fairly static, but the demands of the bills will continue to grow. This makes the point-oriented player balance the benefit you gain from growing your house with the increasing costs brought on by the higher bills.

Of course, all of this is subject to change depending on how the bills are actually calculated. But from what I know so far…this is going to spice up the financial side of the game very nicely and keep your eyes on your bank account for all 10 generations.