Before I begin, I want to say that something about InZOI keeps getting me back to play, I do take breaks, but I end up coming back more than when I used to play “that other title”. This post has some of the thoughts I have about the game, what I think should be improved, etc. This by no means is a complain post, I love the InZOI devs, the community and everything that the team is doing to improve the game. This post is coming from a place of love towards the game and I’d like to share the feedback so that maybe they can find that sweet spot that makes InZOI shine.
I understand it’s early access, and I’m in for the ride. Hope this feedback provides some insight.
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Personalities: The Sims has better personalities than InZoi at the moment. Each Sim feels different, while on InZOI everyone feels a little too similar. More work is needed here, we currently can have a personality with a trait and 2 characteristics, those traits & characteristics affect the Zoi’s mood, but that’s it, it has no real effect on gameplay than just avoiding certain scenarios. In my opinion, traits should make Zois play completely different, drive them 100%, each trait & characteristic should make your Zoi feel different than another.
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For instance: You can have a charmer that is emotionally needy and neat freak. This combination will just make your Zoi use more romance actions and clean around once in a while (brush teeth, shower, etc.) all Zois shower, all zois want to have their clothes clean, all zois use romance actions. What makes this Zoi different, than say a Socialite with emotionally needy and neat freak. They will act the same way 99% of the time.
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What’d make them different? Maybe we need more than 2 characteristics. For example, it’d be great if say a charmer had a set of interactions that make charmer feel like a charmer (not only from autonomy), maybe the charmer could be yes emotionally needy so they’d be all over their sweethears/spouse, maybe to the point where other Zois feel a little overwhelmed, unless they too are emotionally needy. Maybe a sentinel would react differently to the charmer and not fall for their personality as easy, maybe the sentinel will not be moved as easily and calms the charmer. Maybe the socialite keeps on contacting friends, and throwing parties autonomously. Maybe an introvert when they see more than 2 people they get their emotional battery depleted and want to recharge going home, or if they’re bookworms they’d go to the library. Each personality needs to be different and play different. Hope it makes more sense this way.
Made an extension post about personalities here where I go deeper with scenarios of how it all should in theory play out.
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Interactions: InZOI interactions are getting better over time, but they don’t really change from one Zoi to other (same thing as personalities), they all have the same voice, same animations, same 3-liners voice sounds. More animations are being added, but there needs to be more into the mix than just choosing different interactions, personalities should lead interactions way more. Maybe different set of interactions per trait? All Zois have the same ones, they sound the same, move the same way, it’s like all Zois are copy-pasted versions with just a makeover.
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Smart Zoi: It needs the ability to modify the behavior more, it should allow us to provide a prompt and let the Zoi act through it. Currently it does affect some of the interactions, but it’s mostly a thought system as far as I’ve played with it.
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Multitasking: Multitasking should be that, multitask, doing things at the same time. Currently it just links things to do, taking forever to complete one of them. I understand it’s WIP, but so far I’ve noticed more actions can be linked but all these actions are taking ages to complete, it’d be great if all the linked actions could be happening at the same time. Yes, watching tv and eating at the same time and not on intervals progressing each actions individually.
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Talking, eating and drinking + chairs: For some unkown reason, Zois will always be playing the chair game to do anything. From talking to eating, whenever we’re standing it’d be good if we could just eat or drink there, instead of looking for a chair every time we want to talk, eat or drink.
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Memory System: It’s too barebones at the moment. One moment you remember you’re mad and the next it gets overwritten by a romantic action. It has no real weight as far as I’ve experienced it. Memory should allow to change the behavior of the Zoi. Currently if my Zoi is a dropout from school, nothing in his life changes, it has no effect on the Zoi. It needs to have more weight to the gameplay.
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Businesses: It’s a good starting point what we have, but we need more depth to it. Many bugs too. It’s a WIP, I understand. I’d love to see fully fleshed out restaurants, with waitress, a hostess, etc. not just a kiosk that sells the food like it’s fast food.
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Swimming: At the moment it’s pretty pointless. We need more activities with swimming other than scooba at cahaya. There are no water games, no water sports, no marco polo play, NPCs don’t even go to swim, this system needs a lot of love.
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Fishing: Not much happening with it as far as I’ve experienced, just fish for collectibles and cooking materials (and placing some of them in fish tanks as trophies?)
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Grouping: It’s a cool system, but controlling a group is hard to do, more work is needed here.
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Crafted quality: It seems random, not affected by the skill level. My cook which is lvl 10, can still craft “bad” dishes, that doesn’t sound right.
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Autonomy: Needs a lot of work, from constant reading interactions to actions that don’t make sense (fighting with family when everything is ok for instance). Grabbing food from the fridge when there are 20 cooked plates ready on a table or inside the fridge, they need more logical choices than:
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Talking about random topics.
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Fighting randomly.
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Reading.
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Using workout machines.
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Watching TV.
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Listening to creepy music on the speakers.
By this I mean:
- If the Zoi becomes bored, yes go watch TV, play a video game.
- If the Zoi is hungry, check if there’s a good plate of food ready before grabbing something from the fridge.
- If the Zoi is lethargic, go workout.
- If the Zoi is sleepy but it’s not about bed time, go grab a coffee.
- If the Zoi is feeling sad, go talk with someone, go listen to some nice music.
- If the Zoi is feeling inspired, go paint, go write something, go code, go craft.
- If the Zoi is feeling like they want to go out, let them go out.
- If the Zoi loves dancing, let them schedule going to the night clubs automatically.
- And so on…
Currently the autonomy system feels like a wheel of fortune that spins and chooses a random action to do. I’ve had cases where I’m trying to control my Zoi actions and a bunch of random talking queues start appearing, I cancel them and the second after I cancelled them it comes back and again and again, it’s annoying lol. Let them do more, talking shouldnt be the default option, especially if their traits and characteristics do not align with “extroverted” for example. That’d make perfect sense, but the go-to action is talk with someone.
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Coffee & Mixology: They’re pretty pointless unless you open a bar or a coffee shop, which to be honest sell for too little to make a profit. Coffee barely moves the bar and Mixology I haven’t noticed anything special about it, also the juices, they do nothing for your Zoi.
What if Mixology made you tipsy, or gave you buffs. If you overdo it you might get sick and would have a hangover the next day. Maybe if you drink a little, an introvert suddenly gets confidence and starts acting like an extrovert. Maybe an extrovert depending on their memory logs could become angry if they remember a bad moment. I don’t know, more to it.
What if coffee gave you an energy boost, but if you drink too much coffee you might get excessive energy and feel overwhelmed, anxious, etc. maybe you need to go to the bathroom often to pee. If you drink coffee, maybe you get a temporary boost and focus to improve your skills faster. Too much focus and might become hyper-focus (zoned out) that you might even forget it’s 5am before the energy crashes.
What if Juices helped you protect yourself from sickness, or help you in other ways, maybe juices could have different effects on the Zoi depending the season.
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Skills in general: They don’t affect your job promotion, and pretty much just unlock different interactions or recipes, more work needs to be done towards this. I’d love to be able to go to the street and dance or sing to make a profit, but 99% of the time it doesn’t do anything (busking). Skill level doesn’t really affect the quality of crafted items (cook, coffee, mixology, juices, paintings, etc.) and nothing much happens when you reach level 10 other than maybe unlock an item.
Something that could work is depending on the Zoi skill level, different things could happen on different situations, let logic become more than just a skill to do X, let it drive the actual logic of the Zoi to analyze situations. Charm maybe allows you to have an easier time with people, maybe you’re a natural charmer and it’s easy for you to connect with people. Rhetoric, let it be a tool to persuade other Zois, maybe depending on your rhetoric level you can convince people to do what you want. Performance, maybe instead of just singing and joking, let it become a tool for acting, a Zoi that is a good performer has a better chance to “act it out” / “fake it till you make it”, performance is more than just singing, let it affect the Zoi’s actions too. All the skills need a way to play into personality and not being just skills that need to be leveled up because “numbers”.
Think of it like Dungeons & Dragons, you need a “die check” towards X skill to succeed or fail vs the situation requirements, depending on your skills and the situation, skills could play a good portion of the storytelling that unfolds.
Say a family member dies, you get a “die check” against your logic skill, if you pass the check, you can understand why it happened, how it happened and what you need to do, you’ll still feel sad, but you will be able to process the situation better than someone that failed the check, someone that failed the check might have a mental breakdown depending on the Zoi’s relationship with the deceased Zoi. Things like these make the gameplay be juicy, full of spontaneous scenarios.
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NPCs: The city is filled with NPCs that come and go, it’d be nice if the stablished families affected the world more. I remember seeing the neighbor that gave me a dish when I started my last gameplay, but that was the first and last interaction I had with that person. Others simply don’t matter, it’d be nice if they mattered, if they owned a business, if they interacted with other families more, if they randomly visited you if you know them, etc.
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Events: They’re scripted with a set timer and actions to do, it’d be nice if we moved from scripted to spontaneous gameplay. Scripted events become super repetitive after the fiirst 2-3 times you do them. For example, a birthday party, let the host automatically cook a cake or order it if they can’t craft it, let the Zois place the table automatically, let the friends come over automatically and unleash their personality in a birthday party scenario, some might dance, some might be cheering, some others maybe drinking all your liquor, others maybe swimming. Maybe one of the zois randomly comes up with the cake, others start giving you gifts, etc. just random spontaneous, non-scripted gameplay. We put the “setting” and the game could adjust the Zois interactions accordingly depending on the event, without a list of “tasks”.
When I arrived to Dowon, I was invited to a meeting at the gym, I went there once, and that was it. It was saying “Hi" to the coach, workout a little, and done. No mentoring, nothing. Just an event with random NPCs that just stood there doing random things, mostly talking.
What I want to say is basically, let the game decide what actions should take place depending these events, instead of making them a list of tasks.
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Family Calendar: When it’s automatically populated, it just takes you to random locations each week for X amount of time, for one, when going to a convenience store you just stand there, talking with people and eating food. That’s it, there’s nothing more to it, stuff like this needs improvement. If I’m going to the convenience store it should be because I need something from there, maybe materials because I’m leveling my cooking (the game should give you reason to go there). When visiting the park, maybe you focus on meeting new people and walking your dog (whenever pets arrive).
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Vehicles: I love being able to drive, but for some reason I’m not able to drive to locations I’m scheduled to go, unless I manually choose “drive”. I know there’s going to be improvement for vehicle gameplay, I’d also love to see a “favorite transportation method” option to choose driving instead of using the subway/bus.
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Inventory: It’s good, but needs a lot of love. Let us use items directly from the inventory instead of taking them out and then interacting with them. Also, 100/100 is really not much inventory, if I buy 100 bait, my inventory is full. It’d be nice if it changed to “slots” instead of how many items you have in your inventory (100 bait = 1 slot = 1/100 in inventory).
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Notifications: The game is full of pop-ups and notifications everywhere. There needs to be control about this. You get notifications if your Zoi is at school, a random call, a random text, a random scheduled event, notifications of the household, notifications of memories, notifications of notifications that have notifications. This needs to be cleaned up, it’s overwhelming.
For now that’s it 
I know it’s long I just wanted to post my feedback from 500+ hrs of gameplay.