I hope you can share your experience.
I actually would like to switch the automatical schedule off but it seems to come with the downside that you then will struggle to ever meet your neighbours in the city.
I did switch it off for a while but what I noticed is that you almost never randomly run into the other Zois who are really living in the city. If you go to the beach or a park you mainly only see random Zois generated by the game. On the other side if you go to a place automatically scheduled by the game you will see like 3-4 of the real residents of the city on this lot.
Is it the same in your game? Is there any hidden way to trigger the real residents of the city to generally show up more frequently on the public lots (without the game schedule)?
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i think most zois walking around is simply for decoration at this point. they donāt seem to navigate and actually go anywhere, just walk around then choose another amount to walk around. hopefully this is just placeholder behavior. iād rather see zois that donāt live on the map spawn at places like a taxi or some spot near the edge then navigate to a lot because they have an intention of going there and hanging out at a lot for a while.
iām trying not to use a sims 3 example as usual it seems like the best design.
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Yes that would of course be the best and like you mentioned the Sims 3 example fits extremely well here. Generally I would expect this to be the case for non-residents but even more so for the residents: leaving their house to go surfing at the beach or working out in the gym etc. etc. and then going back home.
I just find it strange that somehow the game is able to bring the resident Zois over to a certain place. If this is an automatically scheduled lot you see them running with the aim to reach this destination exactly the same way like your Zoi is running there. So why (without the automatical schedule) it is not triggered the same way that some of the resident Zois head to the place where your active Zoi is hangig out.
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Well, to be fair, Iāve played games where family mostly worked rabbithole jobs, and otherwise stayed at home.
If you remove those green events that brings your zoi outside, they tend to stay home. Now this is for a player family, so technically itās even worse for the pre-generated families.
The best town/place to meet people Iāve found is Bliss Bay, especially the school.
Chances are your zois will meet lots of ppl and have a couple friends if they start as kids.
If you play as the kid zoi yourself, itās quite easy to just reach āFriendā with a lot of ppl and even pick your life partner eventually from one of them.
Thing is, what incentive is there for a zoi to even leave the house ?
Renovating ? Nope done by the player (as it should).
Going shopping? Nope. Everything is delivered to your doorstep, even a brand new car.
Work? Thereās that, but between working and there being only so many active jobs as opposed to rabbit hole ?
Going to Events? Rabbit hole again.
Now thereās the new bowling/fitness/blind date invitations, which I find a bit cringe but have yet to thoroughly test out. Do they actually go at the gym/bowling alley? or is that just another rabbit-hole like the music/fitness contests ?
Even with wanting families of zoi to interact with the world, my question is: How should the devs do it? How would YOU do it ?
Regarding the school you`re right. For the kids it is easy to get friends as they all leave the school at the same time and it seems the NPC Zoi kids also have this hanging around at the school sports area event in their schedules.
I understand your point @Samuriko and yes there are periods in a life of a Zoi where it is completely fine and meaningful to stay at home most of the time. Like when they have a long workday or the kids are small and need care, after a new marriage etc.
But there are days off in the schedules of the Zois where they can go out for their hobbies. Or for young Zois and teenagers who are not yet having families to care about or maybe are still searching for their perfect partner it totally makes sense to go out in town from my perspective.
Reasons to do so:
- to really meet other people who live in the city, just to chat and get to know new people
- for Zois who have hobbies it also makes sense to visit certain spots:
- like beach or parks (depending on the city) for fishing
- same for gathering of crafting materials
- selling the stuff you made (when the bug is fixed and somebody is buying the stuff again)
- performing songs or instruments for tips
- going to the gym or areas where there are fitness equipment to work out (not every Zoi is rich enough to have all the equipment at home)
- for the games, it would be nice as well but at the moment there is kind of no point in playing chess or bowling or billiard ā no skill behind it and no benefit and not even passive relationship when paying together with other Zois. Hope this will change with new updates.
- also it would be credible if other resident Zois would go out for eating to the relevant spots
- same with library for reading books
- etc. with similar things - there are certainly more I did not think of from the top of my head.
How I would do it:
- I would like the game to push the currently not played Zois who are living in the city to do the stuff mentioned above.
- It could be done like 1 or 2 times a day per NPC Zoi (residents) or it also would be enough to push them or a percentage of them to do such things when your active Zoi leaves the home lot.
- It could be based on their personalities or preferences etc. Somebody who has the fitness trait you would rather meet at the gym or the muscle beach while somebody with the genius trait would rather hang out in the library or somebody who has the Artist personality would rather be in parks where there are easels or places where you can perform.
- For eating and other stuff which is not personality based it could be random
For me this would bring much more immersion to the game. If your own Zoi is out performing for tips or gathering crafting material or whatever, they would naturally see other neighbours doing their stuff on the same public lots and you could naturally meet and get to know them there.
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i actually love the auto-schedule feature so far and how it means your zoi is going out on the town to mingle and such. i was sooo sad when my one zoi says to his wife ālets have dinner together tonightā. it was a scheduled event and eerything, and them bam the time went and came and nothing further popped up. i even had the wife make steak on the grill and had it laid out lol
i think the auto-schedule is a nice feature but if they arenāt careful, its going to quickly overwhelm zois. even the āswim classā takes up the time a job does atm
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Yes, generally I am also fine with it. I just would like to choose the time and place myself. But if you do your own schedule then the neighbours never show up.
To @Samuriko `s point there are days where you rather would stay home and then there are places where it really does not make any sense to go like shopping clothes or to the art museum as there is really nothing to do there.
As for the events which get scheduled through invitation I do not mind at all. First most of them are anyway broken at the moment as you say @svujgeoejoxzgctxkd. The event time comes and the event just disappears. And for those which manage to happen it is your choice to accept them or not, so I think they should rather fix the system for these events and then everybody can choose themselves if they want the relevant event to happen or if not you just donĀ“t accept these.
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