Paralives - First Impressions
I've got a confession to make. I didn't publish the last 3 or so posts I wrote. Why? Because I was either ranting, or way too much oversharing, or both. I want to keep it balanced and talk about positive and negative things. So if you care to read about my opinion about Paralives, read on (otherwise, feel free to skip this one).
I do not have screenshots to share at this time, because I constantly pressed the wrong keys or something... they did not get saved, neither in steam nor in my windows screenshots folder.
Overall, Paralives is a mixed bag for me.
I was initially super mad about the pattern system (I still don't like it much), it's really a huge step down IMO. It is WAY more inflexible than the Sims 3 system, it' severely more limiting with colors and how they can be mixed even. That is very disappointing, I will NOT be able to make any of my signature patterns. I may be able to pull off some simple textured patterns, but this pattern system for clothes is specifically designed to accommodate flat, graphical textures and not much else. You are limited to 3 colors, and you do not even get the full range for ever color channel since every channel seems to "merge" into the other one halfway, so it's more like you get the span of 50% for a channel, at least that is how it seems.
If you care for technical details:
Black is the first color channel, but there are also shades of the next color, red. So, a 75% red will look like a darker color next to a 100% red, but I have to do more tests to confirm that, and how the colors interact.
You only have black, red and green as color channels, and a mix between those. It's like the devs made it unnecessarily limiting and complicated instead of building on the system that Sims 3 had. It's pretty clear that they did not intend it to be used for structured textures, only flat patterns. But why this limit?! And why limit this feature technically instead of embracing the possibility to do something more with it even if Paralives themselves didn't directly use it in that way? I feel like whoever made this feature did not even look at Sims 3's pattern feature.
It also looks pretty rough most of the time, often it is hard to get clean shapes, edge pixels are bleeding through, there are a lot of dark artifacts around shapes, it's kind of a mess.
It does seem like larger textures are usable, which is a relief. Paralives' native patterns are only 128x128px in size, that is only half the resolution of Sims 3's patterns, sadly. And they really look crunchy/pixelated up close on the para's clothes. So CC may use larger textures in case there are no drawbacks (probably needs more video memory, though there is a setting to create mipmaps for the textures which may come in handy for these), it's the early days and a lot can change.
I find it so weird that Paras generally have good quality clothing textures, but then they just make patterns so small that they look crunchy and ruin the whole look of the para. I think people will mostly ignore the patterns in favor for baked-on patterns on the texture directly because that will look much better! Why bother with a feature if it looks bad... I just do not get it. I really hope this will be improved further.
What that means for my CC journey? Well, I am not sure whether I will be sharing any patterns for Paralives anytime soon (maybe if they actually turn out well).
I am trying out a few things to see what can be done with it, to push the limits, but I will take that slowly.
It has been pretty frustrating so far, a lot of "oh, that does not work, I am more limited than that", also the modding tool has glitched out several times and I had to start the mod over again, it's frustrating if the technical side also causes problems.
I'm also not currently in a creating mood (and I've been this way for several months and my creative battery is pretty depleted since every ounce currently goes into my anxiety therapy โ more about that in my next post).
I do like some aspects of Paralives, and some aspects could use improvement (but that's what Early Access is for). Overall, I think it does have potential, though I feel it's not going to replace Sims 3 (or Sims 4) since the games play very differently so far.
It irked me that I have to initiate almost all interactions and Paras only keep themselves alive on "autonomy on" setting. The conversations were very limited and boring to me (they also take too long).
To me Paras not interacting unless I initiate, that is not really a simulation. Walkbys walked THROUGH my paras on the street without any acknowledgement. There are a lot of glitches/Paras taking the same space when directing two of them to do the same thing. They just occupy the exact same space even if it's already occupied. But I guess those are glitches that will be fixed in time.
I also really hope they will add more voices and voice lines. Paras sound like they are just citing random words rather than having a proper conversation as of now. Also, kids are mute (no voices yet).
The language does sound cute, but I feel it needs more flow, variety and emotional variety it to sound like a proper language.
I'm not sure how much of that the budget allows, but it's so crucial to me, since this is where a lot of immersion is coming from.
You don't even realize how important this is (only when it's missing).
I have only played a few hours so far and of course have not seen everything. Here are some more positive aspects:
I do like the flexibility of the need bars. The changes to it if you get sick, for example, are brilliant: some needs are ignored (you do not get hungry if you have a stomach virus!), but your hygiene and bathroom bar get shorter so you have to fulfill that need more frequently. This feels very natural and really gives the impression that your para is not up to their usual self). The job and school system is pretty interesting and in-depth as well. I like how you can juggle 3 jobs at the same time!
I feel like you can really "level up" / improve your para and give them perks and things, and it's fun and counteracts the monotony of the daily grind pretty well. I would love to have some interactive careers as well (maybe there are some already and I just got a rabbithole one? I have not done much research into Paralives prior to buying it).
I have tried the buy mode briefly and I like it so far, the ability to scale objects easily is absolutely great! I have only placed a few things and look forward to trying the modular furniture and things like that.
The clothing is a bit meh so far, a lot of meshes are NOT optimized for patterns and patterns often look distorted, stretched and vary in sizes a lot. Some pants also have rotated UV map bits by the cuffs, and you cannot apply a pattern differently there so it just looks odd (even on pants without cuffs!). In general, I think they could make more use of the zones so you can apply different patterns to different aspects on the same garment (for example, a pant should have a main color, a cuff color, and a button color like it is done on a lot of Sims 3 clothing). Maybe there could be an option to toggle this, so you can easily have only ONE zone if you do not need the fine tuning, but for those who want to, they should have those options.
(Keep in mind that I have played this game only for a few hours, maybe all this is already possible and I just haven't figured it out, if so, let me know!)
While it is great that Paras can wear anything/all clothes are unisex, I would like the ability to sort for more masculine or more feminine looking clothing just to be able to focus more on the style I want (or have style filters/tags, maybe?)
I find it tedious to select colors and swatches, it's not easy to spot which clothes you can add patterns to and which do not so I always have to click on the swatches to see that. To edit you have to right click and choose edit first, there are a lot of extra clicks involved and it's a bit tedious/doesn't have nice intuitive flow. I really miss how interactive the color/pattern system was with drag and drop in Sims 3.
I guess we will get used to it, and I think they will probably improve a lot of the UI stuff once more feedback comes in.
I was not able to create a Para yet because I got motion sick on the moving train scenes at the beginning, even though I have not ever experienced that before in video games. I hope we will be able to shut that off eventually. Because you are supposed to build your first custom para in front of large windows with a constantly moving landscape, I chose a pre-made household to play (the single father with his son). But from what I have seen in some videos, the Paramaker is amazingly detailed and I look forward to creating some paras.
To end on a high note, I have to say that I have not seen a Para that was looking weird, had mismatched clothes or weird anatomy. Maybe I have not seen any spawned-in paras yet, but all the pre-made Paras look really good and unique and the art style works! I was skeptical at first, but it's really growing on me.
What are your thoughts about Paralives? Have you tried it yet, what are your experiences?
