A new Sims 4 mod will bring burglars to the game and allow players to fight back during a robbery in a myriad of different ways. The Sims series has an active modding community where players create content that others can download, making mods that add new gameplay mechanics and custom content items like furniture and clothing. The game's creative community is one of the most active in gaming, with over 36 million players worldwide.
Until The Sims 4, every installment in The Sims series contained burglars. They would sneak onto a Sim family's lot late into the night, with their presence announced with a startling music sting, and attempt to steal valuable items from the player's home. They could be thwarted with burglar alarms, and in some iterations of the game could be fought by Sims with certain traits or supernatural identities - for example, those with the brave trait or Sim werewolves could fight the robber, potentially scaring them off the lot and forcing them to return the stolen possessions. Despite many players being scared of them, burglars have been a fan favorite for many, both as a gameplay mechanic and a target of revenge in The Sims series.
The release of a new burglar-centric mod was announced on Twitter this week by CarlsSimGuides, a long-time modder and guide writer for The Sims series. Sims will be able to fight the burglar off in approximately 25 ways, including "supernatural powers, and even the Simray from Scientist [career]." The mod will continue to receive updates that add more features, including a burglar alarm, more combat options, and lot traits for homes that either reduce or increase burglar frequency. Currently, the mod is only available to Patreon subscribers, but will eventually become free for all players.
The mod is a perfect example of The Sims 4 creative community filling in the gaps left by EA in the game's features. When the game was released in 2014, The Sims 4 was missing several features that were present in other installments in the series, leading many players to feel the game was incomplete at launch. Hot tubs - a fan-favorite item - were nowhere to be found, the color wheel used for design in The Sims 3 was absent, and the life stage of toddler did not exist - babies aged directly into being full-grown children. Since release, players have frequently expressed their desire for features like burglars to be added into the game to no avail, leaving community modders to pick up the slack.
The Sims 4 has been out for 7 years, and in that time more DLC content has been released for the game than for any other in the series. However, many DLC releases from EA have felt buggy and incomplete to fans and forced players to spend large amounts of money for Sims content that in past generations would have been included in the base game. Conversely, modders and custom content creators have continued to keep the series interesting, listening to the community and implementing what fans want to see in the game, usually at no cost to the player. This detailed burglar mod is a testament to the work being done in The Sims 4 creative community, and their continued dedication to keeping the game exciting even several years after its release.
Source: CarlsSimGuide/Twitter