What is society like in Paralives?

[MaxwellDvine]

Hi there. I have been playing TS and other simulation games since I was old enough to reach the keyboard. And one thing that I feel has been missing in many of these games is a sense of community. I’m not speaking about player to player (although that too). I’m talking about the characters. Openworld is a big factor in this clearly, and TS4 introducing clubs was a great add on for that franchise… but I can’t help but think that Paralives could do this much better. How are parafolk going to interact on the macro level? Government? Policies? Religion? Clubs? What institutions might exist to bring characters together in a meaningful way? How can players actions affect the rest of the world? Giving the characters depth of personality is important but what about depth of community? What makes to neighborhood “living”?

[bailey]

I don’t think any of that has been really spoken on yet, probably because they haven’t started working on any gameplay yet. We do know that here won’t be religions, but nothing has been said about government, policies, or things like that. I do remember reading in a early blurb on the website that there will be gameplay to let us take care of the environment (or something along this lines), so I assume there will be some level of our Parafolk being able to influence the town.

[sweetchilli]

I don’t really know how this can be accomplished but I do have some ideas. There could be community events running on a regular basis that you could explore; festivals, book clubs, competitions, sporting events, then there’s some ideas others have had; game nights and fairs. I think if NPC parafolk gathered together with your active parafolk they could enjoy this stuff together as a community. There could also be various community meetings, e.g. parent and community meetings at schools, groups formed by neighbours, environmental clean up volunteer groups (following on from Bailey’s comment), other volunteer work. I have no idea if any of this world work, I’m just brainstorming.

[cakeefeatured]

I do hope and wish for a community for paralives where each neighborhood feels different, some even not having a sense of community maybe too? It’d be nice to have a better way in getting to know their neighbors and having their actions affect the whole world.

I like the neighborhood clean up day idea! Maybe there could be a donation drive too where they take donations from all paras off to some imaginary orphanage or homeless shelter.
I’d think it’d be nice to have a community block party too maybe in a park or just in the general area of the neighborhood! Each para brings a dish an places it on a table and everyone can eat from it.

Helping the elderly for a week would be cool for kids-teens to do a community service for.

• This reply was modified 1 year, 7 months ago by  cakeefeatured.

[MaxwellDvine]

I think I would really like to see these things being player-created. So we can make whatever activities/groups/clubs/institutions we want. I am a little concerned if it is true that gameplay hasn’t been started yet. Is that true? With TS5 announced I expect these two games to be in competition for players. And I trust that EA has learned from their mistakes. I foresee TS5 nailing gameplay this time around. Paralives will need to put A LOT into gameplay if they want to convert players.

[amandac]

[quote quote=8277]I think I would really like to see these things being player-created. So we can make whatever activities/groups/clubs/institutions we want. I am a little concerned if it is true that gameplay hasn’t been started yet. Is that true? With TS5 announced I expect these two games to be in competition for players. And I trust that EA has learned from their mistakes. I foresee TS5 nailing gameplay this time around. Paralives will need to put A LOT into gameplay if they want to convert players.

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They recently showed us a shadow of a para – the team is working on parafolks right now. I’m not a game developer by any means of the imagination, but I think gameplay would not be far behind once they have para looks down. The game will not be released this year (they announced this) so they still have plenty of time to work on gameplay.

“With TS5 announced” – where did you see that it was announced?