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Could EA have done something other than coming out with My First Pet?
MLadyAzzera
Posts: 1,174 Member
Since EA's sales team doesn't seem to know what it's doing, I've decided for the sake of my love of marketing to conduct a poll. Early results are in, and the community is not happy with the teaser trailer that dropped today. My First Pet Stuff Pack seems to be a bundle of bad decisions, and is clearly making the consumer feel cheated by having an Expansion Pack have a Stuff Pack. Many Simmers feel that this shouldn't have been a Stuff Pack at all. So I was wondering, could EA have released this content somehow else so that the community wouldn't have felt ripped off? Could they have had more support (and possibly profit) if they had approached it differently?
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Could EA have done something other than coming out with My First Pet? 235 votes
Nothing. I'm excited for My First Pet Stuff Pack the way it is.
4%
This content should have been in the Cats & Dogs expansion pack to begin with for no additional charge. (If so, how/budget/why?)
45%
106 votes
I like the idea of Expansion Pack Stuff Packs
5%
14 votes
They should have hamsters in a separate stuff or game pack, preferably with other caged pets (such as birds, lizards, rabbits, etc.)
29%
70 votes
I would have rather paid $5 more for Cats & Dogs than see an EP Stuff Pack
4%
11 votes
I would have rather paid $10 more for Cats & Dogs than see an EP Stuff Pack
1%
3 votes
They should have two versions of Cats & Dogs, the basic EP, and then the deluxe version for $10 more that includes the My First Pet content.
2%
7 votes
Other (If so, why?)
5%
14 votes
1
Comments
Personally I wouldn’t have mind if they made the Vet career a separate pack. That would have been interesting. Maybe they did some kind of research and felt people wouldn’t buy a pack just to become a Vet and decided it was a better idea to just include that in Cats & Dogs which meant they removed some items from that pack, leading us to this separate wave of cats and dogs stuff.
The decision to chop up the cats and dogs items in between 2 packs instead of putting them all into one put a bad taste in my mouth.
Couldn't they have just raised the price $10 and put everything together(but not make it a habit)? Announce hamster last minute, so people felt like it had more content so it was worth the extra $10.
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Right now it feels like the rodents were just tacked on to make it seem like it's not just an SP for C&D
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Well I bought Cats & Dogs for $20 and that’s what I feel it’s actually worth as is right now. I’ll tell you what I would’ve paid $50 for:
- Playable pets or increasing the household limit to 8 sims + 2 pets
- Items from My First Pet Stuff already included
- More small pets, actual separate animals, not just 1 animal cloned 4 times
- Bonus if they added birds
That would’ve been worth $50 to me.
Which is why pack though..i'm really sad about in general. It's one thing to buy a pack for an item...at the very least you get a bunch of extra items, it's another to buy a pack without the ability of being able to use all of the items and still have to pay for said hidden items (aka full price). So for those who don't own C&D, it's literally half a pack, if not 30% (since the furniture will be there but many of their interactions will be pure decorations). That kinda ikrs me especially if that small pet lover genuinely wanted an only a variety of small pets (unique pets not reskinned and said their different) yet was only giving one in stuff pack...
The explanation from Graham doesn't even make any sense... and it certainly doesn't justify the decision they made. By saying that the items in this stuff pack were removed from Cats & Dogs for the sake of adding the vet career, he's literally admitting that the expansion pack was rushed and unfinished. He's also openly admitting to EA's greediness by basically mentioning that they took unused content from an expansion pack to make extra money on a stuff pack instead.
There's literally no logical reason why the content in this stuff pack couldn't be included in Cats & Dogs... unless, of course, the developers are willing to finally admit that they rush the expansion packs... which is something everyone already knew anyway. They shouldn't have been "forced" to make a decision between a vet career and pet content. Again, it could've all been included... they simply didn't wanna do it.
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Na plum that. If they managed to include cats, dogs, horses, horse stables, competitions, and a whole new world in TS3, they were able to add the vet career AND this one interactive cage to C&D. I have been very understanding about that EP and I like it a lot but I could somewhat comprehend why others were upset, especially those that liked horses. Now I am just angry and I'm done with their excuses. This is a joke.
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I got it for the town and waited for a sale. I needed more room. The little creatures should have been patched in. I am sorry but this is highway robbery. Sims 2 had small critters, Sims 3 as well why do we have to pay extra in Sims 4? Sims 3 even made it worthwhile by something innovative with the horses. We did not have to pay for a stuff pack for that. In my personal opinion, the vet career was not worth the options of having more than cats and dogs.
Same. The cats and dogs themselves are good, but the fact that they're even trying to sell this makes me feel cheated
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Not seeing how that would be better - same content, same price, just not broken up into two packs. If it's the same price overall, then breaking it up actually gives people more options. You can choose the Cats and Dogs only, the hamster only, or both.
If they had included it with the C&D, people would have loudly complained about the $50 price point. Or "how come there was just the hamster, where were the other small pets? You're raising the price on us EA and giving us less, look how much Sims 3 had". Others would have complained that all they really cared about was cats and dogs and didn't want to pay $10 for the hamster.
The main issue I see is that prices have gone up, period. Whether it's inflation (my guess), the way the teams are structured and organized, or something else. I'm not going to automatically jump to the conclusion that it's "greed", although it could be. I honestly don't know. They are trying to break the packs up differently to downplay this fact, and there's a big psychological price barrier -- people are only willing to pay $X amount for an EP or $Y amount for a SP. I'm not sure how they could have done it differently outside of giving some of it away for free.
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That makes a little more sense.
Actually with this information in mind, why doesn't EA just give the sims team more time to work on their content so they can release it in it's entirety rather than having to chop bits off to meet deadlines.
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If anything this proves their sales are doing just fine. They wouldn't have the audacity to release this if they were afraid of losing customers. They do it because they know they can get away with it.
50 votes so far is not "the community".....given the amount of people that play the game, it's a very, very small subset of the community.
And yet I'm sure most people are very unhappy about this. Either because they're asked to pay 10 for stuff they can't use all of or to pay for stuff they should've already had xD
There's all this talk about budget, but what takes so much of their budget that they give us such limited content in EPs (GPs I'm fine with)? Is it because the engine is terrible (didn't think it could get worse than TS3's engine) and it takes them a really long time to just make things work? If so, it makes the claim of TS4 being 'a great foundation for things to come' a giant lie.
I really don't see what reason can it be other than greed... Of course I'm not accusing the SimGurus, but their higher ups at EA are to blame.
If they really wanted to make an additional pack to the cats and dogs EP they should have made a pack with more animals like rabbits, birds, snakes maybe? With good animaties and good interactions with the animals(preferably including taking them out off their cage longer than only a cuddle interaction or cage free rabbits like the cats and dogs) Together with the new furniture from this first pet stuff pack that would make a good game pack i would be willing to pay €20 for. I dont think i will get this stuff pack, i dont really like dressing up my pets and the new furniture looks fun, but i can manage with the furniture that i have. The only thing that got me excited were the little rodents, but to pay €10 for a caged rodent with probably interactions like feed, cuddle and clean?
In my opinion the cats and dogs EP is very minimum compared to the previous pet EP from the Sims. Sure there is the vet part that is pretty big, but besides that I think the actual pet part is very minimum. I think €40 could have given us the little rodents for free.
I rather would have had an more expanded pet ep and a new game pack as an expansion to get to work with the vet and 2 other careers or something.
Yeah exactly. I think it's both of those. I mean EA's engines are notorious for being terrible and developers of other games have struggled with them to no end, and the games end up being pretty bad (eg ME: Andromeda). The problem is they don't have much choice, they are forced to use them. So yeah I'd agree it is totally a lie, but EA lie pretty much constantly about everything (see Star Wars Battlefront 2 fiasco). And budget wise, it's very clear to me they are spending as little as they can get away with on this game for maximum profit, an example being they're focusing so much on SPs that we hardly ever get EPs, because SPs are far cheaper to make. They are running this franchise into the ground, just like they've done with many other well loved franchises (SimCity, Mass Effect, Battlefront, Titanfall, Command and Conquer, Dead Space etc.), only with this one a lot of people are just accepting it and defending it rather than taking a stand.
Yup i couldnt agree more! I belive devs are as passonate about sims as we gamers are, but looking at current EA politics is more then obvious whats going on right now.
This pack focuses on kids and pets. I like and play with both kids and pets, but we have a lot of stuff for kids and pets. I'm not so thrilled with the reskinned stuff for pets and I loathe the pet costumes. The kids stuff is cute, but we do have a lot of it. I would have preferred that they focused instead on small size in both pets and objects. Object size is a frequent complaint from the comunity(myself included). This would have been a good opportunity to center a pack around small things from pets to home furnishing for small spaces. Instead, we get more content for kids, reskins, more costumes and a single pet type. This one is a miss as far as I am concerned. I think I'll wait for a sale.