Since I bought the Pack I had to try the vet career. All went well till I employed others. NPC employees are still just as useless.
But other than that, I have to say the actual cats and dogs have been done really well.
It's actually got me back playing the game and enjoying my time doing so. Well, as long as I don't play families. They still drive me crazy with their up and down from the dinner table .. that's if they even sit there at all (among other stuff).
My main Tester Sim needed to get some skills up so I have been playing him with a dog and a cat. I'm not a cat lover but I do love the cats in this game. It's way better than Sims 2 or 3 imo.
My Sim has become companions with both pets and I even caught the dog and cat playing together today. Didn't think that was going to happen as the cat was not happy with the dog to begin with.
I do find the strays a bit disturbing as they are quite often sick and it upsets me watching them throw up and collapsing and there doesn't seem to be anything I can do for them. There should be an option to take them to the vet but I couldn't find it.
If anyone knows something I'm missing, please let me know.
One thing I'm a bit confused about is with the cat .... I managed to lecture about "jumping on counters" and she responded positively and the notification came up to say she learnt NOT to jump on counters and yet she continues to do it. Is it a glitch or just a "cat thing"? The dog I trained not to drink out of the toilet has never drunk from the toilet again. Caught him looking at it "longingly" on a couple of occasions, but no drinking.
Anyway, I'm always grizzling about this game so thought I'd share how much I love this pack.
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When you have control you have to 'control' them which, means you have to constantly be switching over to them and directing them to do something. As they have very little to do other than eat, sleep, poop and dig it can get monotonous real quick.
The other thing is EA has vastly improved some aspects re sleeping and befriending that make Sims 4 far superior.
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In one of my McFluff videos I noticed a cat got off on its own in Hidden Springs. So I followed along to see what happened. It traveled the entire length of the world to go fishing in a fishing hole. Then it caught and ate a fish and started heading back home. I left it to its own devices and returned to play with the human sims. There are 15 cats in that household. They keep themselves entertained.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCuW44b3uCMtCSaq4gwC8EZg
> I shouldn't have to go through all that rigmarole to help a stray cat or dog. You wouldn't go through that in real life.
I agree.
It seems to me that since you cannot directly control them, they really should not take up an entire slot in the household.
It does make sense that you'd have to befriend a stray to catch it, but you should be able to leash it if it likes you enough, and take it to the vet. Or take it home and put it in a fenced area so it won't wander off, and feed it.
I assumed that when you could control them, you don't /have/ to any more than you have to tell sims what to do, they take care of simple stuff on their own, mostly.
In Sims 2 when your Sims went to bed, if the pets weren't asleep as well, time would continue to pass at normal speed. You would have to manually change the speed to get through the night time. So you had to be careful as if things went wrong it didn't automatically switch time back to normal speed. Sims 3 eased that a little as you could "arrange" for your dog to sleep at the same time but it meant having to watch them and arrange their time so they didn't sleep through the day. Sims 4 time passes quickly when your Sim sleeps irrespective of what the pets are doing. I much prefer that.
In Sims 3 making friends with strays was a painful process as it took so long and even friendly dogs would reject a Sims initial interaction. Sims 4 has a more realistic approach. Most dogs love being petted and some need one scratch in the right place and they're your friend for life. Sims 4 is more like that.
Controlling your pets sounds good till you have control and find there's very little to do to warrant having control. Like @Karritz said above, I rarely controlled my pets in Sims 3 as well (except for the sleeping part). I tried playing as the dog once but was soon bored.
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I think the shy strays sounds more realistic, but less fun.
I confess I got the game for the pets. I'm a sap for beasties. Really what I've wished for is a 'Sim Wilderness' game where you have little wolves and such instead of sim people.
Though now that I've actually played The Sims for any length of time I think it should be an expansion where one can have households of wolves and deer and whatnot under the player's direct control if you like and all trying to get enough to eat and to mate and form herds/packs etc. There (human) sims can do nature-related careers and vacations and unlock some way of sneaking past the ranger station to access a certain lot, where they can cut trees and build a cabin and become a disturbed hermit.
There should also be a mechanic where dogs and cats don't automatically follow the sim home from 'wilderness', but only come along if they're next to the sim our you make the sim call them before traveling. A pet left behind overnight would become feral and under the player's direct control like the wild animals. You could then make it trek home to rejoin its original household if you like, or try get by with the 'forage/scavenge/hunt for food' mechanic equivalent to its type.
Or you could have the wild beasts come into towns and tip over trash cans (to forage, hopefully) and break stuff, or even claim a lot, but they'll always be tense and want to go back to the wild until they raise a tameness skill by being around human sims (who also make them tense). Random sims wandering by will try to shoo wild beasts away from residential/business lots, or follow them around trying to take pictures of them with their phones, and if they can't flee it can make untame/low tameness wildlife die of tension or embarrassment.
Hilarity ensues.
I was disappointed EA didn't integrate Cats and Dogs more with Outdoor Retreat. I took my cat and dog camping hoping there might be a few interactions like "explore forest", "go fishing" (for the cat) or "chase bear" (for the dog) but the cat sat on the table all weekend and the dog did nothing except when we went walking.
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Right now my biggest bug bear with S4 is the lack of Story Progression. I'd even prefer the "stasis" of S2 than the randomness of S4. I find it completely breaks story immersion when things like the Hermit of Outdoor Retreat rings you up to go nightclubbing.
Ah well, I'm only playing to get my tester's skills up a bit on some of the newer skill lines but I do like these cats and dogs.
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~ A lot,well to be honest most of the wandering is to procreate, & a little to do with traits or if your animal is a hunter!
~ The sick strays I give them Wellness treats after befriending them, & it upsets me very much with the amount of sick strays (the treats are exy at $50 Simollians a pop, but most of the Sims in my Brindleton bays (I have 6 saves, 7 if you count Murkland which I have not played yet, so that is 6/7 Brindleton Bays, & so far I have populated three of them,MCCC, which I installed for Story progression,populated two of them before I found out how to turn that off, I install new worlds as I run out of build sites or have nowhere for my Sims I create to live, I am managing close to 200 families at the moment, I rotate often as I play every single day,it helps to stave off the boredom,keeps things interesting)they are kept poor because of the strays, but as there are no pets or strays outside of BB it is OK to monitor(not happy that the only other pets outside of BB is what I put with my Sims families & households,you do not see them out & about,only in Brindleton Bay, & no were else,at first the pets travelled with their owners to other worlds/hoods but a few patches later & it is a thing of the past, I like the realism in the pets travelling with their owners,or them walking their dogs in other Neighbourhoods, but in a blink it was gone, I felt it more like RL that way,but I guess it is like Kissing,my Sims kissed perfectly,& I marvelled at how well EA had done with the realism, but that is all in the past now they do a jittery thing with their ducks beak pucker of a kiss,just so un-natural, & very weird looking, it went from amazing to, I do not want to see them do that with their mouths, I can not describe it,but maybe a lip jitterbug,just wrong,like pets should be everywhere (the amount of pets"not of this world" in the NPC bin,is three times more than Sims NPC, but the other worlds have no pets/strays so why that amount!)
~ Sorry about the ramble! I do love this game!♥ ♥ never forget that, it is just somethings we had,that are now broken & I know they try but they never get fixed to how they originally were! (or were intended!)
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~ I noticed with the steel bladder that it will not glitch if you get your sim to use the loo first then give them the trait it works every time,if there green bar is full! I can not say for the Hardly hungry,as I have only used it on one Sim,my Vampire Sim ( that I could not for fill his thirst,was costing a fortune,& he did not have enough hours in the day to fish or find frogs,which BTW took all his waking hours to do!Just to fill his thirst, it did not work as I did not start with a full purple bar, I am assuming,I have since turned him human,& hope they fix it as he is a favourite Sim & I use him for modelling,Ashaya, I only use CC hair & eyelashes on him, & some cloths,when modelling,he needs nothing else to look the way he does, but he was originally created as a Vamp!!) But I am guessing the same would applie here, make shore their hunger bar is full then give them the trait!
ps. I understand fear of radio and TV as they can be noisy ... oh wait ... I just realised, I tend to have sound on my pc turned well down so maybe that's why I didn't think a pc should fear them but if you turn the sound up and play games ... it could freak me out let alone the pets.
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I can't remember if there is a cheat for removing traits. I will have to look it up and then try removing and adding back on but the fact that it glitches at all suggests I'm wasting my time. EA need to get their programming right.
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I couldn't watch it either.
I like your Sim avatar by the way. Is she on the Gallery?
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