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Opinions on Bowling Night?
That_Fat_Cat
Posts: 85 Member
I want to know what other people think of the upcoming stuff pack. Personally, I think it should have been part of an Expansion, but I want to know other peoples thoughts on the matter.
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I've never been a huge fan of stuff packs but I find this one intriguing,
It's got a lot of firsts.
The thing I find quite interesting is that noone seems to be talking much about it,
This will be the first stuff pack I'm aware of that offers such comprehensive focus on just one subject.
We saw how well that worked for Vampires.
I'm very interested in seeing how this turns out, becuase if it's as good as I suspect it's going to be then I see it as a positive new approach for SP's in general.
They are including gameplay in SP's it's never happened before.
Not only are people not talking about it...it seems people are expecting something more?
Baffling.
I like how families will show up to bowl together, and I love the return of the Disco channel (although all the classic Sims 1 songs are already in my in-game radio). The various aspects of gameplay you see depending on skill or age, the unlockable trophy...
It looks like it'll be a surprising amount of fun.
I mean, am I gonna play it all the time? No. But it'll make a great birthday or date venue.
i guess it does make it easier to pick and chose if you want to get that content or not. while i do not fully agree with that way of thinking if you do not like it do not buy it.(only because i do not think its that simple when it comes to eps like this) a good example is city living. since i have mixed feelings on that ep and the vampire game pack which slighty rubed me the wrong way because yeah i mean it did not interest me much but there were some things that seemed cool in it anyways i bought it anyways but i mean that advice of do not play it if you do not like it or do not buy it if you do not like it or wait for a sale to happen honestly slightly offends me. even though its good advice i just do not think its that simple for a sims game
I don't know if I would call this gameplay. Romantic Garden Stuff is the one that I think wins that title, simply because the Wishing Well is completely unique in function. At the end of the day, skill or no, Bowling is just another way to fill the fun meter. Had the skill done a bit more outside of unlocking new bowling balls, it might've had potential to be gameplay, but I don't think it is. We're just watching our sims roll a ball down a lane as their fun meter fills up.
I'm also not sure I want gameplay in stuff packs. As I said, personally I view stuff packs as "holding items hostage" in the sense I personally don't desire more generic stuff. Let's say a stuff pack had Chinese stuff and included a fleshed out martial arts skill with unique level unlocks that I would describe as gameplay. If it did that, I would not want any of the Chinese stuff, I'd just want the skill, and I'd feel a ripped off if I was "forced" to pay $10 for a skill.
Don't know what to tell ya man.
I think it's a classic case of one person seeing the glass half empty the other seeing it half full.
Regardless of what you want to call it, these are features that were never present in stuff packs before.
I get that you see it is a robbing Peter to pay Paul and maybe you have a point?
I see it as adding value to something that people either loved in the past, rarely used in the past (but might use a lot more now) or hated in the past (they won't miss it anyway and they save $$)
Wins all around.
It would be great if they included mini bowling set for toddlers, but maybe it may be brought in sometime in the future...
Having said that, I will be purchasing the pack simply because I'm someone who likes to own as much as one can. I will be creating bowling clubs using GT. I'll pop in occasionally to watch these clubs bowl.
I bought DO with no intention of running a restaurant. It's a great venue for building relationships and I leave it at that. I guess we're all different.
That could be said about any EP/GP/SP tho. Lets say I just want the singing skill from CL well now I have to pay 40 bucks just to have a singing skill. I could say CL is "holding a skill hostage" to make me pay more for it. At the end of the day its just a matter of your own view point. Some people like how packs are being done this time other do not. I will take Sims 4 of way doing it over Sims 3 item store any day of the week tho.
My thoughts are pretty simple. Like the vampires' pack I am happy, I can choose not to buy it. I don't want another activity for my sims, while they cannot swim properly, and that problem isn't fixed in the very big patch we had Thursday. So no interest for me, sorry!
Done more like what? Do you have any examples? Or is this just another 'vague' meaningless mention of nebulous 'depth' that no one can ever get into any kind of real detail about?
In terms of the skill and activity, this is the most fleshed out yet. When Sims start out fresh, they fail a lot. And in multiple ways. As their skill rises, they visually get better. Not only do they fail less often, but they have varying degress of success. If they have multiple rounds of successful strikes, their ball gets 'on fire' as it rolls down the lane. At the end of each lane is a movie screen that shows a success or failure mini-movie, again of varying degrees. Three strikes and you get a 'cold turkey' screen. Fail and you get the Tragic Clown. Kids can play bowling and the lane automatically gets bumpers so they don't get gutter balls, and yet they can still fail in multiple ways. Unlike virtually every other skill in this game I can think of, this one very much 'shows' the skill being learned, step by step. And that's just for a single Sim playing.
You can have up to four Sims play per lane against each other. The game keeps track of the score and tells you who won and by how much at the end of it. If you have GT, you can make a bowling club, and yes, it's a club activity and even has a club perk to help boost the skilling. And even Sims who are just watching other Sims play can earn club points if they're in the club. Which means that pregnant Sims, who can't bowl for safety reasons, can still earn points for their club by cheering on their families/teams.
If a Sim plays a perfect game, they unlock a trophy and they earn the highest point achievement in the game. If they max the skill, they automatically wear bowling gloves when they bowl as a mark of their success. Children that learn the skill carry it with them through their life. If the bowling lane is in one of the three recommended venues, other families show up wearing matching bowling team outfits and bowl against each other automatically, so even if you play a single Sim, you'll always have potential competition if you want.
So seriously... what is this nebulous extra gameplay you're looking for?
Edit/Addition: I forgot to mention, on home lots if you have a decent handiness skill, you can upgrade the lane for the Moonlight Bowling that you can switch on or off whenever you want. And you get access to it automatically on the venue lots. (And they automatically turn it on around 7 pm on venue lots too.) So there's some more extra gameplay inclusion.
Of course in a EP it would have been cheaper than to buy EP + SP but i don't think people who loves bowling would have liked a half baked bowling because there isn't enough space on a EP to perfectly focus on it.
I think its great they managed to do so many objects to get the atmosphere of a bowling alley even though they didn't introduce a venue.. I really like how they were sensitive to our complaints of running out of room in the hoods or wishing we had an extra lot or two.. I am trying to decide which karaoke can go a lounge and put a bowling alley in there.. The obvious choice is the spice district but I put a waterfront restaurant down in there.
I absolutely love the stuff packs, they are affordable, they don't come too often, yet not often enough.. more stuff than what was sold in the store for Sims 3 for a better price! When stuff packs come out, I don't have to debate if I can afford it or not, I just have to decide when to get it..
I think @SimGuruGraham and the team for stuff packs are doing an awesome job and I hope they keep doing just as well and bring things that make our game lots of fun!! I love the excitement they show for their babies ( the stuff packs) coming to our game!
Watch the Graham walkthrough, you will change your mind. It's a huge move on part of a stuff pack to have that many different and new animations and gameplay for a stuff pack. That should answer all your questions.
ETA: Let me put it this way (after you watch the walk through) who can argue a stuff pack is bringing as much gameplay this time as a GP does? I mean really who can argue with that. I think that is amazingly cheap to get that much gameplay from a stuff pack.
ETA: I stand corrected. It seems LGR can argue it's not worth $10
i also like the new male hair i saw in the trailer
(◡‿◡✿)
I for one really want this retro/atomic era feel and look that's coming with this pack.. I'm buying it as much for the style as the bowling game play (if not more). I like the stuff packs and the GP's for that reason they seem more focused on revolving around a certain style or theme.
This.
loving the details. Such as vampire details and spa details...
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Don't you consider it an advantage that it's not in an EP precisely because you don't want it? This way you aren't stuck having paid for bowling instead of for something you'd rather have that could go in an EP instead. (And maybe I'm not stuck buying tennis, which I've less than no interest in having in my game, because I really like the idea of having bowling.) I'm sure EPs sell well without people who might want only one thing in them that could have fit in an SP anyway... and been done by a different team, thus not making even more that only the EP team can do, which could end up only meaning either that stuff that has to be in an EP because of how much development it takes (Seasons, Pets, maybe something like Farming because it would need a world and animals) gets delayed or that we never get these smaller-development-budget activities because the EP team focuses on those bigger development projects.
Sure, in Sims 3 we had to wait for big packages for most gameplay objects. But now we don't have to wait, or be stuck with a whole EP because we were interested in a corner of it. There really is, I believe, an advantage to Simmers in having three teams working on three different package sizes. And there's no magic to the EP-size package that makes something that could fit in an SP better than it is in an SP.