Not every body feels this pack is a bad pack - keep that in mind.
But you have to admit this pack has angered a lot more people than any pack has previously, and I'm sure Maxis has never felt a push back from the fans on this scale before. They've been underestimating and exploiting fans of the Sims all throughout 4 and now they probably have wished they hadn't. Sims 1,2 and even 3 were a phenomenon,now its merely a game (and a bad one at that)
Not every body feels this pack is a bad pack - keep that in mind.
But you have to admit this pack has angered a lot more people than any pack has previously, and I'm sure Maxis has never felt a push back from the fans on this scale before. They've been underestimating and exploiting fans of the Sims all throughout 4 and now they probably have wished they hadn't. Sims 1,2 and even 3 were a phenomenon,now its merely a game (and a bad one at that)
Considering I go to a lot of gaming sites, plus twitter, and facebook - I'd say by and large the ones carrying on about it are mostly here. I talk with a large number of simmers on facebook and none of them are talking about the pack one way or the other - granted we are almost all older Simmers. Just about like they do all sps - no one really talks and fusses over sps. The only time you see much discussion on packs is about eps and sometimes gps. To most simmers sps are not game changing events and just cute or what ever additions.
And believe me this anger was tiny compared to the base game coming as it did - never mind all that time with out toddlers and such. To simmers those issues were game breaking - but an sp will never be gaming breaking situation. Most simmers know this and are not as bothered by it at all.
I honestly have talked to so many people that sim - and I honestly don't find very many not buying that pack outside of this forum. A few that isn't buying, never has ever bought any stuff packs for any sims game - so it is no different on this one either. All I know is if EA is seeing the same thing I am seeing - it won't be an issue at all. I mean when it was toddlers still missing after 2 and a half years - every post every where sims games were mentioned - never mind professional game mags were writing articles about it constantly. But there nothing at all like that out there and people are buying the pack on top of it.
Post edited by Writin_Reg on
"Games Are Not The Place To Tell Stories, Games Are Meant To Let People Tell Their Own Stories"...Will Wright.
In dreams - I LIVE!
In REALITY, I simply exist.....
Not every body feels this pack is a bad pack - keep that in mind.
But you have to admit this pack has angered a lot more people than any pack has previously, and I'm sure Maxis has never felt a push back from the fans on this scale before. They've been underestimating and exploiting fans of the Sims all throughout 4 and now they probably have wished they hadn't. Sims 1,2 and even 3 were a phenomenon,now its merely a game (and a bad one at that)
Considering I go to a lot of gaming sites, plus twitter, and facebook - I'd say by and large the ones carrying on about it are mostly here. I talk with a large number of simmers on facebook and none of them are talking about the pack one way or the other - granted we are almost all older Simmers. Just about like they do all sps - no one really talks and fusses over sps. The only time you see much discussion on packs is about eps and sometimes gps. To most simmers sps are not game changing events and just cute or what ever editions.
And believe me this anger was tiny compared to the base game coming as it did - never mind all that time with out toddlers and such. To simmers those issues were game breaking - but an sp will never be gaming breaking situation. Most simmers know this and are not as bothered by it at all.
I honestly have talked to so many people that sim - and I honestly don't find very many not buying that pack outside of this forum. A few that isn't buying never has ever bought any stuff packs for any sims game - so it is no different on this one either. All I know is if EA is seeing the same thing I am seeing - it won't be an issue at all. I mean when it was toddlers still missing after 2 and a half years - every post every where sims games werte mention - never mind professional game mags were writing articles about it constantly. But there nothing at all like that out there ad people are buying the pack on top of it.
This is the point the tricks they've employed like recycling and dividing EP's to sell as Sp's only compounds the seriousness of how, well I'll say it, pathetic this whole Sims 4 has been since it rolled out on it's release day. Oh they noticed about this SP, its all over and in their faces on their very own Twitter and Facebook pages...
To me Cats&Dogs looked like a pack that should have been sold as a GP because it seemed too small as an EP. But EA had decided to still release one EP each year and therefore chose to sell it as a GP even though it had less animals and stuff compared to the earlier Pets EPs.
We can’t force EA to make more EPs again instead of all the SPs and GPs when the smaller and cheaper packs sell better. So we need to accept that traditional EPs will be split up in GPs plus SPs in the future. The problem for me is that EA has hesitated to make this change total and therefore has released EPs that are so small that they should have been made as GPs instead. Maybe this will be corrected when TS5 is released?
To me Cats&Dogs looked like a pack that should have been sold as a GP because it seemed too small as an EP. But EA had decided to still release one EP each year and therefore chose to sell it as a GP even though it had less animals and stuff compared to the earlier Pets EPs.
We can’t force EA to make more EPs again instead of all the SPs and GPs when the smaller and cheaper packs sell better. So we need to accept that traditional EPs will be split up in GPs plus SPs in the future. The problem for me is that EA has hesitated to make this change total and therefore has released EPs that are so small that they should have been made as GPs instead. Maybe this will be corrected when TS5 is released?
I doubt it, from some articles I have been reading about all companies doing this and going with live service like this - even steam is doing - Paradox is even doing it, - you name the big games and this is the trend. EA actually sounds new to the game for at least The Sims games in these reflections and articles I have been reading - and there has been some furor here and there - but it sounds like especially for even online games that offer single player campaignes this is the way they deliver content is have smaller expansions - some even taking 2 years to come out to refresh the game - then selling addition small packs (one called it flavour packs to add more flavor and choice to an expansion) that expanded the expansions at 5 -25 dollar a small pack - some added more maps, others just stuff. I knew Fall Out 4 has been doing it - but was surprised to hear some of the others like the Witcher etc doing it too - it says several of EA games are finally doing this - Dragon Age - Mass Effects - Battlefield, Anthem-.
But it also works well with Seasons passes where players can pay in advance for all the content coming for the year (sight unseen no less) or they can buy the ep and each flavour pack for it separately. I guess the live service on all will also include regular patches, some free content, and monthly fixes. EA is just new to the game apparently.
The worst case I saw was an article on Gamespot from 4 years ago of games on a disc that included dlc on the disc but on top of the 60 bucks you paid for the game if you wanted to use the dlc you had to pay addition money to get it unlocked and activated. I believe those were on some console versions though.
Post edited by Writin_Reg on
"Games Are Not The Place To Tell Stories, Games Are Meant To Let People Tell Their Own Stories"...Will Wright.
In dreams - I LIVE!
In REALITY, I simply exist.....
To me Cats&Dogs looked like a pack that should have been sold as a GP because it seemed too small as an EP. But EA had decided to still release one EP each year and therefore chose to sell it as a GP even though it had less animals and stuff compared to the earlier Pets EPs.
We can’t force EA to make more EPs again instead of all the SPs and GPs when the smaller and cheaper packs sell better. So we need to accept that traditional EPs will be split up in GPs plus SPs in the future. The problem for me is that EA has hesitated to make this change total and therefore has released EPs that are so small that they should have been made as GPs instead. Maybe this will be corrected when TS5 is released?
I doubt it, from some articles I have been reading about all companies doing this and going with live service like this - even steam is doing - Paradox is even doing it, - you name the big games and this is the trend. EA actually sounds new to the game in these reflection and articles I have been reading - and there has been some furor here and there - but it sounds like especially for even online games that offer single player campaignes this is the way they deliver content is have smaller expansions - some even taking 2 years to come out to refresh the game - then selling addition small packs (one called it flavour packs to add more flavor and choice to an expansion) that expanded the expansions at 5 -25 dollar a small pack - some added more maps, others just stuff. I knew Fall Out 4 has been doing it - but was surprised to hear some of the others like the Witcher etc doing it too - it says several of EA games are finally doing this - Dragon Age - Mass Effects - Battlefield, Anthem-.
But it also works well with Seasons passes where players can pay in advance for all the content coming for the year (sight unseen no less) or they can buy the ep and each flavour pack for it separately. I guess the live service on all will also include regular patches, some free content, and monthly fixes. EA is just new to the game apparently.
EA has talked a lot about live services too. But mainly for its action games and sports games where EA has said that they don’t want to release a new version each year anymore but instead will turn them into live services.
Ubisoft is doing the same and describes live service as something that turns console focus into multi-platform focus.
EA never mentions the Sims games when they talk about live services. But the Sims Freeplay and the Sims Mobile are already live services anyway.
The problem for TS4 just is that it isn’t an online game where you have a lot of ingame friends which you can play with inside the game. Beside that the game companies omit to tell people that their are two other things that motivate them to create live services instead of traditional games:
1. Online games require a game server and can’t be played anymore if they close it down because they are switching to a new version of the game. So doing this could make many gamers very angry and provoke some of them into refusing to buy the new games.
2. The game companies want to make online games instead of offline games because they then also can earn a huge amount of money from ingame advertising - just like many TV channels do.
But TS4 will never become an online game and therefore can’t work as a real live service anyway. Also the big Sims games earn a lot of money to EA because they have this huge number of packs (SPs, GPs and EPs) which no other games have. Yes other games have had one or two packs too. But no other games have had 15-30 packs like the Sims games have. Therefore the Sims games for PCs are very special and EA could lose a lot of money from turning them into live services too.
The problem is that a game like TS2, TS3 or TS4 can’t have new packs forever if the packs still must have the same huge sales numbers. It isn’t a problem if most of the new content is free content in updates. But new simmers won’t just buy 10 years of old packs when they start playing the game. Therefore old packs give EA more and more problems the older the game becomes because what should EA then do? Options are:
1. Do nothing. But then more and more new simmers will just give up on the game or decide not to buy packs or only very few packs.
2. Let packs become free if they are more than 5 years old? But then a huge number of simmers will just wait for the packs to become free instead of buying them.
3. Discount old packs? But then new simmers will just buy old packs instead of the new ones.
None of those things are solutions for EA. Therefore EA has always instead solved the problem with too many old packs just by releasing a new basegame after 5 years and I don’t think that EA will stop doing this before the PC versions of Sims games become online multiplayer games too where we are playing with our ingame friends. But is EA ready to make that change even for TS5? Won’t it be better for EA just to let the Sims games for mobile devices be live services and keep selling packs for only 5 years for the PC versions of Sims games even if EA change all its action games and sports games into live services too?
But MFP and it's backlash has been in media and you honestly cant tell me they haven't a clue of the hornets nest they poked when they released MFP
I think that they badly needed an idea for the next SP and then read threads like https://forums.thesims.com/en_US/discussion/925515/small-pets/p1 Then they likely realized that small pets would be ideal for the new gameplay in a SP and Pets has always been very popular in Sims games. Also simmers who didn’t care about cats and dogs wouldn’t likely buy such a SP anyway. So they likely just decided to make MFP as an exception even though they usually won’t make SPs that depend on earlier packs.
I expect most simmers to buy MFP anyway because I don’t think that simmers are unhappy because they got more pets and more pets stuff but just a little angry because they were disappointed that this SP wasn’t just included as a part of Cats&Dogs. But simmers likely need to adjust to the fact that EA won’t make huge EPs anymore but likely soon won’t make any packs that are bigger than a GP. So it is IMO just a lot of fuss about nothing.
Because they weren’t familiar yet with the concept small animal for the game, sure Sorry but I don’t believe it for a split second. “Oh, that’s right, we could also add other animals to this game than cats and dogs alone, why didn’t we think of that!? Good thing we have a community to point that out to us.”
No they would plan SP's many many months ahead with concept, design, legals, testing, promotion, press releases etc. They had this as part of C&D and decided to release it separately. Even if I were to entertain the dubious possibility that it wasn't planned then its too late to sway the bad press they generated
Remember the votings about the next SP? Those votings didn’t happen very long before the SPs that won most votes were released. EA changes plans much more often than simmers usually think and also many times while a new game is under development. This has been the case both for the basegames, the packs and also for the Sims Mobile while it was soft launched and we therefore could observe all the many changes. So EA just experiments a lot instead of following some long time plans.
Voting for Laundry day (initially Recycling) started about 9 months before that pack was released.
Not every body feels this pack is a bad pack - keep that in mind.
Which is part of the problem for those who do. Because it’s more than just a matter of different taste in this case. Discussing that doesn’t mean we don’t allow you that other opinion. It just means we want to talk about it. “But I love the pack and so do other anonymous loads of simmers that don’t come here.” That’s nice but off topic in this case.
But MFP and it's backlash has been in media and you honestly cant tell me they haven't a clue of the hornets nest they poked when they released MFP
I think that they badly needed an idea for the next SP and then read threads like https://forums.thesims.com/en_US/discussion/925515/small-pets/p1 Then they likely realized that small pets would be ideal for the new gameplay in a SP and Pets has always been very popular in Sims games. Also simmers who didn’t care about cats and dogs wouldn’t likely buy such a SP anyway. So they likely just decided to make MFP as an exception even though they usually won’t make SPs that depend on earlier packs.
I expect most simmers to buy MFP anyway because I don’t think that simmers are unhappy because they got more pets and more pets stuff but just a little angry because they were disappointed that this SP wasn’t just included as a part of Cats&Dogs. But simmers likely need to adjust to the fact that EA won’t make huge EPs anymore but likely soon won’t make any packs that are bigger than a GP. So it is IMO just a lot of fuss about nothing.
Because they weren’t familiar yet with the concept small animal for the game, sure Sorry but I don’t believe it for a split second. “Oh, that’s right, we could also add other animals to this game than cats and dogs alone, why didn’t we think of that!? Good thing we have a community to point that out to us.”
No. But as usual they wanted packs for TS4 to be different from packs for the earlier games. They also wanted the packs to be smaller and cheaper to make and with a different focus. Therefore they changed Pets into Cats&Dogs with very few pets and reduced content but attempted to compensate by making the cats and dogs more clever and more autonomous.
Then they saw threads about simmers missing small pets in the pack. But small rodents in cages are very cheap to make and therefore suitable for SPs which EA now wants to have just a little gameplay too to become more attractive for many simmers such that they can get better sales numbers. So my guess is that this gave them the idea to make MFS too.
What I don’t believe at all is the conspiracy theories that they reduced the size of Cats&Dogs with the intention to have some things to put into an SP too because that isn’t something EA would do. EA thinks differently and just focus on each pack to make it for as less money as reasonably and to give it a new and interesting focus to compensate. But EA mainly just makes one pack at the time. They have decided to release 4-5 SP, 2 GPs and 1 EP each year (until sales numbers become too low or TS5 is ready to be released). But they haven’t decided the content of all those packs until about the time when they start making them. In that sense TS4 can be seen as a live service too even though it isn’t an online game you play with friends.
No they would plan SP's many many months ahead with concept, design, legals, testing, promotion, press releases etc. They had this as part of C&D and decided to release it separately. Even if I were to entertain the dubious possibility that it wasn't planned then its too late to sway the bad press they generated
Remember the votings about the next SP? Those votings didn’t happen very long before the SPs that won most votes were released. EA changes plans much more often than simmers usually think and also many times while a new game is under development. This has been the case both for the basegames, the packs and also for the Sims Mobile while it was soft launched and we therefore could observe all the many changes. So EA just experiments a lot instead of following some long time plans.
Voting for Laundry day (initially Recycling) started about 9 months before that pack was released.
It is the time where the voting ended that is interesting because they couldn’t start making the pack before that and likely also had to wait for another pack to be finished before they really started.
But MFP and it's backlash has been in media and you honestly cant tell me they haven't a clue of the hornets nest they poked when they released MFP
I think that they badly needed an idea for the next SP and then read threads like https://forums.thesims.com/en_US/discussion/925515/small-pets/p1 Then they likely realized that small pets would be ideal for the new gameplay in a SP and Pets has always been very popular in Sims games. Also simmers who didn’t care about cats and dogs wouldn’t likely buy such a SP anyway. So they likely just decided to make MFP as an exception even though they usually won’t make SPs that depend on earlier packs.
I expect most simmers to buy MFP anyway because I don’t think that simmers are unhappy because they got more pets and more pets stuff but just a little angry because they were disappointed that this SP wasn’t just included as a part of Cats&Dogs. But simmers likely need to adjust to the fact that EA won’t make huge EPs anymore but likely soon won’t make any packs that are bigger than a GP. So it is IMO just a lot of fuss about nothing.
Because they weren’t familiar yet with the concept small animal for the game, sure Sorry but I don’t believe it for a split second. “Oh, that’s right, we could also add other animals to this game than cats and dogs alone, why didn’t we think of that!? Good thing we have a community to point that out to us.”
No. But as usual they wanted packs for TS4 to be different from packs for the earlier games. They also wanted the packs to be smaller and cheaper to make and with a different focus. Therefore they changed Pets into Cats&Dogs with very few pets and reduced content but attempted to compensate by making the cats and dogs more clever and more autonomous.
Then they saw threads about simmers missing small pets in the pack. But small rodents in cages are very cheap to make and therefore suitable for SPs which EA now wants to have just a little gameplay too to become more attractive for many simmers such that they can get better sales numbers. So my guess is that this gave them the idea to make MFS too.
What I don’t believe at all is the conspiracy theories that they reduced the size of Cats&Dogs with the intention to have some things to put into an SP too because that isn’t something EA would do. EA thinks differently and just focus on each pack to make it for as less money as reasonably and to give it a new and interesting focus to compensate. But EA mainly just makes one pack at the time. They have decided to release 4-5 SP, 2 GPs and 1 EP each year (until sales numbers become too low or TS5 is ready to be released). But they haven’t decided the content of all those packs until about the time when they start making them. In that sense TS4 can be seen as a live service too even though it isn’t an online game you play with friends.
No they would plan SP's many many months ahead with concept, design, legals, testing, promotion, press releases etc. They had this as part of C&D and decided to release it separately. Even if I were to entertain the dubious possibility that it wasn't planned then its too late to sway the bad press they generated
Remember the votings about the next SP? Those votings didn’t happen very long before the SPs that won most votes were released. EA changes plans much more often than simmers usually think and also many times while a new game is under development. This has been the case both for the basegames, the packs and also for the Sims Mobile while it was soft launched and we therefore could observe all the many changes. So EA just experiments a lot instead of following some long time plans.
Voting for Laundry day (initially Recycling) started about 9 months before that pack was released.
It is the time where the voting ended that is interesting because they couldn’t start making the pack before that and likely also had to wait for another pack to be finished before they really started.
There's no conspiracy theory people are saying it precisely because they, as you yourself say, think EA is trying to fleece as much money by milking us as much as they can, and what better way to do that than break up a pack and sell each part separately
But MFP and it's backlash has been in media and you honestly cant tell me they haven't a clue of the hornets nest they poked when they released MFP
I think that they badly needed an idea for the next SP and then read threads like https://forums.thesims.com/en_US/discussion/925515/small-pets/p1 Then they likely realized that small pets would be ideal for the new gameplay in a SP and Pets has always been very popular in Sims games. Also simmers who didn’t care about cats and dogs wouldn’t likely buy such a SP anyway. So they likely just decided to make MFP as an exception even though they usually won’t make SPs that depend on earlier packs.
I expect most simmers to buy MFP anyway because I don’t think that simmers are unhappy because they got more pets and more pets stuff but just a little angry because they were disappointed that this SP wasn’t just included as a part of Cats&Dogs. But simmers likely need to adjust to the fact that EA won’t make huge EPs anymore but likely soon won’t make any packs that are bigger than a GP. So it is IMO just a lot of fuss about nothing.
Because they weren’t familiar yet with the concept small animal for the game, sure Sorry but I don’t believe it for a split second. “Oh, that’s right, we could also add other animals to this game than cats and dogs alone, why didn’t we think of that!? Good thing we have a community to point that out to us.”
No. But as usual they wanted packs for TS4 to be different from packs for the earlier games. They also wanted the packs to be smaller and cheaper to make and with a different focus. Therefore they changed Pets into Cats&Dogs with very few pets and reduced content but attempted to compensate by making the cats and dogs more clever and more autonomous.
Then they saw threads about simmers missing small pets in the pack. But small rodents in cages are very cheap to make and therefore suitable for SPs which EA now wants to have just a little gameplay too to become more attractive for many simmers such that they can get better sales numbers. So my guess is that this gave them the idea to make MFS too.
What I don’t believe at all is the conspiracy theories that they reduced the size of Cats&Dogs with the intention to have some things to put into an SP too because that isn’t something EA would do. EA thinks differently and just focus on each pack to make it for as less money as reasonably and to give it a new and interesting focus to compensate. But EA mainly just makes one pack at the time. They have decided to release 4-5 SP, 2 GPs and 1 EP each year (until sales numbers become too low or TS5 is ready to be released). But they haven’t decided the content of all those packs until about the time when they start making them. In that sense TS4 can be seen as a live service too even though it isn’t an online game you play with friends.
No they would plan SP's many many months ahead with concept, design, legals, testing, promotion, press releases etc. They had this as part of C&D and decided to release it separately. Even if I were to entertain the dubious possibility that it wasn't planned then its too late to sway the bad press they generated
Remember the votings about the next SP? Those votings didn’t happen very long before the SPs that won most votes were released. EA changes plans much more often than simmers usually think and also many times while a new game is under development. This has been the case both for the basegames, the packs and also for the Sims Mobile while it was soft launched and we therefore could observe all the many changes. So EA just experiments a lot instead of following some long time plans.
Voting for Laundry day (initially Recycling) started about 9 months before that pack was released.
It is the time where the voting ended that is interesting because they couldn’t start making the pack before that and likely also had to wait for another pack to be finished before they really started.
There's no conspiracy theory people are saying it precisely because they, as you yourself say, think EA is trying to fleece as much money by milking us as much as they can, and what better way to do that than break up a pack and sell each part separately
Yes. But EA just isn’t thinking this way.
What simmers rarely realize is that EA has no intention about letting each new Sims game be just a new and improved version of the previous one and with just the same EPs made in a little improved way. Instead EA wants each new Sims game being a completely new and different game such that it becomes more interesting for customers who already own the old game and such that new simmers have more and very different games to choose between.
So EA’s idea isn’t to just release the same EPs again even though some of the EPs (Pets, Seasons and University) were released both for TS2 and TS3. This likely just happened anyway for TS3 because EA had decided to release even more EPs for TS3 than for TS2 and it was difficult to find enough new ideas for this.
But EA only released all those EPs for TS3 because EPs still were mainly sold in physical stores where SPs just looked very small among all those other much more expensive games. EA knew that as digital downloads cheaper packs would likely sell better. So EA decided to replace at least half of the EPs with smaller half priced GPs to see if such GPs wouldn’t sell better than traditional EPs (and also to compensate a little by now adding gameplay to the SPs hoping that this would make the SPs sell better too). This experiment seemed to have been very successful because EA then decided to double the number of GPs from one to two GPs each year.
Still EA wanted TS4 to be as different from TS3 as possible. So EA avoided repetions of the traditional EPs Seasons, University and Pets as long as possible and most likely because EA hoped that this would make new simmers more interested in buying TS3 too.
So EA didn’t want just a repetions of Pets when EA finally decided to make such a pack anyway because pets always have been very popular in Sims games. Instead EA decided to concentrate on only cats and dogs and omit less interesting pets. But attempt to compensate by making the cats and dogs in a new and hopefully more interesting way. That this so opened up for adding small pets to an SP was new too. But EA still avoided foxes, hedgehogs and similar small animals and concentrated on rodents instead to make things new. So no: The idea wasn’t to split an EP up in an EP plus an SP. It instead was to make a new and different Sims game.
Ok are they doing it to be different from the other series or doing it cheaply to make money - you seem to bounce your arguments back and forth between these two reasons
Ok are they doing it to be different from the other series or doing it cheaply to make money - you seem to bounce your arguments back and forth between these two reasons
Mainly to be different from the other series because EA doesn’t believe in high sales numbers just for repetitions and almost surely also because EA still wants TS3 to sell as well as possible too (mainly to new simmers who don’t already have TS3).
But like all game companies EA of course just want to make money. This means that EA wants to avoid unneccesary expenses by adding things to the packs which wouldn’t really have any effect on the sales numbers anyway. Adding small pets to a pack called Cats&Dogs was just an example of such unneccesary expenses because simmers don’t buy an EP with that name to get small pets too. In the same way you can find hundreds of examples of omitted things from the packs which EA omitted for the same reason. Even the simplified babies, the omitted toddlers and the tall simplified teens are examples because they didn’t seem very important to EA in a Sims game which mainly was about happy partying and autonomous multitasking for adult sims.
They called it Cats and Dogs because that's all they were willing to put into it, unlike S3's all inclusive Pets which didn't break itself up into "each pet sold individually" packs
They called it Cats and Dogs because thats all they were willing to put into it, unlike S3's all inclusive Pets which didn't break itself up into "each pet sold individual" packs
If we only look at Cats&Dogs then this could be the reason. But there isn’t anything new in their attempts to avoid releasing packs with the same names as some of their packs for Sims 2 and Sims 3. Where is University, Seasons, World Adventures, Nightlife etc? The answer is nowhere because EA always has wanted Sims 4 to be a new game with as different packs as possible. It even took EA more than 3 years after the release of the basegame to release Cats&Dogs just because EA wanted to avoid a Pets pack for as long time as possible - and even then EA avoided to reuse the “Pets” name for the pack.
They just released a world adventures inspired pack, they released an Open For Business inspired pack etc there is retreading going on.As for seasons they probably can't make it feasible on the engine they built. And avoiding a Pets pack just to sell us individual packs that will eventually turn into a Pets pack seems money hungry. Cant wait till Sims 5 when they release the "Dogs" EP and sell us the "Cats" add on SP later...
I don’t believe that EA will release more pets packs. I am curious to see what EA will do with Seasons. But apart from that I don’t really believe that EA will release more important packs for TS4. More likely EA will just announce TS5 in very few months and then I will be very curious to find out how EA will make that game new and very different from TS2, TS3 and TS4?
They just released a world adventures inspired pack, they released an Open For Business inspired pack etc there is retreading going on.As for seasons they probably can't make it feasible on the engine they built. And avoiding a Pets pack just to sell us individual packs that will eventually turn into a Pets pack seems money hungry. Cant wait till Sims 5 when they release the "Dogs" EP and sell us the "Cats" add on SP later...
I'm with you on the seasons thing. Since they can't seem to accomplish doing something like making a Lounge chair for the pool because, as it was said by one of the gurus years ago "it's just too hard to make the animations"....then how are they going to make weather work?
Honestly, I don't know how they are spending the money they are cash grabbing from doing things like breaking up content to sell as a separate stuff packs. But they certainly are not putting the money back into the game itself. The backlash that arrived on EA's doorstep immediately following the release of MFPS was large and loud. I mean, I don't even have the game installed anymore and I heard the roar of disappointment.
These threads that keep appearing over and over and over again in the feedback section, of the disappointment, and the need to save this franchise and not throw it away by turning it into nothing more than a cheap ATM for EA, is astounding. This recent stunt with purposely holding back content that was obviously made to go with the C&D EP...just to be sold separately to make more money....to me is a sign that EA does't really care about the future of this game. And they will probably do it again before TS4 is finally done and put on a shelf. I won't be contributing to their obvious thievery. I won't ever support them breaking up content to make extra money on something that should have been already included in the base game, or in an expansion pack. If EA wont invest in this game...then either will I.
Every 5 or 6 years, they should just remaster all four games. That's what everyone seems to want at this point anyway. Seasons, again. Pets, again. University, again. Etc, etc. Save both time and money just updating graphics/bugs of the series instead. Anything new or different is always the worst thing ever, apparently.
Every 5 or 6 years, they should just remaster all four games. That's what everyone seems to want at this point anyway. Seasons, again. Pets, again. University, again. Etc, etc. Save both time and money just updating graphics/bugs of the series instead. Anything new or different is always the worst thing ever, apparently.
Yes we want them to expand, not reduce previous concepts, not separate them into smaller packs. To throw in something original would be great - if it actually works and actually elevates the game
Every 5 or 6 years, they should just remaster all four games. That's what everyone seems to want at this point anyway. Seasons, again. Pets, again. University, again. Etc, etc. Save both time and money just updating graphics/bugs of the series instead. Anything new or different is always the worst thing ever, apparently.
I mean can you imagine a life simulator without domesticated stray creatures running around during rainfall in a big campus? I personally cannot. Club system is something new, but I have yet to see someone despising it. Everyone pretty much adores it. Lot traits? People adore that as well. Talking toilet.... well it was a bit insult that they spent all their resource into that thing oppose creating actual realistic elevators (or could have simply you know... omit it and replace them in apartments with simple stairs so people wouldn't have to stare at the lazily animation-cut that they done). As @cactusjuice, we want things to return that existed in the past games, but done better or at least with quality than making it look like that doesn't make it look like they came to work with their children from home to the studio to play around in their development workplace equipment. Players didn't like the toddler soupball pit thing, not because the object was new, but oh my lord somebody didn't even bother adding simple polygon or 3D mesh to the balls in that thing. Nobody could have stand having their pixelated toddlers drowning in that goo-y thing. They gone with the right direction by improving the CAS to it's maximum extent and 100% people do LOVE it.
New isn't the worst thing. Different? Depends on how different and If people can accept the "different" they offered. Toddlers? They're different. Heavily praised returning addition. Apartments/Penthouses/Skyrises? They're different. However, barely and only a few like how they're done.
I do not mind packs that have the same names being it should be expanded on as technology permits however in Sims 4 case I see that it is not possible looking at CL as one pack that should have wowed me but it disappointed me because it did have too much technology in it and I found it to be very limited on the fun factor and I do not even use CL.
Post edited by Goldmoldar on
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If MFP hadn't included the C&D related content (pet objects and CAS), would people feel better about the pack?
If it would have included different stuff instead it at least wouldn’t have been a DLC for DLC pack. But I think people are mad about the small animals not being in the EP and the furniture that clearly is part of the same set as in C&D as well.
I agree that the problem seems to be that people still hasn’t accepted that EA now is making both fewer EPs and the remaining EPs smaller than previous EPs. But I don’t think that EA ever will reverse that change.
No one raised a 'stink' because Store Content in TS3 are extras and not stuff packs. It's like buying custom content, that is the essence of the TS3 store. And the DLC for DLC stuff pack requires I have an EP if I want to use all the content in it. If I don't have C&D then I don't get any benefit out of a new pet bowl recolor and pet clothes. For the first time ever, I needed an EP to get full benefit out of a stuff pack. That is the difference. TS3's store was like buying all the custom content I could find but paying EA instead of TSR paysite. Paysites must die. I will never pay for CC. However, I was willing to fork out a few dollars (not many) for content from the TS3 store. I will not pay for DLC for DLC which requires I have an EP or other pack to be able to use all the content in the DLC.
That's your perspective, Stuff Packs are extras too.
And there was DLC for DLC on The Sims 3 store too, just saying. So if you're angry at this, you can't then say it was alright in The Sims 3.
Yeah, you keep just saying this, while people keep explaining to you (like Goldmoldar now) that that is really not comparable. Sims 4 SP’s aren’t extras. With 4 EP’s, 6 GP’s and 14 SP’s they’re much more than ‘an extra’. They’re 63% of all extra content offered.
The Sims 3 Store could maybe be seen as extras. But the Sims 4 SPs are clearly meant to be replacements for EPs (just like the GPs also are).
But Erpe why should people accept it, I think a clear message was sent to them with My First Pet and Toddlers etc. Maybe they tested the waters and were surprised at the backlash they received and hopefully will continue to receive, after all plummeting sales make stockholders nervous...
This.
I don't accept it. I don't buy it because I don't accept it. I love this series and I don't mind change if that change is for the better but more times than not during The Sims 4 change hasn't been good.
I, for the most part, like to think along the lines of 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it' but changes like improvements for the better and progression are fine. Content wise, fixes and improvements were definitely needed and I respect and even like some of what they did and tried to do. The old way of doing things pack wise wasn't broken though, and I don't think the current way they're doing it improves or progresses anything in an overall good way.
If they said they planned to do away with SP's and just do EP's, I would've been disappointed but I wouldn't have minded as much. If they said they were going to do a Sims 4 Store, it would have to be improved from The Sims 3 Store, more affordable and all content decent at least. When they said they'd add GP's I was a bit skeptical, in part because SP's and EP's are already packs for the game, why add another pack, but I was willing to be proven wrong. But with its addition combined with the changes to what EP's and SP's have become is not a better system to me. It's just spreading out content over a two or three packs when it used to be that a combination of two to three packs in TS4 would equal one EP of better quality in TS3, TS2, or TS1.
“Vote with your wallet and not with your mouth!” This is an old truth that has been mentioned many times and for all games - not just for EA games or Sims games.
The problem has many times been that people send mixed signals to the game companies when they protest in forums and other places but still just buy the games. This only has the effect that the game companies have stopped listening to opinions from gamers and look at the sales numbers instead.
I won't lie, it kinda blows when I see other people talking about how much they hate things being this way, how they hate the way packs are being done but they have to buy it because... I've heard it all. I'm a collector... It has this one item/feature... I have to buy everything Sims... I NEED something new to do in my game... they won't make a Sims 5 if we don't support 4... etc. etc.
I'm not going to tell anyone how to spend their money, and judging from a lot of the comments I've seen on different sites from people who say those things they already know the answer, but how is EA ever going to grasp that there's a problem if people who think there is a problem still purchase what in essence is the problem? They're not, but it's up to each player, if they take issue with The Sims 4, to decide what their redline is and clearly some of them haven't reached it yet regardless of what they may say.
In regards to the main topic, I think I've said this before somewhere. SP's do not equal to TS3's store when TS3 also had SP's. Even with this new way of them doing things, it still doesn't. Not to me. I'm not a collector who has to have everything but it's the closest way I can describe my feelings on it. The stuff packs and expansion packs felt more like the official Sims 3 releases, same for The Sims 2. I didn't have to have all of them but to complete the game but there's something about knowing that these are the packs for the game. I can count on one hand the number of times I went to The Sims 3 Store while the game was still releasing packs and that was only because they were giving me free simpoints but I didn't need anything from the store. The game provided plenty to keep me glued. The store was just extra stuff and they didn't have packs of store content to buy in stores beyond a few of the worlds. They decided to put out copies of this specific content in stuff packs and that ranks over a store set to me.
The Sims 3 Store wasn't fantastic by any means and it didn't matter like the packs do and that's why these packs in TS4 feel like a harder blow. It's one thing to just feel cheated by the store because it felt like extra content that didn't matter, it was easy to ignore. But by majority of the packs (and the base game too)? That matters to me.
I have to agree Sims 4 even with the improvements it is still not enough to say Sims 4 left me with good memories only controversy after controversy and less features with only items to hide the features or make one not notice.
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Every 5 or 6 years, they should just remaster all four games. That's what everyone seems to want at this point anyway. Seasons, again. Pets, again. University, again. Etc, etc. Save both time and money just updating graphics/bugs of the series instead. Anything new or different is always the worst thing ever, apparently.
I truly don't get comments like this. Who even said or implied that? Why is that the way people who want packs like Pets, Seasons and Uni are interpreted by some? And why does this seem like the only iteration in the main series where it's wrong to ask that they expand upon old, yet classic ideas? Especially when they've barely scratched the surface on what they can provide in packs like those. I haven't seen anyone who is anti-new or different ideas for packs. In this case small pets aren't new or different, the only thing different is that after giving us small pets with cats and dogs in the past three games they split them up into two packs. That is different, I'll give you that, but not in a good way.
The thing is that this is a life simulator. We're reminded of it every time those of us more critical point out something we question and the responses fall along the lines of, 'it's a life simulator and so they want things to be more realistic'. Last time being Cats & Dogs when some of us said that there was no difference in how realistic pets will act whether we controlled them or not. But it is, for the most part a life simulator and for many people life includes experiences with pets, seasons, and even Uni. That's part of what makes them so popular. Whether you owned a pet, saw someone with their pet, or were running from someone's pet chances are most people have experienced either dogs, cats, birds and/or some type of rodent. It's not all sunshine and clear skies 24/7. There's rain, sleet, snow, different temperatures, different seasons, and a variety of activities that revolve around each of them. In a lot of places university is part of life. The natural next step when you graduate high school is to go to college and make something of yourself as if 12+ years of your life wasn't enough to give. A lot of people have had at least some college education or know someone who has.
I personally think all of them should just be included in an awesome base game that way there is more space for new ideas. That'll never happen unless there's like a drastic change of some sort at EA allowing that but as I've said before for a base game with Season and Pets, even Uni included I'd gladly spend 80 to 120 dollars for it or even more but they'd have to come correct with it. Just because they add those features doesn't mean it's automatically a great base game.
It doesn't have to be old vs new though. It doesn't have to be either/or and I wonder again why when it comes to this game some of us feel we can't have a combination of both, why we can't have improved and expanded upon the old and have new as well. I wonder if statements and thoughts like this come from the fact that regardless of everyone being pro-new ideas, most of what they've released is something we've had before. But instead of getting on Maxis or EA's case about it the blame is put almost entirely on the players who want to see some of the old features too. That's not entirely the fault of players wanting some of the old features when they could've gave what they provided over the course of a base game and 24 packs in a base game and 10 packs with 14 left for new ideas up to this point.
I recall when Laundry Day happened how other players were upset because of all the new ideas before it was narrowed to eco living and of the new ideas to choose from in the scope of eco living laundry was chosen. Of course it was. They listed an old feature they knew a lot of people wanted (because laundry is a part of life and this is a life simulator) and listed it with new ideas never seen before. I can't entirely blame people for choosing laundry. It's an option even I like to have when playing Sims games, even though I didn't vote for it. That doesn't mean people hated the other ideas and didn't want to see them. But they knew what they were doing and what the outcome was going to be when they added laundry as a voting option when they could've put laundry in Spa Day, Parenthood, City Living, Cats & Dogs, Get To Work, or even the base game and listed another idea in the place of laundry.
Like I said, they have barely scratched the surface with some of the old favorites that some of us want to see. They haven't done everything possible with Seasons, Pets, or Uni and there's still enough to do where they come out looking better than before with new features never done in a pack. Some of those old favorites even lit a spark for new ideas in the community that would actually go well with some of the old. Then there are new ideas in general that have nothing to do with them. EA/Maxis just need to do better finding a balance between the two, with how they release content, and on EA's part they need to do better with treating The Sims like what it's supposed to be, at least on PC, a single player sandbox game. Unfortunately, I don't see any of that happening for the remainder of The Sims 4.
But MFP and it's backlash has been in media and you honestly cant tell me they haven't a clue of the hornets nest they poked when they released MFP
I think that they badly needed an idea for the next SP and then read threads like https://forums.thesims.com/en_US/discussion/925515/small-pets/p1 Then they likely realized that small pets would be ideal for the new gameplay in a SP and Pets has always been very popular in Sims games. Also simmers who didn’t care about cats and dogs wouldn’t likely buy such a SP anyway. So they likely just decided to make MFP as an exception even though they usually won’t make SPs that depend on earlier packs.
I expect most simmers to buy MFP anyway because I don’t think that simmers are unhappy because they got more pets and more pets stuff but just a little angry because they were disappointed that this SP wasn’t just included as a part of Cats&Dogs. But simmers likely need to adjust to the fact that EA won’t make huge EPs anymore but likely soon won’t make any packs that are bigger than a GP. So it is IMO just a lot of fuss about nothing.
Because they weren’t familiar yet with the concept small animal for the game, sure Sorry but I don’t believe it for a split second. “Oh, that’s right, we could also add other animals to this game than cats and dogs alone, why didn’t we think of that!? Good thing we have a community to point that out to us.”
No. But as usual they wanted packs for TS4 to be different from packs for the earlier games. They also wanted the packs to be smaller and cheaper to make and with a different focus. Therefore they changed Pets into Cats&Dogs with very few pets and reduced content but attempted to compensate by making the cats and dogs more clever and more autonomous.
Then they saw threads about simmers missing small pets in the pack. But small rodents in cages are very cheap to make and therefore suitable for SPs which EA now wants to have just a little gameplay too to become more attractive for many simmers such that they can get better sales numbers. So my guess is that this gave them the idea to make MFS too.
What I don’t believe at all is the conspiracy theories that they reduced the size of Cats&Dogs with the intention to have some things to put into an SP too because that isn’t something EA would do. EA thinks differently and just focus on each pack to make it for as less money as reasonably and to give it a new and interesting focus to compensate. But EA mainly just makes one pack at the time. They have decided to release 4-5 SP, 2 GPs and 1 EP each year (until sales numbers become too low or TS5 is ready to be released). But they haven’t decided the content of all those packs until about the time when they start making them. In that sense TS4 can be seen as a live service too even though it isn’t an online game you play with friends.
No they would plan SP's many many months ahead with concept, design, legals, testing, promotion, press releases etc. They had this as part of C&D and decided to release it separately. Even if I were to entertain the dubious possibility that it wasn't planned then its too late to sway the bad press they generated
Remember the votings about the next SP? Those votings didn’t happen very long before the SPs that won most votes were released. EA changes plans much more often than simmers usually think and also many times while a new game is under development. This has been the case both for the basegames, the packs and also for the Sims Mobile while it was soft launched and we therefore could observe all the many changes. So EA just experiments a lot instead of following some long time plans.
Voting for Laundry day (initially Recycling) started about 9 months before that pack was released.
It is the time where the voting ended that is interesting because they couldn’t start making the pack before that and likely also had to wait for another pack to be finished before they really started.
I wouldn’t call it a conspiracy. Just a marketing plan And I have no reason to believe a company, any company, wouldn't be capable of/prepared to use such a strategy when they trust people will buy it. Which is why ‘not everybody dislikes this pack’ is part of the problem and in fact an argument for the people protesting against this practice.
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"Games Are Not The Place To Tell Stories, Games Are Meant To Let People Tell Their Own Stories"...Will Wright.
In dreams - I LIVE!
In REALITY, I simply exist.....
But you have to admit this pack has angered a lot more people than any pack has previously, and I'm sure Maxis has never felt a push back from the fans on this scale before. They've been underestimating and exploiting fans of the Sims all throughout 4 and now they probably have wished they hadn't. Sims 1,2 and even 3 were a phenomenon,now its merely a game (and a bad one at that)
Considering I go to a lot of gaming sites, plus twitter, and facebook - I'd say by and large the ones carrying on about it are mostly here. I talk with a large number of simmers on facebook and none of them are talking about the pack one way or the other - granted we are almost all older Simmers. Just about like they do all sps - no one really talks and fusses over sps. The only time you see much discussion on packs is about eps and sometimes gps. To most simmers sps are not game changing events and just cute or what ever additions.
And believe me this anger was tiny compared to the base game coming as it did - never mind all that time with out toddlers and such. To simmers those issues were game breaking - but an sp will never be gaming breaking situation. Most simmers know this and are not as bothered by it at all.
I honestly have talked to so many people that sim - and I honestly don't find very many not buying that pack outside of this forum. A few that isn't buying, never has ever bought any stuff packs for any sims game - so it is no different on this one either. All I know is if EA is seeing the same thing I am seeing - it won't be an issue at all. I mean when it was toddlers still missing after 2 and a half years - every post every where sims games were mentioned - never mind professional game mags were writing articles about it constantly. But there nothing at all like that out there and people are buying the pack on top of it.
"Games Are Not The Place To Tell Stories, Games Are Meant To Let People Tell Their Own Stories"...Will Wright.
In dreams - I LIVE!
In REALITY, I simply exist.....
This is the point the tricks they've employed like recycling and dividing EP's to sell as Sp's only compounds the seriousness of how, well I'll say it, pathetic this whole Sims 4 has been since it rolled out on it's release day. Oh they noticed about this SP, its all over and in their faces on their very own Twitter and Facebook pages...
We can’t force EA to make more EPs again instead of all the SPs and GPs when the smaller and cheaper packs sell better. So we need to accept that traditional EPs will be split up in GPs plus SPs in the future. The problem for me is that EA has hesitated to make this change total and therefore has released EPs that are so small that they should have been made as GPs instead. Maybe this will be corrected when TS5 is released?
I doubt it, from some articles I have been reading about all companies doing this and going with live service like this - even steam is doing - Paradox is even doing it, - you name the big games and this is the trend. EA actually sounds new to the game for at least The Sims games in these reflections and articles I have been reading - and there has been some furor here and there - but it sounds like especially for even online games that offer single player campaignes this is the way they deliver content is have smaller expansions - some even taking 2 years to come out to refresh the game - then selling addition small packs (one called it flavour packs to add more flavor and choice to an expansion) that expanded the expansions at 5 -25 dollar a small pack - some added more maps, others just stuff. I knew Fall Out 4 has been doing it - but was surprised to hear some of the others like the Witcher etc doing it too - it says several of EA games are finally doing this - Dragon Age - Mass Effects - Battlefield, Anthem-.
But it also works well with Seasons passes where players can pay in advance for all the content coming for the year (sight unseen no less) or they can buy the ep and each flavour pack for it separately. I guess the live service on all will also include regular patches, some free content, and monthly fixes. EA is just new to the game apparently.
The worst case I saw was an article on Gamespot from 4 years ago of games on a disc that included dlc on the disc but on top of the 60 bucks you paid for the game if you wanted to use the dlc you had to pay addition money to get it unlocked and activated. I believe those were on some console versions though.
"Games Are Not The Place To Tell Stories, Games Are Meant To Let People Tell Their Own Stories"...Will Wright.
In dreams - I LIVE!
In REALITY, I simply exist.....
Ubisoft is doing the same and describes live service as something that turns console focus into multi-platform focus.
EA never mentions the Sims games when they talk about live services. But the Sims Freeplay and the Sims Mobile are already live services anyway.
The problem for TS4 just is that it isn’t an online game where you have a lot of ingame friends which you can play with inside the game. Beside that the game companies omit to tell people that their are two other things that motivate them to create live services instead of traditional games:
1. Online games require a game server and can’t be played anymore if they close it down because they are switching to a new version of the game. So doing this could make many gamers very angry and provoke some of them into refusing to buy the new games.
2. The game companies want to make online games instead of offline games because they then also can earn a huge amount of money from ingame advertising - just like many TV channels do.
But TS4 will never become an online game and therefore can’t work as a real live service anyway. Also the big Sims games earn a lot of money to EA because they have this huge number of packs (SPs, GPs and EPs) which no other games have. Yes other games have had one or two packs too. But no other games have had 15-30 packs like the Sims games have. Therefore the Sims games for PCs are very special and EA could lose a lot of money from turning them into live services too.
The problem is that a game like TS2, TS3 or TS4 can’t have new packs forever if the packs still must have the same huge sales numbers. It isn’t a problem if most of the new content is free content in updates. But new simmers won’t just buy 10 years of old packs when they start playing the game. Therefore old packs give EA more and more problems the older the game becomes because what should EA then do? Options are:
1. Do nothing. But then more and more new simmers will just give up on the game or decide not to buy packs or only very few packs.
2. Let packs become free if they are more than 5 years old? But then a huge number of simmers will just wait for the packs to become free instead of buying them.
3. Discount old packs? But then new simmers will just buy old packs instead of the new ones.
None of those things are solutions for EA. Therefore EA has always instead solved the problem with too many old packs just by releasing a new basegame after 5 years and I don’t think that EA will stop doing this before the PC versions of Sims games become online multiplayer games too where we are playing with our ingame friends. But is EA ready to make that change even for TS5? Won’t it be better for EA just to let the Sims games for mobile devices be live services and keep selling packs for only 5 years for the PC versions of Sims games even if EA change all its action games and sports games into live services too?
Then they saw threads about simmers missing small pets in the pack. But small rodents in cages are very cheap to make and therefore suitable for SPs which EA now wants to have just a little gameplay too to become more attractive for many simmers such that they can get better sales numbers. So my guess is that this gave them the idea to make MFS too.
What I don’t believe at all is the conspiracy theories that they reduced the size of Cats&Dogs with the intention to have some things to put into an SP too because that isn’t something EA would do. EA thinks differently and just focus on each pack to make it for as less money as reasonably and to give it a new and interesting focus to compensate. But EA mainly just makes one pack at the time. They have decided to release 4-5 SP, 2 GPs and 1 EP each year (until sales numbers become too low or TS5 is ready to be released). But they haven’t decided the content of all those packs until about the time when they start making them. In that sense TS4 can be seen as a live service too even though it isn’t an online game you play with friends. It is the time where the voting ended that is interesting because they couldn’t start making the pack before that and likely also had to wait for another pack to be finished before they really started.
There's no conspiracy theory people are saying it precisely because they, as you yourself say, think EA is trying to fleece as much money by milking us as much as they can, and what better way to do that than break up a pack and sell each part separately
What simmers rarely realize is that EA has no intention about letting each new Sims game be just a new and improved version of the previous one and with just the same EPs made in a little improved way. Instead EA wants each new Sims game being a completely new and different game such that it becomes more interesting for customers who already own the old game and such that new simmers have more and very different games to choose between.
So EA’s idea isn’t to just release the same EPs again even though some of the EPs (Pets, Seasons and University) were released both for TS2 and TS3. This likely just happened anyway for TS3 because EA had decided to release even more EPs for TS3 than for TS2 and it was difficult to find enough new ideas for this.
But EA only released all those EPs for TS3 because EPs still were mainly sold in physical stores where SPs just looked very small among all those other much more expensive games. EA knew that as digital downloads cheaper packs would likely sell better. So EA decided to replace at least half of the EPs with smaller half priced GPs to see if such GPs wouldn’t sell better than traditional EPs (and also to compensate a little by now adding gameplay to the SPs hoping that this would make the SPs sell better too). This experiment seemed to have been very successful because EA then decided to double the number of GPs from one to two GPs each year.
Still EA wanted TS4 to be as different from TS3 as possible. So EA avoided repetions of the traditional EPs Seasons, University and Pets as long as possible and most likely because EA hoped that this would make new simmers more interested in buying TS3 too.
So EA didn’t want just a repetions of Pets when EA finally decided to make such a pack anyway because pets always have been very popular in Sims games. Instead EA decided to concentrate on only cats and dogs and omit less interesting pets. But attempt to compensate by making the cats and dogs in a new and hopefully more interesting way. That this so opened up for adding small pets to an SP was new too. But EA still avoided foxes, hedgehogs and similar small animals and concentrated on rodents instead to make things new. So no: The idea wasn’t to split an EP up in an EP plus an SP. It instead was to make a new and different Sims game.
But like all game companies EA of course just want to make money. This means that EA wants to avoid unneccesary expenses by adding things to the packs which wouldn’t really have any effect on the sales numbers anyway. Adding small pets to a pack called Cats&Dogs was just an example of such unneccesary expenses because simmers don’t buy an EP with that name to get small pets too. In the same way you can find hundreds of examples of omitted things from the packs which EA omitted for the same reason. Even the simplified babies, the omitted toddlers and the tall simplified teens are examples because they didn’t seem very important to EA in a Sims game which mainly was about happy partying and autonomous multitasking for adult sims.
I'm with you on the seasons thing. Since they can't seem to accomplish doing something like making a Lounge chair for the pool because, as it was said by one of the gurus years ago "it's just too hard to make the animations"....then how are they going to make weather work?
Honestly, I don't know how they are spending the money they are cash grabbing from doing things like breaking up content to sell as a separate stuff packs. But they certainly are not putting the money back into the game itself. The backlash that arrived on EA's doorstep immediately following the release of MFPS was large and loud. I mean, I don't even have the game installed anymore and I heard the roar of disappointment.
These threads that keep appearing over and over and over again in the feedback section, of the disappointment, and the need to save this franchise and not throw it away by turning it into nothing more than a cheap ATM for EA, is astounding. This recent stunt with purposely holding back content that was obviously made to go with the C&D EP...just to be sold separately to make more money....to me is a sign that EA does't really care about the future of this game. And they will probably do it again before TS4 is finally done and put on a shelf. I won't be contributing to their obvious thievery. I won't ever support them breaking up content to make extra money on something that should have been already included in the base game, or in an expansion pack. If EA wont invest in this game...then either will I.
Yes we want them to expand, not reduce previous concepts, not separate them into smaller packs. To throw in something original would be great - if it actually works and actually elevates the game
I mean can you imagine a life simulator without domesticated stray creatures running around during rainfall in a big campus? I personally cannot. Club system is something new, but I have yet to see someone despising it. Everyone pretty much adores it. Lot traits? People adore that as well. Talking toilet.... well it was a bit insult that they spent all their resource into that thing oppose creating actual realistic elevators (or could have simply you know... omit it and replace them in apartments with simple stairs so people wouldn't have to stare at the lazily animation-cut that they done). As @cactusjuice, we want things to return that existed in the past games, but done better or at least with quality than making it look like that doesn't make it look like they came to work with their children from home to the studio to play around in their development workplace equipment. Players didn't like the toddler soupball pit thing, not because the object was new, but oh my lord somebody didn't even bother adding simple polygon or 3D mesh to the balls in that thing. Nobody could have stand having their pixelated toddlers drowning in that goo-y thing. They gone with the right direction by improving the CAS to it's maximum extent and 100% people do LOVE it.
New isn't the worst thing. Different? Depends on how different and If people can accept the "different" they offered. Toddlers? They're different. Heavily praised returning addition. Apartments/Penthouses/Skyrises? They're different. However, barely and only a few like how they're done.
I have to agree Sims 4 even with the improvements it is still not enough to say Sims 4 left me with good memories only controversy after controversy and less features with only items to hide the features or make one not notice.
I truly don't get comments like this. Who even said or implied that? Why is that the way people who want packs like Pets, Seasons and Uni are interpreted by some? And why does this seem like the only iteration in the main series where it's wrong to ask that they expand upon old, yet classic ideas? Especially when they've barely scratched the surface on what they can provide in packs like those. I haven't seen anyone who is anti-new or different ideas for packs. In this case small pets aren't new or different, the only thing different is that after giving us small pets with cats and dogs in the past three games they split them up into two packs. That is different, I'll give you that, but not in a good way.
The thing is that this is a life simulator. We're reminded of it every time those of us more critical point out something we question and the responses fall along the lines of, 'it's a life simulator and so they want things to be more realistic'. Last time being Cats & Dogs when some of us said that there was no difference in how realistic pets will act whether we controlled them or not. But it is, for the most part a life simulator and for many people life includes experiences with pets, seasons, and even Uni. That's part of what makes them so popular. Whether you owned a pet, saw someone with their pet, or were running from someone's pet chances are most people have experienced either dogs, cats, birds and/or some type of rodent. It's not all sunshine and clear skies 24/7. There's rain, sleet, snow, different temperatures, different seasons, and a variety of activities that revolve around each of them. In a lot of places university is part of life. The natural next step when you graduate high school is to go to college and make something of yourself as if 12+ years of your life wasn't enough to give. A lot of people have had at least some college education or know someone who has.
I personally think all of them should just be included in an awesome base game that way there is more space for new ideas. That'll never happen unless there's like a drastic change of some sort at EA allowing that but as I've said before for a base game with Season and Pets, even Uni included I'd gladly spend 80 to 120 dollars for it or even more but they'd have to come correct with it. Just because they add those features doesn't mean it's automatically a great base game.
It doesn't have to be old vs new though. It doesn't have to be either/or and I wonder again why when it comes to this game some of us feel we can't have a combination of both, why we can't have improved and expanded upon the old and have new as well. I wonder if statements and thoughts like this come from the fact that regardless of everyone being pro-new ideas, most of what they've released is something we've had before. But instead of getting on Maxis or EA's case about it the blame is put almost entirely on the players who want to see some of the old features too. That's not entirely the fault of players wanting some of the old features when they could've gave what they provided over the course of a base game and 24 packs in a base game and 10 packs with 14 left for new ideas up to this point.
I recall when Laundry Day happened how other players were upset because of all the new ideas before it was narrowed to eco living and of the new ideas to choose from in the scope of eco living laundry was chosen. Of course it was. They listed an old feature they knew a lot of people wanted (because laundry is a part of life and this is a life simulator) and listed it with new ideas never seen before. I can't entirely blame people for choosing laundry. It's an option even I like to have when playing Sims games, even though I didn't vote for it. That doesn't mean people hated the other ideas and didn't want to see them. But they knew what they were doing and what the outcome was going to be when they added laundry as a voting option when they could've put laundry in Spa Day, Parenthood, City Living, Cats & Dogs, Get To Work, or even the base game and listed another idea in the place of laundry.
Like I said, they have barely scratched the surface with some of the old favorites that some of us want to see. They haven't done everything possible with Seasons, Pets, or Uni and there's still enough to do where they come out looking better than before with new features never done in a pack. Some of those old favorites even lit a spark for new ideas in the community that would actually go well with some of the old. Then there are new ideas in general that have nothing to do with them. EA/Maxis just need to do better finding a balance between the two, with how they release content, and on EA's part they need to do better with treating The Sims like what it's supposed to be, at least on PC, a single player sandbox game. Unfortunately, I don't see any of that happening for the remainder of The Sims 4.