Kit Packs sound like Stuff Packs, only called 'kit' instead.
It's just another way to wrangle money out of us. Basically they've run out of themes so they're going to do a few things at a time and they're going to charge a few bucks at a time and slowly crank up the price.
That, or the kits will get smaller and smaller until we're paying £5 for each item or upgrade. It looks big now, but mark my words it'll get much smaller. They'll stop releasing Stuff Packs now, and only release Game Packs and Expansion Packs. Then they'll release Expansion Packs the size of Game Packs. It'll cost a fortune. Of course if we stop buying in protest they'll just stop making.
Prepping a list of mods to add after Infants are placed into the game. Because real life isn't 'nice'.
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The other thing is, there are a lot of players who buy packs just for the CAS/BB items and not the featured game play (Vampires, Batuu, RoM, etc), so maybe this will be their way of giving players a choice of buying just "stuff" instead of the entire pack they're not really interested in.
It could also be a way for them to add more things players have asked for without having to create an entire pack around it
Instruments
Kids activities
Elder activities
Farm items (chicken coop, milking cow, etc)
It's also possible that it will end up being beneficial, maybe by taking out a bunch of objects from packs and selling them separately it will free them up to make the big packs beefier with more gameplay, since they can eliminate a lot of the "stuff".
Only time will tell.
I'm not 100% opposed to it because it's not mandatory to buy any of them.
The numbering also seem to hint that there is a Stuff Pack 19 in the works (or another kit) unless it was cancelled.
You see, I was exactly right. They're classing these as our Stuff Packs now, the only difference is they're calling them Kit Packs. And they're cheaper but also come out more frequently and are bound to be smaller.
I mean, I'm not going to miss Stuff Packs, but look at it this way - a Stuff Pack was $9.99. Now say you'll get three Kit Packs released every three months for $4.99, so you're paying more for the same amount. It looks big this time, keeping in mind that these are the early releases, but I'll put money on the size of each kit shrinking, but if people still want all the content...
Oh yeah, and if you're one of those people who says "Well it's not happening to me right now", I'd like to remind you of when the price of Game Packs and Expansion Packs went up in Europe before they went up in America. "It doesn't affect me so why should I care?" Because of a little word spelled EMPATHY.
I still think we will get stuff packs as well. The kits will be more frequent than the other three types of packs to tide people over until bigger packs are released.
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That's what I'm worried about these Kits replacing Stuffpacks. There is plenty of sp themes they could still do and unlike sps kits aren't guaranteed to have gameplay objects.
We ll find that out Tuesday when maxis goes more indephth about kits.
And Stuff Packs will simply no longer be made. Maybe they've got one waiting for release. Or maybe they'll divvy it up and release it as kits.
After all of EA's demonstrations of how they love to rip us off, why does anybody have any faith in them?
Slowly, bigger pack' teams will be transfered to sims 5 development team while the small kits' team will still be releasing bits of content here and there even after sims 5 announcement...
Haha that's why i don't like to speculate much...
What i won't speculate, specially because we're just a few days away of knowing for sure, is the price of the kits...
actually now that we talk about it yeah, luxury party is indeed kit how about you upgrade all those stuff packs to being actual stuff packs with some content now [:
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This is my theory. The last 3-4 stuff packs provide so much more than the old ones. I wouldn't be surprised if they keep making that size of stuff pack for the original price and also add these smaller kit packs to be what stuff packs used to be for less money.
Expansion packs have been getting shallower and stuff packs have been getting deeper, while game packs are about the same. I think they are seeing more profit from the smaller bits of content for smaller bits of money than from the expansion packs, and are moving to do more of that.
Maybe. We'll know for sure Tuesday. I'm sure the Maxis is going to reveal prices Tuesday when they give us more info and we might even get to download these packs Tuesday.
I'm completely expecting it to cost more to buy them individually than as a Stuff Pack.
I'm expecting a price point of between $4 and $6 USD, with hopefully an option to buy a "bundle" at $10 (same as a stuff pack) to $12 (maybe as much as $15). The bundle will probably have to be one BB, one CAS, one Gameplay (just like the current option to build a bundle on Origin requires one stuff, one game, one expansion) so if you want only gameplay kits, or only BB, or only CAS, you're going to be shelling out.
This is generally the way with all sales setups like this. EA's not breaking new ground in grubbing for money with this tactic. Not saying it's right, or fair. Just that it isn't new. Heck, check the pricing of a 6 pack vs a 12 pack of your favorite individually packaged beverage at the grocery store. This is basically the equivalent of just selling single cans ... which, coincidentally, my grocery store does for some products.
Yes, I'm assuming that bundling will be an option and we don't know that. But we don't know that it won't either. And it's more likely that we can convince EA that it's ultimately more profitable to add bundling as an option than that they'll take it away after introducing it. I only want one of the three kits, but if I wanted two, and I could get a third for only an extra dollar or two, I might be tempted to throw it in anyway. It's part of how the psychology of marketing works.
Now, the fate of Stuff Packs, in general, will be interesting to see. The last three have been very robust. Possibly budget-breakingly so. I'm not convinced they're going away, but I also wouldn't be surprised if they did. What I think is less likely is that they'll continue this breakdown through the Game and Expansion packs, as those usually include systems that in and of themselves won't fit inside what I expect the budget is for a Kit (at least in terms of man-hours, if not in terms of gameplay impact)
I mean, right now with these three kits, they could be a Stuff Pack, sure. But they don't really fit together as a pack unless you squint (and even that's only possible because of the pandemic - if people hadn't generally been cooped up for the past year, no one would see how they went together at all), and the aesthetics of the three packs are very different. They could be leftovers from previous packs that were cut for budget/time, or they could be ideas that came up later that don't fit in the update team's budget. But they're not all on the same theme.
Now, if next month they have an 80's themed CAS, some 80's throwback BB, and a Retro Tech gameplay that includes newspapers and landlines, then there's an argument to be made - and a very strong one that should be made very loudly - that they should have been a stuff pack. Heck, if they release a set of kits like this over the course of six months, they probably should have been a stuff pack. Outside of a six-month spread... it gets fuzzier, depending on how frequently packs are coming out and how long you think is reasonable for the team to hold back on an asset/Asset group until they can come up with either CAS and BB to fit with the Gameplay or else Gameplay that fits with the CAS or BB.
The Dusting Kit is kind of like the Laundry Day pack - to get the most out of it you need to have less fun - by dusting.
Here's where that logic fails: Your arguments seems to be that all three of these kits together equal one stuff pack (which I also question), so instead of paying $10 for all of them, we would be paying (pure speculation at this point) $15 for all of them. But even if all that's true, here's the thing: I don't want all of them. I only want one of the three kits we've seen. So far, I haven't seen a single person on the forum say that they're interested in all three of this first set of kits; most people have said they want one, several have said they want two or none. So, if I can pay $5 for several items that I do want, instead of $10 for a few that I want plus a bunch of 🐸🐸🐸🐸 cluttering up my menu that I don't want... yeah, option 1 is obviously the better deal.
Now, DaWaterRat made an excellent point, which is that it will look a lot shadier if we start to see groups of kits coming out together that look like they could or should have been a single cohesive stuff pack. But if it's like this first set, where it's a disparate group of kits from which people are likely to pick and choose... yes, please, for the love of God, let me pick and choose. I'd much rather have that than, oh I don't know, spending $10 for a whole bowling system and a bunch of crappy furniture that I have never used and never will use, because I just wanted one really cute hairstyle and a single cute top.
I mean, look, we still don't know all the details. And when we do, it still may seem like a bad deal to you. But it's illogical to act like it's inherently a bad deal for everyone.
Given the prices of the items in the past Sims Stores, I tend to agree with @Loanet. I fear that kits will be just another way for EA to make us pay more for less. Moreover, unless you are really concerned about menu clutter, the kit option is still likely to be a worse deal, since stuff packs can often be purchased for $4.99 during a sale. I personally would rather buy a full stuff pack for $4.99, than one kit for $4.99. If EA actually prices the kits at around $3.33 (1/3 the price of a traditional stuff pack) or less, then I can see how a kit might be a better choice for some people.
That's very true. But it's also true that TS3 store items regularly went on sale, not to mention those set completion deals. So if that holds true for the TS4 kits, we could see opportunities to buy kits for just a couple of dollars.
Also, I haven't seen anyone point this out yet, but TS3 store sets varied in price depending on what was actually in them. Sure, there were some one or two item purchases, but they were a fraction of the cost of the larger sets. One of the many things we still don't know is whether all kits will have the same price, much less what that actual price would be.
There is less gameplay in the vacuum kit than in laundry day. At least laundry day offered the possibility for doing laundry without electricity, and they gave the wash basin and the clothes line. So far it looks like you can only banish the dust bunnies with a vacuum. Whichever way you look at it there is less offered for your bucks. And there are no hairs. Also comparing with TS3 is not a good idea. TS3 store offered a lot of gameplay items that were traditionally in game and left very little gameplay in the EPs and Stuff packs. And some of those things only came packaged with other things I didn't want and were too expensive. TS3 Store is not a good model to follow. Some people say they watched ads, for points, but that choice was limited to a small number of countries.