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Empty countryside in CoL?
Oldeseadogge
Posts: 5,000 Member
Broke down and got the pack over the weekend, couldn't resist the British charm - it strikes an inner chord - and the animals. It's been huge fun so far, taken up way more time than intended, and is amazingly beautiful - even for TS4, The amount of territory a sim can wander through in the rural sections is impressive, seemingly endless. It also feels empty. Lots to see, but very little to interact with other than the swimmable rivers (Yea!), a fishable pond with benches, and a couple of places where one may buy seeds. On the Henford side I've so far found 2 blueberry bushes, 1 rabbit stump, and a lot of empty if green acreage. The season is summer. Is such emptiness typical? I wonder if it's due to Seasons limiting what's available, the gardening glitch that reduces plants to nothingness, or if that is the intention. That much land should have a lot more than 2 blue berry bushes, as in more of those and more varieties. I know the UK has fruit trees, so where are they? What about wild herbs and veggies? Rabbits and birds should be plentiful in such rural settings.
At long last we finally have something that feels almost like TS3 style open world, but why bother to go out there if there's nothing to find and do?
Thoughts from those of you who have been playing this a while are welcome.
At long last we finally have something that feels almost like TS3 style open world, but why bother to go out there if there's nothing to find and do?
Thoughts from those of you who have been playing this a while are welcome.
7
Comments
New Old Henford feels the most empty, because it contains an enormous 40x50 lot which is vacant. But it is also a lot of open, river-bottom land. Harvestables are there to find, but you really do have to explore for them.
The Bramblewood is also vast, and harvestables seem to come and go. I think random visitors are also foraging, and may be beating my sims to the berry bushes and mushrooms. Both neighborhoods also have a few digging spots. The Aspiration challenge to forage five times in the Bramblewood took my sim four visits to actually complete. The layout of the area is delightfully confusing - but I get lost in games easily.
But yes - a lot of open space is, simply, open space. But picnics are a thing, and if there isn't a table in your favorite pretty spot, apparently one can now bring one's own. I think the open space is there to make the area convincingly rural, and give more distance to cover.
In light of which, a call-out to the area designers, who did a MUCH better job making Finchwich more bicycle-friendly than, say, Foxbury campus. I am likely to use the bonus content bike a lot more - even if it is a girls' bike (my sims don't mind).
for chocoberries, there's one located right next to the bridge leading to the creature keeper's place (he's got carrots and...oddly...an avacado tree... growing in pots on his lot in my game, too). there are also two chocoberry bushes and one nightly mushroom spawn amid the ruins on the central island. there's also a spot there that can spawn up to 3 clumps of strange mushrooms pretty close to the nightly mushrooms
a bridge near the outside of the snail statue's spiral also has two spots right next to each other that can spawn up to 3 clumps of strange mushrooms... so that's 6 you can potentially harvest at once there. and then the bench on the first of two switchbacks on the path up to the lot at the top of the hill/mountain/whatever you want to call it also has a patch that can spawn up to 3 strange mushrooms on one side and a nightly mushroom on the other
as for bunny stumps and bird trees, you can actually see their locations on the travel map... there are 3 of each in the bramblewood, one of each in the other neighborhood outside the town
Once the festivals begin, I shall send a member from the active household to enter whatever category is up for that time. Had some really rotten luck when I first had my families living in HoB. The festivals would just fizzle out of existence without announcing who won. (Doesn't have to be my Sim, so long as the festival comes to an honest conclusion. Why else did they gather?) Suffer me to say, it really wasn't that much fun. I am disappointed. In the hopes it isn't an actual bug, I did a repair game. When that didn't seem to make an impact, I did a game folder Refresh. Then I began anew, only in Windenburg, instead. We'll see what good comes of it. If I don't find any satisfaction, I may jump back over to my Main save until this bug is fixed. Ho-hum. Just when I thought I'd finally be able to get somewhere with my Ancestral game save, too. ;'(
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Same goes for taking care of crops and animals.
But that's only my personal opinion.
Moreover, there isn't that much to be done in an open rural area or the woods in real life, is there?
I love to think that they also were looking ahead in the future of the Sims 4 and providing rideable areas for horses.
They also added another bike for early buyers and I think these areas are great for biking.
I hope these aspects don't get nerfed. Everything doesn't have to be done at once, and I like that.
Thank you, everyone, for your input. It appears the emptiness is a deliberate thing, though I wonder whether it's been taken a bit too far. From personal experience while living in New Hampshire years ago such areas are good for finding blue berries, raspberries, and black berries - not vast plots of them (though that can happen), but not scarcer than hen's teeth, either. If one knows what to look for and where, herbs should be abundant. I don't expect to find wild lemon trees, but apple, pear, and cherry should be at least present. Maybe it will take a visit to the real Cotswolds to to have a more accurate picture of what's out there. I'm not holding my breath on the horses, though it would be nice. Fox hunts, anyone?
I like the river where sims spawn and go for a swim and the lake where you can fish in Old New Henford. The open garden where sims seems to spawn and plant random plants doesn't really do it for me and the playground with toys just laying on the ground with no kids with them feels weird. At least some sims spawn and hang around there.
The huge area with the snail in The Bramblewood feels more like a thing for Maxis to be honest, I know it's based on the snail statue they have outside of their headquarters but I don't think many people will get that reference and are probably more likely to wonder why it's there and why it takes so long for sims to visit the statue, I love the ruins in the middle though. But again, they could have more collectibles in my opinion.
Yeah times have changed it was a sport amongst the middle/higher/aristocracy/royals classes for a long time and it was outlawed in mid 2000s (can’t remember the exact year) hunts can still take place but the dogs follow a scent trail not foxes. Many illegal hunts take place still. I live in the uk countryside and it was a big part of the culture. Especially Boxing Day hunts. It’s now seen as animal cruelty.
Not surprised. Let's hope fishing isn't next. Covid permitting, I might get over there next summer for school, taking extra time to do the tourist thing, especially the Cotswolds, so that might increase my appreciation for this. Among a lot of other things.
Without derailing the thread too much and breaking the forum rules fox hunting is nothing like fishing and it’s illegal for a reason in the uk and as my initial post said it would and should never be in the game.
Maybe bird watching...and if the picknic basket would actually let us have a picknic on the ground that would've been cool...
That rabbits and bird trees are limited makes sense to me, irl rabbits run and hide from you, they maybe there but you wont see them, birds are flying or up in a tree not directly in front of you being able to be talked to
What would really be cool if we could hike there, like we can in Mt Komorebi, especially hike with other sims (and dogs).
But you can cloudgaze, take photographs, walk/jog with your dog, play with/train your dog, maybe do yoga if you bring a mat, picknic at the picknic table, pick harvestables, swim in the river, look for frogs, talk to birds and bunnies, watch foxes, go fishing, investigate the snail statue, interact with the creature keeper (talk, buy, trade and order animal clothes)...I feel like that is sufficiant for a rural area.
I’m glad harvestable spawns are sparse and sometimes out of season or require you to be in certain places at certain times. It’s realistic if you’re into foraging to have to know where to go and when to go there. Plus so much comes so easy in this game it’s fun to have to strategize a bit to accomplish something.
Yeah, I like that the harvestables are scarce and that sometimes it takes a while to get an errand done. Otherwise I'd zip through everything in just a few gaming sessions and then complain that there was nothing to do. I'm enjoying the slower pace, although in some ways it's not slow at all, because my poor sim is busy every minute taking care of her crops, animals, and going to HOB every few days to sell stuff.