I just got the "Seasons" expansion for Christmas by way of a generous Amazon gift card, and I'm quite happy to finally have weather. The rain and snow look pretty nice, and I really like how the leaves slowly fall off of the trees over the course of the fall and the frost on the windows in winter is a nice touch. However, there are a few things in seasons I am not fond of.
1. The Autonomous "Witness First Snow" action is annoying. It causes your sim to actually walk all the way outside of the house to look at the snow...all the way outside. If your sim lives in a tiny shack, not so bad, but if you have a medium/large house, it's super annoying...especially if you're managing several sims at once and you don't catch the sim who's on their way outside until they're just about to hit the stairs! Why can't your sim just go to the nearest window to see the snow like TS2?! Why do they have to trek all the way outside just to see the snow? No. That was a poor design decision, especially because it happens even with Autonomy set to OFF!! No desert for you.
2. The Holiday Activities are kind of lame. If they get a full golden checkmark on at least 3/4 of the holiday activities, they get a happy moodlet. If your sim doesn't spam through at least 3/4 of the holiday activities enough to get a gold checkmark on them, sad moodlet. The worst part is that with the Spooky activity type, I had a family of vampires and had them interacting with each other non-stop, but none of the interactions counted toward a gold checkmark on the activity. What the actual Heck? Yeah...Holidays are pretty weak.
3. The snowball fight animations are slow, limp, and lifeless. I had three Child sims having a snowball fight, thinking it was going to be a cute, funny romp...WRONG! They stand around more than anything, and they move around so slowly, rarely ever throwing a snowball. There's just no action, no dynamism to the whole affair and it's boring to watch! A snowball fight should not be boring to watch! What sort of wrong have you done to your animation team for them to toss out a crummy set of snowball fight animations and go, "Yeah, it's done, here. Just give us our paychecks so we can go home and drink away the pain." Thank goodness I didn't pay full price for this pack with these weak oars snowball fights.
Aside from these complaints, I do like the weather and seasonal effects, and the calendar is very useful, at least, for keeping track of sims' birthdays (an invaluable tool for playing with families) and scheduling parties and vacations in advance. Still, not as good as "Get Together" (still my favorite EP, sorry), but not quite as bad as "City Living" (still disappointed about that thing).
There is a song I hear, a melody from the past...
When I woke for the first time, when I slept for the last.
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Comments
It looks like a beta version.
Something wicked this way comes!
I don't use MCCC.
> @RavenclawDragonlord Your sims need to wear the clothes in the cold weather category to feel warm. Any other category can have them wear jackets and scarves and leggings under their pants, they will still feel cold because it's not the cold weather outfit.
I know but technically PJ's should most of the time be counted as warm :neutral: I had them get up and then they decided it was really cold in their house - that was before I realised their heating was off but like it should have still been warm as it had been on earlier.
You're right. If you take a look at older packs like Get to work and all of its flaws and how often they go back a fix that it gives you an idea of how things will be handled when we have more packs later on down the line.
With the vampires, maybe it's because the activities are perfectly normal for them that they don't count as spooky. If you do interactions that have a holiday marking, that should count towards the Holiday Spirit requirements. I agree the snowball fights (and water balloon in summer) could be a bit better in terms of the animations. And the First Snow only seems to happen the first time your Sims experience snow -- I haven't really seen it reoccur with my established households.
Get Together is a great pack -- I enjoy having the club system available for my Sims even if I don't use it every save (if I do get a Sim in the acting career I might look into an acting club) and I really enjoy nightclubs now with the DJ booths. Best parts of CL are the semi-active careers (where you can choose to work from home or go into the office -- they're great when raising toddlers) and the singing skill/karaoke bars. I also like the festivals but Seasons has kind of ruined them for me -- I'll send my Sims but they end up arriving in a blizzard or thunderstorm.
Fun must be always -- Tomas Hertl (San Jose Sharks hockey player)
The umbrellas still don't work right with autonomy off. I don't give my Sims any weather-related perks (like stormchaser or hot-cold immunity), since that would kind of nullify the point of Seasons for me, but as umbrellas are such a pain, they do get the waterproof trait. I sent a Sim to rake leaves, and she kept cancelling after each pile because she was fiddling with the umbrella. (The umbrellas worked nicely in S3. Wish they could duplicate that.)
I agree...I don't get what the issue is with the umbrella fiddling that sims do, it's almost ridiculous. I would settle for them setting it so that at least active sims don't even try to use the umbrella except when we tell them to at this point.
The Winters family Tree --- My Mods
The umbrellas open even when its just cloudy.
My sims geet umbrellas automatically from I dont know where after I removed the build mode item.
Reaking leaves only works for long periods of time if you keep your screen on the sim.
Sims get a negative moodlet if its too hot in the sun or the thermostat is set to hot during summer but they dont get a moodlet when wearing cold clothing inside during summer.
All evidence that the devs dont play their own game. Took me less than a day to observe this and more. Reporting these issues to people who dont play their own game is futile because they dont understand their own game to fix it.
Love the game, hate the company is driving me mad.
It's supposed to be mimicking frozen ground. As a gardener irl you can't plant before your ground is thawed and you don't plant before the last freeze because of possibility the ground freezing again or the cold killing your plants. So even if it's been warm doesn't mean that the ground has thawed enough to plant in.
Something wicked this way comes!
I don't use MCCC.
try:
thermostatoutfittweak: When the thermostat is on, Sims will change from their coldweather outfits to everyday inside. When its hot outside and the thermostat is cooling, sims change from hotweather outfit to everyday when inside. Sims will also change from hot weather outfit into their everyday outfit when feeling chilled outside. Sims will now also change from coldweather wear to everyday if they enter a room with a lit fireplace.
walkbyrainfix_version2: Sims walking by won't wear ridiculous outfit combinations when it's raining anymore. With version 2 Sims will actually choose boots and a raincoat.
Modders are saving the game.
The holidays wore off on me long ago. There’s really just no reason to keep doing them over and over. Features like that get super repetitive, even with the surprise holidays. I haven’t seen other sims participating in holiday activities on their own either, I thought that was supposed to be a thing.
Something else that REALLY irks me with seasons is that Sims aren’t programmed to change out of their hot/cold clothing when they go indoors. I got a mod to solve it, but what is the deal with that? Sims will change into their outerwear for 2 seconds to take the trash out and come back inside and leave it on. This wasn’t a problem in Sims 2 or 3!
On a similar note the thermostat, which was a fun idea, is also super annoying. You are basically forced into getting one or else your home will be hot or cold. Couldn’t they have made that an opt in thing? I don’t always want to bother with a thermostat to play a household without obnoxious outfit changes. Who puts on their winter coat when you’re cold inside your house?
I always give my sims at least two cold weather outfits: One to wear when it's cold inside, and one for outside, like this:
Of course, that means I always have to tell them manually which outfit to wear when, and I have no control over it when I meet them as NPCs while playing other sims, but that's still better than seeing them walk around dressed for the Antarctic while indoors.
Something wicked this way comes!
I don't use MCCC.