I just struggle to find anything fun to play in snowy escape. Winter sport is just some repetitive animation. Lifestyle sadly I have just disabled it cuz it offers no new gameplay what so ever. The world is pretty and that’s it.
Paranormal pack has a sort of active career and the lot type has some back story and gameplay with a purpose to clear the hauntedness.
I feel like sims 4 expansion packs are very lacklustre.
Does anyone else feel the same ?
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I've been playing with Paranormal almost every day since release, and I feel like I've gotten more gameplay out of it than Snowy Escape.
I got SE on sale, and I've hardly touched the world apart from one or two vacations. I guess it didn't grab my attention as much.
I think it's because of the open ended feel of the pack. You can plop down a séance table or haunted house just about anywhere. Snowy Escape felt a lot more restricted imo.
It's fun and has great BB, but I still feel like I bought the gold edition of a Sims 3 Store World, if you know what I mean.
I expect there's more to that pack than we already know, like Get to Work, when you fully explore the options.
Comparing and contrasting SE and Paranormal Stuff is tantamount to doing it with quantity and quality. Paranormal does one thing, haunted houses, very well. I would argue it is the best SP, but for the same reason it breaks the SP mold. SE gives you an entire Asian snow world, with plenty of vacation type things to do (snowboarding, skiing, mountain climbing, hiking, onsen, festivals, etc.). It very much fits the destination world expansion mold, like IL before it.
I understand what you are getting at, though. Especially if you have a bunch of the other packs, SE offers very little new. A lot of things have familiar flavor. Festivals are just one example of something from another pack.
That being said, I do love SE. I feel it could have been much more, but I do think there are worse expansions. I am admittedly biased, though. I wanted a snow world and an Asian world and still believe they would have been better served apart, but it is all stuff I wanted even if it is not enough. Plus my favorite things about SE are not winter sports. It is the traits, the atmosphere, the little things like the spirits, and the lifestyles (I still really like them even if they are still ridiculously bugged). I love Paranormal Stuff, too, of course, but I do not think it is fair to say the haunted house lot and career is more gameplay than all of SE.
While I am finding Paranormal gameplay to be fun, it's definitely not something I'll explore much once I've played through it. So in reality, other than the "stuff" that came with the gameplay, it doesn't have much "replay" value.
Snowy Escapes, on the other hand, is something that I've already had multiple generations play. I don't use the "vacation" part but have them go for a Saturday for the family to do as an activity. It's no more "boring" in that way than it is for my family to go skiing for the day in real life. So I use it the same way.
I did disable Lifestyles, however. There's a glitch where you can't get rid of a lifestyle you no longer want. And also a glitch where a "workaholic" Sim gets "tense" even if he does "work at home" things on his day off. I'll probably turn it back on if they ever fix that because I did like the idea.
For me game packs and stuff packs are more about niche things. (I'm especially thinking of Journey to Baatu, which I've *never* had my Sims participate in and probably never will. And I'm not really into "paranormal" activities.) The CAS and build/buy things may be useful, but not the "gameplay." But the EPs have more CAS and build/buy things that I use and I use the gameplay in Sim after Sim, family after family.
I think this boils down to the differences in the ways that Simmers play. Simmers who like specific things (like supernatural things or Star Wars) will love packs like Paranormal, Vampires and the like. They like the "excitement" factor. Simmers who play long term families probably will use them once (if at all) and then no more. They'd rather have gameplay that mimics their real lives and have more re-playability. And builders are happy if the buy/build things have sufficient "neutral" swatches so that they can use the items in builds other than the one in which those items came. (Builders, for example, may dislike the "Star Wars" aspects of Journey to Baatu, but they like the buy/build items. They seem to be surprised by the versatility of many of the objects!)
One of the nice things about all of these DLC is that if you don't like the things that come in a pack, you don't have to buy it. You're not stuck with it. (Unlike Minecraft who "updates" things that you don't like but can't avoid.) If you're not convinced it will be to your liking, you can wait until the YouTubers have done bunches of "Let's Plays" and reviewers (YouTube and in blogs) have reviewed the pack to see if it's something that you might enjoy. And if you buy it and find that it's not to your liking after all because it ruins something you do like, you can disable the DLC and go back to the way you liked it. All you're out is the money and the time. You're not stuck with it no matter what.
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1923-2016 mamie
Snowy Escape really fell short in the "fun" department, sure there's winter sports but are they fun to play with? Are they challenging? Do they capture my full attention and keep me gripped? Nope. Sure you can make your own storyline about a snowboarding celebrity but the sports are literally just an animation, there's no challenge there, no drive to succeed, no player involvement. There's nothing for me to achieve or work towards achieving, just repeating an animation until my sim is level 10 just isn't fun for me.
This is the main reason why I prefer game packs over expansions. Vampires for example has tons of gameplay, it adds challenge to the game and a whole new way of playing. Dine Out let's you run a business and go through the challenges of micromanaging and keeping things running smoothly. Parenthood adds a lot of gameplay and challenges for raising kids, etc etc. If you compare these with expansions, sure Island Living adds a pretty world but where's the challenge? Where's the directed gameplay? There isn't any. Same goes for City Living and Snowy Escape, great world but there's nothing to challenge or stimulate me which makes them boring to play with.
Majority of SE gameplay is tied to the world unfortunately which wouldn't have been so bad if they had more things for them to do at home or outside that which is really only lifestyles, salary person career and vending machines and sentiments came with a patch.
But paranormal is more interesting of the two
Why is it that content from Expansions Packs feels more recycled than contents from Stuff Packs that is what happening now but it does not make sense Lol. However surely, there is a problem with the creativity of the Expansion Pack team.
Think about it. We have three World Focused Expansion Packs that do the Same.
-A Beautiful looking world with many props.
-Festitvals that are repetitive.
-A Non Existent Pretend Culture with recycled animations compared to Jungle Adventures Actual Culture.
City Living, Island Living and Snow Living ("Escape") all have the same formula. I mean why? Do we really need festivals in this three expansion Packs for example? I mean they can take the Culture and World on these 3 but atleast change the festivals. or something.
I bet if there will be another expansion pack that will focus on a new world, we will get another set of repetitive festivals, and cultures that do not have a companion skill nor animations.
http://forums.thesims.com/en_US/discussion/924539/features-that-needs-depth-and-ways-to-improve
The winter sports are just animations. There is nothing active about it really. You just tell them to ski or snowboard and they do it and you just watch. Lifestyle are a background feature. Yeah, you do things to earn and maintain them but for the most part they are just buffs and autonomy changes for some. The Salery-person career is also just a standard career you send them to work/complete your daily assignment and then your done. The Onsen is nice and very fitting for the world but it basically a giant inground hottub. You tell them to relax and done. Nothing in the pack is really active or super engaging.
Paranormal gives you a career but because it's an active freelance career you have to be engaged and actively work to clear the house of paranormal activity. The Haunted Lot type is also very active as you need to work to lower the activity or risk your house becoming too chaotic to live in at night. This pack offers a lot less but what is does offer is active gameplay so it's more engaging and impactful.
City living is the first of the world-packs and it is actually good. It introduced festival for the first time, and it has 3 careers ! Also apartments are quite different to live in.
Island living introduced a half baked off the grid lot which is super boring (EL fixed it) and one career and nothing much.
I hate the fact that its gameplay is tied to the world. But mostly my enjoyment (or lack of it) is all about how funny the gameplay is... winter sports aren't funny imo. Paranormal gameplay is funny
I don’t understand why they can’t add more in an EP given the level of recycling. I have a feeling they blew most their budget on world building.
I think CL has the kind of rags to riches gameplay that i find challenging... starting in a 'needs tlc' apartment with rats and loud neighbours to get to a penthouse. It can be funny.
IL has the conservationist career and the changing of the beach environment by cleaning the beach and so on... SE is about the mountain climbing... both very lackluster and kind of boring...
Yeah, I agree. It's that kind of challenging gameplay that keeps you engaged as a player (for me at least). The build-up of the haunts in the first nights, the greyed out séance table because of low motives, the pop-ups with the sound effects, etc. Snowy Escape's gameplay looks cool but it doesn't lure you in. For me as a player there's no real incentive to become a snowboarder/skier, except for when I play in Mt. Komorebi.
I think Eco Lifestyle actually did better in that area. The new systems were a bit rough around the edges but the ideas felt fresh.
That said I still love SE (would love it more if they fixed the skiing/snowboarding bugs tho).
I haven't had so much fun with a Stuff pack since Tiny Living & Romantic Gardens.