Isn’t it sad that a game changer who tells the truth gets accused of being a troll when another who cries tears and screams like a teenage girl is held up as the gold standard?
I have no problem with Carl’s reviews, I’m glad SOMEONE is talking about the game play. He saved me £20 as I don’t want to buy a pack where once again consequences and choices don’t matter.
Yeah I'm kiiiinda sensing some double standards here. Dude gave a negative review so suddenly people are acting like he's no longer credible just because they disagree. It's the same BS that LGR always went through. Game Changers aren't required to be the uber-positive EA shills that some of them act like they have to be. Carl had an honest opinion of the pack and he gave it. Like he's always done. And just from seeing other game changers' play throughs (even the positive ones) I gotta say, most of what he said was spot on. This pack is a hot *** mess.
I'm, once again, slowly getting off the fence and leaning more towards skipping it.
Isn’t it sad that a game changer who tells the truth gets accused of being a troll when another who cries tears and screams like a teenage girl is held up as the gold standard?
I suggest a nice in-between. Everyone start watching Plumbella. She's awesome and typically not overly positive or negative.
He was honest, but it wasn't as over the top as Carl's is. I mean we all knew this pack is weak on Gameplay before, no need to dedicate the whole review to making fun of the shortcomings of the career.
I know we already have sofas and stoves and shelfes, but doing what they did with these is hard work and while it does not justify the price tag of a GP in my eyes, I would still expect a review to mention that the BB is of good quality. These aren't really new gameplay objects but they also aren't just carbon copies of assets we already have in the game, there is more to them than jus ta new sofa that functions exactly the same as sofas in previous packs.
I understand that the Buy Mode assets were technically new , and great in quantity (Build mode was an ABSOLUTE JOKE with a single wallpaper and 3 doors). However, the issue I have (and Plumbella did too, along with several people on the subreddit) is that the style is something that we have gotten ad nauseum to the point where we are numb to this mid-century modern IKEA-esque furniture that they keep spitting out in tons of packs. It's overdone to an absurd degree, so even if the models are new and each piece is unique, it all looks so similar to existing pieces that it's incredibly easy to gloss over the newness of it and go right into being unimpressed by the same stuff we've already got. If this was a new style that the Sims team hadn't given us tons of already, or even if the pack included like 4 different styles instead of just the one, it would feel a lot better, but with a style we've seen time and time again, it's hard to really appreciate it. If we had gotten more styles like Victorian, Art Nouveau, Colonial, or Rococco, I think a lot more people would have overlooked some of the shortcomings of the career since we'd be getting furniture that isn't well represented, but that's not the case.
Pointing that out is not "adolescent" just because you do not play that way or do not agree with it.
I suppose I understand not liking negativity, but you went a step further saying a review was neither "helpful" nor "legitimate" and was even "pointless" and "adolescent" just because you did not like it. I simply do not watch the reviews I do not care for. I do not demean them and their creators.
I thought the deliberate choice of placing only dog poop in a build was "adolescent" not Carl himself. Ditto the description of this approach to discussing the pack as pointless. I suppose I should have explained more clearly that the review seemed pointless to me because I am interested in the career, that I didn't particularly find it helpful personally speaking because I didn't learn anything useful about the pack or how it worked. I played the original career extensively in Sims 3 and would really have appreciated a longtime Sims 3 player like Carl pointing out similarities and differences for instance (not that I had any particular expectations going in).
You seem to be deliberately misrepresenting my words by quoting them out of context and ignoring my general point about the review. You are also attributing to me opinions that I never said I hold. I have never judged how anyone else, least of all Carl, plays the game, people are free to play how they like and I certainly have no opinion or negative judgment about it. In a thread about a review, I posted my thoughts on why I did not find this to be a valuable or useful review due to its unbalanced nature and failure to treat the career in an objective way. I enjoy plenty of reviews that have negative or critical elements and still find them useful. For me, Carl's was not; it was just inflammatory. And disagreeing with someone's approach to a subject is not about demeaning them, it's about refuting, intellectually, their argument. His argument was that the pack was worthless because it was easily broken; I don't happen to agree. But I won't repeat all my points again. Peace.
Pointing that out is not "adolescent" just because you do not play that way or do not agree with it.
I suppose I understand not liking negativity, but you went a step further saying a review was neither "helpful" nor "legitimate" and was even "pointless" and "adolescent" just because you did not like it. I simply do not watch the reviews I do not care for. I do not demean them and their creators.
I thought the deliberate choice of placing only dog poop in a build was "adolescent" not Carl himself. Ditto the description of this approach to discussing the pack as pointless. I suppose I should have explained more clearly that the review seemed pointless to me because I am interested in the career, that I didn't particularly find it helpful personally speaking because I didn't learn anything useful about the pack or how it worked. I played the original career extensively in Sims 3 and would really have appreciated a longtime Sims 3 player like Carl pointing out similarities and differences for instance (not that I had any particular expectations going in).
You seem to be deliberately misrepresenting my words by quoting them out of context and ignoring my general point about the review. You are also attributing to me opinions that I never said I hold. I have never judged how anyone else, least of all Carl, plays the game, people are free to play how they like and I certainly have no opinion or negative judgment about it. In a thread about a review, I posted my thoughts on why I did not find this to be a valuable or useful review due to its unbalanced nature and failure to treat the career in an objective way. I enjoy plenty of reviews that have negative or critical elements and still find them useful. For me, Carl's was not; it was just inflammatory. And disagreeing with someone's approach to a subject is not about demeaning them, it's about refuting, intellectually, their argument. His argument was that the pack was worthless because it was easily broken; I don't happen to agree. But I won't repeat all my points again. Peace.
I think you may be missing the point of Carl's review. His review made it abundantly clear that the rules the career followed were incredibly nebulous and rudimentary, to the point where you could overhaul their living room when tasked with a kitchen renovation and still succeed so long as you hit their likes. That's enough to tell you that this career is a hollow sham with a bare minimum of parameters in place and not enough to really make it a rich, developed interior designer career like it should be to feel fulfilling. I'm not sure what else you're expecting from this kind of career review - if the career is fundamentally broken, seeing more of it isn't going to make it any better. Even branching out from Carl, I just saw someone post today on Reddit that they got a kitchen renovation request in which the customer hated cooking and loved video editing, which is critically flawed when you're tasked with upgrading their cooking room. So Carl's review of the career was on point in showing just how poorly constructed this career was.
Is it just me or has he become more and more negative? I remember when Carl's Guides were neutral or positive. The last year or so it seemed he's always upset.
It is "popular" now
I miss the neutral reviews too.
I always want honest reviews.
And I never said I did not. Does neutral mean "not honest" these days? Person has to either love the back or totally hate it to be "honest"?
I mean Carl used to have neutral reviews, positive or not, THOSE I loved. They were good reviews, I did not want to know does he like the pack or not, I have already made my own opinion. What I needed to know what was in the pack. Good or bad, without going nuts about it.
AGAIN, to ME, and I as any others here , have the right to tell how I feel. To me (only to me, again, not to everyone or "us") , it feels more like now he is trying to get the pack to look as bad as he can, in purpose. Again, only how I feel. I might be wrong.
And the same goes with those who in their reveal hype the pack to heavens, no matter what is in it, not watching those either.
My love, my love, my fearless love, I will not say goodbye..
Sea may rise, sky may fall, My love will never die..
My heart, my heart, My drowning heart, Oh all the tears I've cried
Oh I may weep forevermore, My love will never die..
The poop was just to prove a point - that decorating the room doesn't actually matter, even if you show off the poop; the only thing that seems to matter is getting a colour in Likes and Dislikes, then putting it on your walls.
Prepping a list of mods to add after Infants are placed into the game. Because real life isn't 'nice'.
Is it just me or has he become more and more negative? I remember when Carl's Guides were neutral or positive. The last year or so it seemed he's always upset.
It is "popular" now
I miss the neutral reviews too.
I always want honest reviews.
And I never said I did not. Does neutral mean "not honest" these days? Person has to either love the back or totally hate it to be "honest"?
I mean Carl used to have neutral reviews, positive or not, THOSE I loved. They were good reviews, I did not want to know does he like the pack or not, I have already made my own opinion. What I needed to know what was in the pack. Good or bad, without going nuts about it.
AGAIN, to ME, and I as any others here , have the right to tell how I feel. To me (only to me, again, not to everyone or "us") , it feels more like now he is trying to get the pack to look as bad as he can, in purpose. Again, only how I feel. I might be wrong.
And the same goes with those who in their reveal hype the pack to heavens, no matter what is in it, not watching those either.
I didn't said you don't want honest reviews. I said i prefer always honesty. For good and bad. I don't want neutral, i want the truth. If the truth is neutral then that's what it is...
But you did said that being negative is popular now. And i think that's not truth. I think that whoever says a negative remark is publicly "punished". Just compare lilsimsie popularity and Carl's popularity.
Yesterday Plumbella announced that she's not making more reviews because she can't handle the anxiety of people accusing her of being overly negative or positive. Clearly, because she's leaving now, it must have been for being negative about this pack.
Being negative is not taking game changers anywhere, to any glory, to popularity. They need to be brave to do that.
And honestly, Carl, a guy that has deepen into all features of sims 3 to make really in depth guides, starts playing this career and what is he going to think? That it's in depht? You're asked to do a kitchen reno, you do a gym instead, and that's ok? Because the couches are beautiful? Carl has different standards...
But i don't have the pack. So i would love if someone could tell me if Carl is making that up, on purpose, to make the pack look bad...
I think you may be missing the point of Carl's review. His review made it abundantly clear that the rules the career followed were incredibly nebulous and rudimentary, to the point where you could overhaul their living room when tasked with a kitchen renovation and still succeed so long as you hit their likes. That's enough to tell you that this career is a hollow sham with a bare minimum of parameters in place and not enough to really make it a rich, developed interior designer career like it should be to feel fulfilling. I'm not sure what else you're expecting from this kind of career review - if the career is fundamentally broken, seeing more of it isn't going to make it any better. Even branching out from Carl, I just saw someone post today on Reddit that they got a kitchen renovation request in which the customer hated cooking and loved video editing, which is critically flawed when you're tasked with upgrading their cooking room. So Carl's review of the career was on point in showing just how poorly constructed this career was.
I didn't miss Carl's point; I just disagreed with it, as I already said. At that point I had not played the career yet but I had watched some other excellent reviews from Plumbella and English Simmer. I did not find Carl's as helpful as theirs (which were far from adulatory), that's all. In the past, I played the Sims 3 Ambitions career quite a lot, and now that I have had the opportunity to play with this career I see it as essentially the same career with just a fresh coat of paint. The Sims 3 career had some annoying glitches and bugs leading to some weird randomness (like required objects not being checked off sometimes even though you placed them in a renovation, just to name one). I think this version of the career has tried to fix these; but probably they went too far in the other direction (I don't know for sure, as I have only had a few gigs so far) as they simplified it. In my experience, though, the career is not (in my opinion) nebulous and rudimentary, or fundamentally broken (leaving aside some of the bugs that some gamechangers and players -- not me -- have experienced), or not any more than the Sims 3 version.
My sim failed at a gig because the client didn't like Contemporary Decor and I had accidentally placed a TV (which I didn't know counted as Contemporary) so there did appear to be consequences for your choices, as there were in Sims 3, if you didn't pay enough attention to traits; I also had fun succeeding at gigs and having sims clap at my carefully chosen objects. I enjoy the new animations and the before/after reveal trailer too. Prior to this pack, I already liked decorating and redecorating my played sims houses, so for me it is just a new, interesting way to do more of that, have my sims now make money at it, and have them go out and engage more with the townie sims that I usually ignore. The Sims 3 career essentially worked that way as well, at least as I remember it. Based on my experience of now having played both sims 3 and sim 4 versions of this career, it's not that different, and that just confirms me in my view that Carl's opinion of this pack (as someone else said above) was not neutral, but seemed intended to make the pack look bad on purpose. Probably he was genuinely frustrated, I don't know, since apparently his expectations were completely different than mine, but the result was that I didn't find his review particularly enlightening, that's all.
Maybe Carl's sims liked the poop because brown was their fav color? His review was fun but when I played the career myself I really liked it and there were no bugs. Bad coding perhaps because the likes were for only one family member but still I was under budget and got rid of so much superfluous furniture I came home rich!
I love the fact that I can take a job, steal all their stuff, give them a bathtub and get paid still.
@Dannakyri1 This is the only part of the pack I genuinely love. The fact that you can throw parties at the house when the owners are away. Just my gameplay style.
I just wish they added some kind of "punishment" for you if the owners came back and caught you in the act. Get you fired or something. Drop your reputation. Just the kind of stuff I live for.
The Renovation system that was added in the Sims 3 Ambitions EP has a complexity many people are unaware of.
What happened to Carl would not happen in The Sims 3:
// Sims3.Gameplay.ActiveCareer.ActiveCareers.InteriorDesigner.Renovation
private float Metric_DirtyObjects()
{
int num = 0;
foreach (Action scoringAction in ScoringActions)
{
if (scoringAction.Origin == Origin.Owned && scoringAction.Item.Cleanable != null && scoringAction.Item.Cleanable.VisuallyDirty)
{
mbDirtyObjectsPlaced = true;
num++;
}
}
return 0f - (float)num * kMetricDirtyObjectsPointsDeductedPerDirtyObject;
}
The scoring for each renovation also takes into account:
- The Environment score (which is a BG system). The math the game uses to calculate this are extremely complex.
- Whether the player moved an object of its original location rather than buying a new one.
- Client's traits. For example, snob sims want you to spend more money; hates the outdoors sims want as few windows as possible.
- Plants, rugs and home-made items give a boost to the score.
- Extra points if you use an object whose subject is the client (like a painting or sculpture of the client) or someone from their household.
- Special actions such as discussing the renovation and taking measurements give additional score but are NOT required.
- Objects that contain the word "cheap" internally deduct points.
- The number of rooms and square tiles is stored before the renovation to use for scoring later.
The Renovation system that was added in the Sims 3 Ambitions EP has a complexity many people are unaware of.
The scoring for each renovation also takes into account:
- The Environment score (which is a BG system). The math the game uses to calculate this are extremely complex.
- Whether the player moved an object of its original location rather than buying a new one.
- Client's traits. For example, snob sims want you to spend more money; hates the outdoors sims want as few windows as possible.
- Plants, rugs and home-made items give a boost to the score.
- Extra points if you use an object whose subject is the client (like a painting or sculpture of the client) or someone from their household.
- Special actions such as discussing the renovation and taking measurements give additional score but are NOT required.
- Objects that contain the word "cheap" internally deduct points.
- The number of rooms and square tiles is stored before the renovation to use for scoring later.
Seeing how thoughtful the Sims 3 code was really makes the Sims 4 seem lacking.
It appears Carl has filled in the lgr gap in terms of knowing his reviews are going to be more critical. It’s what I expect now from him. I’m not saying that’s a bad thing and definitely not a troll but for me when I want to watch a review I want a full honest opinion and Carl like lgr is the opposite end to some of the super positive ones lilsimsie and deligracy who I find over positive. Both types of reviews I don’t find helpful or sometimes truthful. Plumbella does good reviews as she looks at both positives and negatives and is more balanced. Personally this time I liked grim cookies he is usually very positive in his reviews so for his to be negative I think is a much more honest reaction which I value more.
Is it just me or has he become more and more negative? I remember when Carl's Guides were neutral or positive. The last year or so it seemed he's always upset.
It's because he's being influenced by the increased negativity of the fanbase in general. It gets to a point that you feel out place for thinking differently than the majority, this allows negative influences to make adjustments to way you think. I'm sad to say that I've only come to understand this now because I, myself was undergoing it.
Case in point, it follows the same deal of if you hear a lie enough times it becomes the truth.
I don't see any depth to the dog poop stunt. What did the last masterpiece your sim painted look like? You already can hang literally anything on the wall and sims will get a positive vibe from it--so that probably isn't the point; never has been.
I want to think that Carl gets the manifest style of TS4 that makes it different (better or worse, whatever) from TS3. But he's lately brushed that aside so flippantly that it's hard to take him seriously. He's clearly joined in with some solid critique of the GP and stated it effectively. But I'm glad I wasn't deterred by his (comparatively restrained) criticism of Island Living, for example.
I think I've settled into a playstyle that the game rewards, and it's surprisingly opposite to what Carl--who has apparently built a livelihood on the back of a game he seems to fundamentally not enjoy--recommends.
The Renovation system that was added in the Sims 3 Ambitions EP has a complexity many people are unaware of.
What happened to Carl would not happen in The Sims 3:
// Sims3.Gameplay.ActiveCareer.ActiveCareers.InteriorDesigner.Renovation
private float Metric_DirtyObjects()
{
int num = 0;
foreach (Action scoringAction in ScoringActions)
{
if (scoringAction.Origin == Origin.Owned && scoringAction.Item.Cleanable != null && scoringAction.Item.Cleanable.VisuallyDirty)
{
mbDirtyObjectsPlaced = true;
num++;
}
}
return 0f - (float)num * kMetricDirtyObjectsPointsDeductedPerDirtyObject;
}
The scoring for each renovation also takes into account:
- The Environment score (which is a BG system). The math the game uses to calculate this are extremely complex.
- Whether the player moved an object of its original location rather than buying a new one.
- Client's traits. For example, snob sims want you to spend more money; hates the outdoors sims want as few windows as possible.
- Plants, rugs and home-made items give a boost to the score.
- Extra points if you use an object whose subject is the client (like a painting or sculpture of the client) or someone from their household.
- Special actions such as discussing the renovation and taking measurements give additional score but are NOT required.
- Objects that contain the word "cheap" internally deduct points.
- The number of rooms and square tiles is stored before the renovation to use for scoring later.
Considering this was one of many careers and other in deph features in ambitions and now we're only getting one career at a gamepack price, i was expecting it to be at least as good.
I don't see any depth to the dog poop stunt. What did the last masterpiece your sim painted look like? You already can hang literally anything on the wall and sims will get a positive vibe from it--so that probably isn't the point; never has been.
I want to think that Carl gets the manifest style of TS4 that makes it different (better or worse, whatever) from TS3. But he's lately brushed that aside so flippantly that it's hard to take him seriously. He's clearly joined in with some solid critique of the GP and stated it effectively. But I'm glad I wasn't deterred by his (comparatively restrained) criticism of Island Living, for example.
I think I've settled into a playstyle that the game rewards, and it's surprisingly opposite to what Carl--who has apparently built a livelihood on the back of a game he seems to fundamentally not enjoy--recommends.
Island Living is the most content-free EP ever, so yay for Carl.
Is it just me or has he become more and more negative? I remember when Carl's Guides were neutral or positive. The last year or so it seemed he's always upset.
It's because he's being influenced by the increased negativity of the fanbase in general. It gets to a point that you feel out place for thinking differently than the majority, this allows negative influences to make adjustments to way you think. I'm sad to say that I've only come to understand this now because I, myself was undergoing it.
Case in point, it follows the same deal of if you hear a lie enough times it becomes the truth.
If you played TS3's Ambitions then how does this stand up to that? It cost $20 with one half baked career. TS3 Sims aren't happy if you don't meet the requirements for interior decorator. It's much more complex than this DLC. Big Fish site has several games like this DLC, and I can tell you the characters who request stuff (and other characters actually have to paint the walls and remove the furniture etc.) are not happy if an item is not filled to their specific requests. They are very popular with players who like strategy and or linear play and or time management games. This dlc seems to be hurry up and make a GP and call it a day. No new floors, or only one wall paint and or no consequences for selling off the big TV or a nice, expensive couch? It seems no one cared what the heck they were building that day. No specific room? Really? That's a good thing? lol A quick look at the game play of those little games over on BF and or TS3's Ambitions EP with more than one career and a complex interior decorator remake can show the difference between the truth and a lie.
"Games Are Not The Place To Tell Stories, Games Are Meant To Let People Tell Their Own Stories"...Will Wright.
Is it just me or has he become more and more negative? I remember when Carl's Guides were neutral or positive. The last year or so it seemed he's always upset.
It's because he's being influenced by the increased negativity of the fanbase in general. It gets to a point that you feel out place for thinking differently than the majority, this allows negative influences to make adjustments to way you think. I'm sad to say that I've only come to understand this now because I, myself was undergoing it.
Case in point, it follows the same deal of if you hear a lie enough times it becomes the truth.
Not everyone are going to like a pack that Maxis makes, you know best yourself if you like this pack or not.
That's why I think it's good that we have Carl because he has a different point of view. Not everyone is going to agree with it but that's fine, people that want to listen to people with different points of view have the option to do so. It's better than just listening to people who have a very similar taste and tend to like everything that Maxis makes.
If you have doubts about this pack, listen to some other gamechangers, some of them really liked the idea of having no rules when doing decorations because they could build whatever they wanted.
Oh dear. That doesn't sound good. I still plan to get it though.
And people wonder why the game is in the state it is in and why EA get away with the stuff that they do?
This is the very epitome of why.
Edit; Carl is one of the TWO YouTubers I will watch for reviews and honesty. He pretty much mirrors anything I think, but I’ve even seen plumbella and others saying how disappointed they are.
It goes beyond whether you like the game or not now, the game is broken, the service is abysmal, the content is lacklustre and my enjoyment is nonexistent because of it. If they want money from the everyday people like me, this ain’t the way to do it.
The comment I quoted is a big problem for everyone. Sure, you’re happy with the game now, I was once too.
Yeah I'm kiiiinda sensing some double standards here. Dude gave a negative review so suddenly people are acting like he's no longer credible just because they disagree. It's the same BS that LGR always went through. Game Changers aren't required to be the uber-positive EA shills that some of them act like they have to be. Carl had an honest opinion of the pack and he gave it. Like he's always done. And just from seeing other game changers' play throughs (even the positive ones) I gotta say, most of what he said was spot on. This pack is a hot *** mess.
I'm, once again, slowly getting off the fence and leaning more towards skipping it.
Isn’t it sad that a game changer who tells the truth gets accused of being a troll when another who cries tears and screams like a teenage girl is held up as the gold standard?
I suggest a nice in-between. Everyone start watching Plumbella. She's awesome and typically not overly positive or negative.
Personally I would not recommend her, she is waaay too over peppy, too people pleasey, and no offence to her, clearly has other issues going on in her life that she, IMO, should be focusing on instead.
PleasantSims is the way to go I’d say. Her reviews are honest, fair, and they actually make me want to fight for this game, when 99% of the time i couldn’t care less.
Oh dear. That doesn't sound good. I still plan to get it though.
And people wonder why the game is in the state it is in and why EA get away with the stuff that they do?
This is the very epitome of why.
Edit; Carl is one of the TWO YouTubers I will watch for reviews and honesty. He pretty much mirrors anything I think, but I’ve even seen plumbella and others saying how disappointed they are.
It goes beyond whether you like the game or not now, the game is broken, the service is abysmal, the content is lacklustre and my enjoyment is nonexistent because of it. If they want money from the everyday people like me, this ain’t the way to do it.
The comment I quoted is a big problem for everyone. Sure, you’re happy with the game now, I was once too.
—T
This is one of the packs I will get only if it goes on 50% off sale, which I understand is fairly rare for GPs. I don't actually hate the stuff in the pack. It disappoints me, but I do like the stuff, I just don't believe it's anywhere near worth 20$. The job needs work, and I'm hoping there are patches that correct it by the time I'm actually willing to buy it. It's not Journey to Batuu, which automatically means I've not marked it off as unbuyable.
I don't think Carl's being influenced by the fandom's negativity, at least not on any noticeable level. Like many of us, his frustrations over the game have been growing. Sims 4 has been going on for almost 7 years, and a lot of its flaws and failings haven't been addressed - if anything, some of them have gotten worse over time. You see it in a lot of his videos, and not just his reviews: he knows what he wants to see and what the game can do to improve, but nothing is being done.
And I don't think he's being negative to cater to people. Reviews are tricky with this fandom - if you're too positive, you get called a shill and bootlicker who swallow up everything you're given. If you're too negative, people say you're a troll, a hater, doing it for views and not credible. Plumbella and Grimcookies even talked about this in some of their reviews, where they have to preface things by saying "I tried to be positive so people don't think I'm a hater" or "I've been positive in my reviews and people called me a bootlicker." I don't think it's fair to accuse most people of catering to fans, since anything but completely neutral or is going to get you side-eyes.
That said, the Game Changer program will inherently have biases because the big GCs know many of the Gurus personally and are friends with them, and they get the packs for free, before anyone else. Even if they come to a positive opinion on their own, the system is set up in a certain way. LGR, himself, brought this up and said that's why he opted out of getting free review copies. But that's not relevant to my overall point, which is that reviewers can be unfairly criticized. There's an inherent bias in the system, but that doesn't mean reviewers are easily influenced.
The Sims 4 hasn't introduced a new musical instrument since 2017
Comments
I have no problem with Carl’s reviews, I’m glad SOMEONE is talking about the game play. He saved me £20 as I don’t want to buy a pack where once again consequences and choices don’t matter.
I'm, once again, slowly getting off the fence and leaning more towards skipping it.
I suggest a nice in-between. Everyone start watching Plumbella. She's awesome and typically not overly positive or negative.
I understand that the Buy Mode assets were technically new , and great in quantity (Build mode was an ABSOLUTE JOKE with a single wallpaper and 3 doors). However, the issue I have (and Plumbella did too, along with several people on the subreddit) is that the style is something that we have gotten ad nauseum to the point where we are numb to this mid-century modern IKEA-esque furniture that they keep spitting out in tons of packs. It's overdone to an absurd degree, so even if the models are new and each piece is unique, it all looks so similar to existing pieces that it's incredibly easy to gloss over the newness of it and go right into being unimpressed by the same stuff we've already got. If this was a new style that the Sims team hadn't given us tons of already, or even if the pack included like 4 different styles instead of just the one, it would feel a lot better, but with a style we've seen time and time again, it's hard to really appreciate it. If we had gotten more styles like Victorian, Art Nouveau, Colonial, or Rococco, I think a lot more people would have overlooked some of the shortcomings of the career since we'd be getting furniture that isn't well represented, but that's not the case.
I thought the deliberate choice of placing only dog poop in a build was "adolescent" not Carl himself. Ditto the description of this approach to discussing the pack as pointless. I suppose I should have explained more clearly that the review seemed pointless to me because I am interested in the career, that I didn't particularly find it helpful personally speaking because I didn't learn anything useful about the pack or how it worked. I played the original career extensively in Sims 3 and would really have appreciated a longtime Sims 3 player like Carl pointing out similarities and differences for instance (not that I had any particular expectations going in).
You seem to be deliberately misrepresenting my words by quoting them out of context and ignoring my general point about the review. You are also attributing to me opinions that I never said I hold. I have never judged how anyone else, least of all Carl, plays the game, people are free to play how they like and I certainly have no opinion or negative judgment about it. In a thread about a review, I posted my thoughts on why I did not find this to be a valuable or useful review due to its unbalanced nature and failure to treat the career in an objective way. I enjoy plenty of reviews that have negative or critical elements and still find them useful. For me, Carl's was not; it was just inflammatory. And disagreeing with someone's approach to a subject is not about demeaning them, it's about refuting, intellectually, their argument. His argument was that the pack was worthless because it was easily broken; I don't happen to agree. But I won't repeat all my points again. Peace.
I think you may be missing the point of Carl's review. His review made it abundantly clear that the rules the career followed were incredibly nebulous and rudimentary, to the point where you could overhaul their living room when tasked with a kitchen renovation and still succeed so long as you hit their likes. That's enough to tell you that this career is a hollow sham with a bare minimum of parameters in place and not enough to really make it a rich, developed interior designer career like it should be to feel fulfilling. I'm not sure what else you're expecting from this kind of career review - if the career is fundamentally broken, seeing more of it isn't going to make it any better. Even branching out from Carl, I just saw someone post today on Reddit that they got a kitchen renovation request in which the customer hated cooking and loved video editing, which is critically flawed when you're tasked with upgrading their cooking room. So Carl's review of the career was on point in showing just how poorly constructed this career was.
And I never said I did not.
I mean Carl used to have neutral reviews, positive or not, THOSE I loved. They were good reviews, I did not want to know does he like the pack or not, I have already made my own opinion. What I needed to know what was in the pack. Good or bad, without going nuts about it.
AGAIN, to ME, and I as any others here , have the right to tell how I feel. To me (only to me, again, not to everyone or "us") , it feels more like now he is trying to get the pack to look as bad as he can, in purpose. Again, only how I feel. I might be wrong.
And the same goes with those who in their reveal hype the pack to heavens, no matter what is in it, not watching those either.
Sea may rise, sky may fall, My love will never die..
My heart, my heart, My drowning heart, Oh all the tears I've cried
Oh I may weep forevermore, My love will never die..
I didn't said you don't want honest reviews. I said i prefer always honesty. For good and bad. I don't want neutral, i want the truth. If the truth is neutral then that's what it is...
But you did said that being negative is popular now. And i think that's not truth. I think that whoever says a negative remark is publicly "punished". Just compare lilsimsie popularity and Carl's popularity.
Yesterday Plumbella announced that she's not making more reviews because she can't handle the anxiety of people accusing her of being overly negative or positive. Clearly, because she's leaving now, it must have been for being negative about this pack.
Being negative is not taking game changers anywhere, to any glory, to popularity. They need to be brave to do that.
And honestly, Carl, a guy that has deepen into all features of sims 3 to make really in depth guides, starts playing this career and what is he going to think? That it's in depht? You're asked to do a kitchen reno, you do a gym instead, and that's ok? Because the couches are beautiful? Carl has different standards...
But i don't have the pack. So i would love if someone could tell me if Carl is making that up, on purpose, to make the pack look bad...
I didn't miss Carl's point; I just disagreed with it, as I already said. At that point I had not played the career yet but I had watched some other excellent reviews from Plumbella and English Simmer. I did not find Carl's as helpful as theirs (which were far from adulatory), that's all. In the past, I played the Sims 3 Ambitions career quite a lot, and now that I have had the opportunity to play with this career I see it as essentially the same career with just a fresh coat of paint. The Sims 3 career had some annoying glitches and bugs leading to some weird randomness (like required objects not being checked off sometimes even though you placed them in a renovation, just to name one). I think this version of the career has tried to fix these; but probably they went too far in the other direction (I don't know for sure, as I have only had a few gigs so far) as they simplified it. In my experience, though, the career is not (in my opinion) nebulous and rudimentary, or fundamentally broken (leaving aside some of the bugs that some gamechangers and players -- not me -- have experienced), or not any more than the Sims 3 version.
My sim failed at a gig because the client didn't like Contemporary Decor and I had accidentally placed a TV (which I didn't know counted as Contemporary) so there did appear to be consequences for your choices, as there were in Sims 3, if you didn't pay enough attention to traits; I also had fun succeeding at gigs and having sims clap at my carefully chosen objects. I enjoy the new animations and the before/after reveal trailer too. Prior to this pack, I already liked decorating and redecorating my played sims houses, so for me it is just a new, interesting way to do more of that, have my sims now make money at it, and have them go out and engage more with the townie sims that I usually ignore. The Sims 3 career essentially worked that way as well, at least as I remember it. Based on my experience of now having played both sims 3 and sim 4 versions of this career, it's not that different, and that just confirms me in my view that Carl's opinion of this pack (as someone else said above) was not neutral, but seemed intended to make the pack look bad on purpose. Probably he was genuinely frustrated, I don't know, since apparently his expectations were completely different than mine, but the result was that I didn't find his review particularly enlightening, that's all.
@Dannakyri1 This is the only part of the pack I genuinely love. The fact that you can throw parties at the house when the owners are away. Just my gameplay style.
I just wish they added some kind of "punishment" for you if the owners came back and caught you in the act. Get you fired or something. Drop your reputation. Just the kind of stuff I live for.
What happened to Carl would not happen in The Sims 3:
// Sims3.Gameplay.ActiveCareer.ActiveCareers.InteriorDesigner.Renovation private float Metric_DirtyObjects() { int num = 0; foreach (Action scoringAction in ScoringActions) { if (scoringAction.Origin == Origin.Owned && scoringAction.Item.Cleanable != null && scoringAction.Item.Cleanable.VisuallyDirty) { mbDirtyObjectsPlaced = true; num++; } } return 0f - (float)num * kMetricDirtyObjectsPointsDeductedPerDirtyObject; }The scoring for each renovation also takes into account:
- The Environment score (which is a BG system). The math the game uses to calculate this are extremely complex.
- Whether the player moved an object of its original location rather than buying a new one.
- Client's traits. For example, snob sims want you to spend more money; hates the outdoors sims want as few windows as possible.
- Plants, rugs and home-made items give a boost to the score.
- Extra points if you use an object whose subject is the client (like a painting or sculpture of the client) or someone from their household.
- Special actions such as discussing the renovation and taking measurements give additional score but are NOT required.
- Objects that contain the word "cheap" internally deduct points.
- The number of rooms and square tiles is stored before the renovation to use for scoring later.
Seeing how thoughtful the Sims 3 code was really makes the Sims 4 seem lacking.
It's because he's being influenced by the increased negativity of the fanbase in general. It gets to a point that you feel out place for thinking differently than the majority, this allows negative influences to make adjustments to way you think. I'm sad to say that I've only come to understand this now because I, myself was undergoing it.
Case in point, it follows the same deal of if you hear a lie enough times it becomes the truth.
I want to think that Carl gets the manifest style of TS4 that makes it different (better or worse, whatever) from TS3. But he's lately brushed that aside so flippantly that it's hard to take him seriously. He's clearly joined in with some solid critique of the GP and stated it effectively. But I'm glad I wasn't deterred by his (comparatively restrained) criticism of Island Living, for example.
I think I've settled into a playstyle that the game rewards, and it's surprisingly opposite to what Carl--who has apparently built a livelihood on the back of a game he seems to fundamentally not enjoy--recommends.
Considering this was one of many careers and other in deph features in ambitions and now we're only getting one career at a gamepack price, i was expecting it to be at least as good.
Island Living is the most content-free EP ever, so yay for Carl.
If you played TS3's Ambitions then how does this stand up to that? It cost $20 with one half baked career. TS3 Sims aren't happy if you don't meet the requirements for interior decorator. It's much more complex than this DLC. Big Fish site has several games like this DLC, and I can tell you the characters who request stuff (and other characters actually have to paint the walls and remove the furniture etc.) are not happy if an item is not filled to their specific requests. They are very popular with players who like strategy and or linear play and or time management games. This dlc seems to be hurry up and make a GP and call it a day. No new floors, or only one wall paint and or no consequences for selling off the big TV or a nice, expensive couch? It seems no one cared what the heck they were building that day. No specific room? Really? That's a good thing? lol A quick look at the game play of those little games over on BF and or TS3's Ambitions EP with more than one career and a complex interior decorator remake can show the difference between the truth and a lie.
Not everyone are going to like a pack that Maxis makes, you know best yourself if you like this pack or not.
That's why I think it's good that we have Carl because he has a different point of view. Not everyone is going to agree with it but that's fine, people that want to listen to people with different points of view have the option to do so. It's better than just listening to people who have a very similar taste and tend to like everything that Maxis makes.
If you have doubts about this pack, listen to some other gamechangers, some of them really liked the idea of having no rules when doing decorations because they could build whatever they wanted.
And people wonder why the game is in the state it is in and why EA get away with the stuff that they do?
This is the very epitome of why.
Edit; Carl is one of the TWO YouTubers I will watch for reviews and honesty. He pretty much mirrors anything I think, but I’ve even seen plumbella and others saying how disappointed they are.
It goes beyond whether you like the game or not now, the game is broken, the service is abysmal, the content is lacklustre and my enjoyment is nonexistent because of it. If they want money from the everyday people like me, this ain’t the way to do it.
The comment I quoted is a big problem for everyone. Sure, you’re happy with the game now, I was once too.
—T
Personally I would not recommend her, she is waaay too over peppy, too people pleasey, and no offence to her, clearly has other issues going on in her life that she, IMO, should be focusing on instead.
PleasantSims is the way to go I’d say. Her reviews are honest, fair, and they actually make me want to fight for this game, when 99% of the time i couldn’t care less.
—T
This is one of the packs I will get only if it goes on 50% off sale, which I understand is fairly rare for GPs. I don't actually hate the stuff in the pack. It disappoints me, but I do like the stuff, I just don't believe it's anywhere near worth 20$. The job needs work, and I'm hoping there are patches that correct it by the time I'm actually willing to buy it. It's not Journey to Batuu, which automatically means I've not marked it off as unbuyable.
And I don't think he's being negative to cater to people. Reviews are tricky with this fandom - if you're too positive, you get called a shill and bootlicker who swallow up everything you're given. If you're too negative, people say you're a troll, a hater, doing it for views and not credible. Plumbella and Grimcookies even talked about this in some of their reviews, where they have to preface things by saying "I tried to be positive so people don't think I'm a hater" or "I've been positive in my reviews and people called me a bootlicker." I don't think it's fair to accuse most people of catering to fans, since anything but completely neutral or is going to get you side-eyes.
That said, the Game Changer program will inherently have biases because the big GCs know many of the Gurus personally and are friends with them, and they get the packs for free, before anyone else. Even if they come to a positive opinion on their own, the system is set up in a certain way. LGR, himself, brought this up and said that's why he opted out of getting free review copies. But that's not relevant to my overall point, which is that reviewers can be unfairly criticized. There's an inherent bias in the system, but that doesn't mean reviewers are easily influenced.
The Sims 4 hasn't introduced a new musical instrument since 2017