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Eco Lifestyle + Cottage Living (any issues at the moment?)
TARDISgrade
Posts: 193 Member
I'm thinking of getting Eco Lifestyle (Eco Lifestyle and Get Famous are the only two expansions I don't have). So far I decided against because from what I read there were (are?) many glitches and issues with this pack. I've recently bought Cottage Living and I love it. I'm also very lucky not to be experiencing any major glitches/issues with it. Gardening, restaurants, pets etc... everything is working smoothly, so I'm actually scared of installing a new pack that could potentially introduce issues and break everything. I never use any mods or CC or MOOC for precisely the same reason.
So my questions are:
- For those of you who have Eco Lifestyle: is the game still buggy and full of issues or has it been working fine lately (at least up to the introduction of CL)?
- For those who bought CL and already had Eco Lifstyle: are you currently experiencing major issues with CL? (and if you do, do you also use mods/CC?)
Thanks
Edited to correct the pack name... I meant "Eco LIFESTYLE" but wrote Eco Living (the title in German is Nachhaltig leben)
So my questions are:
- For those of you who have Eco Lifestyle: is the game still buggy and full of issues or has it been working fine lately (at least up to the introduction of CL)?
- For those who bought CL and already had Eco Lifstyle: are you currently experiencing major issues with CL? (and if you do, do you also use mods/CC?)
Thanks
Edited to correct the pack name... I meant "Eco LIFESTYLE" but wrote Eco Living (the title in German is Nachhaltig leben)
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As far as CL, so far I haven't seen any problems in my game. The only mod I'm using is MCCC, but I'm using it mainly for getting access to the hidden households and CAS. When I play I usually take it out. In case you don't already know there is an option to turn off aging for the animals that come with CL. Just a heads up, Ms. Crumplebottom is in the hidden household section.
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But I actually also really like EL's different community lots (Maker Space, Community Garden, Landfill Lot) and the behaviours they bring with them. I also enjoy cleaning up the neighbourhoods in that world. As for the green sources of energy and water, they are absolutely essential to my gameplay now, especially when playing Off the Grid, and they go really well with Cottage Living too. My desperately poor farmer family saved up their hard-earned pennies for water collectors and solar panels to help cut down on their energy bills and it improved things a lot for them. It rains a lot in HoB and so far my sims always have a surplus of water, just to name one bonus.
I just started a rags to riches and I love having the Eco Lifestyle pack for that. Here I just used a cheatcode to put a part of Oasis Springs in a industrial state. Now everyone is miserable and plants doesn't grow. It makes it more difficult to stay clean and I cannot use farming as an easy way to make a buck in the beginning. My favorite thing is to make my sim work hard to move a clean nice area afterwards. I just enjoy going between the the two states. Also, I intend to use the NAPs for conserving water and electricity to play pretend that they live out in the middle of nowhere and have to be self-sufficient. Then having a little generator and being able to collect water near your home becomes much more rewarding.
For my playstyle these two packs work very well together.
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I also like wandering the hills.
I'll definitely deactivate NCP voting in the game options before starting to play, and maybe the Eco Footprint Gameplay too in some saves.
Another thing I read was that Eco Lifestyle was causing the game to load very slowly. Anybody having this issue? Thanks!
Disable NPC voting!
When I first got Eco Lifestyle NAPs were driving me mad. I had to use cheats to remove the ones enacted and get the things I wanted.
Also I emptied neighbourhoods to prevent NAPs before I knew to disable voting. Oasis Springs only had one active neighbourhood. Willow Creek had two and I bulldozed Newcrest. Forgotten Hollow only has one neighbourhood anyway. All active neighbourhoods had the same four NAPs - the only ones I sorted of liked. So it was very dull.
The trailers made it look like you try to save Evergreen Harbour but the environment is more influenced by build items than what your Sim does.
No matter what you did, the environment strays to neutral. I wasn’t able to keep the world polluted. I had so many industrial fires on one lot but it was when I changed the floor, walls and roof that the arrow moved to industrial.
Also no lots could have greenery due to all plants adding to green score. So that was annoying, I could only have indoor plants outside.
When you clean up Evergreen Harbour, to me, it looks like an extension of Willow Creek. In the end no one lived there.
I took out Eco Lifestyle and for me it was the best decision of 2020. Very buggy and annoying.
On the plus side:
I hope you have fun if you get it.
My 1st generation legacy Sim started in Evergreen Harbor because the grimyness of it really suited "starting from nothing." I even filled up pretty much all the lots with either my own or other's junky/starter creations or otherwise trashed community lots. (this greasy spoon from Moonlightown-ES is a good representation: https://moonlightowl-es.tumblr.com/post/625447988210319360/simburger-the-home-features-price-106-357-lot)
World: I really really like "grimy" play and hate how perfect everything is in The Sims, so Eco Lifestyle really suits me. That being said, starting with generation two my Sims moved out of EH and don't use much outside of going to the Community Center in the Harbor.
Bugs: I have not noticed any major bugs probably because I turned off NAPs before any gameplay started. The most frustrating bugs for me are all related to Dine Out, honestly.
Gameplay: I don't really do immersive-in-one pack gameplay so I don't have too much feedback here. I really love the dumpster, the recycling machine, and the crafting machines. I haven't used the candle maker yet but I'm fond of the juice fizzer. One of my Glimmerbrook families has an apple orchard and they make and sell apple pies and cider with the fizzer.One of my poorer legacy heirs lives in Del Sol Valley and without me doing anything or trying anything their neighborhood has an "industrial" footprint, which has stuck around quite a bit and really adds to the gameplay visuals. I really really like the versatile lot that can turn into different things. It doesn't need to appear 3 times in one world so I shut down 2/3 in EH but I did set a world-appropriate version of this lot up in Oasis Springs and Willow Creek. The lots are very active, even just as the neutral community centers. The market tables fill up and you can have one food stall active without hiring it.
Final thoughts: I shied away from buying this pack because of the issues, however I'm glad I bought it. The world is unlike any of the other worlds, unique in its run down state (even the nicer areas have litter) and the objects are really nice. Some of the gameplay items are already part of my regular rotation--I also just really like how well it integrates with other packs. I think it really comes down to what you're looking for in a pack.
for example, i had a mod free save to build with. was play testing a community lot and rotated down to the kitchen and half of it was gone - the sharing is caring NAP was in play, meaning sims can take what they want ? you can see some people have turned off NPC voting.
so its quite a good pack if you use mods to tone down some of the behavior or otherwise ensure you are comfortable with what may occur.
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