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Thoughts on festivals?
sam123
Posts: 4,539 Member
I think we need to have a discussion on festivals. At first I thought they were such a great idea and had fun with them when they were first introduced. It gave our sims something fun to look forward to to change up their sometimes dull lives. But at this point I think the festivals have just become a lazy way for EA to feel like they’ve added “content” in a new pack without putting in much effort.
For example let’s look at the snowy escape festivals. You head to the festival of youth, buy a capsule, use items that have been in the game since base game, buy an outfit and then what? There really should be some new gameplay. And from the looks of things festivals seem to be getting worse, not better. In HSY the football match is basically a festival. All you do is throw around a football and eat. How is this fun or new?
So many of these festivals just feel so boring now, we’re getting these in expansions and they don’t seem to be adding any brand new fun content or gameplay to them. Snowy Escape and now HSY seem to have taken the lazy route when they could have been done so much better. What are your thoughts??
For example let’s look at the snowy escape festivals. You head to the festival of youth, buy a capsule, use items that have been in the game since base game, buy an outfit and then what? There really should be some new gameplay. And from the looks of things festivals seem to be getting worse, not better. In HSY the football match is basically a festival. All you do is throw around a football and eat. How is this fun or new?
So many of these festivals just feel so boring now, we’re getting these in expansions and they don’t seem to be adding any brand new fun content or gameplay to them. Snowy Escape and now HSY seem to have taken the lazy route when they could have been done so much better. What are your thoughts??
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But instead the festivals are static and there is no way to shake things up.
Maxis seems to add them to a lot of packs but I feel that they are not much more than a place to visit in order to do a few activities. They probably put in a lot of work in order to make them by making art and assets and creating tuning files and broadcasters but the end result feels a bit underwhelming when you have visited them a few times...
If they had been placed on an actual lot then maybe we could have customized them and added more things to them. In HSY they should probably have been located at the school and happen during school hours.
But the ones in Snowy Escape definitely seemed to have potential, but were underwhelming pretty quickly. The ones in HS Years look pretty lacking, too. I agree that it would probably help if we could customize them ourselves, but unfortunately that doesn't seem likely to ever happen.
Comparing those to the ones we're getting in HSY, it's pretty pitiful honestly... So, you what? Take selfies, throw a football, and show off your cheerleading skills? That's it?? And it's so SMALL too. Would've been nice if it took up the whole football field. If there were actual games for your sims to play. Maybe it would've been better if it was more of a school spirit kinda thing, especially since by default you have to schedule on your own the non-sports related events. Why not have them all together? Have some more competitions? Maybe be able to try out for a team? Make it like an event where the clubs are trying to recruit new members? Maybe there could've been the school mascot there that you can talk to and take pictures with like you can with all the other mascots? Get hyped about school spirit or mock it instead? Maybe even prank the mascot? I mean they DID design the Womp Womp, why not make it an actual mascot that one of the teens dresses up as?
I like the idea of the festivals, and like I said the CL ones are still fun to attend from time to time. But they are definitely getting more boring. The HSY one is definitely the worst to date. Give my sims something to DO!
I have never been able to catch most of the Island Living events when they are happening, and the turtle hatching appears to happen when I am playing any household other than the one that actually helped clean up Sulani.
Mostly I only manage to enjoy most of them by leaving multiple in-game weeks, and preferably real world months, between my visits to each one.
I think Humour/Hijinks festival is okay. It would be cool for more opportunities to prank items, just to add more depth.
The romance festival is just okay. But I think if you could add some activities, that would've been nice. Something like a romantic film playing at the festival, or if they introduced the tunnel of love rabbit hole first. I believe it just has the tea and the painting. I wish we could make out own festivals, that would be nice. Even a dance floor with Romance music playing so you slow dance with sims. Sims could be encouraged to wear Party or Formal wear. IDK.
What I like about the geek festival is that there are social interactions, activities, and costumes and it feels like a festival to me. Whereas the other two that I like, only have special social interactions and 2 activities (1 mic for telling jokes and fireworks). But easels, fireworks and microphones can be for any festival. The activities for GeekCon feels like a geek con festival.
But ayyye, I still think the festivals are a cool idea.
I agree. I think the City Living ones I come back to now and again. I noticed I have completely avoided going to any other ones because there is literally nothing to do there that my sims can do at home.
HSY has sadly taken the laziest approach to these festivals and it's actually quite laughable and disappointing. Your suggestions would have helped to lived it up a bit. I really think we need more gameplay objects with these expansion packs. They seem to be avoiding gameplay objects for some reason. A few more objects related to football or something could have made it maybe more fun?
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My best tip is to edit the locale where your sims travel during the festival and make it interesting, so that if the festival bores you you can spend some quality time there. Personally I always stay until the end of the festivals because I don't want them to overlap - I don't know if that's still an issue? At the end my sims will sometimes be napping on the benches because of this.
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I also do think the cottage living festivals are okay if you have farmer sims. The competitions make it more interesting as there is atleast a prize for participating. However the Snow Escape ones and now HSY have severely hit the mark IMO. There are so many brand new objects and gameplay ideas they could of added to these festivals but decided to do the bare minimum.
I haven't played the HSY ones yet, so can't say much about them, but the festivals from snowy escape don't engage our sims too much, unless it's food related activity. I like food and it's good that we get so may recipes, but there's not much to do there except eat and watch fire works. And because they are not editable, we can't add more stuff from other packs either so we're stuck with them.
Watch the game changer videos on them and you'll feel the same way. There is literally nothing to do lmao.
Also, even though the City Living ones are better than the ones in those two packs, I really thought they would have done a refresh on some of the festivals (including Flea Market) or at least changed them up a bit for that pack as I don't bother to send my sims to those anymore at all.
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I do agree, these little changes could be better. And I agree the devs probably feel as if they've done a lot in giving the game more fullness, but I don't think that's so. Adding Knickknacks to a room can really make it homey and nice, but adding too many can cause clutter. I think we've reached clutter, now.
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Finchwick Fair is just as lame as the one we have in our village but one of the interactions makes me laugh "ask about bird's plummage history" or something. It is actually somewhat useful for loner sims to talk to a lot of sims at once, I never enter anything, I'm not into sim gardening.