There are elements of the Sims 3 store I’d like back.

You could create an entire amusement park in The Sims 3 with the store (across multiple overpriced sets). Casino, Circus, Vehicles… the sets were also highly usable.

Lucky Palms Deluxe is still a great piece of content. Everything was great, including the marketing.

This or you're going to need the EA Play subscription.

The subscription is the most likely outcome in my eyes. So many things these days are becoming subscriptions. I miss the days I could just, I don't know, own something.

Totally 1000 percent agree with this!

Exactly. People can complain about TS3 Store as much as they want, but here's the thing: it's entirely optional! Thing is, you can still have a LOT of fun with Sims 3 as is without getting extra store content. But with Sims 4, you can buy literally every pack/kit/whatever and you still get bored within five minutes, if that long...that is, assuming, it doesn't break the game even more.

And I agree about subscriptions. There's nothing that isn't this day and age. I miss when programs like Photoshop, etc were just a one time payment and you actually owned it. I wouldn't be surprised if EA goes down the subscription route as well.

I watched a video yesterday from some guy I've never heard of complaining about subscription services yesterday. The video explained how companies make more on a monthly sub rather than somebody paying in full for the year. Anybody can take a minute with a calculator and already know this, but judging by his comment section, apparently people didn't know this.

Then he went on to talk about how companies make it hard to cancel subscriptions. When I "closed" my Amazon account a couple of years ago, they put me on a endless loop. I'd click cancel on one page, then I'd have to click cancel on another page, then I was sent to another page. Rinse, wash, repeat until I got pissed off and called them.

Why did I use quotes around the word closed? Because they didn't actually close my account. Amazon isn't charging me money as they can't. The credit card I had at the time no longer exists due to fraud ( not Amazon related) but I still occasionally get emails from shady Amazon sellers wanting to pay me to review their products. I report these emails as phishing scams via my email provider. People like to try to gaslight me for ragging on Amazon and shady reviews on their website. Gaslight away, friends. I get those emails just like everybody else does.

If anybody is rolling their eyes at me wondering what this story time has to do with sims, I'm getting there.

The loop thing that Amazon does, Playstation does the same thing which was also mentioned in said video. In order to cancel a sub to Playstation, a person has to dig around in their settings. https://www.ign.com/articles/how-to...laystation-plus

Lyndsay Pearson has stated that Project Nay-Nay will not be subscription based. Do I believe her? I want to, but I don't simply because all big tech companies are pulling these shenanigans in hopes that the subscriber will simply give up and continue to hand over their cash because canceling is so aggravating. Don't give in! People in the US have the option to report these companies to the Better Business Bureau. I'm sure other places around the world also have somewhere they can go to report a company that refuses to cancel a subscription. Another alternative, close the credit card account that is being used. Note that some credit card companies allow a person to close account that carries a balance, others do not. When in doubt, use a gift card. A company can't charge a person if the source of money is shut off or beyond it's limit.

The new EP leaked… The Sims 4: Lovestruck
Somehow, they managed to make a dating expansion pack sound so boring, because WHAT ARE SIMS GOING TO DO ON DATES!? There is no mention of new places to go or new activities for Sims to do together. We’ll see, but…

Early Purchase Incentive:
Runny Mascara
Messy Bed
Decorative Plushy

New & Updated Mechanics:
Turn Ons & Turn Offs
Online Dating
Date Planning
Additional Relationship Dynamics (Wholesome, Steamy, Strained, Unpredictable)
Romantic Satisfaction

New City World:
Ciudad Enamorada

New Interactions:
Cuddling In Bed
Seductive Dance

New Items
Heart Shaped Bed
Romantic Blanket (Interactive)

New Skills:
Romance

New Career:
Romantic Consultant

New Lot Trait:
Singles Hangout

We also appear to be getting food related gifts, such as chocolate covered strawberries, and more apartments - the lot shown in the screenshot of the rewards appears to be fairly high up with windows that match the deco apartment block across the street.

Come on, this is the amazing Lovestruck Pack!!

The couple will have a lovely romantic evening in stunning Ciudad Enamorada. They have planned the date through the Romantic Consultant and met at the Singles Hangout.

They will become "steamy" and "unpredictable" eat chocolate strawberries and do seductive dances until they WooHoo on a Heart Shaped Bed, which causes their mascara to run and scares the living heck out of their romantic plushie .

Leaving their messy bed, one of the now Romantically Skilled pair heads to the kitchen to buy some romantic DLC food (Cucumbers maybe?) from the EA App!

There, after a memorable and touching Romantic evening with their new lover, they run into a random townie they have never met before...
*FLIRTY*
"Common Snarla?"
*blows kiss*
*VERY FLIRTY*
*giggle*
and off to WooHoo in the Rocket Ship in the back yard while your date is still in the messy bed, repairing their mascara and wondering where the heck you've gone!!

Thats amore EA style!

Ok so let's see if I need this pack or not.



I really hoped they are going to release new and exciting content... Now they just copy mods which already exist for years and sell this as something new.

This feels like a patch. I complained that growing together felt like a patch to the social systems that was sold as an expansion pack, but this really feels like a patch to Growing Together.

Like, sure, we can plan a date, but they didn’t advertise anything new to do. I’d be happy if they added little things here and there to the existing base game lots to make dates more engaging.

Billiards, Poker, and Mechanical Bulls to Bars.

Payable VIP Doors, Stacked Sparkling Nectar Glass Trays (that Sims may shatter), and Nectar Fountains for Lounges.

Table/Bar Dancing, Effect Machines, Bogos for Nightclubs.

Guided Tours and Art Auctions to Museums.

Even customizable attributes like entry fees, genders, minimum ages, occults, attire, menus (in line with dine out), dancing, and preferred music would be a great next step to making bars feel unique.

I love how TS4 always adds these systems such as likes and dislikes, milestones, sentiments and others that have very little impact on gameplay. I think Turn Ons and Turn Offs are going to be just like likes and dislikes. I think it's funny how certain activities that your sim likes conflict with their traits. That is what I learnt from SatchOnSims.

There are so many systems, but with no deep meaning, such as the infamous secrets from the For Rent expansion pack. On the other hand, milestones are just a simple copy of memories from TS2. We should have gotten a proper expansion of TS4 memory system. Milestones (or memories) is a nice concept, but it is just too shallow. The sims don't even get milestones for completing a skill (there is a mod for that).

All of this is going to be interesting with in-place, much ignored, incest bug.

I want to say more, but I'm going to play nice today and tap the brakes.

I feel like, as an observer, the things they added to flash out the sims seem so redundant and overly=added (like I notice how many mild features should been mashed into one), which is perplexing because it still didn't manage to fix the core issue how lackluster Sims are. Lifestyles are traits that are on top of pointless traits, sentiments (aren't exactly memory synonim) covering up for lack of chemistry and strong relationship dynamic, milestones that are for whatever reason in expansion pack.... and don't get me started how fears don't even look fears (in TS2 you're Sim would lose it if you're children get taken, you lose your job and on top your husband has cheated with the maid. TS4? How, she's just moody. She'll get over it after a nice meal) and how whims are superficial. It's funny how it earlier games, Sims having less of fancy-smancy Simology features had more depth and stay true true to their personalities and sexual orientation. No flimsy cosmetical Secrets or dislike preferences gonna make you feel your Sims are smart AI characters (which is pretty ironic, as in 2024 AI was all the talk but Sims Teams misses a mark to incorporate it. They should ask ChatGPI with the question "what makes older Sims games better" and "why Fans find TS4 a step backward".)

Yes, the feeling on the EA forums was that most off this was readily available via Mods. I use mods so I have whole menus of ways you can kiss.

But you know what this means don't you?.... ALL of these mods are NOT going to work when the game is patched.

Simplicity.

Attention was placed where it mattered most and made sense. Personality in TS2 was selected based on qualities, aspiration, and turns ons/off. Everything was superfluous filler. When you only have 8 aspirations or 5 qualities, you can get a lot of depth out of these systems because there are so few of them.

If they layered actual traits on top do these, it would be perfect in making Sims more unique - I don’t eat meat, I’m fearful of technology, I love dogs - simple, effortless. Now, you’d have several active Sims in a neighborhood instead of a handful, who have personality limited to being 1/3 active. With qualities, it’s 1/5, but it’s more of a scale as to how active or lazy a Sims is. Depending on how high the scale is, this would determine if Sims have other implicit character traits as well.

We weren’t waiting around for more personality traits because the core 5 qualities are actually based around an actual personality system and was made easy enough to understand.

More aspirations? Didn’t need more than 8, and one of them was a joke (although power would be nice). Aspirations were kept vague and allowed players to implant goals on to their Sims. When aspirations are defined, things feel missing when omitted. “Pleasure” or “Knowledge” are just vague enough to give a Sim purpose at whatever they choose to do, instead of “Woo Hoo with 5 different Sims.” That goal should be implicit based on the “Romance” aspiration. It didn’t need to be said.

More over, in game, experiences slowly shape their personality - memories, social interactions, and wants/fear slowly dictate who Sims are and how they react to the world around them.

Content was made with all personalities and ages in mind because they remained the same for the games 4-5 year run.

Interesting.
I understand a lot better now.

To be fair, I feel like that word does more suits what TS4 is Sims are too simple, building is simplified (which isn't a bad thing; it's simple to use is not the problem), but the features aren't complex anymore is where the game falls flat. The stories are too simple, with the emotions being much simple than the real life take (Inside Out movie I would say does a better job than the interactive medium).

I would bet to differ that the personality system in TS4 is way to simplied if we compare TS2 or TS3, wheres TS1 - while it is also simple, it still has the it-makes-sense formula because as the first game it understandably didn't have a lot of going for to be super fancy, tacky or toddler-funny looking. What is difficult is maybe the limited options TS4 is giving for traits, like you said - providing the three instead of five and more array to choose from, and perhaps aspirations for you (although personally, I actually do like TS4 BG provides more and main aspiration to choose from than TS2 ones, and categorization is much cleaner than say TS3).

I'll rephrase and say minimalism.

The personality system isn't bloated in The Sims 2, and fairly easy to follow. It takes a small amount of features and does a lot with them. Everything rotates around a central eco system. The depth is in how these few key features are simulated, which is amazing.

How social a Sims was is by virtual of a degree of chance basic on what is prioritized in their rest of their personality, instead of having the "Loner" trait. Given how the Qualities system operations, you're bound to see more introverted and extroverted Sims, with most people occupying the middle (like most people).

Some tried to compare this to traits by saying "Unless a quality was less than 4 or higher than 6, you didn't notice anything, which is somewhat true, but given how the system operations, you're bound to see a lot nice or mean Sims without a 3rd of their personality be occupied by whether or not they like to dance. The system was successful.

This isn't a response to anybody in particular.I'm just tossing a thought into the void.

With TS1, TS2 and TS3, Maxis had their hands forced to make sure that whatever they wanted to add to a pack got done within x amount of time. Live service games were not a thing, at least not for TS1 and TS2. They were starting to gain traction with TS3 which not surprisingly is when EA decided that discs should no longer be a thing and stopped selling them.

Live service games are a thing now. A rock cannot be thrown without yapping about games being live service, but there is a price for that. If things are half-assed finished, oh well. Publishers will send the game or DLC out to the masses anyway and maybe finish it later. Is a pack bug-ridden? Bugs haven't stopped a publisher before, but there was also a level of self-respect, giving a fug, actually caring, ect... from the dev side of things. Bugs and tech debt used to mean something "bad". Now they're talked about as if they are assets.

Part of this give no shits thing is because live service. Devs can go into a game and tinker with it at will, at any given time. The collective we of the sims community never had a problem with blinking shopping carts and log in events before because EA / Maxis couldn't do that. The disc or discs served as a boundary. Despite all the differences and different opinions about these 3 games, they do have a big thing in common; a player could play in peace and be left alone. Maxis and EA were not metaphorically hanging out in the background.

I did have a point close this post out with, I don't remember what it was because dog seizure. I guess I'm done.

Details leaked. There’s a grown up costume chest. I’m GAGGING.

Somehow. Somehow. We have a bear skin rug, but not dog houses. Sim can now die of heartbreak, but not sadness.



Another Sims was holding dumbbells, so I assume there’s a new way to workout since there’s also a gym in town.

And proper, definable eyelashes, heavy with mascara, and - (did the sky just fall in?!!!) - nine inch high heel shoes!! Maxis has been avoiding high heel pumps like the plague. Yeah, with the Moschino pack they finally gave something with a higher heel, but that was more to do with the Moschino brand than Maxis deciding. But in that leaked picture of the blonde fem sim at a bar with the clearly definable eyelashes, (caked in mascara) behind her is the leg of another fem sim wearing long, slutty, sexy heels you could steak a vampire through the heart with! AT FRIKKEN LAST!

It's kinda weird to be honest. I feel a song coming on. "I'm too sexy for the Sims, too sexy for the Sims, so sexy it hurts." This pack may well be too strange for what TS4 and the 12 year old audience it latched itself onto is used to.

Though given the amount of CC we have for eyelashes and high heels, Maxis you are well, well late to this party. The console players and anti-mod-users benefit the most from this type of thing. But anyone else, been there, done that, bought the CC T-shirt long, long ago.

Yet it will be fully appreciated that eyelashes will have their own, unique body category, - in the same way fingernails did - so no more conflicting with finger rings, jewelry or glasses. That alone will be a joy to finally experience, so thank you Maxis. Finally.

NOOOOOO!!!!

Now my Kijiko eyelashes are going to break when they patch for this! And my lovely Syb crossfit gym with dumbells and weight bench will be nerfed.

Is there no end to this madness!!!!?

It's like EA have hoovered up every bit of CC they can find for ideas. Sad.

I find it kinda odd (tho not really) that a creator comes up with something not in the game, then Maxis waits a year, give or take, to come up with their own version of it. Why?
Just fix the damn game and spray the bugs, Maxis!

My tinfoil hat conspiracy is that if they just ripped a idea from a cc creator as soon as something was released, they'd [Maxis] would have to deal with people yelling at them about ripping off ideas. By allowing a year to go by, the 'in thing' that was released a year prior is pretty much out of trend at that point and most people have forgotten about it, so they don't get yelled at about being thieves of ideas, too much.

I know eyelashes have been a sticky bone of contention for a long time because Maxis was too lazy to put some in the game. It's right up there with their beard excuse they used for a longest time. "Beards are hard and expensive to make." For those that have been around since TS4 was released, you know.

I don't pay attention to what is trendy for clothing, shoes, accessories, ect... It reminds me too much of the crap that goes on with TikTok. There is no direct correlation, but it feels like it. If something is popular on TikTok, then there must be a version of said thing in cc form. I'm waiting for the day that TS4 sims sit around with their noses buried in Colleen Hoover novels. Ewww, no.

I use and enjoy this CC too. A lot! As do many. So the upside could very well be that after next patch, Kijiko updates their eyelashes to sit correctly in this new body category so their CC no longer conflicts with rings and glasses. So the hope goes.

But having said that, I remember all the fingernail CC I once had, all based on finger ring meshes so conflicted with wearing rings on certain fingers. Then Maxis gave us their fingernails - we have quite a few types now - and almost none of those CC creators reworked their fingernails to go into new Accessory category. Or if they did, they were still based on ring meshes so still conflicted. So I no longer have any in my game. Maxis did do a very decent job with the variety of fingernails we currently have that they pretty much killed off the CC for it. Certainly from my perspective.

Will they do the same for eyelashes? I don't think so. In that leaked picture, I did say "caked with mascara" because they still look a bit thick, chunky, like a poor evolution from the single black "plastic strip" that has been passing as eyelashes since game release. (Thank you Kijiko for the mod to get rid of that lazy, half-arsed ugliness.)

So hopefully Kijiko will utilize the new category for eyelashes, (but that will entail re-meshing them not just re-categorizing them.) then I know which eyelashes my sims will "continue" using.

I mean I've long since re-categorized Kijiko's eyelashes to Tattoo section, so the sim has them in all clothing and nude outfits in one go. But they still conflict with rings, glasses and other jewelry because that's the mesh they're built from. Then Kijiko did something similar by re-categorizing to Face Details for same reason to hit all clothing and nude in one go. But still conflicting. Hopefully that will all change now come the next patch as Kijiko wrote several years ago that they really tried to separate the eyelashes from glasses and jewelry so they would not conflict, but there was nothing in the Maxis coding they could use to do this. Seems like Maxis are now about to give Kijiko the coding they were looking for years ago, so real high hopes on those CC eyelashes getting the all-new treatment.