Don't you mean we got bugged and broken cuddling? Let's not let them off lightly.

For anybody that is worried about bugs, according to Maxis, there are plenty more years of those to come. No, they didn't actually say that. That would have been honest.



Sims 4 Devs Speak Out: Future of Sims 4, Lovestruck EP

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZAI26xCtU0s


I find the timing of this little PSA, (typing a lot while saying the same thing several ways) interesting. At the moment many are focused on Inzoi. Here comes Maxis with their "years to come" stuff.

I'm sure it's all a big coincidence.

I don't need years of content, tbh. Live service games are draining over time. I need quality additions. The fact that the Sims 4 has entered an era where existing content feels like patches for previous content is becoming exhausting when players are begging for actual new content. I felt the same way about the Far Cry 6 DLC. All of it was basically the same randomly generated content and wasn't interesting to replay (except for the Vaas content. A Rogue-adjacent gameplay mode made sense given his character, but not Joseph or Pagan Min at all).

Growing Together felt like a combination of a refresh of Parenthood, an upsold base game update, and a new game pack.

Horse Ranch is basically the remaining half of Cats & Dogs, and nectar making left over from My Wedding Stories (Where the inclusion made sense, unlike horse ranch), and maybe some odds and ends from Cottage Living.

For Rent felt like an update to City Living but in Thailand (I swear, it was a game pack before and they upsold it).

Lovestruck is literally an upsold base game update with some odds and ends from previous packs.

Meanwhile, players have been foaming at the mouth for an active music career since Get Famous AND ARE WILLING TO PAY EXTRA FOR IT, but Maxis thought revamping the sales table for a stuff pack was a better idea. So, the next pack is speculated to be about death and funerals? A cemetery and a funeral should both be base game additions. A death focused pack with missing content doesn't feel like a direction the series should take amidst ongoing bad publicity since My Wedding Stories and their post-pandemic offerings.

I understand starving people before giving them what they want psychologically to maximize profit, but the content on offer in the meantime also needs to be worth the effort. I buy the packs because I have the disposable income and want to support the series, but even I hesitated before buying Lovestruck because nothing is truly there. I predominantly build, and even build buy is threadbare. So, what am I buying it for?

I can't continue supporting a series if I don't like anything about it. I spent more time complaining here than I do playing because that's actually more fun than playing the game.

Also, I believe we've programmed Maxis/EA to believe an expansion pack is just a big world with a lot of build/buy and CAS, and not actual gameplay additions, so they've chosen to create expansion packs like this.

Supporting a series that can carry on open world and cars in 2024, amonst many, many and many features (but those are excrutating examples where . And as you mention how EPs are turning to be more like just downloadable world packs, they may as well end life states/occults and say they can only continue releasing new death types (say bye to fairies and other awaited creatires to be coming to the Sims). Hence why we need to demand more with our wallets than filling the whole in the game by shoving in more cash in hopes they use it to complete/fix the game (which is, newsflash, they may not have a saving account for the budget they cried for consisting a cobweb and a dustbunny)

Oh, I would just love A.)! Fairies were always my favourite life state in Sims 3. Here's to hoping they bring them back soon!

Part of me wants to assume a LOT of the downward trend in content is some gaming companies moving away from crunch, but why are development teams not building non-crunch friendly projects. I felt game packs would be a way to plug in content that didn't needs a whole pack and would be budget friendly. Like, house party would be a game pack.

Give me an Open For Business kind of pack. A basic, simple concept with gameplay that seeps into almost every other pack. "Death" feels too niche a concept to me to really flesh out an entire expansion pack. How much fun can visiting a lot as the Grim Reaper be over time? Death wouldn't be fun without gameplay associated with the deaths.

Elderly and Old Age? Give me that. Give me all of that. A celebration of a Sims winter years sounds nice. "You had a good run, enjoy your retirement" but that sounds like stuff that should have been in Growing Together.

Edit: They're doing a public playtesting thing...