Favorite Sims 2 EP?

Ooof omg this is the hardest question I've been asked this whole year so far!

Here's my list of why I didn't choose the other ones :p

-University: It never really felt that ''college-y'' enough for me.. But I obviously still loved it. And the new walking animations for young adults hahaha

-Open 4 Business: Hmm well for one I thought it was a little tedious to have to constantly re-assign the ''set for sale'' ,say, food in a bakery.. Also the glitch of the special uniforms messing up their faces was a bit of a killjoy, but still fantastic pack! I loved the all the new activities! Ts2 packs were just so full of goodies, I miss those packs.. (I especially loved the water object that even dogs could play with, from the toy making station)

-Pets: I guess the interactions with the pets were limited :/ still loved it with all its beautiful details, like when dogs would bark out the seat-window.

-Seasons: Loved everything, though it plumed how gardeners would always throw away the leaves piles! Like hello I wanted you to rake them so that then I could play in them hahah.

-Bon Voyage: BV was amazing and so well made. Buying a vacation home really felt realistic, it was awesome how you could get houses on the beach. My biggest bummer is that Tours were just rabbit holes... They could've at least done a cinematic each time they went, but not nothing :( though the helicopter coming to pick them up was awesome lmao. Oh and also, I HATED HOW THEY COULDN'T ACTUALLY JUMP OFF OF THE PLANK ON THE PIRATE SHIP

-Freetime: AMAZING I loved this one omg, all the new activites and objects and everything! However, I really didn't like basketball and soccer. I wish they could actually play, not just a shootout that would make their needes decay like crazy.

-Apartment Life: Honestly, I felt this one was so close to reaching it's potential.. It was rather boring how your NPC neighbours were always just 1 sim, and the in-game apartments were all so..Un-apartment like and ugly. Nothing like the ones in the trailer. However, the amount of content that went into it (yet again) is bloody astonishing. I loved that interaction where parents would swing their kids around haha.

They all had so so so much content, I miss those good packs :(

I love them all but went with Seasons. It was a huge game changer and is just incredibly well done.

If I hadn’t picked Seasons, would hsve been free time, loved the new hobbies, the new hidden lots, the genie and the new objects. Just really added a lot of character to the sims.

It was between Uni or Night Life. I love the young adults and the university hoods, but you can't really incorporate it into a lot of the game. My sims use Downtown constantly, and I love the dating system.

Wow! That question had me looking at it for quite a while. Honestly, ALL of the EPs had great things to offer. Even the ones I don't particularly play much of, in my case Nightlife. For this poll, I chose Open For Business because it let's my stay-at-home parents create a good income for the family. I don't think I ever reached a level 10 business when I played all those years ago but I currently have two level sevens and thing they will eventually hit 10 if the owner lives long enough. That's a fun challenge for me as is seeing my Sims be all proud of the items they created to sell. One family has a clothing shop and the entire family has jumped in to make clothes for it. The cool thing is my other families have those clothes in their closet since they stopped by to buy them.

Seasons added so much realism and I love the weather changes.
Pets is so much fun with all the furry "kids" around, just like my RL.
Freetime gave some great hobbies and for more than one of my sims, a career.
Bon Voyage makes for great honeymoons.
Apartment life had value. Some of my founding sims chose to get an apartment when they started out with nothing.
University, while not my cup of tea, gave more careers and extra wants/fears.
Nightlife, while I don't play it much, gave us a number of things like CARS.

The lists of benefits for each EP would be pages long. Honestly, I can't imagine not having any of these EPs.

This poll wasn't fair.... there was no all of the above choice! :joy: I honestly couldn't imagine playing without any of them. I chose Freetime though just because of all the extra gameplay it added. I love all the workstations, hobbies can make sims seem more unique ( though I do wish we could choose which was their favorite hobby) Lifetime aspirations, and the fact you could now age up some of your sims friends with them. It came with a lot of other activities for your sims to do too. Plus who doesn't like getting a genie lamp!

Wow just realized I didn't vote on my own poll :D

In general, I do love all the Sims 2 packs, but I'd say the one I use the most is Apartment Life. The ability to make all sorts of creative lots such a flat, row houses, cul-de-sac with private homes acting as apartments, trailer parks etc, and actually have multiple people live in them is amazing to me. I like cozy, compact lots and small worlds, so this way I can still build small, but have a lot of sims.
Another cool thing I like about Apartment Life is that essentially there is no limit to how many sims can live in one lot. Of course, only 4 families can be played, but someone once did a test with making as many tiny apartments as possible...and they all had a townie live in them. Amazing!
In addition, the CAS and Build/Buy was really cool to me.
The reputation and lower/middle/upper class systems were really sweet additions that look subtle, but have a lot of impact on how the world looks and reacts to your sims.

It bugs me to this day that the Sims 3 and 4 don't let you make your own apartments like in the Sims 2. Of course, the high rise penthouses are really cool, but the apartment system in 2 was just on a league of its own. You could plop down the huge 60x50 lot and essentially make a little open world area just like the neighborhoods in the Sims 4, just smaller and without loading screens.

Overall I'd rank the packs in this order in terms of how much do I really use their content:

1. Apartment Life
2. Open 4 Business - Love having businesses in the game and running them, or even just doing yard sales.
3. Freetime - A lot of new activities for sims.
4. Nightlife - Bowling, restaurants and cars are awesome!
6. Pets - I like having pets in the game but overall it's a pretty small pack.
7. Bon Voyage - THAT PIRATE SHIP OMG.
8. Seasons - The gardening is fun, but all the deaths from the weather made me lose so many sims lol. Still, weather spices up the game.
8. University - It's so small...some of the Sims 2 stuff packs have just as much, if not even more new objects. Sims 3 University Life did the theme much better than this pack in my opinion.

OFB was the real game changer for me. The actual functionality that was provided was tedious, but with some modding, it opened up the world to near endless possibilities. And I LOVED that they made all of the future games backwards compatible with it.

With OFB I was able to make a completely self sustaining world. Each neighborhood had it's own mayor and governing system with tax collection based on parks and museums (using the ticket machine) and when the government collected enough, it would upgrade "features" around town. All businesses were owned by residents. Regular sims couldn't buy anything that wasn't sold in a store and if they wanted it, it created a business opportunity, which expanded the town, until there wasn't space left and a new town was established. And on top of all that, it provided a great way for my towns people to get to know one another. They even have clubs for business owners to sell to one another (like my crafty sims might try to sell furniture/decor to the owner of the furniture store), the elites get together to sell properties to one another, teens and kids craft at the community center and the "fund-raise" by selling their wares. It's an intricate system. I love it!

I choose Apartment life but I love seasons and open for business too. Well, actually I love all of them. They were also all very well made and came with so many new animations and things for sims to do.

I very narrowly went with Nightlife over Open For Business, simply because Downtown for my play style has always been a complete game changer. Aside from vampires, I really felt that the EP added a huge amount of humanity to the game, things like restaurants and clothing shops should be a given in a life simulator. That being said, picking an ultimate favourite is practically impossible because I love and utilise all of them to this day. I've always felt that nothing was wasted in The Sims 2.

It was a toss-up between University and Seasons.
I like them both for different reasons that cannot be compared! :blush: