Boo! A New Stuff Pack Appears!

I like the theme of the pack with a more "cultural" side of paranormal activity. I like that it showcases spirituality while adding "cultural" items to at least credit that it's not just western cultural influences. For me, cultural additions are a very welcome addition that enriches the game. Might also be because I'm european and tired of the american-centric mainstream media and how that is often set as the norm in video games and movies.

I heard some say the build items are Moroccan and some other's say the spiritual side is Malaysian and Indonesian. I dont know enough about the cultures to know what is right and if the spiritual takes are accurate for the cultures. I'm guessing it's probably a vague mix of different cultures, but I hope it's still done respectfully to the cultures.

I think there are two boxes cultural representation can fall into. For example Avatar The Last Airbender is culturally inspired by lots of different south-east asian cultures, but still is a great show where the purpose isn't to show one particular culture (my opinion is formed by this video). While Coco is showcasing Day Of The Dead and therefore it's more important to stick to Mexican culture.

I'm not sure which one of these boxes the new stuff pack would fall under. I think there is a fine line between adding cultural diversity that many can relate to and appropriating it / promoting stereotypes, and it's impossible for me to see where that line is when I don't know much about the cultural influences. I'm hoping to see some takes from people of those cultures and if the cultural influences clash or if they're welcomed.

"They're Here"
"Who are you going to call, Ghostbusters"
"I see dead people, they don't even know they're dead"
"I love you; D I D O"

What can I say, I keep remembering old Ghost movies. :o

By Stuff Pack, they mean it was made by the Stuff Pack team and costs a Stuff Pack price.

But at the same time, we're getting a free update to make our Ghosts more scary, that we HAVE to have free because it would break the game if it didn't come with the base game.

Put together they're big enough for a Game Pack.

Although I welcome the new pack, I have some reservations about it. Due to inaccurate or exaggerated information in the recent marketing campaigns, the following questions come to mind:

1) Do the lights in the new Haunted House venue REALLY flicker on and off, and do the doors REALLY slam on their own, or is that description just story telling rather than an actual game feature?

2) There are probably no other additional features of the game, since this is a stuff pack,beyond the ones that have been advertised so far. That means that the only thing they have done here that custom content creators could not are as follows:

* New meshes (which some content creators don't have difficulty with but others do).

* new Paranormal career (which already was done by one career mod, by the way, but at least now this new career won't break when the game is updated.) It remains to be seen whether this will be an active career or rabbit hole career (note: the mod careers are all rabbit-holes).

* new Seance session and object. Possibly new levitation and meditation animations. New floor design drawing object.

Let me know if I missed anything.

It's not that hard for a lot trait to result in the triggers of sound effects and animations.

Perhaps doors will animate open and closed spontaneously and candles will blow out randomly if your house is haunted, and such things will trigger 'fear' emotions. Those aren't exceptionally hard things to put into gameplay. I also think the Globby Ghosts will have emotional triggers. Perhaps Anger Globs will set things on fire, like NPC Ghosts?

@userafw

"userafw;c-17773551" wrote:

1) Do the lights in the new Haunted House venue REALLY flicker on and off, and do the doors REALLY slam on their own, or is that description just story telling rather than an actual game feature?

https://twitter.com/SimGuruConor/status/1349063963552595969

"userafw;c-17773551" wrote:

* new Paranormal career (which already was done by one career mod, by the way, but at least now this new career won't break when the game is updated.) It remains to be seen whether this will be an active career or rabbit hole career (note: the mod careers are all rabbit-holes).

https://twitter.com/SimGuruNinja/status/1349130445615583232

This looks like FUN! I can't wait!

"Onverser;c-17771644" wrote:
This looks amazing, I'm surprised at the furniture style though - it looks very Moroccan inspired which is totally opposite of what I expected from this pack. Seems very random to add Moroccan styled stuff when there's no Moroccan world - possible hint at a future pack?

It's more of a New Orleans / modern bohemian / voodoo-inspired style rather than Moroccan. Though I'd love to see future expansion packs based in African countries! We need that :D

"LazyGrim;c-17772111" wrote:
Are we even sure this is a stuff pack? Sure it says it's a stuff pack, but it looks an awful lot like a game pack to me. As an occult player who voted for Happy Haunts, this is fantastic. It's great that they allowed the runner-up to the Nifty Knitting voting to still be made.
P.S. Still holding out hopes for that supervillain/heroes game pack one day... just saying.

It may have a lot more content than most stuff packs, but a lot of it is recycled gameplay. Bonehilda is a recycled maid/butler & they already made the skeleton base in JA, the dolls seem to have similar interactions as gnomes, etc. So I think it's fair that this is a stuff pack, even though it's a lot. They didn't have to create all of this from scratch.

I really have no idea what the Spooks are going to behave like, but it looks like their behaviour will be fairly simple.

It's not that hard to write coding for spooky sounds to wake up your Sims or random animations to trigger an emotional response. The bigger thing is finding out just how strong the Scared effect will be, and that's free.

No Ghost Babies
https://twitter.com/SimGuruConor/status/1349782236078374912?s=20

Bonehilda can be woohooed with
https://twitter.com/SimGuruConor/status/1349909349393567745?s=20