Cats and dogs is kind of worse then I expected.

"estella_dee;c-16150908" wrote:

"Cinebar;c-16149074" wrote:

"Amiutza;c-16149040" wrote:
From what I've seen/heard keeps getting thrown around everywhere today by people who haven't even tried the ep :thinking: Like, there's this massive thread where people who actually played share their experiences and everywhere I've looked people seem happy with it overall, yet somehow the word is "it's semi negative".

I don't need to see my pets needs because they tell me what they want. I am very pleased with the pack this time around and I was not with any other expansion they came out with. The world is beautiful, the build/buy team outdid themselves and I didn't even think that was possible after parenthood. The pets are indeed adorable, and their behavior reminds me so much of my real life pets. For me they add to the overall simulation, they're not my focus, yet they complete my overall experience. It's not a perfect pack, but it's nowhere need as bad as some people wanna make it out to be.

And on top of it, despite expectations, the game runs better rather than worse, the performance improvements were on point.

Couldn't be happier.

Since you are playing it but not actually into pets? would you say it is the best pet expansion ever? Like I did say that about toddlers or how would you rate it against Unleased, TS2 Pets, and TS3 Pets? Those are important points. Lack Luster? Just as good? Way better? Think on it.

I played the EP for a few hours now. And so far, to me, It's ok. It's not too bad. But NO it's NOT the best EP, I still think that gameplay-wise Get Together had the most gameplay added to TS4. So far, I feel like it's like Get To Work or City Living. I think the pets and BB looks awesome. Like really well done to the concept artists, they did very good on making things even more beautiful. But beauty will only go so far. After a while this beauty will just be meh... Honestly, it's just like any other expansion pack so far, it's beautiful and that's it. What's the difference between you having pets and not having them? Can I open a pet store and sell pets, like in the Sims 2? No. Can my pets enter competitions if I train them well enough? No. What else can I do aside from taking them to the vet when they are sick? I will say though, I do like the vet system-- I think it's cool. But like what someone else mentioned in a post here, you really can't tell the difference between having pets and not having them. And people who do not have Cats and Dogs aren't really missing a lot of things. So unless you want cute stuff get this EP. Otherwise there is no need or rush to get the EP. Wait for it to go on sale. Anyways, all the good stuff came with the free patch; new roofs, new build tools, etc.

Anyways, that's just my 2cents. Going to go back to game now, trying to convince myself that this game is still good.

Oh PS and just a rant:

I'm disappointed EA didn't give a copy to LGR. He is the only sims game reviewer (other than maybe James) who actually gives out an objective review on The Sims pack releases. lol

See here is where I disagree. Personally, I find this ep to have a lot more gameplay than Get together did. I found that ep really barren, the only thing I got out of it is the group system just as a tool to have all the sims in one place. I was so excited for cafes but they are absolutely broken. Takes hours to order a cup and I need to do it 3 times for my sim to actually get their drink. Much rather just go to a restaurant, if I'm gonna spend that time at least I'm making sure they actually get what they ordered.

"catloverplayer;c-16152774" wrote:

"brendhan21;d-928911" wrote:
Actually from what I am hearing its a bit worse then i expected. as there seems to be so many issues but alot of players seem to be ignoring them or not expericeing them and focusing more on the fact that cats and dogs look so cute doing things. Rather then oh idk sometimes they apparently wont do things like eat or sleep. plus we cant even tell what their needs are. do i think create a pet is awesome. well duh! but i thought create a pet was awesome in sims 2 and 3 no idea why this is even better then sims 2 or sims 3 create a pet when it feels just the same but dealing with pets feels like the worst and i do not mean no control I mean you cant even see their needs or anything. and they seem to have no idea how to take care of themselves. but oh look they are so cute seems to make up for all of that.I was expecting something more in line with sims 2 which at least let you look at the status of your pets but here you cant see anything. i mean all we get in exchange for all those sarcfrices are the pets are expressive. which again they were experessive in sims 2 and 3.

Bugs are to be expected in a New Ep but they will probebly be patched in the December Update.

You can't be certain of when bugs will be fixed, CL has been out for a year and they have just patched in bug fixes for it, big ones at that and if the people that play with vampires have to wait a month for a patch to fix what this patch broke a lot of simmers will be really angry.

"drake_mccarty;c-16152142" wrote:
For $20 it made the most sense to pick it up, and it’s not terrible but definitely not worth $40.

The most disappointing part IMO is the lack of interactions with either Cats or Dogs. There’s a handful of generic interactions and that’s it. Pets are just kind of there, they can’t do a lot of things (that they should be able to) and some things are just poorly animated (playing fetch: ball pops from the ground to the dogs mouth.. in a AAA game that’s ridiculous). There’s a ridiculously small number of pet objects whether that be interaction objects or care objects like pet beds, food bowls, etc. dogs get the short end of the stick. Cats get a few more things, but most of it is nothing more than jumping around. Children have even fewer interactions with pets than adults, they can’t even take dogs on walks. I do not like how annoying dogs are. An untrained dog shouldn’t waltz over to the door and wine to go outside. If it’s smart enough to know it should be going outside then why do I have to instruct it to? Not a fan of the instruction setup, not possible to see what your dog has learned good or bad. Learning is heavily skewed already anyway. What happened to “Pets will be messy”? Because that, so far, has been the polar opposite of what’s happened.

As I said, for $20 it’s a steal. I would not pay $40 for this pack. After playing it my honest opinion is that they did focus way too much on areas that weren’t Cats or Dogs - and it shows with how little attention was given to either. CAP is neat, but I doubt I will use it that much. More things for dogs and cats to do would have been a much better use of those resources. The pack itself isn’t terrible, but it’s not an improvement over Pets EP’s in the past which offered a lot more for the same price.

It’s a 4/10 for me.

I still hold the stance that an EP that fails to offer any improvements over it's predecessor to it's main feature doesn't deserve any money whatsoever, simply on a matter of principle. To buy this pack is to welcome more lackluster EPs and say "yes EA, I am willing to throw money at you if you give me the bare minimum and don't even improve on anything."

But they knew Pets and Cats would sell regardless, so why bother?
It's like we have tons of Frys saying "shutup and take my money"

"Pristine42784;c-16152809" wrote:
Before I even downloaded the xpack, friends of mine were telling me they were disappointed with it. I really enjoy it. I have seen the disappearing food dishes (I personally can get over this, I mean just sell and buy a new one, done) and I have discovered that kittens and puppies cannot go up stairs. I have a kitten stuck on my kitchen table because it got up on the cat tower and got stuck. It couldn't jump down off it. I tried deleting the tower and it just moved to the next raised surface. I am sure it's just an unforeseen bug. As most games have from time to time, and it takes time for them to iron out all the kinks. I am currently trying to figure out how to age up your kittens and puppies (I am guessing with a bday cake like everything else, but I have not tried it yet). I am hoping maybe once the pets age up to fully grown some of the issues I have experienced throughout my game play will render themselves.

Just an update. I removed all the surfaces in my kitchen and she was back on the floor... Sims day can resume!!!!

@Pristine42784 FYI, if you want to manually age up your pets there are 2 treats available at the vet clinic. One ages up, the other ages down, and I believe you can buy ambrosia for your pets there too, so you can bring your friend back from the beyond. :)

OP, for not playing before you posted, and playing minimally you seemed to just hate it right off the bat. I would've rather had pets than toddlers (YEAH SOME PEOPLE ACTUALLY PREFER ANIMALS!!!). They are pretty realistic. My animals have VERY specific personalities and they're WAY fun to play with. My cat specifically goes and sits on the robotic vacuum and waits for me to turn it on like a proper human slave just like a real cat would. Training it to get off the counter took a while and it was eating human food all the time until I was able to catch it in the act and scold it a few times for it. Right now I'm running a vet clinic and compared to the restaurant it's 100x better. With a high vet skill you REALLY can see the progress on how fast you take care of them. Early on it's hard (like it's supposed to be). I haven't had any glitches once I removed the offending mods that were outdated or updated the ones I could keep. My sim comes home stressed from work? Nice jog with the dog to get her and the dog's exercise in. You can control almost EVERYTHING the animals do by asking them to do things and with training so IDK why people are still stuck on the 'can't control them' thing. You pretty much can. You can control them WAY better than you can a butler or visiting sim. You can probably control them more than a real pet tbh (my dog gives 0 plums if he wants to do whatever it is he wants to do). The sim dog kept waking me up in the morning, barking at strangers, being terrified of the TV (yeah idk, it's kind of hilarious though), getting dirty as heck rolling in pee puddles....for a while I had to bathe him every other day. Now he's clean more because I trained him not to be a dirty piggy. Now he lets me sleep in. With everything if you don't actually TRY to get into the pets they won't matter to you (just like in previous games I really hated children. They are boring to me.) So, you've just got a bunch of animal haters or something since these pets are about as close as you can get to real ones atm IMO. I don't have any glitches because my computer is decent (might have problems on lower spec ones) so obviously glitches suck but.....not a single one for me once I ditched my outdated problematic mods. 10/10 best expansion for me by far. I was laughing so hard last night at some of the things that were happening in my game. I've always enjoyed animals and this is the thing for me and even gives me a career with them. Couldn't be happier. Glitches usually are fixed in time if it's not on your end so even if you have them you'll probably find a way around within a week or 2. (between mods and proper patches).

Pets is worth if if you like animals. If you don't, go play with the toddlers. #childfree.

"Feenoir;c-16152892" wrote:
OP, for not playing before you posted, and playing minimally you seemed to just hate it right off the bat. I would've rather had pets than toddlers (YEAH SOME PEOPLE ACTUALLY PREFER ANIMALS!!!). They are pretty realistic. My animals have VERY specific personalities and they're WAY fun to play with. My cat specifically goes and sits on the robotic vacuum and waits for me to turn it on like a proper human slave just like a real cat would. Training it to get off the counter took a while and it was eating human food all the time until I was able to catch it in the act and scold it a few times for it. Right now I'm running a vet clinic and compared to the restaurant it's 100x better. With a high vet skill you REALLY can see the progress on how fast you take care of them. Early on it's hard (like it's supposed to be). I haven't had any glitches once I removed the offending mods that were outdated or updated the ones I could keep. My sim comes home stressed from work? Nice jog with the dog to get her and the dog's exercise in. You can control almost EVERYTHING the animals do by asking them to do things and with training so IDK why people are still stuck on the 'can't control them' thing. You pretty much can. You can control them WAY better than you can a butler or visiting sim. You can probably control them more than a real pet tbh (my dog gives 0 plums if he wants to do whatever it is he wants to do). The sim dog kept waking me up in the morning, barking at strangers, being terrified of the TV (yeah idk, it's kind of hilarious though), getting dirty as heck rolling in pee puddles....for a while I had to bathe him every other day. Now he's clean more because I trained him not to be a dirty piggy. Now he lets me sleep in. With everything if you don't actually TRY to get into the pets they won't matter to you (just like in previous games I really hated children. They are boring to me.) So, you've just got a bunch of animal haters or something since these pets are about as close as you can get to real ones atm IMO. I don't have any glitches because my computer is decent (might have problems on lower spec ones) so obviously glitches suck but.....not a single one for me once I ditched my outdated problematic mods. 10/10 best expansion for me by far. I was laughing so hard last night at some of the things that were happening in my game. I've always enjoyed animals and this is the thing for me and even gives me a career with them. Couldn't be happier. Glitches usually are fixed in time if it's not on your end so even if you have them you'll probably find a way around within a week or 2. (between mods and proper patches).

Pets is worth if if you like animals. If you don't, go play with the toddlers. #childfree.

Awesome post!

These are the things that sway me. I was concerned that they would go overboard in the direction of "family play" with the pets, but I see a lot of simmers saying that they are absolutely wonderful additions for the singles.

"PrincessVee;c-16148971" wrote:

"Pamtastic72;c-16148942" wrote:
To be fair, I think a lot of people are having these issues due to mods & cc. My game is stripped down to vanilla, I reset my S4 folder & deleted all cache files and I'm mot having these issues despite my computer being below the new specs for the pack. I miss my mods but for now I'm perfectly content to just explore and enjoy the new content.

@Pamtastic72 Could you test if you experience disappearing food bowls please?
1. Place a food bowl anywhere in your house.
2. Leave the lot and travel to any other venue.
3. Come back and see if the bowl is still there.

I've had disappearing bowls too :( I know sometimes the dogs can take them and bring them to a sim when there are hungry, but everytime I come back to my home lot I can't find the bowls anywhere on the lot. I do not have any mods though.

"DeservedCriticism;c-16152819" wrote:

"drake_mccarty;c-16152142" wrote:
For $20 it made the most sense to pick it up, and it’s not terrible but definitely not worth $40.

The most disappointing part IMO is the lack of interactions with either Cats or Dogs. There’s a handful of generic interactions and that’s it. Pets are just kind of there, they can’t do a lot of things (that they should be able to) and some things are just poorly animated (playing fetch: ball pops from the ground to the dogs mouth.. in a AAA game that’s ridiculous). There’s a ridiculously small number of pet objects whether that be interaction objects or care objects like pet beds, food bowls, etc. dogs get the short end of the stick. Cats get a few more things, but most of it is nothing more than jumping around. Children have even fewer interactions with pets than adults, they can’t even take dogs on walks. I do not like how annoying dogs are. An untrained dog shouldn’t waltz over to the door and wine to go outside. If it’s smart enough to know it should be going outside then why do I have to instruct it to? Not a fan of the instruction setup, not possible to see what your dog has learned good or bad. Learning is heavily skewed already anyway. What happened to “Pets will be messy”? Because that, so far, has been the polar opposite of what’s happened.

As I said, for $20 it’s a steal. I would not pay $40 for this pack. After playing it my honest opinion is that they did focus way too much on areas that weren’t Cats or Dogs - and it shows with how little attention was given to either. CAP is neat, but I doubt I will use it that much. More things for dogs and cats to do would have been a much better use of those resources. The pack itself isn’t terrible, but it’s not an improvement over Pets EP’s in the past which offered a lot more for the same price.

It’s a 4/10 for me.

I still hold the stance that an EP that fails to offer any improvements over it's predecessor to it's main feature doesn't deserve any money whatsoever, simply on a matter of principle. To buy this pack is to welcome more lackluster EPs and say "yes EA, I am willing to throw money at you if you give me the bare minimum and don't even improve on anything."

I sort of agree with you. If it can't amaze more than the three others, I don't see any point in jumping on the bandwagon. GT was o.k. and it was the world that interested me, CL was disappointing, the only good things I got out of that which were fun was the flea market table since we can't run a home business, and the karoake machine again, but the podium, forget it, no one listens like they do in TS2, but I don't know, I can wait for something better.