Disappointed with City Living

Completely agree, City Living is terrible and it's actually the reason I stopped playing the Sims 4 and refused to buy any more packs. I also bought it discounted and still felt ripped off (50% off).

The apartments are one of the worst things for me, I was so angry when they revealed that you can't build them or move them, you are stuck with what you get. Having creative freedom has always been the most important thing for me with the Sims, and this just removed it in the worst possible way. Compared to the Sims 2, these apartments are absolutely terrible. There are so many limitations and in the end, playing an apartment just felt no different to a house, only with a pretty backdrop (which is clearly the main priority for the sims team in this game judging from how nearly all the packs have been handled). There's no lively communal areas and social life that you got in Sims 2 AL (and no loading screens to visit neighbours), nor roommates. Just incredibly disappointing.

I also totally agree about the busking, I'm surprised no one else already mentioned this before. It's very frustrating trying to play a musician sim who busks for their job, I tried to do this and gave up in the end due to the problems you've mentioned above, just like so many other (flawed) gameplay elements of the Sims 4 that I gave up on and never touched again. As you said, I also noticed that the busking area was ALWAYS occupied so I could barely ever get my sim to busk in the first place. And even if it happened to be empty for once and I clicked on it and told my sim to busk, there was a high chance that another sim would get there first and start using it before my sim got there. And like you said it was so hard to get tips. It was so much easier in the Sims 2, where you could go up to any musical instrument and play for tips, and usually you got quite a few tips as well. You could also freestyle for tips wherever you wanted.

Yeah I agree about the recolours, there's loads more in CL as well. It's becoming a concerning trend for the Sims 4, with many objects in new packs bring recolours. The worst example is the MFP pack, nearly everything in there is either a recolour, or clearly part of a set in C&D. It's extremely lazy. I'm starting to think now that this is why we didn't get create a style or a colour wheel for CAS, because that would get in the way of them making tons of recolours of objects and outfits/hair and selling them again in future packs.

But yeah, the two words for me that best describe CL are "missed opportunity". That is honestly all I could think of while trying to play it, it's honestly totally shocking what we ended up with for a full price expansion. It seems that much of what you listed and other things you'd expect to see in a city pack (eg restaurants), were split up and sold in other packs. IMO CL and GT could easily have been combined into one big city pack, albeit with only one of the worlds. That said though Windenburg was pretty much a city and that's how most cities are here in Europe, so I would've been happy to have that instead of San Myshuno, but with an urban district or something added in.

"coldplay2233;d-937833" wrote:
I purchased City Living a little over a week ago while it was on sale for 60% off. What I've now found in my shortish time playing the pack, that this City Living is but a shadow of what it could have been..

I feel like there are appartments to live in, but nothing else. Where are the events? Yes there are the festivals but they aren't much from what I've seen. Just some vendors with sims using some interactive items.

I remember Sims 3 Late Night at least added in a fame system. At least there was some progression provided for our sims. If you wanted to get into the more fancy establishments, you had to build a bit of a name for yourself. But there is no systems like that provided here..

I noticed one of the couches that came with City living is nothing but a RESKIN of a couch from base game. Are they really doing this? If we can create a style, we could do it ourselves.
https://i.imgur.com/d2d23YV.jpg

I tried to find alternate ways for my sim to make money. I hoped I could have my sim learn a skill like dancing, and use that skill to busk on the street. But it looks like you can only busk with violin or guitar. And what's worse is sims barely tip you at all. And even worse than that, you cannot busk wherever you please like how it was in Sims 3. Nope.. there is predefined spots where you can busk. Like an item you can use. And you can forget about it if another NPC is using it before you can. He will busk from morning till night, and then all night, and your sim wont get a chance to play.

I feel like the city should have had so much more. I mean it's a city for plum sakes. Wheres the bowling, movie nights, beaches, nightclubs, vip accesses, subways, tourist attractions. It just feels so bare. Even for the discounted $20 I spent on it, it doesn't feel worth it.

Unfortunately if you want dancing skills, bowling and or movie nights you will have to purchase more packs. But I absolutely agree with what you have to say. Heck I bought it as full price... You can imagine how Tee'd off I am \(>o<)/

City Living is not a good expansion pack by any means. Basically there is no point to it, they added a decorative city filled with novelties and content that they knew players already didn’t use. I spent $18 on it months after it released, and I regret doing that because it was not even worth that.

The apartments are trash. The festivals are base game content (most of which the devs told us people already weren’t using!), and that’s about it. I feel sorry for people who think CL is a good pack, because it’s really not at all.

"drake_mccarty;c-16408397" wrote:
City Living is not a good expansion pack by any means. Basically there is no point to it, they added a decorative city filled with novelties and content that they knew players already didn’t use. I spent $18 on it months after it released, and I regret doing that because it was not even worth that.

The apartments are trash. The festivals are base game content (most of which the devs told us people already weren’t using!), and that’s about it. I feel sorry for people who think CL is a good pack, because it’s really not at all.

Agreed. imo there is nothing wong with the concept. I think every concept are great the problem will be on the implementation, especially at the festials. Just imagine if they added more fun objects that is related to let say "GeekCon" Like the sphere thingy from TS3 SHowtime instead of the rocketship, observatory, and Programming. THe only new thing in that festival was the Consoles. The interactions would have been nice but they are just reused base game animations. Then Don't get me started on that Immortal Romance Guru...

"TS1299;c-16408431" wrote:

"drake_mccarty;c-16408397" wrote:
City Living is not a good expansion pack by any means. Basically there is no point to it, they added a decorative city filled with novelties and content that they knew players already didn’t use. I spent $18 on it months after it released, and I regret doing that because it was not even worth that.

The apartments are trash. The festivals are base game content (most of which the devs told us people already weren’t using!), and that’s about it. I feel sorry for people who think CL is a good pack, because it’s really not at all.

Agreed. imo there is nothing wong with the concept. I think every concept are great the problem will be on the implementation, especially at the festials. Just imagine if they added more fun objects that is related to let say "GeekCon" Like the sphere thingy from TS3 SHowtime instead of the rocketship, observatory, and Programming. THe only new thing in that festival was the Consoles. The interactions would have been nice but they are just reused base game animations. Then Don't get me started on that Immortal Romance Guru...

They felt very cheap to me. Like I already wasn’t using this stuff, is it supposed to appeal to me now that it’s in a city setting? Festivals could have been pretty cool had they made new content for them, instead of just a few shirts and food mixed with tons of existing gameplay.

I also think they should've let us have the ability to create our own festivals. This kind of gameplay mechanism is clearly possible in the Sims 4 because they did it with clubs in GT. I like having as much creative possibility as possible and creating our own festivals meant we wouldn't have gotten bored after doing the same ones over again.

"RnM92;c-16408449" wrote:
I also think they should've let us have the ability to create our own festivals. This kind of gameplay mechanism is clearly possible in the Sims 4 because they did it with clubs in GT. I like having as much creative possibility as possible and creating our own festivals meant we wouldn't have gotten bored after doing the same ones over again.

This probably would have been possible had they not stuck the festivals in the parts of the neighborhood that cant be edited. They’ve known they can’t make changes to the worlds themselves, so putting these festivals in spots where they can’t be changed was a huge design flaw. Same for apartments. They cared more for how the content looked in the world than what players could actually do with those features.

For me CL symbolizes a team that tries their best to make a good product but lost touch with what this franchise is actually about for its players. It’s all atmosphere and looks and scripts instead of giving the players tools to make the game their own. Which for me is the power of The Sims.

Doesn't feel like a good EP to me either. I think I bought it for 60% off like you and I don't think it's even worth that. The biggest fail is that we can't build our own apartments. Not even in the current 4 stories high limitations we have right now. I don't have to build skyscrapers, just anything that isn't detached!
I have played in SM a few times and I think it's very boring. You don't really do much there that is different from the rest of the game. It's all recycled stuff from the base game. Yeah you can sing karaoke and there are some new food stands, but those are nothing exciting for me. The world is kind of nice, but it still feels small to me.

I did like some of the furniture that came with it, love the bohemian style but movie hang out stuff had so much more in that respect. The preowned furniture is such a rip off - give us a new design or the ability to find it on the street or buy from our neighbors or something?

Anyone played the new careers? I haven’t had the chance since my battered laptop takes a little too long with loading screens very tedious jumping from location to location