"Zeldaboy180;c-15808059" wrote:
"DeservedCriticism;c-15807991" wrote:
The pack does plenty to give parents plenty to do (at least for Children), but my counter-point would be that good traits and good family gameplay are not mutually exclusive. It's entirely possible to provide both, so when the YA traits underperform, it just seems like a disappointment and missed potential on behalf of the GP team. Either they should spend a little more time thinking about interesting trait effects or they desperately need some more creativity; either way they could've addressed the issue with minimal time setbacks to it's release date.
Could they have delivered both good family play and good traits? Yes, and that's precisely why complaints and disappointment will be voiced from time to time.
The traits are fine, I don't know what a couple few people are going on about, here's some backstory.
I had a son and a daughter as toddlers, the son had the angelic trait, and the daughter fussy.
The son is a teen now and has green in nearly all categories, the daughter is red in 3 and green in 2.
The son autonomously will do dishes, set up the table, and generally doesn't get into any trouble. He's only been in time out once, I seriously never have to punish him. He even has good grades and does projects.
The daughter meanwhile, never picks up after herself and was an absolute nightmare as a kid. She was CONSTANTLY making messes and being scolded. She went through a mean phase and was an absolute jerk to her dad and brother. I put her in time out more times than I can count, and most of it was autonomous. Let me tell you, that girl had a mouth like a sailor, and her grades weren't nearly as good as her brothers.
The traits in this pack have seriously improved, I'm so happy. I just aged them up to teens so let's see where it goes.
I'm not talking about character values, I'm talking the traits. The two are not the same. The character values are functioning fine, the Young adult traits are rather weak.
Had a child that was low Empathy and insensitive and they picked fights constantly. Moment they become a YA, suddenly they're calmer and back to normal, only picking a fight here and there much like Mean and Evil do (aka not enough, and may have been Evil doing this since she had that trait). The little girl that constantly sought to pick a fight or troll the forums was suddenly only interested in video games or tending to her needs, and would only rarely pick mean interactions in conversations. What's more, "Instigate" was the only new interaction worth mentioning (+2 moodlet to a negative mood for the target sim), as all the others she gained were functionally identical to existing traits.
Even ones such as Responsible are a bit weak, since they only encourage the Sims to work hard by default instead of boosting their promotion rate; a responsible sim and a sim that happens to be working hard seem to gain promotions at the same rate, it's just the responsible sim is less likely to come home tense. Very very few of the YA traits seem to actually matter, such as the Manners ones or Irresponsible.
Point is the YA traits could've been handled better. They weren't and that's disappointing, because as I said, functional character values for kids and well-polished traits for adults are not mutually exclusive, so even if the focal point of the pack is on kids, there's no reason they couldn't ensure this feature was meaningful for YAs too.
