"ashcrash19;c-18289539" wrote:
I personally believe the horse animations, riding skill, competitions, baby goats/lambs, nectar making, art/direction of the world and more are why it was an expansion pack vs a game pack. Even if I wasn't a horse lover, I'd understand that it takes a lot of resources and money to create horses correctly based upon what simmers have wanted for years. I imagine they also wanted to avoid them being buggy like in TS3 edition.
I think of it like Eco Lifestyle--not everyone was thrilled with it based on its focus on sustainability, eco-living etc but yet it was still an expansion pack due to the features it came with/money used on creating.
Tbh then they should have raised the budget for this pack. I know animations are expensive and difficult, but animations (while tied to gameplay) aren't actually gameplay in themselves. Raise the budget to bring the gameplay up to par with other EPs. But EA is controlling things, and EA is...
EA.
And I keep bringing this up, but Sims 3 Pets didn't seem to have this problem, and it was already operating on a less limited base game. It had most of what Cats & Dogs, My First Pet Stuff and Horse Ranch has put together. There are some additional content in those packs, but you could easily argue that TS3 Pets had exclusive content that was just as good, if not better.
Like they were able to do so much with one pack a decade ago, but we're paying more than twice the price for this content and arguably*
still getting short-changed?
Eco Lifestyle is probably a good example of a pack featuring an extensive new system, but still including a lot of stuff. You had the extensive Off-the-Grid features, major overhauls, eco footprints and NAPs. But you also had crafting, a new career, a freelance career, candle-making, dumpster diving, juice fizzing, four new traits for sims, and 5 lot traits. I didn't like the pack and questioned many of its decisions, but it was ambitious for what it was.
*Arguably, because I know people will chime in and say that they're happy with what they're getting. And I think that's totally fine. I know I'll be happy to get Horse Ranch and will get a ton of use out of it regardless. But I hope you can see why people wouldn't be happy with what we're getting, or find it insufficient.
