"babajayne;c-17133154" wrote:
"Zussage;c-17133060" wrote:
Eventually all of the content in every pack will be "explored through". To me, the beauty of the sims is how you can play the same career on the same world but with a different personality and sim, and you have a whole different game, or vice versa. It's about recombining. I just don't think it's possible to make a pack with content that "never ends". The replayability of it is based on something else.
With TS2 and TS3 expansions, there were spoilers everywhere online and I wanted to find these surprises myself. I would play an expansion for months, even years before really delving into the details people would share online, and I always came away with several new things to try.
With TS4 expansions, I come to the forums to find out what I am missing and the answer is: little to nothing.
That's a totally valid experience and you're totally right. Subjectively for me though, that just hasn't been my experience. I find the amount of content comparable. I also find that as a player, as I have become more savvy, things move faster and become easier for me (regardless of if it's in TS3 or TS4).
I would definitely say that TS3 does have more content on the surface, but for the way I play it didn't really matter. I couldn't play with the best graphics, Couldn't play without heavy mods. The game crashed all the time, I had to nerf it just to be able to play it. So I couldn't use things that I loved. Not so with TS4, I can play everything fully, on the same computer. I just get more out of it. I love the build mode better, the graphics, CAS. I think the game needs more skills, traits and aspirations but that just keeps growing with each pack anyway.
Let's take one thing for me as an example: Diving and open water. Loved it I'm TS3, I loved making mermaids and going down. It was cool! But then, Island Paradide seriously glitched my game. I couldn't play with resorts, had to install a bunch of mods, delete a bunch of stuff... and even though it was cool diving, I couldn't even play with the graphics on full. I wasn't getting the full experience of that underwater world. Even open water interactions were few: I could snorkel and splash sims. That's about it. Underwater I could view items, harvest kelp, and catch fish. The talking animations were all the same. It basically became a "where's Waldo" point and click for catching fish. Trying to travel anywhere, it took forever to walk, swim, taxi or boat in the open world. Worse for mermaids as they automatically swim. On houseboats, my child sims couldn't swim at night because once they are off the house boat, they're "past curfew" and get caught by police, even while diving :/
In TS4, there is no following diving, it's a rabbit hole. But, graphics wise, the ocean swimming itself is gorgeous! Its not just blue on blue. My mermaids have so many more interactions in the water, they can even kiss sims!!! Yes, these interactions will likely get boring after awhile, but so will anything. These are still more, and gameplay wise for me, much more usable for everyday storytelling. Even the way they swim is more interactive then it was watching mermaids dive in TS3. We don't have the open world, but the loading and traveling is so much easier for me this way. I LOVE it. I'm not spending forever watching my sim swim through an endless ocean, or getting a dozen routing glitches. Its ten times more useable than TS3 was for me.
Would it be cool if they had interactive diving? For sure. No doubt. But do I still think the content given, for what I paid, was reasonable? Certainly. I also knew going in that wouldn't be featured. I had enough information on hand about what was in it for me to determine if the price was worth it for me. I also wouldn't want diving back if it caused as much problems for my system as TS3 did. And I guess this is where I ended up when I personally determined the value of this expansion and TS4. Of course I want everything: we all do. If I could have everything perfectly functioning and magically working for 40 bucks or less of course I would. But eventually I know they can't do it all. They are going to have to draw lines somewhere, for one reason or another. And some cuts will certainly be for financial reasons and what they can get away with. That's just what businesses do. But taking all the information at hand, comparing to the previous similar title, considering how I play and what I'm most likely to use, it came out as an overall winner for me.
I hope I'm making sense. I also don't mean to sound like my opinion is superior or the only right one. I think everyone is right because it's all about how YOU play personally. So for you, it's a let down and not as good as TS3. And you're right.
