Life and Death Negative thread

I'm not really negative, but not so positive anymore after the trailer.

First of all, I'm glad that there will finally be an expansion pack with a new idea after all the endless recycled stuff from previous Sims editions. I can hardly remember a pack in those ten years that contained something really new and creative (the only exception might be My Wedding Stories - I guess that's something that didn't exist in this form in Sims 1 – 3).

Based on the trailer, I'm now getting the idea that it will be something recycled again, but this time from previous Sims 4 packs: the aforementioned My Wedding Stories, Realm of Magic and Paranormal Stuff. Maybe there's more, but that's what I recognized from the trailer. So, my anticipation for something “brand new” has been dampened a little.

Regarding the reaper game play, I’m not overly excited. I play static: no births, no deaths, aging off, and I’m still playing (most of the time) the save I’ve started in September 2014. Grim is basically unemployed in my game. And because of that, there won’t be more to do for him after the pack was released.

To me it will be another Strangerville, Journey to Batuu or For Rent, because I also never played the story arcs or the new game play features of these packs (same as the Get to Work careers or the MWS options).

I will buy the pack because of the new world – as always. I need more space for my builds. Ravenwood is looking nice with the different height levels and is not so flat like most of the worlds we got before. Unfortunately, it also doesn’t look brand new. To me it looks like a combination of Windenburg and Tartosa without the sea/shores. And I guess that there will be again a lot of shells and static deco (and of course the inevitable rabbit hole) with only some few usable lots scattered around.

I feel like there's no way the idea of a "Sims heaven place" didn't arise at some point during development but either they couldn't do it because of time/money reasons or, and I think this is very valid, you can't come up with a fictional "'resting place"/heaven without going into religious territory. They got such a huge backlash back when Snowy Escape released because of a "bowing" gesture, I'm sure they want to distance themselves as much as possible from any possible religion related scandal.

But I do agree, the whole theme of the pack is so GLOOMY and realistic I'm actually surprised it doesn't have the usual Sims goofiness twist to it. The Sims 2 death by old age animation with the two dancing vahines is still the best way to die lmao, dying in bed reminds me too much of my grandfather who passed away like two months ago, it's not even funny. 

I'm also a bit confused about the "playable household members" and the mention of CAS. To me this isn't anything new but a part of the basegame for years.

I have a household with four human ghosts and four ghost horses. You can play with them like any other sims (with the human ghosts of course). They have some limitations (afaik they can't join a career - never tried) and they also have some special features like possessing objects. And of course, they already can be edited in CAS. 

Whatever they mean with "playable household members" and "they can customize their looks in CAS" as something special of the new pack is a mystery to me.

I'm not the target of this pack though I do own all supernatural packs. I think the team usually excels at them. My only disappointment is not being able to will simoleans unless whole household is dead. 

I am also apprehensive about how the pack with effect randomly generated sims but that not a huge deal. As that is something I want control of in general. Also if all sims are going to become ghost. I hate when they nerf features even when I don't like them so I want to know more before purchasing. 

I just want ZOMBIES!

And Fairies..

I'm not into playing ghosts and the grim reaper job is not quite my grail, but I'm still sort of liking he new pack. My biggest concern is that playing rotationally most of the content seems a tad too detailed. I'm not even sure the Bucket List can be a thing in my game. I hope there won't be nested actions spanning several weeks per sim, because such features I never get to see in my game. I still have not seen anything relating to the lifestyle feature, thanks to my never resting rotation. Hoping the death/will/funeral stuff will work on rotation. There's plenty of smaller features that I expect to be available to just any sim at any time, like the crows and the tarot deck, graveyards and the beautiful world. I hope residential lots will not be restricted to the main hood, so a map will be even more interesting for this pack. I certainly need to learn more before I become negative ;)

I'm not sure about it in general, in the gameplay itself I'm not interested too much esoteric for me as far as I can see, but the bb catalogue is what I would like to use one day. To have an official graveyard and more different graves and tombstones would be really nice. Basically I will wait and see again, how this pack will develope when it's going live.

I suspect what they're trying to say is that ghosts will just be a part of your household--maybe you can even make a ghost in CAS rather than having to go to the trouble of making a living sim, killing them with cheats, and then adding them with a different cheat just to start with a ghost--and maybe that there's some CAS options for making them more ghosty instead of just looking like transparent people. 

But a lot of the copy here sounds like they're saying the pack features things that are already in the game.

I thought what we saw in the trailer wasn't bad, but I would have been more excited for this pack 4+ years ago when every new pack (and the patch that came before it) didn't totally break the game. I still haven't installed the pre-Lovestruck patch. The Reaper's Rewards event was supposed to tempt me to do that, but considering the number of still-active bug reports related to the event, not to mention the July and September patch-related bugs that are ongoing, I'm somehow still not tempted to update. 

Here's my wild guess as to what will be broken in this pack (and possibly the patch before it): 

• Funerals sound like they're going to function basically like weddings with MWS. And I think we all know how that pack worked out. 
• Apparently, ghost sims will be able to form "special connections," including ones that can lead to "spectral woohoo." Whenever they touch anything to do with how romantic relationships are formed and maintained, relationships get broken. Prepare for the return of the dreaded... let's say... inappropriate attraction to family members... bug. 
• This pack includes a bunch of festivals. Festivals are already broken; the fixtures that appear during a festival don't disappear after the festival. That means different festivals that take place in the same location at different times overlap each other and are therefore non-functional. 
• There is a new reward system "combining aspirations and wants." This system will probably be bugged, just because it's new and also because it depends on wants, which are already problematic if not fully bugged (e.g., fears never going away and whatnot). 
• Sims are supposed to be able to be reincarnated with bonus traits and with milestones and such carried over from their past life. Do we really think this will work as planned? There is a current bug where some people can't choose a toddler/child/teen/YA trait upon aging up. And just a reminder that it took them 2 YEARS to fix the bug where toddlers did not receive bonus traits upon aging up.
• Speaking of aging, there is currently a bug where infants/toddlers/pets auto-age-up several times in a row. Could this possibly be a problem in a pack where sims reincarnate? 
• There is an existing bug where dead sims are not greyed out in the relationship panel or in the family tree. I think this might be important with a death-themed pack coming. Just me?
• There are four new grief types and different situations (besides a death) in which sims will experience grief, including divorce, getting fired and who knows what else. This feature will be overpowered on launch, and your townies will be sad all the time. Maybe if you also have Lovestruck, your worlds will be full of couples stargazing during the day while also bawling their eyes out. 
• Rotational players will have sims dropping dead in their played households when they're not actively playing them because rotational players are an afterthought when it comes to these types of things. Remember the disappearing milestones problem when GrT came out? Yeah. There will probably be many more unforeseen problems for rotational players. 
• The simology panel will break because they'll be adding even more stuff to it. 

What did I miss? 

Forgotten Hollow is still gloomy, even without Seasons and during the Summer. It doesn't get very bright, and the colour palette is mostly greys and earth tones.

I don't think Ravenwood is going to have similar atmosphere, at all.