6 years ago

My Few Gripes About "Seasons"

I just got the "Seasons" expansion for Christmas by way of a generous Amazon gift card, and I'm quite happy to finally have weather. The rain and snow look pretty nice, and I really like how the leaves slowly fall off of the trees over the course of the fall and the frost on the windows in winter is a nice touch. However, there are a few things in seasons I am not fond of.

1. The Autonomous "Witness First Snow" action is annoying. It causes your sim to actually walk all the way outside of the house to look at the snow...all the way outside. If your sim lives in a tiny shack, not so bad, but if you have a medium/large house, it's super annoying...especially if you're managing several sims at once and you don't catch the sim who's on their way outside until they're just about to hit the stairs! Why can't your sim just go to the nearest window to see the snow like TS2?! Why do they have to trek all the way outside just to see the snow? No. That was a poor design decision, especially because it happens even with Autonomy set to OFF!! No desert for you.

2. The Holiday Activities are kind of lame. If they get a full golden checkmark on at least 3/4 of the holiday activities, they get a happy moodlet. If your sim doesn't spam through at least 3/4 of the holiday activities enough to get a gold checkmark on them, sad moodlet. The worst part is that with the Spooky activity type, I had a family of vampires and had them interacting with each other non-stop, but none of the interactions counted toward a gold checkmark on the activity. What the actual Heck? Yeah...Holidays are pretty weak.

3. The snowball fight animations are slow, limp, and lifeless. I had three Child sims having a snowball fight, thinking it was going to be a cute, funny romp...WRONG! They stand around more than anything, and they move around so slowly, rarely ever throwing a snowball. There's just no action, no dynamism to the whole affair and it's boring to watch! A snowball fight should not be boring to watch! What sort of wrong have you done to your animation team for them to toss out a crummy set of snowball fight animations and go, "Yeah, it's done, here. Just give us our paychecks so we can go home and drink away the pain." Thank goodness I didn't pay full price for this pack with these weak oars snowball fights.

Aside from these complaints, I do like the weather and seasonal effects, and the calendar is very useful, at least, for keeping track of sims' birthdays (an invaluable tool for playing with families) and scheduling parties and vacations in advance. Still, not as good as "Get Together" (still my favorite EP, sorry), but not quite as bad as "City Living" (still disappointed about that thing).

Ayvid_Reader
Newcomer
6 years ago
"Reitanna;c-16902158" wrote:
my issue... you can't plant if it's too cold outside? like... even if it's spring? it says, "it's too cold to plant!" too cold to pick up a tiny shovel, dig a hole, and plant a seed? it'll be warmer later, right? I mean... how cold could it POSSIBLY be to not be able to plant things in spring at 10:30 AM when the forecast is "warm and partly cloudy?"

It's supposed to be mimicking frozen ground. As a gardener irl you can't plant before your ground is thawed and you don't plant before the last freeze because of possibility the ground freezing again or the cold killing your plants. So even if it's been warm doesn't mean that the ground has thawed enough to plant in.
GrumpyGlowfish
Seasoned Newcomer
6 years ago
Can I just add that beekeeping s-u-c-k-s? I have a beekeeper with an almost full friendship bar with her bees, she regularly rids their hive of mites and puts crocus-scented flowers in the vicinity to keep them calm, yet they still sting her half-dead every time she sets foot in their greenhouse! I also wish this was a minor skill rather than relationship-based, because it took me weeks to get this alleged "friendship" so high, and with relationship culling running wild in my game (my two lovers in the same household just completely forgot about each other), I'm already dreading the day I'll have to start anew with those little pests.
mariefoxprice83
Seasoned Hotshot
6 years ago
I wish we had a wet weather category because sims have no business wearing raincoats except when they are outdoors in the rain. I rarely use the raincoats because I once had a sim keep putting it on when getting dressed in the morning. It was in her set of either everyday or cold weather. I also agree that sims really shouldn't be wearing their cold weather outerwear indoors, but the game can't distinguish between a warm jumper for cold weather whilst indoors, and a jacket for outdoors.
DreamaDove
6 years ago
"Mariefoxprice83;c-16912370" wrote:
I wish we had a wet weather category because sims have no business wearing raincoats except when they are outdoors in the rain. I rarely use the raincoats because I once had a sim keep putting it on when getting dressed in the morning. It was in her set of either everyday or cold weather. I also agree that sims really shouldn't be wearing their cold weather outerwear indoors, but the game can't distinguish between a warm jumper for cold weather whilst indoors, and a jacket for outdoors.

@Mariefoxprice83

try:
thermostatoutfittweak: When the thermostat is on, Sims will change from their coldweather outfits to everyday inside. When its hot outside and the thermostat is cooling, sims change from hotweather outfit to everyday when inside. Sims will also change from hot weather outfit into their everyday outfit when feeling chilled outside. Sims will now also change from coldweather wear to everyday if they enter a room with a lit fireplace.

walkbyrainfix_version2: Sims walking by won't wear ridiculous outfit combinations when it's raining anymore. With version 2 Sims will actually choose boots and a raincoat.

Modders are saving the game.
drake_mccarty
6 years ago
The snowball fights, water balloon fights, and mud fights are so annoying. Half the time the sims aren’t even facing each other when they end up throwing anything.

The holidays wore off on me long ago. There’s really just no reason to keep doing them over and over. Features like that get super repetitive, even with the surprise holidays. I haven’t seen other sims participating in holiday activities on their own either, I thought that was supposed to be a thing.

Something else that REALLY irks me with seasons is that Sims aren’t programmed to change out of their hot/cold clothing when they go indoors. I got a mod to solve it, but what is the deal with that? Sims will change into their outerwear for 2 seconds to take the trash out and come back inside and leave it on. This wasn’t a problem in Sims 2 or 3!

On a similar note the thermostat, which was a fun idea, is also super annoying. You are basically forced into getting one or else your home will be hot or cold. Couldn’t they have made that an opt in thing? I don’t always want to bother with a thermostat to play a household without obnoxious outfit changes. Who puts on their winter coat when you’re cold inside your house?
GrumpyGlowfish
Seasoned Newcomer
6 years ago
"drake_mccarty;c-16913553" wrote:
Who puts on their winter coat when you’re cold inside your house?

I always give my sims at least two cold weather outfits: One to wear when it's cold inside, and one for outside, like this:

https://abload.de/img/outdoor84jn1.jpg

Of course, that means I always have to tell them manually which outfit to wear when, and I have no control over it when I meet them as NPCs while playing other sims, but that's still better than seeing them walk around dressed for the Antarctic while indoors.
Thenyoukissme
6 years ago
Whats been bugging me most is the cold weather wear. My sim is ALWAYS wearing it. Wish they would change to regular once they come inside.
BabyCake04
Seasoned Newcomer
6 years ago
I feel like the umbrellas work almost like strollers did in the sims 3
Ayvid_Reader
Newcomer
6 years ago
"Bagoas77;c-16916005" wrote:

Thanks for the review. Sounds like I would not be happy with this pack. Guess I'll give this one a wide berth.

I dunno I feel it adds so much to the game. You may wanna watch a couple of Youtube reviews of the pack. I love the holidays myself. I don't feel I'm spamming anything. It sucks the vampire thing didn't work out, but just like IRL holidays get repetitive.
TheGreatGorlon
6 years ago
I wish the snowball/water balloon fights had been like they were in TS3 (or was it 2?) where it was done with the snowball fort/waterballon fort. Sure, it wasn't as impulse friendly as just grabbing a ball and chucking it, but because it was locked to a specific item, it had it's own interactions and designated fight space so they could have a more in depth animation for it.

As for City Living, I'm not exactly sure why you thought it was disappointing. I personally find it very fun! It added so much content, like apartments, lot traits, and singing skills, as well as the multiple food trucks with cool recipes your Sim can learn and collect. Plus, the festivals are pretty fun and add a bit of life to the game. I think it was a very well done pack, and added so much character to the game. Though, like others have mentioned, I've been hesitant to get Seasons because of the horror stories I've read about how weather can mess up some of the festivals - like the rain breaking all the stuff at GeekCon.