"Sk8rblaze;c-16393466" wrote:
Ever since this pack, I've found myself probably the most checked out of this franchise that I have ever been.
MFP really proved that these stuff packs are nothing more than a mere attempt at charging a good 10 dollars for a "special object", often a returning feature we've already had bundled with a stuff pack (or even base game) in the past, with some aesthetic fluff. To some people, the purchase is worth it, however, to myself, especially with all of the great games currently on the market, of all different genres, I can't justify it whatsoever.
Speaking of which, that is primarily what has taken me away from The Sims -- great games whose publishers allow the game to just flourish and improve. The Sims has stagnated and devolved into something I am just no longer interested in. I don't find myself compelled to wait months on end without content for, finally, a pack which adds a guinea pig object with different skins and limited functionality, giant rodent costumes, and content that should have been in the expansion I just purchased (which also lacked content in the "stuff" category"). Jungle Adventures and MFP were both let downs in my eyes, and they're just two little components of a much bigger mess that is TS4.
It's more than that. This is evidence EA is watching like hawks for every opportunity to nickle and dime the fans. It's the implication that gameplay quality is a bottom-tier priority while profit is prioritized over both consumer satisfaction and consumer trust.
People have spent over three years insisting Sims 4 will get better, and to it's credit, while 2017 wasn't exactly amazing, it was also by far the best year of the game's run.
This pack is evidence that the game is not a steady climb upward though. This is not a linear path, and that quality can fall again, just like it just did. The team isn't learning and improving, they're exactly where they were on release day. Nothing has changed, and as we can see, the team is clearly watching for any opportunity to do less work for more money. It sounds like Cats and Dogs sold really well (probably because for many people it'd be viewed as being symbolic that Sims 4 is finally "complete"), and how did the team react? "Well obviously we should utilize this moment to price gauge our loyal customers and destroy their trust for some more money!"
What happened here...? It can happen again. It will keep happening. What do you suppose is going to happen if Seasons sells more than Cats and Dogs...? They're certainly not gonna learn a lesson and just give us great content. No, we'll get more of this.
What the Sims team did by making this pack is they showed their hand. They made it clear this isn't about quality, this isn't about their "vision," this isn't about trying something new or any of that. It's about money. It's about doing as little work as possible for as much profit as possible. I mean, need I remind anyone that this pack delivered one small pet while Sims 3 had....I don't even know how many.
Even Sims 1 delivered the hamster for free. The hamster in Sims 4 is the most expensive hamster of the franchise, no questions asked, and the title implies they'd like to repeat that process (if there's no outrage anyways; they were ABSOLUTELY testing the waters to see if they could get away with it) with parrots or turtles or the like.
Even the content or "gameplay" recycled is getting terribly predictable. It feels like any time they make a new pack now, what's their lazy filler to make the pack seem bigger than it is? "Here consumer, here's another collectathon."
City Living recycles base game content, has the most limited apartments of the franchise and seems to think food dishes count as meaningful content? It's ok, here's a snowglobe collection!!!
Cats and Dogs has practically nothing for the pets to actually do? It's ok, here's a feather collection!!!
Jungle Adventure could try to offer unique rewards and abilities for players to discover? It does that to some small degree, then pads itself with a RELIC TREASURE COLLECTION!!!!
My First Pet Stuff releases as a barely finished pack? Don't worry, here's POSTCARD COLLECTION 2.0!!! They didn't even bother coming up with a new collectible this time, and need I remind that Kids Stuff pack also had a collection to pad itself, as did Dine Out.
It just screams "lazy." They can only be bothered to provide low-resolution collectibles as a means of giving us something to do, but that isn't gameplay. That's just a time-killer. This isn't Super Mario or Banjo-Kazooie where there's some degree of challenge to finding all the collectibles. No, we make our Sims do a thing X amount of times and eventually we have all the things.
Add onto that other odd practices, such as the ever-increasing amount of low-framerate animations that seem to be popping up in newer packs (I've seen choppy animations in Laundry day, Fitness, Jungle Adventures and I vaguely recall Toddler Stuff and this pack may have them too; all the recent packs seem to have an animation or two that are noticeably choppy and poorly done), their increasing infatuation with easy-to-design 2D Wall decals, and design decisions like needlessly locking off tiny, pointless paths in Jungle Adventures to give the illusion there's more, and again: why should any of us believe the design of this game is anything but lazy?
It's padded content after padded content after padded content.This is not the attitude of a team that truly cares about this game. This is the attitude of a team that is carefully watching for any signs of "weakness" from the consumers, then concocting ways to exploit that and get more money for less work.
The goal of Sims 4 is not to improve the quality of past features, but rather to improve the amount of money received for those same past features. That is their design philosophy, and they've made that painfully obvious now.
Personally I don't see a point in sticking around. The game isn't gonna get better, the game is still half-complete, and I have no interest listening to people lie through their teeth about listening to feedback and criticism, yet here we are over 3 and a half years later and we still see the exact practices and problems that we saw on day one.
