My Thoughts On Kits, Honestly I'm Just Confused

I am kind of surprised they went the unified pricing route myself, but from what I gather they are trying to present the story that no one type of gameplay is worth more than the other so they are worth the same. In that respect, a gameplay focused kit expansion for someone that namely plays in live mode is worth the same as a CAS kit to a namely CAS player and a BB kit to a mainly builder.

What that means for people like me that roughly spend a third in each (although I think gameplay is the most important) seems to be various different opinions on the value of the kits. For example, I was disappointed by Throwback because it only had clothes. I would have expected a CAS focused kit to have things like hair, accessories, jewelry, makeup, etc. Better yet, new CAS things like body hair.

players wanted more content, ea wanted more money. players are willing to pay more to get that content and ea knows it.
what's there to not understand?

"bella_goth;c-17824889" wrote:
players wanted more content, ea wanted more money. players are willing to pay more to get that content and ea knows it.
what's there to not understand?

I would prefer to pay reasonable prices for more content, not just some arbitrary, blanket amount of money.

Simply put, the value of the packs does not equal the price.

"bella_goth;c-17824889" wrote:
players wanted more content, ea wanted more money. players are willing to pay more to get that content and ea knows it.
what's there to not understand?

If that is a good answer for you that's fine. But really sit back and look at the content they have given us. I just want to know how the work that they put in comes out to the cost the give. We have expansion packs that have no worlds, game packs with worlds, massive gaps between content for the ages and sexes. I only ask because it's just so inconsistent. Your answer has barely scratched the surface to what I want to know.

"Calico45;c-17824883" wrote:
I am kind of surprised they went the unified pricing route myself.

I agree with you, and I think over time we will likely see even more discrepancy between how much value different kits seem to offer for the same price.

However, I strongly suspect the reason for this is that some people complained so much about the point system for the TS3 store. In that case, the cost of the sets valued dramatically depending on whether they were for an entire world, 1-2 items, or various points in between.

For reasons I have never fully understood... and I mean, I've seen the arguments, I just never found any of them compelling... apparently some people felt that having a point system made it a particularly egregious form of microtransactions. So my best guess is that the TS4 marketing team just said, "oh, you didn't like the points system? Fine, we'll just slap one uniform price on all of these kits, no matter what they include, and call it a day. "

They say it's because they felt restricted in what content they could do for each pack. When they come up with ideas for every pack they probably decide on a couple of things and then maybe some features get scrapped along the way because they feel that they will not work or other features get prioritized. They wanted to have the ability that cc creators have where they can just make a bunch of items based on a niche theme.

The pricing is probably determined by EA and Maxis, based on how much effort they put into each kit and what they think people are willing to pay for them. The three kits will probably require a similar amount of efforts from people like artists and programmers. Dust the bust kit have two gameplay items with a lot of gameplay which probably required a fair bit of programming, the country kitchen kit required a lot of work to make all cabinets and benches work together and the throwback fit kit required a lot of work from their artists.

That's my guess anyway.

"bella_goth;c-17824889" wrote:
players wanted more content, ea wanted more money. players are willing to pay more to get that content and ea knows it.
what's there to not understand?

i'll try again. it's just more content separated into packs to maximize profits while ea pretends they're making us a favor. if they do this is because it works. i'm sure if kits were $10 people would've still paid anyways. the reason packs are so inconsistent is that devs have to cut corners depending on the topic cuz ea won't give them more time to develop nor budget.

Personally I don't mind the idea of kits, I would just adjust the prices. BB/CAS kits should be £3/$3 and Gameplay should stay at 5