NAPs are boring

"kwanzaabot;c-17535062" wrote:
Just because I don't want to be totally negative, here's some NAPs that would make gameplay more meaningful:

• Fund Our Public Schools! Sims in High School and University have a better-funded curriculum, so they learn more in class and therefore complete homework faster. The "Breeze Through" and "Dominate" Homework interactions would be available to Teen and older Sims. Elementary School students could instead gain a bonus to skill gain. Property taxes are increased.
  
• Smoke Detector Distribution (I stole this one from Cities Skylines). You get a rebate for buying Smoke Detectors (like the Rebate Day holiday in Seasons, you get a kickback for buying one?) but you get fined if you don't have one.
  
• Encourage Cycling (okay, these are all gonna be inspired by Cities Skylines) Joggers are replaced with Cyclists. You get a rebate on bicycles.
  
• Book Fair Sims can go to any public Library lot in your world, and get increased skill gain, but property taxes are increased.
  
• Historical Walking Tours You see Sims milling around outside community lots, listening to a well-dressed Sim giving a speech on the local history. At night, ghosts appear, and you can ask them about the local history, too. You see text popups with little snippets about the world, talking about historical events; a war from long ago, the first settlers to the area, that time Miss Willow Creek lost her crown because of some famous scandal... Sims would get an Inspired or Focused moodlet from learning an interesting fact.
  
• Parks and Recreation Sims become Happy when they visit parks, and Bored when they haven't for a while. Property taxes are increased.
  
• Support Local Businesses! Business owners (Retail, Restaurants, Vets) get a rebate from the city council, but local Sims get increased property taxes.
  
• Challenge Week! Jasmine Holiday reappears, and until the next voting period, you can participate in the Growfruit Challenge, the PlantSim Challenge, or the Kindness Ambassador Challenge.
  

@kwanzaabot great list. I think it may have been good if the sims team would've done some surveys to get ideas of what most simmers would've preferred as NAPs in a way that would not have given away the plot of the pack.

"troshalom;c-17567545" wrote:

"kwanzaabot;c-17535062" wrote:
Just because I don't want to be totally negative, here's some NAPs that would make gameplay more meaningful:

• Fund Our Public Schools! Sims in High School and University have a better-funded curriculum, so they learn more in class and therefore complete homework faster. The "Breeze Through" and "Dominate" Homework interactions would be available to Teen and older Sims. Elementary School students could instead gain a bonus to skill gain. Property taxes are increased.
  
• Smoke Detector Distribution (I stole this one from Cities Skylines). You get a rebate for buying Smoke Detectors (like the Rebate Day holiday in Seasons, you get a kickback for buying one?) but you get fined if you don't have one.
  
• Encourage Cycling (okay, these are all gonna be inspired by Cities Skylines) Joggers are replaced with Cyclists. You get a rebate on bicycles.
  
• Book Fair Sims can go to any public Library lot in your world, and get increased skill gain, but property taxes are increased.
  
• Historical Walking Tours You see Sims milling around outside community lots, listening to a well-dressed Sim giving a speech on the local history. At night, ghosts appear, and you can ask them about the local history, too. You see text popups with little snippets about the world, talking about historical events; a war from long ago, the first settlers to the area, that time Miss Willow Creek lost her crown because of some famous scandal... Sims would get an Inspired or Focused moodlet from learning an interesting fact.
  
• Parks and Recreation Sims become Happy when they visit parks, and Bored when they haven't for a while. Property taxes are increased.
  
• Support Local Businesses! Business owners (Retail, Restaurants, Vets) get a rebate from the city council, but local Sims get increased property taxes.
  
• Challenge Week! Jasmine Holiday reappears, and until the next voting period, you can participate in the Growfruit Challenge, the PlantSim Challenge, or the Kindness Ambassador Challenge.
  

@kwanzaabot great list. I think it may have been good if the sims team would've done some surveys to get ideas of what most simmers would've preferred as NAPs in a way that would not have given away the plot of the pack.

Hey, thanks.

It's beyond strange that there's no incentive to NAPs. Don't get me wrong, I love weird stuff in The Sims, but that weirdness falls flat if it's not grounded. So being able to vote for realistic stuff like public schools, better libraries, parks, you know, things our property taxes would actually be spent on, c'mon Maxis you know this, you made SimCity ffs just makes all that weirdness like Free Love and We Wear Bags all that much more impactful.

Because I needed an in-game explanation for all the weird behavior (before I installed the mod that fixed the problem), I decided that some spellcaster in Glimmerbrook had cast a spell that ran amuck. No one knew whether it was an evil spellcaster who did it intentionally, or an apprentice spellcaster who tried something above their level that backfired.

"Sharonia;c-17565909" wrote:
I agree 100%...

They are boring and feel rather pointless. I've turned off voting and have completely lost interest in the whole system. The N.A.P's are either really obnoxious or really pointless. There is no middle ground or interesting ones that make me want to put effort into activating them.

This is one of the reasons I didn’t buy this pack. N.A.Ps sound cool in theory, but the ones they chose to create sound awful. A lot of people seem to think a patch that makes them less buggy will improve the gameplay, but to me they’re just stupid. Obviously to each their own though.

I used to think that the attraction system in TS3 was the worst implemented system in any sims game I've played, but NAP's are the worst. They're buggy and don't go away, they override sims personality traits and just cause general chaos. Like Chaos in the sims is fine, it's to be expected, but these are just bad. But the worst crime is that they are boring.

I think they missed the ball when not designing NAPs like they designed the Holidays (Seasons). We can create our own Holidays. The system should be more flexible when it comes to the optional NAPs - we should be able to create our own NAPs. A list of benefits and disadvantages - picking 1 focused behavior + 1 benefit (Eco/bills/skills/education/pets/health/pensions/relations etc) + 1 disadvantage (Eco/bills/skills/education/pets/health/fame/pensions/crafting/relations etc).

It would then be easy peasy to add to those 3 lists with new features from future packs. Sounds like quite simple programming, I don't understand why they rather designed a sealed system that feels repeated after a short while.

If they did it this way, every simmer could customize the NAPs to vote for, and they would not all be Eco dominated either.

Agree. Most of them are pointless and really OP. My sim seems to get hundreds of points from simply existing. I found earlier my sim had 142 influence points and I hadn't even done anything! She literally said hi to a random child and got 8 points from it

The ones that do things aren't very interesting aswell. If I choose a certain NAP I want to see actual things happening, ie all the roofs in the neighbourhood turn green, solar panels to appear on lots, etc but there isn't anything that in depth. If they're "community" NAPS I want the whole community involved not just me having to upgrade all my appliances whilst everyone else plays with their darn clay in the middle of the street

NAP's are breaking the game and I hate them. One of my neighborhoods has the stealing one, and NPC's managed to break the night club, library, and bar by stealing the items that it requires to function so they all show up with errors on the map that I have to manually fix. The fighting one makes it impossible to do anything in a public space, because your own Sims will keep cancelling their current actions to "Watch Fight", if they're lucky enough to not get pummeled by some random NPC while they're trying to use the recycler. And don't even think about trying to host an event while the Play With Clay or Use The Inspiration Cube ones are on, because you'll just time out on every interaction with someone else while waiting for them to put away their stupid clay. Plus giving every Sim twenty free clays and cubes each day that they can sell for around $5000 kind of ruins the whole idea of working for money.

What if you turn off voting for naps and never vote for any yourself? Doesn't that get rid of them altogether?

I have to admit, this was one thing I was not excited about, I could see (given the devs history of this kind of thing) that they would be totally spammy and ott.

"crocobaura;c-17535051" wrote:

"ParmaViolet87;c-17535016" wrote:
I am enjoying EL but NAPS are one of my least liked features.

It was fun at first, and some NAPs are pretty good (like Green Initiatives or Modern Development), but the activity ones are spammy and annoying. My sims could not enjoy a meal last night because a fight occurred every two minutes.

I also thought they were replaced, but you have to repeal one before you can change one. I feel like my neighbourhood is stuck with 4 NAPs. Any tips on this would be appreciated.

I guess we could just add the 4 NAPs we find least annoying until someone mods them. :joy: You can shift click on the mailbox to instantly repeal or enforce any NAP.

Oh I forgot about that! Thank you :smiley: