Well, I'm sure that many game developers make many sacrifices and weigh the pros and cons of different features. That seems normal. What doesn't seem normal to me is that with this iteration of The Sims, every time we hear "trade off" or "sacrifice" it's just not really clear what these features were traded for. New activities? Expansions have always come with a slew of activities. Four seasons? That's kind of the standard for a Seasons expansion. Why does giving us new activities and four seasons mean that they can't do the things they did before? I mean, if they just can't make the snow deeper, then that is what it is. But if they say "trade off" they really need to knock everyone's socks off with everything else, you know?
I can't say much about this particular expansion. I actually think that it looks like it could be all right. If I were still playing TS4, I'd probably consider buying it. However, the line they keep trotting out about trade offs is getting kinda old. It's like when they told us that they didn't bring toddlers or pools or other things into the base game because they wanted to give us the smartest sims ever. And then I play the game and I see sims who all act the same, who forget about how upset they are if their decor is cool enough, and all of the other things that have been said countless times already. Simply put, I was not seeing the pay off for the trade off.
So, while I think the expansion could be decent, I still feel like something is off with this generation of The Sims. It's always spun in such a way that it sounds as if they're doing something great for us (they've cut this or that to bring us the "best x ever!"), but in the end we just end up with fewer features. That said, I really hope that this expansion does turn out to be a nice, hefty expansion. This game is overdue for it. And I hope for everyone who still plays and loves the game that Seasons really is something very special this time around.
