I am kind of neutral, kind of not so happy, a little of both I guess. I think I do have a lot of problems with the game though so maybe I am a not so happy simmer more than neutral. I was excited about Dine Out but the more info I get about features I'm starting to realize that the people making the game are not going the extra mile with small details and depth overall. Like not being able to work every position when running a restaurant, that's incredibly lazy imo and should have been a detail that was added. What are we supposed to do when running a restaurant as a manager? Just sit there and watch npc's basically run it for us. I get that we can hire/fire/set menu etc but after that it just seems like we will sit there and what talk to people eating there or stand around? It's not out yet though so I should probably wait and see how it works before I'm to critical.
The lack of cohesion between packs is what I'm having a problem with(minus Dine out.) For example, with Get To Work they added retail and active careers, why did it stop there after that pack? Why not with Spa Day, you can own a spa now as a new type of business, that's expanding game play, features, meshing ep's/gp's together. Why wasn't I able to own a club, a coffee shop when Get Together came out? It's like everything that comes out is a stand alone game with all new features and completely makes the last thing you bought irrelevant. A new ep comes out it's like ok it's time to move on to the new content and the past content is now just unimportant because it has nothing to do with or it does not work with the new content. I'm not talking about clubs/groups whatever, ya they were a nice idea but I'm talking about adding in new venue types and not expanding on the features from the previous expansion(which would be owning and running a venue.)
On top of that why no new careers when Get Together came out? They put in active careers so why wasn't that expanded? Careers in general how many have we gotten since the base game was released? Just look and you'll see, it's not a lot and that's bs. The careers we do have well some of them are great but some of them are silly. Why the hell have we not gotten many new careers? How am I supposed to create a diverse neighborhood and stories when all of my sims have the same careers(because I'm not interested in having a bunch of secret agents or villainous bad guys, I'm not 12.) I don't consider retail anything but one option for a career(which is a broken mess of a system anyways) and just because I can run different types of shops doesn't change that it's just one feature. Where is the expansion of careers? I don't want every career to be active, although it would make sense for them to make more active careers and continue to expand on that but just MORE careers to create a community of sims that have different types of lives.
How many new aspirations have we gotten, in almost 2 years? How many new skills have we gotten, in almost 2 years? How many new traits have we gotten, in almost 2 years? Not a lot, how do they expect their players to be invested in the game when there isn't that much stuff to be invested in? When beyond the features of the base game there has been minimal expansion on basic features. It's like after a couple weeks of something new coming out you've explored all of it and you're right back here on the forums saying "when can we get more content?" How long is it going to take to actually fill the voids of the base game, you'd think by now there has been a lot of time to fill in those things but nope it's still going in the same direction it started out with, shallow, lackluster and with no longevity of entertaining features. Why is it that I was completely content waiting on expansions in the other sims games? I felt there were many ways to play and many new things to do, my game play was always expanded on, there was longevity in every new ep. Now it's like ok I played this for a week and I think I've done everything so when is the next thing coming out to entertain me for a week.
I don't like the whole approach to this iteration of the franchise. The whole "completely new ideas" thing is just untrue, I haven't seen any new ideas really, where are they? Is active careers a new idea? No(Ambitions.) Is owning a business a new idea? No(Open For Business.) Is clubs a new idea? Could be considered one but I'd say it was more of an expanded idea upon the original idea of jock/nerd/rebel. Are careers a new idea? No, careers are in every game. Is Outdoor Retreat a new idea? No and at least in the past with a vacation it was a lot more fleshed out. Spa day? well we've had a spa before, now we can go there and do a few things, woohoo, except own and run one or work at one(boooo.) There are no new ideas here, it's still the same sim stuff, it's just in the past there were details and depth and now they just scratch the surface and hand out a watered down version of the past ideas. I don't have a problem with new ideas if they're actually new, what I do have a problem with is taking features from previous games that everyone loved and only doing them half as good as they did before.
My opinion of what overall is really wrong with the game is that they spent just way to much time with the emotions crap(that is almost completely irrelevant for me because I've come to realize it has no real actual impact on my game or it's just completely broken.) They spent a lot of time on the sims themselves(which is great) and neglected the environment our sims live and thrive in(not so great and that's where the void is.) I'm not talking about open world or any crap like that, I'm talking about the lives we build for our sims and the interaction between sims through their every day lives: i.e, careers/families/diverse communities(because of careers/environments they live in, not everyone lives in a pretty little suburb), lack of space to build communities and have community lots for our sims to interact on, lack of places to have interesting and meaningful interactions to build stories(why can't my sim go to the hospital if they are sick and meet that doctor working there that just so happens to be my other sim and form a relationship/story, why can't my sim go to a retail lot and meet my other sim that owns it and create a meaningful relationship etc.) The sims is about making stories/creating something, it's not a rpg, a mmo, a moba, a rts, a fps, it's a life simulator and when I'm being given limited tools to really create that life then well that's just not what it is anymore.
I understand some may not agree with me and that's fine but this is my opinion and well I'm not going to argue about it because you may not feel the same, that's kind of what an opinion is.
