"catloverplayer;c-17845652" wrote:
"NationalPokedex;c-17845574" wrote:
I can see why some people would think it doesn’t make sense to add the calendar to base game because the packs that utilize it are doing fine both with it and without it.
For example, unless they’re base game or Seasons events, things like the Talent Showcase and Premiere Night are cross-pack integrated into the calendar (someone can correct me if I’m wrong here). Birthdays and work and school days are base game integrated into the calendar. But they still occur without the use of the calendar; the calendar just makes it more convenient to know when they occur.
If the next pack requires the calendar then that pack should have either been designed to work effectively without it or within the infrastructure of the seasons calendar, or give it its own calendar that can then be combined into the seasons calendar. Expansion and integration. That’s what all of these packs should be focusing on. An expansion pack’s job is to expand the game. Seasons expanded the game in its inclusion of a calendar that made it easier to conceptualize time in the game. If seasons isn’t in the game, then this particular role of expansion should just be absent.
Maybe next time around, EA should think a little harder on the things they want to include in the base game before they start cranking out packs and then realize they’ve shot themselves in the foot. They did that with introducing vacations early on and then making every world capable of having vacation lots later on. Suddenly Outdoor Retreat isn’t about the novelty of a vacation, but the novelty of the world and the theme (woodsy cabin-esque) itself. They continue to create foundations early on as if that is a one time thing, then later on make it less special when they change its inherent novelty, causing the one unique foundation to become mere confetti.
This has nothing to do with if players think it’s fine or not fine that they had to pay for something that’s now made available to others who haven’t paid for it. It’s really to do with EA’s poor future planning.
Yes but in Granite Falls you can't live there you can just vacation there. Same with Selvadarado.
That's why I said that the novelty of vacation as a feature has been removed. Now the novelty is the world. If one of Outdoor Retreat's selling points wasn’t the concept of vacation itself, then it would have been added before that pack came out or every other world would have been vacation accessible at that time. But when OR was released, that pack was sold as being the only way to experience a vacation. It was a novelty. Then, Jungle Adventure and Journey to Batuu gave options for this same mechanic in a different dressing. Every destination world, despite all sharing the vacation feature (and thus making this specific feature redundant -- thus requiring players who bought more than one vacation pack to reconcile with its inherent decline in value at that) were still offering that feature as to what made it separate from other packs. If you only have Jungle Adventure, you are still being given the novelty feature of the vacation mechanic. Now that vacations are accessible anywhere, you are not given the novelty of vacation + the new world of Selvadorada. You are being given Selvadorada itself.
Through their choice to make vacations accessible only to designated destination worlds, EA was saying that at one point in time the value of the vacation-specific pack features were spread out across: vacation mechanic as novelty, vacation world as novelty, CAS, and B/B.
Through their choice to make vacations accessible to all worlds, EA is now saying that the value of those same games are spread across: vacation world as novelty, CAS, and B/B. There is no longer a novelty mechanic for vacation.
I understand that people are fine with things being made accessible to those with just the base game. But, it’s a showcase of how EA changes the value of their products while not changing the actual pricing of them. Whether they care or not, a person who buys OR, or JA today is being charged more for a product than the game was initially valued at upon release because they are receiving fewer features for the same price. Again, it’s not about how a player feels about this, but rather the reality of the ethics of EA as a company. I’m just making an observation about this habit they’ve developed.
Does this make sense?
