Thoughts on festivals?

I said the same thing when I got snowy escape. I feel EA should have created festivals as a holiday players can make similar to Christmas and Easter. I think the festival lots should have been a special sort of lot designed for only festivals. We can decorate the lot with festive items and choose what festival we want to be there and on which day. Then players can change up how the festivals look, and instead of it being every weekend, we could set it to happen less often so missing it feels sad.

But instead the festivals are static and there is no way to shake things up.

I think they were fine in the beginning, I do like that you can often participate in competitions and win prizes but because they haven't really been developed and we don't have any way of customizing them they feel repetitive and overused now.

Maxis seems to add them to a lot of packs but I feel that they are not much more than a place to visit in order to do a few activities. They probably put in a lot of work in order to make them by making art and assets and creating tuning files and broadcasters but the end result feels a bit underwhelming when you have visited them a few times...

If they had been placed on an actual lot then maybe we could have customized them and added more things to them. In HSY they should probably have been located at the school and happen during school hours.

I've stopped sending my sims to festivals because it's boring. The City Living festivals were fun in the beginning, but it is boring after you've done it a few times. The festivals in Cottage Living and Snowy Escape aren't fun at all. Not even a little, and I'm going to say that it all comes down to their reluctance to do new animations. I think what most players want is more of a carnival, and not the one we're getting with the high school pack that is all rabbit holes. I'm getting really bored with the game. I open it, it loads, and I close it without playing a single minute. And let's be real, I don't play this game to read paragraphs of text. That's got to stop.

I actually still love the City Living Festivals, and still attend most of them regularly. (Spice Festival always, Geek Con usually, Romance Festival sometimes, and Flea Market almost never.) But that's because they have lots of different activities (except for Flea Market), good food options, and lots of new sims to meet.

But the ones in Snowy Escape definitely seemed to have potential, but were underwhelming pretty quickly. The ones in HS Years look pretty lacking, too. I agree that it would probably help if we could customize them ourselves, but unfortunately that doesn't seem likely to ever happen.

The festivals in City Living are the only ones I still pay any attention to. While they're pretty limited, there's at least things to DO there. Eating spicy food at the spice festival, dressing up and participating in contests at geek con, drinking tea and talking to the romance guru at the romance festival, picking a team and being mischievous at the humor and hijinks festival with fireworks at the end for the winning team. Even the flea market can be fun to attend, and you can even set up your own table.

Comparing those to the ones we're getting in HSY, it's pretty pitiful honestly... So, you what? Take selfies, throw a football, and show off your cheerleading skills? That's it?? And it's so SMALL too. Would've been nice if it took up the whole football field. If there were actual games for your sims to play. Maybe it would've been better if it was more of a school spirit kinda thing, especially since by default you have to schedule on your own the non-sports related events. Why not have them all together? Have some more competitions? Maybe be able to try out for a team? Make it like an event where the clubs are trying to recruit new members? Maybe there could've been the school mascot there that you can talk to and take pictures with like you can with all the other mascots? Get hyped about school spirit or mock it instead? Maybe even prank the mascot? I mean they DID design the Womp Womp, why not make it an actual mascot that one of the teens dresses up as?

I like the idea of the festivals, and like I said the CL ones are still fun to attend from time to time. But they are definitely getting more boring. The HSY one is definitely the worst to date. Give my sims something to DO!

All festivals have a sort of "one and done" feel to them. I only go when they are particularly meaningful to the sims I am playing at the time. I do keep them in mind a little when I plan out my rotations, so the sims who have chickens are played the week of the chicken and egg judging fair, I had a celebrity sim recently get married at the romance festival because fans would have been annoying on extended wedding events, geeks like geek con and mischief focused sims like the Humor and Hijinks, etc.

I have never been able to catch most of the Island Living events when they are happening, and the turtle hatching appears to happen when I am playing any household other than the one that actually helped clean up Sulani.

Mostly I only manage to enjoy most of them by leaving multiple in-game weeks, and preferably real world months, between my visits to each one.

"lexibee;c-18155194" wrote:
The festivals in City Living are the only ones I still pay any attention to. While they're pretty limited, there's at least things to DO there. Eating spicy food at the spice festival, dressing up and participating in contests at geek con, drinking tea and talking to the romance guru at the romance festival, picking a team and being mischievous at the humor and hijinks festival with fireworks at the end for the winning team. Even the flea market can be fun to attend, and you can even set up your own table.

Comparing those to the ones we're getting in HSY, it's pretty pitiful honestly... So, you what? Take selfies, throw a football, and show off your cheerleading skills? That's it?? And it's so SMALL too. Would've been nice if it took up the whole football field. If there were actual games for your sims to play. Maybe it would've been better if it was more of a school spirit kinda thing, especially since by default you have to schedule on your own the non-sports related events. Why not have them all together? Have some more competitions? Maybe be able to try out for a team? Make it like an event where the clubs are trying to recruit new members? Maybe there could've been the school mascot there that you can talk to and take pictures with like you can with all the other mascots? Get hyped about school spirit or mock it instead? Maybe even prank the mascot? I mean they DID design the Womp Womp, why not make it an actual mascot that one of the teens dresses up as?

I like the idea of the festivals, and like I said the CL ones are still fun to attend from time to time. But they are definitely getting more boring. The HSY one is definitely the worst to date. Give my sims something to DO!

I agree. I think the City Living ones I come back to now and again. I noticed I have completely avoided going to any other ones because there is literally nothing to do there that my sims can do at home.

HSY has sadly taken the laziest approach to these festivals and it's actually quite laughable and disappointing. Your suggestions would have helped to lived it up a bit. I really think we need more gameplay objects with these expansion packs. They seem to be avoiding gameplay objects for some reason. A few more objects related to football or something could have made it maybe more fun?

I'm kinda neutral on festivals. My sims rarely attend because they're so busy with other things.

I only ever visit the City Living ones and the weekly Cottage Living one. The Snowy Escape ones I did when I first got the pack, and never again, though the Youth one isn't horrible if you have kids.

I still really enjoy all the City Living Festivals, my favourites are Humour and Hijinks and Spice Festival. Island Living Festival I rarely participate but feel they're okay, kind of cosy. In Snowy Escape I've visited Festival of Lights and Festival of Snow many times, but I don't like Festival of Youth (only visited once though). Are Cottage Living competitions counted as festivals? Those are pretty boring, but I also want to compete so I take it. Overall festivals have gotten worse, there's just less to do. I like having them, but feel they could be better.

My best tip is to edit the locale where your sims travel during the festival and make it interesting, so that if the festival bores you you can spend some quality time there. Personally I always stay until the end of the festivals because I don't want them to overlap - I don't know if that's still an issue? At the end my sims will sometimes be napping on the benches because of this.