Why does everyone hate city living?

"Cinebar;15609207" wrote:

"drake_mccarty;15609154" wrote:

"Cinebar;15609115" wrote:

"drake_mccarty;15608875" wrote:

"jackjack_k;15608224" wrote:

"drake_mccarty;15604884" wrote:


City Living has since made me a much more skeptical player. I bought the Vamp GP because I like vampires and there's some cool options, but in the grander scheme of things I plan on holding off. City Living was in no way, shape, or form worth $40. I didn't even think it was work $18. If Maxis would allow ala carte purchase of stuff I wouldn't have bought it in the first place. In my opinion, city Living is the weakest EP to date. Not for lack of marketing though, for a lack of substance.

Nah, that title belongs to Generations. The Expansion pack that basically took base game stuff, and polished them, and added new "gameplay" that happened mostly off-screen. Apart from a few gameplay objects, and recycling base game stuff and calling it something else, there was literally nothing to it. It just gets over praised because people like Family Play. But there was nothing in that pack that was actually brand new.
The only thing that was made of any effort was the Imaginary Friend. Most of the stuff in the EP was done better on the Sims 3 store.

City Living may not be for some, but if people were willing to pay over $40 for packs like Roaring Heights, then I think City Living does a good job at delivering content.

However, City Living was released too early. It should have been near last. Apartment Life is the smallest EP in the 2/3/4 era, but it's loved because it has little bits of gameplay, but overall just finishes off 2 nicely. I think had Apartment Life been released instead of Nightlife, people would have been more sceptical.

City Living feels like a pack that would bring existing content with new content. Adding some more types of gameplay, but overall doesn't bring a whole new concept. Fills outs what is left, and basically polishes an existing eco system.

I think after a year gap, we needed a pack with a strong concept (Pets, Uni, Bon Voyage) etc. I think a pack that is designed to fill out the base game with more options, was not a good choice 3 packs in.

That's your opinion, not mine.

We aren't talking about The Sims 3 here. The Sims 3 had it's strengths and it's weaknesses, similar to how The Sims 4 has it's own.

You like CL? Good for you. I think it's the biggest rip off yet, introducing a whole lot of half baked features and too many gimmicks all together while still maintaining to pull almost all of its 'new' content directly from the base game. Thats my opinion, which is corroborated by personal experience, not by dragging some unrelated pack through the dirt.

Yeah, it is disappointing most of what's at the festivals are objects and things from the base, I was hoping for lots of other new ideas. Food carts are nice, but how many times does a Sim want to eat spicy food? It's whimsical but not really as compelling as I hoped they could do. They spent a lot of money it seems on the illusion of a city which is nice, but some buildings only have two apartments...and a high rise is just a house on top of a building, I was hoping my Sims could live on a ground floor or in the middle or something of all those fake buildings. You know not everything on 'one' floor and elevators like in the past. Let alone build my own. Granted it is way too small for my tastes though the back alleys are nice but I can't go there. :/

Yeah there's a whole lot of illusion being sold there.

Apartments are easily the worst part of the pack for me. I wanted them really bad, and at the end of the day they are glorified residential lots that are surrounded by decoration and can barely be changed. Zero flexibility there, but to some that doesn't seem to matter. The 'apartment gameplay' the pro-CL crowd hyped up fell flat because it's consists of neighbors visiting and some special effects - something all three Sims games featuring apartments managed to include.

I got the pack for $18, so it's not like I can complain too much - but honestly, there's so little there I still feel ripped off. It's not like I can use apartments outside of the city world, or for any purpose other than how Maxis determines. Festivals are all together worthless, they pretty much throw unused content in the players face (does anyone else remember them saying no one uses the voodoo doll? Guess what's a prominent part of the humor festival... surprise surprise)

Expansion packs for this game are just terrible. Get Together was void of content, as was City Living, and GTW is linear as can be. For all we know this could be intentional. What better way to shift from EP/GP/SP to just GP/SP when the EP's get shoddy reviews.

ETA: With apartments being largely locked into place, they should have given us 2-3x the number we got. This would be a non-issue if we could make other apartments with/without shells. When they fail to provide the necessary tools for that they have set themselves up to fail, which they did big time with apartments.

My Sims moved back to WB, where I have more freedom to tear down the whole 'world'. It's rare they even visit the new city. Not much to keep me going back, though some of the objects have proved useful for other things. But they were also in older packs so not much new there, either. The one excitement I got out of CL (seems so minor) was I sent one Sim from WB to a festival. She is a pretend witch. Her inventory was full of fireworks. I didn't have any room in her tiny cabin in WB so I put them outside her house in the backyard. A fire started in her living room one night and spread to the fireworks..that was worth at least five dollars to see her whole house (except for upstairs) catch fire. :D my story the vampires did it, because she was trying to control them. :p Just one of the very few bright spots I got from that EP's objects.

I am the same way. I have been making 'apartments' using door locks since door locking was added. I prefer my own to their official ones. I never go to the city world. I don't go to the festivals anymore either. Once you've done it once, you've seen it all.

I also find the city world incredibly ugly. Some areas are nice, but others are just odd and poorly setup. All of the areas feature entirely too much decoration, which kills my immersion. I'd rather stay in one of the other worlds where the deco isn't thrust into your playable area.