Why does everyone hate city living?

"mika;15607172" wrote:

"keekee53;15604803" wrote:

"Jestina;15604380" wrote:
My major issue with it at the moment is that it spawns too many Asian sims. By the second generation of my game, just about all the spawned sims are Asian or Arabic.

Yeah this issue is ridiculous. I really miss sims spawning with regular names. It seems like every townie is Arab or Asian no matter what they look like either.

It really drives me crazy new features seem to be a little excessive. It is why I have about 10 no autonomy mods.

I bet the names you consider "regular" are considered abnormal in most Asian counties...

Yknow what they can both agree isn't normal? White, blonde dudes named "Genji Takanashi." It's super lazy and half-baked that they didn't even bother trying to match those names with certain appearances.

What's more, the entire aesthetic of the Sims 4 is based on the USA, or in Windenburg's case, Bavaria. Willow Creek seems inspired by New Orleans, Oasis Springs seems like Nevada, Windenburg is Bavaria....and suddenly this expansion pack gives you a ton of japanese and arabic townies that are still white as snow? NONE of those areas are known for that kind of population.


The Sims team really, REALLY needs to learn subtlety. We go through this every update. Kids stuff pack releases? All sims obsessively watch BEtween TV. Drinking water is patched in? Sims obsessively drink water. Monster under the bed is patched in? It visits every night. City Living promotes "cultural" sims? 90% of the town is now "cultural." Every time they do an update they go completely overboard to practically ram the new features in your face.

"Pegasys;15613960" wrote:

"drake_mccarty;15609703" wrote:

"Pegasys;15609676" wrote:

"drake_mccarty;15609214" wrote:

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.

Different strokes, I guess. I think San Myshuno is vibrant and beautiful. I have no problem with the pack. It's not the best of the Sims series, but it adds a flavor and a new "feeling" quality that expands the TS4 world.

I don't understand how the amount of decoration kills immersion. I know it's "fake" in that it's not something we can use, visit or interact with, but I believe its purpose is to increase immersion, and for that, it does work for me.

When people see "fake" houses and backdrops, while understanding that TS4 is not an open world, would they really prefer to see a blank sky and terrain instead?

Lol of course I wouldn't prefer that. With The Sims 4 being a closed world I would expect more in the form of lots - you know, since no more than one is ever being loaded at any given time.

For most of the worlds the decorative houses are outside of the playable area, not so much with the city where they make up most of the neighborhood. What doesn't bother you really bothers me. You know why? Because the city world is incredibly small, not just in size but in contents as well. A lot of the deco buildings are indistinguishable from the building shells, so why aren't they apartments? Do you prefer the functionless shells to the functionless shells housing aparments?

The deco is there to make the world appear bigger than it is. For most cases it works. For the city? They are built almost entirely out of the deco buildings. Waste of space that could be put to better use. As you said, different strokes.

Obviously I'd prefer buildable, playable area to functionless shells.

However if there is a limit for whatever reason on the amount of content they are providing, I'd rather have decoration filling in to give the illusion of a big city vs vast open space.

So I think what you're saying is this deco bothers people because it reminds them of the limited content.

I'm guessing that the alternative would have been to get the City Living content much later (like a year later) for the devs to have the time to create what was necessary.

Edited to add, and this is not specifically to @drake_mccarty : One more comment about the thought of "wasted space." I see this comment a lot. But there is really no "space" in a computer game. People say "there's all this space they could have used." People also say "why can't we load this lot it's right next door." It doesn't matter whether it's right next door in the sense of the game.

The devs chose to limit the lots not because of "space" or "location" but because of computer memory, RAM, and processing power, and development time. Adding an extra lot may have required weeks of additional development time or a filesize bigger than they wanted.

All that being said, I do hope they do add additional city "space" in a new world.

As you said previously, different strokes.

The deco doesn't remind me of anything, it's just there wasting space that could have been used for other things. I would have preferred 100% buildable apartments, but instead they offered apartments that cannot be created or deleted by the player. They will always be apartments with the same general shape in the same place some always with the same lot traits. There's what like 8 apartments in total? Plenty of shells could have housed more, but they don't. They are there doing absolutely nothing, contributing nothing to the actual game, wasting space that is already underutilized.

Theres lots of ways this city world was setup for failure. The abundance of decoration is one, and their deliberate restriction of in game content is another. This would be a 100% non-issue if apartments could be created outside of SM, and outside of the building shells. Apartments are absolutely useless to me if I can't use them how I need to use them, which doesn't include a handful of super ugly apartments that were designed to be played in entirely stilized ways. They focused too much on making it like a sitcom than making it a feature of the game.

I didn't like City Living for many reasons. These are just a few of the ones that I can remember.

1. There were too many pre-made households and several had traits that I don't like to have in my game. I had considered "fixing" them by making clones in CAS until I saw what was going on with the townie population. I think that out of all the new pre-made Sims there was only one that I liked. He was living in a ratty apartment and was going to be an artist I think, but I forgot his name.

2. There were too many unnecessary types of townies that served no useful purpose - weirdoes, raccoons, living statues and the nuts running around in towels. While I was checking out the pre-made households I could see Sims in the community areas all day and night. The game seemed to generate more weirdoes and raccoons the longer I played. Seriously, why does the game need Sims dressed as raccoons?

3. Apartments had potential but, I think, they fell short. Neighbors were the biggest drawback for me. I gave up on apartment living after a test Sim lived in one for two Sim weeks. I'd rather have them start out on an empty lot without visitors at their door constantly.

4. The "random" name generator for townies seemed to be stuck on ethnic names which in itself wasn't bad it was just boring.

5. The guitars on community were often monopolized by townies and they were constantly in use. The air-head Sofia Bjergsen was a guitar playing fixture on most lots my Sims visited. She always turns into a stalker anyway.

I finally decided to uninstall City Living even though it had new collections, skills and recipes. For me, there were too many things that I didn't like about the content.

I might change my mind someday and install it again. Origin reminds me that it's there, lurking in the background, waiting to be installed.

"Monaveil;15616658" wrote:

2. There were too many unnecessary types of townies that served no useful purpose - weirdoes, raccoons, living statues and the nuts running around in towels. While I was checking out the pre-made households I could see Sims in the community areas all day and night. The game seemed to generate more weirdoes and raccoons the longer I played. Seriously, why does the game need Sims dressed as raccoons?

Living golden statues are something you see in many large cities, actually (at least here in europe)
I found it a nice touch.

Those people who constantly run around in raccoon costumes are strange however, I agree.

"Monaveil;15616658" wrote:

3. Apartments had potential but, I think, they fell short. Neighbors were the biggest drawback for me. I gave up on apartment living after a test Sim lived in one for two Sim weeks. I'd rather have them start out on an empty lot without visitors at their door constantly.

Which actually seems to be similar to reality very often ... i.e. that the biggest drawback of appartment living are the neighbors :D
But I agree that it happens a little bit too often that yur neighbors are at the door step because tthey are bored or want to invite themselves to eat with you.
Nevertheless I found this to be no bi problem ... I just ignore them at my door and after a while they walk away by themselves. The only family for whom this doesn't work are the Jangs (in Harkim House, Arts District) ... they will invite themselves into your house and just enter, unless you locked the house door for everyone except your household

"Monaveil;15616658" wrote:
...
5. The guitars on community were often monopolized by townies and they were constantly in use. The air-head Sofia Bjergsen was a guitar playing fixture on most lots my Sims visited. She always turns into a stalker anyway.

No surprise that she already had a guitar skill of 9, when my Sim made her girlfriend and married her :D

I like CL. I like the festivals/flea market, and foods! The singing is awesome! I even like the apt. living, LOL. I steer clear of the TLC ones now, but they are very interesting. I learned to nap so when neighbors wake my sim up at night, that my sim is not dangerously low on energy.

To me, each pack they come out with.....gets better!

I enjoy playing with city living. I like the festivals and having my sim live in an apartment. You might find it more fun with your sim in the penthouse. I have a sim in the one where you can garden. It's really nice looking across the other buildings, watching the birds run across the roof tops, seeing the traffic passing by, and people roaming the streets and attending the festivals below. It's nice to be able to zoom in to the festivals and watch what other sims are doing, even when my sim is too tired to join them.

I'm fairly new at playing this expansion, so I haven't experienced everything yet, but so far it's fun. I did find it annoying when I had a sim living in the apartment with gremlins. The darn things broke everything ALL of the time. Sometimes would have been okay for the experience, but it was too often to enjoy. I say, wait for the sales to buy expansions you don't feel that compelled to buy. At least that way, you may not feel like you've spent to much on something you don't enjoy.

"Maho-Gamer;15614675" wrote:
Honestly, I only bought it because I got vampires... That and the singing skill.

vampires in city living :p

I personally LOVE City Living. I have it and haven't run into any issues. The apartments are so fun.

I'm still so disappointed I can't build my own apartment building (where I want it). Everything is limited to SM. Everything is LIMITED PERIOD. I want elevators to make office buildings and high-rises that can have sims live on multiple floors. City life just isn't a good EP IMO, it feels fake and half done.
Sad, because now that toddlers are back Im playing more but enjoying the game less....
I've been noticing all the short cuts taken in TS4 in comparison to TS2. HUGE Things that cannot be 'brought back' or fixed, EP's lacking so badly people are wanting to uninstall them. Get to Work having only 3 new careers! City life having non editable apartment buildings! The lack of traits and individualism for sims over 3 years in. It's all very disappointing smh.

Here are my two cents regarding city living... I recently purchased Get Together and man, I LOVED this EP! Cant believe I spent a lot of time playing the game without it. Absolutely love Windenburg, specially the park, coffee shop, gym and the cliff with that incredible sunset. Having said that, I rushed and bought CL at half the prize to see what the fuss was about.

I've had City Living for a couple of weeks and I don't know if it was worth it. The festivals didn't bring anything worthwhile (except one of my sims cheating on her husband, which pissed me off completely). The Karaoke Bar is the SADDEST BAR I've seen in my life. And why only my adult sims are always at the bars? Where are all my young adults? This is very uncomfortable. The rooftop lounge was also very bland and boring. I am not a fan of the Karaoke thing, not in real life, not on a game. Just put some nice ambience, nice music and food and you have a great place. I am about to delete that rooftop bar and pave the way for something else...

I moved 5 of my sims to San Myshuno mainly for the views, the views are incredible but the city is fake, for example I can't believe I can't go to the central plaza or Fashion park or Arts Center DIRECTLY without having to go first to the Gym, museum or bar and "walk out". Or visit an apartment and "go downstairs" We should be allowed to connect with these public areas directly.

The park at San Myshuno is OMG, terrible, there is only like a library and NOBODY IS EVER THERE (unlike parks in other worlds).

What I liked about CL are the maginificent views, they said that they got inspiration from Vancouver, San Francisco and Shanghai to come up with San Myshuno, but the city is completely identical to Hong Kong. Its sad that we cannot access the shopping mall at Uptown, there are no movie theaters, no restaurants, nothing. Having a couple of festivals, rancid karaoke bars and lounges, a sad park and terrible gym (the one at GT is much better) does not equal City Living for me. Personally I have lived in an array of cities (Rio de Janeiro, Madrid, Bangkok, Singapore) and I was excited to see what San Myshuno was bringing, which in reality was nothing.

I agree that if they wanted to make the city multicultural there should be spawned sims of all nationalities, not just 2-3. BTW I recently deleted all my seniors, to make my worlds "younger" and the game threw about 100 new seniors on me, all in San Myshuno horrendous clothing. LOL

in any case, this is how it should have been:
-a nice park along the coast like the one in Windenburg (think Marina Bay in Singapore)
-Fashion District should have been filled with cafes, boutiques and street stalls with handcrafted clothing instead of that horrendous karaoke bar
-The Arts district should have had another park full of artsy displays
-Uptown is composed of a gym, a lounge (both suck) and 3 penthouses. It would have been nice to access the mall underneath. But there should have been banks, designer stores, etc.

If you think city living will add to the gameplay (it doesnt) you will be disappointed. If you do it because you like to have an apartment with nice views, it is okay. And what's with the neighbors screaming and fighting!

Maybe eventually I will move my sims back to Newcrest where they were. One of them is even depressed since I moved him to an apartment and he doesn't have that trait. Haha. If I was to live in any of these worlds, I would choose Windenburg with my eyes closed.