Now that I’m back at uni and have a whole lot of extracurriculars on my plate, my attention has drifted from Sims stuff. I did just install High-End Loft Stuff a few days ago and played for around … ten minutes. I’ll get back into it some time, I suppose; I have a couple of interesting mod concepts that are half-done, and one huge one that’s about 1/5 completed, although the upcoming Ambitions EP may throw it for a spin. (more…)
As I kind of just declared on this blog a few days ago, expansion packs suck. Let’s look back at TS2 for a moment: But which one, in retrospect, was the worst? In the spirit of negative awards, I present the AFAs – the Aspiration Failure Awards for The Sims 2.
If you agree or disagree with me, feel free to comment.
DISCLAIMER: These are just my personal opinions. As I’m a storytelling player more than a gamer or modder, that’s the perspective from which I’ll approach my choices. Also, I completely ignored the mods that fixed many of the problems I mention. EA/Maxis didn’t provide those; the community did.
On with the awards…
(Psst. Check out Lost EA Traits, my new page. Looks like a couple of my trait ideas were close to what EA had planned after all. Before they cut it for EP#X.)
I enjoyed TS3’s freedom from expansions while it lasted, but all good things come to an end. EA have announced the first TS3 expansion.
I am wholly, WHOLLY unimpressed with a single flaw in this game design.
From the press release:
"[Players will] discover new cities in China, France, and Egypt, and share new stories."
Why am I unimpressed?
Because using real countries is a freaking stupid idea.
Trawling through the TS3 scripts, one finds a lot of interesting code, no doubt implemented in anticipation of cashy expansion packs.
For instance, pets are all but confirmed.
The fact that ages are defined for the same animals as in TS2 seems to reduce the chances of a Farm EP. I mean, farm animals age too.
Also, Piano?
Did they cut pianos from the game? You know, I’m 99% sure one of the Store hairs was shown in a preview video somewhere as part of CAS. As if you needed more evidence that EA is out for the money.
Expansion packs are structured around introducing the player to new gameplay elements. In TS2 they did this by subtly forcing those new elements on you in a ham-handed fashion, usually through Wants. Prime example – the first EP, University, caused Teens to almost always roll the ‘Go to College’ want (apparently hard-coded too). If they went, they got a 10,000 asp point boost and a ‘green’ memory. If they didn’t the memory would be BAD – they went ‘Uneducated’. Being Uneducated was even a Fear most of the time!
So presuming you don’t like college, but like the instruments (for sake of example), you keep Uni installed and put up with the annoyances.
EVERY TS2 EP did this, mainly through those persistent wants to go on a date/buy a pet/hire so-and-so/go on vacation etc.
I’ve been thinking about how this relates to telling a neighbourhood storyline.