Here’s a plug for a mod I whipped up a couple of weeks ago while the weather was incredibly hot and I was bored. I uploaded it to CS3 yesterday, take a look: the Hot Coffee mod. I mean ‘hot coffee’ literally, of course.
Basically, it adds dozens more ‘elements’ to the random drink recipe generator for the coffee/beverage machine. My currently active Sim’s favorite drink is an Iced Filtered Macchiato with Passionfruit Swirl. Mmm.
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.