So, a simmer claims to have taken a survey, and this is what was revealed on the surveys:

Minor Pet Game Pack
Beauty Salon & Tattoo Parlor Game Pack
Astronaut/Thief/Rockstar Expansion Pack
Summer Vacation Expansion Pack

I'm really not a fan at all. It all feels very piecemeal. An expansion just for a summer vacation? A sequel to Get To Work with base game content? A pets addition to the upcoming pets addition? Another business pack? Even if the packs released are super solid, you can't shake the feeling of having these in a proper pack (if this is real).

Source:
simsvip.com/2017/02/20/french-reader-claims-received-sims-4-survey/

Well, I'm not sure why 'Summer Vacation' needs a whole expansion pack while the pets needs a game pack...

I would like more things for kids to do, and teenagers, I guess.

It feels like the sims team is just winging it. 'Astronaut/Thief/Rockstar'? What on earth do those have in common other than, 'we didn't have time to put them in the base game?'

They should really take a short hiatus from trying to churn out content (if possible, I know they have a deadline) and figure out the roadmap here.

I agree, I like the expansion/game pack ideas but they should lay out how they are going to do things because the extra jobs should have been included in Get to work game pack. I don't see myself going out of the way to purchase that pack and I still have not purchased the dining out game pack.

This is why fans complain about the series. Even I'm TS3, when everyone was complaining about barebones expansion packs, at least you were given content. Now, they're overcharging for bits and pieces.

Outdoor Retreat + Summer Vacation is $60, and you still don't get nearly as much content as you did with Bon Voyage, negating the entirely of Japanese culture.

Get To Work + Dine Out + Beauty Salon has a totally cost of $80, and it's still missing the business features that Open For Business had.

The new pets expansion and now the minor pets game pack would be $60.

Even now, the only way to replicate Nightlife is to get City Living, Get Together, Dine Out, Vampires, and Bowling Stuff - for the low price of $130.

Again, I really hope this isn't true, because none of these are smart moves. Nothing with EA feels like it's planned at all beforehand. They just blindly have ideas and pump out surveys and whatever sticks they make.

Oh man...the possibility of them selling each season separately gets bigger and bigger.

And a "Get to Work 2"? Never quite got the appeal of active careers.

It just seems hard to believe this is the best they can come up with after the roll they've been on lately. It screams fake, to me.

Minor pets pack can GTFO. They've always been part of a Pets expansion. Splitting it off is just plain greedy, and nothing about this concept justifies its existence as a standalone GP.

Beauty Salon doesn't seem to add anything worthwhile to the game at all. We can already change hair styles and tattoos. Manicures alone isn't worth the price of admission.

Astronaut and Thief careers are already in the game. I'm not sure expanding them to be active careers would be interesting, and how would that logistically work anyway? A third branch? A separate career for both? I'd love a rock star career, but that would be better suited to a fame-oriented EP.

Summer Holiday seems a huge step down from the previous vacation EP concept that was floated.

It also seems fake to me, we know Pets are coming since keystring references to cats and dogs are already in the code and the survey was from GlobalTestMarket that if you check them, its not a company EA would use, their surveys are internal.

Too many red flags.

In The Sims 1 there was a whole expansion just about vacations.

Well this appeared.

https://www.reddit.com/r/thesims/co...survey/ddza6be/

That one looks far more believable, likely its true but this is a survey, not they already planned. I suspect somethings are already in development, that is weather.

The new one is just as bad. I honestly don't believe this is planned out well in the slightest. I'll save you all the clicking trouble:

1. Sims 4: Entreprenuer Expansion Pack
Run a cafe, art gallery, waterpark, or do real estate.

With the exception of a water park, these already exist in the game and could (moreso should) be patched into the existing packs to improve the sales on them. A water park is something to look forward to, but I'd prefer it to be a spin on the traditional vacation packs (just my useless opinion). Do we really need a pack about running specific businesses? This business feature should have been as flexible as the club feature.

2. Winter Vacation Expansion Pack
This combined with the summer one just looks like they couldn't do seasons properly so they have to quarter it off into its own little world. The Yeti is probably be a Sim in a yeti costume living in a "cave."

3. Fashion Forward
Why would that be alone? It may as well be a part of a fame pack. Throw in bands, and add in some acting stuff. Have everything revolve around the fame mechanic. Also, open up the entertainment career to be selectively active.

4. Love Life Game Pack
There is nothing of significance here. This would have been the perfect opportunity to have movies, bowling, and restaurant in one pack (with a few extras, since that makes sense), and have it all revolve around dating. As it stands, it's incredibly bare and everything we already have in the game.

Do the people making these surveys play the game?

The idea of having both Winter and Summer as separate packs is...very concerning. Like...they're not really gonna sell us one Season at a time, are they? And not in their own separate worlds, right? Wasn't it bad enough that they split Open For Business into two packs (three if this Entrepreneur thing ends up being legit) and still barely scratched the surface of what you could do with businesses in TS2?

I'm gonna say it now and hopefully I'm not jinxing myself but...they can not be that stupid. I'm not even gonna entertain the thought that they might seriously be considering that. This survey is just them playing around with ideas but they can not honestly think that's gonna fly. So hopefully these things just stay ideas. Because so far, the only one of those potential packs that sounds even the least bit entertaining is the Entrepreneur one.

The way it seems the game and worlds have been designed I don't think we will get seasons in any one world, I think you'll have to load up another world to get another climate.

That's exactly as I've felt it would be since Outdoor Retreat. That die has been cast. I've been expecting a Vacation/Seasons type deal ever since. Our sims are going to have to travel to the weather, the weather is never going to come to them. What was that thing about Mohammed and the Mountain?

I don't actually mind. I am still very conditioned by TS1, and it seems the most natural thing to me that my sims will have to find the snow etc elsewhere.

Yeah, me neither. It might do well to specialize it as regions specific. At least that way they can avoid the outpouring of complaints due to the continual downpour of rain seen in TS3. Rain and thunder are my favourites in the franchise. It might be nice to take a trip to Monsoon Island for a spell, then scoot back home to the peaceful quietude of weather-less Willow Creek before the tinnitus takes hold.

Weather is something they can implement, its just something that will require work because they have to implement the system, they done it since TS2 and I dont think its a issue, they cannot make separate seasons into "one world" because thats not a weather system.

As a expansion it would repeating the same mistakes as City Window Dressing, as Outdoor Retreat ... that could see happening because it would be Outdoor Retreat with snow, winter without a weather system is not really winter and non-interesting.

Of course they can but I don't think they will, as they have said many times if they back-add things to the worlds it can break existing saves. Don't ask me how true that is, but their policy for this game seems to be that you get a new world in order to get new off-lot features.

Those packs look so tiny, so restricted, even compared to actual packs, that sounds like a hoax to me. If ever it were true, I'd be quite worried. All of these packs sound like low-end games designed for 10-year-old girls only. Like a whole series of remakes of Katy Perry Sweet Treats.

These look like bandaids to me on a game that has problems. No matter what they do or add this will never be 2 or 3. I am tending to wish now they would just stop using resources to add to this piecemeal, and just get started on 5 if they are going to do it. LISTEN to the community more this time, then start over. When there is no place to build, no CAW, no CASt, no a zillion other things, this game will stay as restricted and IMO shallow as it is now. 20 packs will not save it, at least to me. I love the Vampire pack, and have I opened the game in the last few weeks? No. This game does not draw me in as the others did. Anything added now is just a temporary look-see.

Its true and its not.

Let me put this scenario, if they added lots to a existing Neighborhood it would break because there would be new lots that werent there, it would create issues so either the save would not contain then (more likely scenario) or it would break because it was seeing data that wasnt there, depends on what exactly is saved or not.

I think this was answered when people asked why Neighborhoods didnt contained new business lots with Get to Work and Dine Out because they cannot edit existing lots or add new ones because it would affect states so they might as well add new Neighborhoods or just put then in the Gallery so people can edit their own worlds without creating issues.

However its not the same as weather because weather is nothing but fx effects, sims "react" because there is a hidden effect applied to all sims but its not like it affects saves, its just a global condition like day and light, we have traits that are affected by the day and night cycle, we also have now Vampires that are affected by sunlight, the system is already there but only looks to two conditions ... day and night, there is a new neighborhood with Vampires that have a modified day/night cycle so they could add a weather system and release more thematic neighborhoods with modified cycles, like were it never rains but snows or were never snows.

I do think people sometime overact and take things too literally, adding lots to existing Neighborhoods is very different that say Toddlers because those didnt explode saves, its a question of how data is saved and read ... something like weather is likely being based around the existing day/night cycle because its really just FX effects, in fact they could patch weather but make snow restricted to specific neighborhoods.

I'm disappointed, but I can't say I'm surprised.

EA is full capable of adding in revamped versions of existing lots to the game. Nothing will break unless it's created improperly.

Like, whenever something is being reloaded, the game loads the base content, and replaces data after it's loaded.

For example:
If you change the position of a tree, the save file will be fine since the data being replaced doesn't have anything to do with the tree.

Now, if you replace and faminly who occupied a position in the code and the game tries to replace the data with data from another family who used to occupy his space, it will cause errors or crash the game.

About the situation with Seasons, I'm especially concerned because it appears that not only are they seriously considering selling them all separately, but it also sounds like they want to go The Sims 1 route of having destinations with specific weather (ex. beaches, ski lodges, etc) but not actual consistent weather in the game.

Every day I worry more and more for the fate of the game series I literally grew up with (TS1 came out just a few months before I was born).

The moment I save it saves the lot state, meaning if I decide to bulldozer a park lot and make it a residential lot if they try to edit it ... then what? the save contains data saying that is a residential lot, if they try to apply those changes they made to lots then what happens? its a residential lot were my Sims reside, it cannot be whatever they did and what I did at the same time.

Its not a question of "created improperly", its a question what the save indicated the lot status is.



No, I believe it saves the entire state of the neighborhood down to each lot and this is because we have the "default" neighborhood we cannot edit and then our save file neighborhood were we can change lots.
Sure they could change the default neighborhood but then what? those changes will NOT be applied to saves because to do that they would have to modify each save and do without any regard to player made changes to lots, this is why they dont do it because not only its completely ignoring the player chances but also adding a risk of making the whole break.



The save file have the location of the tree stored, if you change it from the default neighborhood position then when loading it will load the saved position, not the default position ... in fact it will load the lot as its saved, whatever changes were made or not.

So altering the default position does nothing unless you start a new game making the entire thing pointless more or less.

What I said was altering lot information, if they changed default neighborhood lots then when those changes would not be applied to saved games, meaning you would have to start a new game and this is why they dont do it, its clearer to load a game, pick a lot and put one from the Gallery because that will apply to the save ... another problem is how do you do it? I dont own every single Pack or Expansion so they would have to make changes for every single possible permutation, this is another issue .

The point is they cannot alter lots, altering default neighborhoods would still not translate at saves and there is also the fact possible permutations of Packs/Expansions would create its own issues. In fact I am more convinced now that a basic weather system will likely be patched in at some point even if just for compatibility sake if/when they create a weather system.

1. The tiny neighbourhoods in The Sims 4 makes the real estate career restricted and overall pointless. Art gallery ownership sounds like the most probable carer, purely because 90% of the content required for it to work is already in the game. Good luck building a waterpark - which should be included in the Summer Vacation pack - in your 50x50 lot. The cafe sounds feasible but basic, like the art gallery. To me it's like they just chose random businesses out of a hat and decided to make a game over it. Stop shittily imitating Open For Business. Just copy all of Open For Business. Open For Business worked.

2. Winter Vacation's content is laughable. Have a house, but, like, in the snow!!! Snow angels! Snow board, but not actually down a mountain. Walk over some mountains. Relax. Breathe out. Suppress that murderous consumer rage when you realise this stagnant frozen winter wasteland of a world consisting of, like, five lots is the closest you'll get to a Seasons pack. Build a snowman.

3. Remember in Sims 2: Free Time how as part of like fifteen different hobbies and jobs you could design clothes? That's now it's own thing but costs $20.

4. Not Another Goddamn Dating Pack That Should Have Just Been Included In City Life Jesus Tap Dancing Christ.