Just the stinky nanny haunting me.

Expansion packs most likely.

Whenever I say "I'd like something in the game" I'm speaking about a hypothetical game that doesn't exist at this point, but: The main reason I'd like aliens in the base game is cos there would be male pregnancy earlier. Although it must be said, the sims in TS4 look so much more individual and lively than the Sims in TS3 (not that we've seen any gameplay to be sure) that adoption might actually be enjoyable in this edition. The main problem with gay adoption in TS3 was that you'd end up adopting a hideously pudding-faced clone of every NPC in town.

If you pose them: stand still, they look at you and smile.

Like creepy dolls, trying to get you...

Well that would be difficult enough anyway, seeing as they'd have to make Beau either a baby or a child instead of a toddler and there's no way to kill Skip properly.



Yes. It wouldn't surprise me at all if they put aliens and mpreg in an EP and forgot to add the pregmorphs to the clothes or something stupid like that. Or they decided that it would be too much work to do the pregmorphs after the fact and so took out mpreg altogether.

When our Power and Water are shutdown due not paying bills, the whole house is affected and all the electricity/water items are unable to interact with?

Oh easy then, visit our neighbor houses and live there.

Most of my TS2 babies are from alien abductions - love them!! I just wish multi-PTs were already included so I wouldn't have to use a mod. :D

See, now a water outage scenario with pools would've been interesting. They could've had three clean states for the pool as it stagnantes and as it gets filthier, there's an increased chance your sim will get ill from swimming in it. Or lack of water could just mean it gets drained. I bet you now, if pools get added in a future EP, the water outage scenario won't affect the pool at all.

Truth be told I'm more of a "naturalistic player", I enjoy the silly supernatural stuff, but it's ancillary to the whole experience for me. I just let aliens, vamps, simbots, etc, creep in and out of the gameplay naturally as it suits. If adoption in TS3 hadn't been so traumatising for all involved, I would have vastly preferred it to forcing gay couple to obsess over the stars just to continue the legacy with passably individual-looking heirs.

Someone actually mentioned that pools and toddlers will be added in a patch like a month or two after the game comes out but I'm not that optimistic.

There's plenty of speculation to that effect, but as far as I'm concerned (and I don't think I'm alone) some things are so basic the game ought not be on the market without them. Toddlers are such a thing. If EA has internal issues that are preventing that, they have to bite that bullet and cough up for the delay, it's not the customer's problem, and not the customer's bill to foot.

(Not to mention the fact that if things as basic as toddlers haven't made it into the schedule, the game is liable to be pretty anaemic, because many things of lower priority (ie, nearly everything) have probably also been scrapped).

I love this feature. It makes the game much more real! :lovestruc

I will not pay more bills to my Sims.

And have a poolboy NPC to clean them?

In SimSocial (facebook) you had to maintain your pool or it would go grungey. And wasn't there something you had to do to the pools in TS3 resorts too?

Aliens are the only "creature-feature" that I enjoy and I usually set-up a hood and play only aliens in it.
Tho I also have hoods that have very few aliens and those aliens are only because my sims had snuck out to the telescope without me knowing it

And I don't care for the TS2 adoptions either...most of them end up looking exactly alike, just with different eye and/hair color.

Yeah, it was an option to chlorinate them and thus raise maintenance costs or dechlorinate. However, after chlorinating I still got reviews of having a dirty pool but no further options for pool maintenance. No cleaning, replace filters or things like that. I decided that these complaints were just weak attempts at getting refunds. Customers !

I have absolutely zero faith that will happen when EA could charge £50 for an EP. Give away two highly-anticipated features for free? Hahahahahaha

Yea you're right. They will never do that!

Graham, in case you're still lurking here, I really like what you said about money and bills. It seems really cool! But man, those are little things. Why spend time and money on that and leave out important ones?

I'm a legacy player, I love to play big families with lots of members and I adore watching my sims grow from birth to death, you know like that (see pic).

How am I supposed to enjoy TS4 when babies turn into 10 year olds and then transform into 18 yo?
I hope EA really understands that TODDLERS and REAL TEENS are needed in the game quickly. Well, that and lots of other things.... pools for example .

I'm very glad to hear of such features that create a feel of being connected to an actual Sim society! Makes me hopeful to see what else the game has like that, things that make the game feel non-fishbowl like. Which reminds me of my lifelong dream...
Someday they have to make a Simlish radio Station! *news theme playing* "Wagga woop scheep malaga doo!"

Oh, they understand alright. It's just that they just don't care.

Oh.

<preens>

I just realised .. no pools and no toddlers makes Brandi Brokes household the most exposed one

See, these little details are actually good news, it shows that someone, *somewhere* deep in development, actually gets what used to make The Sims a life simulator. The Sims 4 does seem to present good ideias like these, I just wished they were within a better game.

It's really of no use to add this function if the game throws simoleons at you all the time and you don't really have to manage it (because there's nothing to spend it on). You never have to make a decision on wheter to buy that giant TV or pay the bills; should you invest your time on a job promotion or take your sim on an expensive date (which are probably gone too, since they are out of TS3 and developers doesn't seem interested in bringing back what made TS2 great, other than loading screens).

It just takes a couple of hours to buy and build what you want. Carreers made you rich in no time, even if it's something mundane. You will always be a star on your field. You get money by selling whatever the crap you find spread throughout whatever you go, but don't pay for clothing, transportation and basic needs like you *used* to do. You even needed in game money to buy that shiny new outfit you downloaded. With those life simulation apects out in favor of collectibles and goals, there's no use for currency.

And there's really no stopping that either, to the point you need cheats to take OUT funds to add some real gameplay. The game never stops you from getting money, even if you don't work for it. The progression system is always so broken that the game keeps throwing you rewards, unlocking discounts or whatever just because you complimented the right sim or whatever.

In the end, a player that doesn't pay the bills probably just forgot to look at the mail box (and missed the game's notifications), it's not something people do because they don't have the money. The game's too dumbed down and the visuals and promo material just make that clear: it's a game for kids. The "humor" is leading to over the top, exagerated, ridiculous moments that just make it childish, not smart. So yeah, these little features are failing in my eyes simply because of the game as a whole.