Its a Trap! [Rant]

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Sigs_Minock
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Joined: 07 Jul 2018, 05:06

Its a Trap! [Rant]

Post by Sigs_Minock »

Greetings all, I am on my second town (decided to reset the first one) and on the verge of calling it with this game, especially with the bug that made working at the police station a nuisance. Once all my sims die off and go to the aether, i'll let the game stew for a bit and see if any new updates make the game worth playing... seriously though, this game's been active for 5 years and they just released a garage update?! Anywho... I'm just here to vent a little bit, and list off my biggest grievances with this game; and hopes for improving the game. I know this is a free to play game, and it's a time sink because of the nature of F2P game mindset. My town is at lvl 47, with 28 Sims- and two on the way, and this game has gotten to the point of Work-Farm-Dream-Work cycle, especially when it's costing me 900,000 Sims to build anything in the main town, and 1mil to build the hospital, and Dream Orbs to build anything on the Island... It's going to take me a long darn time to build the anything.

To the Topic: Trap, i'm defining as quest or game objective that results in a net loss of resources and time. There is no real order to this list, add to it or comment, up to you.

1> Marriage. Aside from the first free one, i've never had a sim get married for anything less than 6LP Ring. I'll be damned if i'll spend any more than 6 LP to get my Sims to say "I Do." I've lost LP trying to get Sims married with the 3LP Ring, and almost wanted to sabotage that relationship because of it. The Game Devs should just put a flat "Get Married (4LP)" option, rather than allow people to waste their luck trying to get married with anything less than 6LP ring...

2> Pregnancy. I liked the prospect of pregnancy in the game, and it's one of the reasons why i quit SimsMobile [woohoo with random joe, and half-an-hour later: baby! :/]. But the pregnancy event... Oy. Done early enough in the game, it's a great XP farm, though you're spending a lot of money and other sims times trying to reach the objective of a "super baby." In the late game, the doctor and yoga visits become stupidly expensive- but atleast you'll have enough sims to do the bonus tasks. Stupidly expensive objectives, and town-wide time sink... And you have to complete the Quest to unlock general pregnancies... Speaking of which, why are pregnancies a trap? The pregnant sim can't do anything related to hobbies. So, all they're doing is gardening until she pops. Oh, and each new baby costs 5LP. So, is the 2LP + Appointment Costs + wasting everyone's time equivalent to 5LP and a useless Sim for a week? Debatable.
In my current game, i got some LP from the Devs when i reported the Police Station bug, and i decided it was time to repopulate the town with Elder popping up. I regretfully got four sims pregnant with one doing the Event. The Doctor and Yoga appointments cost 150,000+ each... I went through my inventory, sold a lot of "Free!" stuff and even demolished the pool of the Haunted House [and the Nosferatu's Basement I added] and the Beach House back bungaloo to pay for the last visit. My town isn't bothering to do the latest Bonus event [which is a 15 hr event :roll: ], just focused on gardening and going to work.
Morale: Do the Pregnancy event late game, with town of ~20 and a LOT of money in the bank. Then never again... Don't even do the normal pregnancy. Just spend the cash to adopt, save the LP to bake Birthday cakes until the automatic aging quest is compete.

3> Stables. This is an unavoidable trap. The Island is a nice location with some good stuff, but the you have to start the Stables questline to unlock the island. What makes this trap worse, is the fact the game forces you buy a horse, then fix up a hobby objective that the horse can't even compete in! You've got to buy better horses to compete in the different tiers of the Horse Riding hobby.
If the quest had to clean up the Simple Tricks pen, rather than the Jumping pen, this trap wouldn't be as bad...

4> PETS. I did the quest, and got a kitten. I immediately regretted starting the quest when i found out it takes 15 LP and a day to bake the damned fuzzball a cake to age up. A sim got a Lifetime Dream to play catch with a dog. Doesn't sound too bad... Wrong- Dog? LP. Frisbee? LP. Food bowl, water dish, and dog house? 20,000$. A different sim wanted to play with a cat all day- same deal. Pets are a waste, and aren't worth the chump change they occasionally cough up.

5> Restaurant & Night Club- Do you want to waste a sim's time for absolutely no gain? send them to tend the bar at the Restaurant or Night Club; or have them tend the kitchen and wait tables in the restaurant or the Burger stand in the mall... 10 hrs of NOTHING. Restaurant is worse, as you have to spend time and money to fix it up; and you can't even have two sims cooking at the same time. But hey, atleast you can have some sims flirt at the bar, or dance on the dance floor. :oops:

6> Second Stories & Patios. Second stories are a nice way to expand your house, especially if you're on a small lot. Not for the cost of 300,000$, basements are cheaper. Patios are just an obnoxious waste of cash... you want to spend hundreds of dollars to put a mosiac masonry in a 3x6 part of your backyard... Ya, no.

7> Castle. I originally though this would be a cool house for a sim family to live in. What i got were two hobbies, some nice costumes, and a 4-hr stint to generate a nominal bonus for a day. So much for living in a castle...

8> Interactive Careers. The Law Enforcement career is somewhat exempt from this list- as it is part of a Quest, but investing time and money into the Movie Set or Hospital careers are the real traps. My biggest gripes with these careers, that makes them traps, are the ludicrous amount of resources needed to expand the career- in both the supplies needed AND the coins needed to expand the proportionally small storage for said supplies. You need 600 X, 1200 Y and 250 Z to build Annex 4? First to need to spend time collecting the 10,000+ coins needed to for the 100 Storage increase, and you need to store what you need to build Annex 4.

I haven't built the Wizard tower or Wilderness Adventure locations, and doubt i will- so they are getting a pass, but in my last game- they were definitely traps. The Wilderness Adventure had too many "hobby quests" to get effectively "part 2" of this hobby chain is just ludicrous. I will work towards this Wilderness Adventure quest, because i'll be damned if i spend more time grinding for pittance with the Medical career.

Now, to lighten things up... Hopes and QoL Changes.
1> Household names. One thing that irks me, is that if you move someone into another household, they gain their surname- and keep it if they move out. I wish there was a way to keep a sim's name, or a way to change it.
2> Genealogy. I kind of wish there was a way to track a sim's lineage. in my current game, i had two female sims get married and they got pregnant at the same time [they live in the Haunted House. ;] and the kids are listed as Brother/Sister rather than Step-Brother/Step-Sister. If i could have a Brady Bunch family, I would- but no. I wish there'd be something in the game that registers a baby's father is, to the last one the woman woohoo'd with.
I would like to see something like the PC games- a Risky Woohoo could result in a surprise pregnancy with an unpartnered sim; Starting a Family with a partnered sim starts a pregnancy event. More interactive than "click on a crib".

3> Multiple Births. I'm never going to complete the "perfect baby" quest, especially when the bonus events take over half the day. So, why not an option when the doctor is visiting, "Extended Exam" then when she returns with "Unexpected Surprise" option locks in Twins, and depending on how well you've completed the Bonus quests would get a "More Unexpected New!" option for triplets in the last visit. Yes, it would break the household limit- but still, having a doctor say "you're gonna need more cribs" would be fun.

So, yea... sorry about that. Im going to go back and slowly watch my SimVille population drop...
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chamilet
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Re: Its a Trap! [Rant]

Post by chamilet »

The pets are also a time suck if you let their happiness levels drop. Unless you like to watch cats and dogs mope about with their ears down and their tails between their legs.
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telemwill
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Re: Its a Trap! [Rant]

Post by telemwill »

I fully agree about the workplaces being time traps. I actually sent some Sims to work today. So often all of the resources offered are not the ones needed, and it takes way too long to finish a shift. The number of Sims needing to be helped should really go down as the professional level goes up. Also the experience points gained are far too low. The entire process is excruciating.

Ruth
HFN at #11 West Side. Haunted House at #1 East Side. Three star instruments at #3 East Side.
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3luv4eva3
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Re: Its a Trap! [Rant]

Post by 3luv4eva3 »

Response (You've raised a lot of good points here and I have the need to reply to some of them!):

Pregnancy

Pregnancy doesn't deserve to be so time consuming and expensive in this game. It's Sims freakin' FREEplay! I mean, I love the whole aspect about getting the pregnancy tokens to spend on the Maternity store, but it's soo not worth the time wasted. (Liking ONE post on Simsterest DOES NOT take you nearly THREE HOURS in real life!) And nearly $200,000 Simoleons or 15 LP for one measly appointment is too much! I'd pay $20,000 Simoleons or 5 LP tops! And I'm trying to be generous!

I'm disappointed Pregnant Sims can't do hobbies - I can understand why they can't be sent to work (I haven't tried that but I presume) so it makes sense that one thing that Sim will turn to is finding a hobby to pass the time! Unless the gamer makers expect as to pay for those appointments with the gardening money earned (which by the way, is NOWHERE NEAR enough FM!)

If anything, the 24 hour baby should cost the less amount of LPs - some people aren't fussed about the baby bonus enough (like me), and it isn't worth the LP spent considering the amount of time it takes to do it. I'd happily spend 5 LPs on a Pregnancy event rather than 2.

Restaurant and Night Club

I'm massively disappointed in these - when I first completed the Restaurant quest, I highly expected it to be a career place; maybe like the Movie and Police Stations and Hospital that accompanies the Cooking Hobby (I kinda wanted the Restaurant to be what the Ballet/Karate hobbies are). Complete waste a quest - if I wanted to build it knowing that it wasn't going to be a career or workplace, it would still be sitting in its' initial state and those Simoleons would have no doubtly gone to something better.

The Nightclub is nowhere near worth spending SPs on - complete waste of space in my town. There's nothing really to do there and now with the new Cars in Lots there, I dread going anywhere near the place (though I commend FM for allowing the Nightclub to be an automatically built feature because there was no way they were getting my SPs!).

Workstations

I only have the Movie and Police Stations built on my game, and at this point, they're the only ones I'm gonna have built for a long while to come. Depending on how long you take to do each option, it's a massive time consumption and very draining on yourself. I'm already on limited supplies as it is with the Marketplaces that I have been recently doing (it's only now that I've decided to give up the next few after doing about six in a row - and please don't get me started about the amount of items needed for the Marketplace!). I remember back when I first started on the game, I'd do the Movie Stations one weekend and then the Police Stations the next, but obviously time moves on and things change.

The times for some of these tasks are insane. I've resorted to saving up some LPs beforehand to skip past some of the longer time-taking ones because I doubt you could get everything done without spending LPs on some of those options even if you're workstations are maxed out.

Household Names

Who in their right mind thought it was good idea to claim the last name of the original house holder when moving another Sim in?! (I have nothing more to comment here...)


I think I'll quit here while I'm ahead...
SFP: Level 55
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SKatF
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Re: Its a Trap! [Rant]

Post by SKatF »

I have not done the pregnancy quest. But hello EA, most pregnant women can work (except a few jobs) until the day they deliver. Much less do hobby activities.
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telemwill
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Re: Its a Trap! [Rant]

Post by telemwill »

Another thing in this game which should be listed as a trap is the seashell collecting hobby. The night time shells must be collected between 12 and 6 am. By small children!

This is most disrespectful to players as this is the time most people sleep. This should be changed.

Ruth
HFN at #11 West Side. Haunted House at #1 East Side. Three star instruments at #3 East Side.
Mariel Bravef
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Re: Its a Trap! [Rant]

Post by Mariel Bravef »

Trap: all the recent live event prizes that cost so much in game currency to purchase after players worked their butts off to unlock them; so much so that no one who wasn't blessed with the higher old daily reward has much of a chance of ever really affording many of them...
Mariel Bravef on Facebook, feel free to add me :)
Friend House: Starter lot. Social task and hobby items both. Let me know how I can improve it!
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Sigs_Minock
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Re: Its a Trap! [Rant]

Post by Sigs_Minock »

TRAP:
The Mall. I'm not a fashionista, so- having to pay to open up all the shops for Elderly Footwear and Toddler Onesies, is a obviously a drain- as you then have to BUY the ridiculously overpriced clothing. Then let's add to the equation HOBBIES to unlock more of the stores to fully complete the mall for MORE wasting money to get more stores open, to get access to more clothing. Though, the playground is nice...
FreePlayFan24
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Re: Its a Trap! [Rant]

Post by FreePlayFan24 »

I don't know if this would be considered a trap, but I hate how every time the town value increases, the cost to build places jumps significantly. I go to 20,000 simoleons to 75,000 without a 50,000 in between. Not to mention you HAVE to add more sims as you build more.

I also agree with the ridiculous cost of second stories in houses. I'd rather pay 100,000 simoleons or at most 150 000. I'd even pay LPs for a second floor.
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jVanDuyn
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Re: Its a Trap! [Rant]

Post by jVanDuyn »

LOVE this thread/postings!! This thread is a great asset & all-around timesaver for SFP players (especially those new to the SFP game). Great going, Sigs_Minock, and all those who contributed their SFP gaming experiences which greatly benefits others who are trying to enjoy the game without availing themselves of costly game purchases.

As always, loads of fun,

VanDy
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