I'm watching Carl's part 2 video and, once again, Maxis shows very little concern for the game's economy. You can make a ton of money, but WHAT do we have to send it on?
It's not like we can purchase multiple properties, expensive vehicles, jewelry and fashion, real estate, investments, etc.

However, I do like that chickens and bunnies aren't tried to the objects and have actual routing.

After watching Carl's Part 2:

1) They copypasted Snagglefluster for one of the milk types. Right down to the short timer of the moodlet and the dazed effect. "Hardest working team in the industry."

2) Carl entered $300 wool in the fair and lost. If we judge potential prizes based on the egg festival that he won in part 1 though, then the prize money is $525. Even worse, his cow got second place in the other fair and won $275. If you account for the fact that his oversized crops range in the 600-700$ range, then participating in that fair is potentially a net loss. This means that not only are the fairs barebones and pathetic, but they did not even bother to balance the prizes out, to the point you can actually lose money for winning. (assuming of course that EA/Maxis was lazy and made $525 the blanket 1st prize across all fairs, which let's be real, we totally expect that to be the case)

3) Carl mentions routing issues with chicken feed that he cannot return to his inventory. Meanwhile he has an immortal cow because a violin placed nearby is preventing it from moving. The bug potential for this pack sounds incredible

4) Grim Reaper visits seem obscenely frequent for a farmer. Also I'm unsure how Sims 4 handles it, but I know Sim deaths were a cause for file bloat in Sims 3. Would not surprise me if the frequency of animal deaths was a cause for problems either. Given that they lack ghosts though, it could be fine and little more than the annoyance of the Grim Reaper practically living with you.

5) Obviously, the economy of the items seems very, VERY broken. Carl spends loads of time on making supersized crops and gets about 700$ per plot. Meanwhile the birds seem incapable of giving him cheap rewards: every single gift from a bird was either a collectable of rare quality (eggs, milk, wool, fish, flowers) or a top-tier skill book that can be sold for a decent sum.

If you try and imagine the "endgame" for this pack, then you get an automated garden for befriending animals. The rabbits eat weeds, the birds eat bugs, the chickens upgrade plants to maximum, and then you only have to water. UNLESS they have some amazing effects for drinking various milks or gathering various rare materials, it doesn't seem like it's even worth bothering with the llamas and cows. Given they copypasted Snagglefluster, that doesn't exactly inspire hope that they have loads of interesting effects for the milks. Wool and eggs also seem useless beyond being ingredients or things to sell for money. Stitching likewise looks like a barebones skill with zero depth to it.

It seems like it boils down to "do you want an automated garden" and that's it for gameplay, really.

you can tip cows but it's not what you'd expect

I wonder how Animal Enthusiast will work with Cats & Dogs.

I cringed so hard when I saw it.. Of all the dad jokes they could possibly put in the game, that has to be by far the stupidest...

The Sims 4 has become so uninterested that I unable to bother checking the live stream or videos about this latest pack I'm busy at times playing TS1 and trying out all the features lol. That game is not buggy, which is a bit suprising considering it's a first one ever.

Part of me wants to cut the team some slack, because this pack was made during a pandemic.

The other part of me says that doesn’t matter because they could have waited to release this and fleshed it out more.

EA is not a company where the CEO is living hand to mouth and the entire company is struggling to get by.

I've played all the Sims games (and all modded, mostly heavily), and I think 1 is the only one that has never crashed on me.

Really? I find the opposite to be true. However, I was running on systems that barely played The Sims on medium settings. Now I have a computer that plays on maximum and still has room for Google Chrome to be hoggin' up resources in the background lol. So maybe I'm just lucky so far.

Personally, I am happy about the new pack in general. But gardening is one of my favourite activities in the Sims, so having a new spin on it will defo add more gameplay for me.
I do understand others though. If you are not into that kind of thing, the pack might seem as more of the same (more gardening, more festivals, etc.) We know they love recycling ideas.
Cross-stitching looks like a leftover from knifty knitting.

Seen some videos online and mostly enjoyed them. Some things about the animals seem annoying, some seem cool.
Wasn't able to confirm this yet, but I am worried about animals dying even with aging off.

Also, was expecting to have more big lots for a farming pack, but it looks like we get only one 64x64 and it is already taken by a family.
I know not every household will have a big farm, but you have smaller lots in the town area or the forest, why are there small lots in the "farming" area at all?
Even smaller farmers might have a tiny cottage but own land...

And like someone already mentioned above, my biggest worry is how it will all work with other packs. I do own most of them at this point and any excitement always dies when I download a new pack and realize things are broken. Just bought Snowy Escape last month and turns out that Snow Festivals are broken since last patch and can ruin your save. So yeah... bought a new pack and now avoid it in game in hopes they fix it. The Sims 4 is a money pit at this point. They fix one thing and break another.

So really would love to see how it all works with seasons, retail, cats and dogs, other festivals, etc. Also if I place a pub or grocery stall in another neighbourhood will the henford pub owner and shop keeper show up there? I hope not. But I predict a nightmare with too many NPCs spawning.

I wish our rich sims could hire *really good* staff, like a gardener and butler and cook and housekeeper and nanny that were really intelligent, did jobs at intelligent times, and hard working, not just there to introduce another layer of irritation as they steal things and taunt the kids.

I think it would be fun to occasionally get a household staff member who steals, or is rude, but bad their job, etc. EAxis tend to be the type of people who don't properly understand humor so they front load everything that's a joke. Having a function service member with gag being that a maid steals would be funny when you finally get one and eventually figure out the maid did it.

Nowadays, we get dust bunnies who give you long lost treasure valued at 10k a piece and the devs think this is fine.

This! 100% agree.

Like murphy bed malfunctions or exaggerated animations that make things take longer... it happens all the time.
If these things happened only occasionally it would be so much more rewarding to see it.

They overdo everything. Things that were supposed to be quirky lose their charm very quickly, even become annoying.

The thing with bunk beds where Clumsy Sims fall off while climbing up occasionally is the perfect example of subtle things that make a big difference. It's funny without being overdone or in your face.

But things like that are hard to come by in TS4. Everything's either too sanctimonious or fired off constantly like the endless texts and calls for a Sim to come over that it stops being endearing, if at all, very quickly.

What? Your friends don't normally call you in the middle of school time to congratulate you on making a new friend? "Heeeeyy I heard that you finally met someone willing to deal with your pathetic existence. I knew there was hope for even you. Welp...enjoy having your phone confiscated in class. Congrats!"

The thing that makes it super annoying is, not only are the "quirks" exaggerated but they aren't even original... I honestly can't think of more than a handful of things in 4 that aren't functionally a "best hits of maxis" that misses the entire point of the original content.

The Sims Bustin' Out for GBA had an evil veloci-rooster that would fight, chase and usually kill your sim. Why not have evil chickens that can do the same!.... Missing the obvious point that the veloci-rooster, whilst silly, was an actual threat that you actively wanted to avoid...

The Sims 1 had rabbits to accompany it's farming? Let's add them into 4... Missing the point that rabbits in 1 were actual pests that added a challenge to gameplay.

The Sims 2 had the very occasional Murphy Bed failure? Copy paste, but from the sounds of things they made it waaay more common in 4. Despite in 2, your sim has to already be really upset to even have a small chance of it falling on them... Almost like something that could use... THE EMOTIONS SYSTEM!

The Sims 1 had the tragic clown as a creepy ghost clown who would unintentionally terrorize your sims if they were upset and you had a specific painting. You had to sell the painting, burn it, or call the clown catchers, because he would actively make things worse... First of all.. that's a one trick pony... Cuz once you know how to deal with him, that's the end of the challenge. It isn't hard to sell a painting or avoid buying it, hence why he was never brought back in 2 or 3, and only was referenced. But second of all... In 4, you have to actively summon them (who aren't a mysterious npc but a service fulfilled by normal sims like a maid, gardener, etc. As well as a costume that gives your sims their emotional moodlets) by looking at the painting... You know that old interaction that is honestly kinda useless and so is rarely used? And all they do is make your sim sad... No negative effect on motives (which this game could DESPERATELY use) Nada... Just makes your sims sad...

They have fundamentally missed the point of almost every feature they have adapted... Yet that's all they do... Even if they have a unique idea it's usually just a variant on something the other games did, like farming contests which seem a lot like the pet shows from the Sims 1, only instead of skills, quality of the product determines how well they do... Or the emotional deaths, which are all just copy pastes of the death by fright in The Sims 2 to other emotional states. Only difference is the reliance on the poorly conceived and manic emotion system, which despite games like 2 having (they didn't show the player in the UI, but they had emotional tokens from the memory system, which is why sims in 2 might seemingly randomly start crying or laughing, or change their behavior in more subtle ways. Ghosts can even get angry if you sell their bed or their former spouse remarries) manages to be fundamentally broken...

I don't get how a team of professional game devs can miss the mark this consistantly... They seem to be almost entirely focused on nostalgia bating, but they are sooooo bad at it, they don't even remotely understand the concepts they are adapting!

Arnie's farmland mod is public access now!
https://www.patreon.com/posts/new-farmland-1-1-53565803

Yeah that should be based on randomly assigned traits when hiring them. Not forced gimmicky quirks based on their job, because that will grow old fast when all those npcs behave like that. This is all because of the problem with the foundation of the game. How in TS4 traits don't really matter for a sims personality.

The game changers have really gotten this game quite early this time, no? I haven’t been following super closely, and assumed it was released seemingly weeks ago. So strange that they’d be having the YouTube personalities playing through this game in its entirety for weeks on end, leaving its (lack of) content on display so vividly.

This is the first time I’ve not had any (and I mean any) interest whatsoever in a pack. I literally only want that sofa.

With the amount of times they’ve reintroduced the food stands, you’d think they’d let us work at one or have NPCs spawn for free.

So, 3 days to launch and we've heard nothing about cats and dogs with this pack? Interesting.

Wouldn't that be covered with the NDAs Gamechangers are made to sign? They are only allowed to play with the Base game and that beta pack of the new one anyway.

2 days, and I want this exp now. I guess this place is still full of complainers who don't really play the game?

We can't like everything. Volvenom.

I'm gonna wait a bit. I do like the idea behind this Country Livin' EP, especially if it means I could make, say, a fully self-sufficient household with off-the-grid stuff that also has milk/eggs as food sources and such. But I'll still wait, see what happens, and probably wait for a sale.