considering getting more expansions, seeking advice
jennydeenyc:
Ok, so Seasons is a definite at least :-)
Anyone care to speak about the relative merits of Pets (which I haven't seen mentioned yet) or any of the SPs I don't have - which I believe are: Celebration, H&M, Teen, and K&B?
SimWitch:
If you like animals and/or the notion of playing a simulated dog/cat breeder, Pets is a great addition. I like playing with breeding characteristics and I personally like animals, so Pets hasn't been a waste of hard drive space for me. If virtual animals aren't your thing, then the expansion is of debatable worth. Strays are highly annoying and require you to take some precautions to protect your yards (and are irritating regardless). Werewolves I haven't really gotten to test yet, but they seem more interesting than zombies and less high maintenance than vampires, so take that for what it's worth. But, really, if you don't put any animals into your households, you won't even notice Pets is installed until some stray comes and makes himself at home in your yard/garbage/front porch. (I highly recommend getting the cleaned templates to rid yourself of strays if you do get it.)
Oh, and I do believe it was the Pets expansion which added the option for Custom Paintings on the easel, which allows you to add your own artwork into a folder and have Sims paint it in-game. I play a lot of artist Sims, so I love that option to bits.
On the SPs, I know nothing about K&B. H&M is good if you aren't someone (like me) that downloads 8183491 pieces of custom clothing, because -- for EAxis -- a lot of the clothes added are decent, and are a definite step-up from the base game stuff. Celebration is something I "acquired" recently, and what tinkering I've done, I don't know how I lived without it. It's possible make a presentable weddings and birthday parties now. Teen, predictably, adds some new stuff for teens, though all I've seen so far are the new collections and furniture. I'll use it, I'm sure, but it's not something I'd say is worth buying.
Just my lurking two cents. Though I'm on the bandwagon touting Seasons as easily the best EP. It really does alter the whole game, rather than being a tinker-and-forget like most of the rest.
talysman:
I'm sort of in the same boat as Jennydee, since I arrrr'd a bunch of stuff, but haven't installed Pets, Seasons, or FT yet (the FT zip turned out to be broken, so I guess I have to buy it.) So I have a question, which I'm sure Jennydee will be interested in as well: what are the performance effects of installing Pets or Seasons? I specifically skipped those when I installed OFB and BV, because I wanted to see whether the system would slow down with OFB/BV and a couple stuff packs installed. No visible difference, but I figure Pets might be different because of the extra animated creatures on the lot, and Seasons has a lot of extra visual effects. Are there noticeable performance drops with those two EPs installed?
Lord Darcy:
Quote from: jennydee on 2008 May 01, 06:01:03
Anyone care to speak about the relative merits of Pets (which I haven't seen mentioned yet) or any of the SPs I don't have - which I believe are: Celebration, H&M, Teen, and K&B?
Pets is just all about pets. I agree with SimWitch, it really depends on your preference. I like the futuristic furniture set and floor dividers (I believe it's from Pets), but that's about it. No new clothes at all. Custom painting option will be carried onto later EPs, so if you get Seasons you'll get it as well.
Until I acquired subsequent SPs, I didn't realize that GLS was actually a decent SP by comparison. None of later SPs is up to GLS IMO. They're too specialized. For example, if you don't care about wedding parties, you would not find much use for Celebration. As for Teen pack, the so-called "Elite" theme is more suitable for nursery IMO. I have little use for stupid GothEmo stuff. Teen hairs are quite nice though. As for K&B, Holy Simoly's donation sets totally PWN it, both in quality and quantity. Seriously, only 3 similar black shades for the new shower, which is near identical clone of base game shower in itself?
Go look at official homepage for items and screenshots. WYSIWYG. Nothing more.
If I have to pick just one SP, I'd choose Celebration. Before Celebration, I hardly bothered with wedding parties. Now I find myself throwing wedding parties more often.
SimWitch:
On my old computer, which hated anything and everything I ever ran on it more complex than a web browser, I eventually had all the expansions up to and including Seasons. My install order was funky... it was something like base game --> Uni --> Nightlife --> Seasons --> Pets --> OFB. My system performance remained about the same (albeit crappy) until I installed OFB. It made the game damn near unplayable for me. I don't know if it was OFB's fault, or just stacking it on top of everything else that did it, but I had serious performance issues after installing it. For reference, my old specs were a 1.2GhZ AMD processor, 896 MB RAM, and 128 MB video card.
On my new computer, I have all EPs and SPs save K&B, and on max graphics settings I have no system troubles. I'm sitting at 2.2GhZ AMD processor, 2GB RAM, and a 512 MB video card.
For neighborhood start-up, Pets and Seasons will both add some time to the load screen when playing a neighborhood for the first time, but should load normally after that. Winter in Seasons can be somewhat stressful when it snows, but you can change around the seasons how you like in a neighborhood, and remove winter if snowfall causes too much terrible lag. (Which I do anyway, because I freaking hate winter and its useless bonus.)
From what I've observed, Seasons is a lot more system-intensive than Pets. I've had six pets on a lot (on my old PC) with several Sims, and performance stayed the same even after I whittled down the pets on lot to two. I've also never noticed my lots with pets responding any slower than my lots without.
Individual mileage will vary. OFB was my personal downfall, but I'm guessing most people didn't have issues with it. :)
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