Apartment Life: Obligatory Hate/Love Topic

[Lonesome Dove]

He. That's the first startup music I've liked in the sims since the Makin' Magic EP. It's just lovely.

I'm with you. I just love it.

Maybe I need to set the lock on my door, but my Sim went into labour, in the teeny little bathroom in her trailer park home, and her spouse, four neighbours and the landlord swarmed into that teeny little room to witness the grand event. *headdesk*

People have been walking in my Sims' apartments that have no business there, for example, the paperboy. He's been leaving the paper on the front porch nicely, but recently he walked right into my Sim's apartment, put the newspaper on the floor, then stood around waiting for someone to strike up a conversation before he finally went on his way.

On a related note, I sent my Sims on vacation to see if anything there got borked. I didn't notice anything odd except that my female Sim walked into an NPC-occupied hotel room to go to sleep, instead of going to her own room, and while she was there several other NPC guests walked in. One took a bath while another turned on the TV, waking my Sim up, then they all stood around chatting for a while. This never happened before but I really never played vacation lots that much. Thought I'd report it in case it's related to the AL problem.

Tsarina - Your avatar freaks me out. I swiped at my monitor twice before realizing there's no creepy crawly there. 

Same here. Beat the crap out of my monitor with a flyswatter.

Squinge's pregnancy wear any clothing mod breaks the closets. But Dizzy at the Laden Swallow has a similar mod that works with AL and doesn't break the closets.

Thanks for the heads up! I would truly miss that wonderful hack. EAxis must hate pregnant ladies, they dress them so fugly. 

[Bruce Banner]

 :)Likes

The new Bathroom Medicine Cabinets ( one is a mirror too ) with the new Face Wash and Teeth Cleaning interactions ( which should have been in from the base game considering Sims could clean their teeth in Sims 1  .)
The kids playground stuff . Makes a nice change for the kids to get a few decent items 
The new pool table is far better than their previous efforts and more like a classic American Pool table .
The ceiling looks fine to me and the default white one goes with pretty much any colour walls anyway , Maybe the problems of the ceiling not disappearing with the walls are down to when you repaint the ceiling and/or use a custom flooring on the ceiling because the default ceiling disappears with the walls when needed to in my game  And surprisingly the ceilings don't seem to cause any lag at all . When I tried custom ceilings ages ago I got lag in my game and expected the same with this , but these don't seem to have any affect on game performance at all 
Being able to move some official items higher and lower on the walls is pretty cool , although I was surprised that the Maxis plasma tv couldn't be moved like that ( I didn't expect custom objects to be movable in this manner though , which it seems they aren't )
The new vending machines seem non autonomous , which is good considering sims often flock round items like this like flies round shit if they're autonomous 

 :-\Neutral

Witches ain't my bag really so I don't really have much of an opinion on them . I hope those that wanted them like them , but it won't be something I'll be using in the game .
The same goes for the apartments feature itself . They're just like glorified hotel rooms in my opinion so I'll be sticking to my sims having their own homes , although I can see how this feature might interest some .
The reputation score thingy is not something I've really taken much notice of yet either , so I'll reserve judgment on that too .

 >:(Dislikes

The new auto-generating character thumbnails . Changing it in the mirrors was perfectly fine before . Using the ' batman box ' to change it whenever needed was even easier . So what do EA do ? Make it so it changes every single time they get dressed etc . It wouldn't bother me if it wasn't for the fact that a number of the character poses for the thumbnails are awful sort of contorted grimaces . This new feature makes the thumbnail generating feature of Pescado's Lot Debugger redundant at present because it automatically gets changed too often anyway so if you currently used that to change it to a preferred thumbnail you'd be doing it constantly  I hope someone , anyone , makes a hack to override this feature so we can go back to the ' Batman box ' and the mirrors for selective thumbnail regenerating because this new feature is crap .
The paperboy now seems to leave the newspaper outside the front door rather than the garden gate , which was pretty annoying at first seeing as I thought he'd not delivered one at all . No great shakes now I know where he leaves it though . I just didn't want several of them going ' missing ' cluttering up the lot , that's all .

[Alex]

I also like the music. Very soothing, and doesn't drive you insane like the FT music does. It's definitely my favourite alongside OFB, Superstar and MM themes.

I'm not sure I'm too happy about the new paper delivery feature. Yes it's great for apartments, but not so great for my more... unusual residential houses. Plus I can just see myself forgetting about it and tons of mouldy papers cluttering the front patio/deck.

I was annoyed the TV can't be moved. I'm sure it's just a setting though, as they had the TV at various levels in a video awhile back. I want to move the TV up the wall a little bit, so it doesn't cut into the fireplace when placed above one.

I'm not touching my other sims until this portrait asshattery is fixed.

[Tsarina]

Tsarina - Your avatar freaks me out. I swiped at my monitor twice before realizing there's no creepy crawly there. 

Same here. Beat the crap out of my monitor with a flyswatter.

I've been hearing that quite a lot. I guess I could switch my avatar to something less horrifying if it's that bad.
Edit: are you silly, entomophobic people happy now? Are talking muffins less disturbing to you? Huh? HUH?

[keirra]

Oh, but, I liked your old Avi. It was freaky in a good way.

[Tsarina]

So did I. I still have it at PMBD. But cute muffins fit MATY better, don't you think?

[Alex]

Weird. For the first time ever, I heard a little ditty play when the Unsavoury Charlatan arrived at my newly built playground , although I'm going to put this down to Argon's music fix, and not AL.

[Lonesome Dove]

Tsarina - Your avatar freaks me out. I swiped at my monitor twice before realizing there's no creepy crawly there. 

Same here. Beat the crap out of my monitor with a flyswatter.

I've been hearing that quite a lot. I guess I could switch my avatar to something less horrifying if it's that bad.
Edit: are you silly, entomophobic people happy now? Are talking muffins less disturbing to you? Huh? HUH?

I liked your buggy avatar! It fit this thread nicely, don't you think? 

No really, now that I know it's not a real bug I don't have a problem with it. A BIG bug, yes, I'd have problems with. DO NOT WANT big bugs. Or spiders. Or snakes. Not even pixelated ones.

[Tsarina]

My cat is sparkly ;/ I was watching my sims kitty run around playing with its own tail, and it started to sparklel ike crazy, had flying stars and prissy colours flying this way and that, was annoying really.

If the cat's not your Astral somethingsomething, it came with the pest pets EP. I think it's catnip that does it.

[Havelock]

Hates:

ERG What happened to the Ergo Window recolours? They used to be available in many other colours, now its onl available in red! Thats so stupid.

Someone at EAxis renamed the subsets in the Windows GMDCs which borked the Windows recolors.

[Soggy Fox]

I love the witches - its half of what I liked from Makin' Magic, and the other half was in OFB/FT so....
Also love the living statue - that is so freaking cool, just wonder if I can recolour him so he looks made of bronze or gold instead of concrete.

I like the basic idea of the apartments, just really need to make my own buildings - though the little set of four row houses are pretty nice until mine are done. 

I hate that they seem to have completely borked the OFB windows.  I've got a collection of modern homes with these ugly red things and no way to change them without switching to custom windows.  That's my bit complaint.

And how do I get to Baba's Hut?

[J. M. Pescado]

The witches out of the box are severely underwhelming. There are only *TWO* potions that are actually NEW to the game, the rest being repackaged shit that they've already sold us. Of the spells, most of the are duplications of things we either already have, or could easily make. Most of the rest are just useless.

[dream_operator]

Weird. For the first time ever, I heard a little ditty play when the Unsavoury Charlatan arrived at my newly built playground Undecided, although I'm going to put this down to Argon's music fix, and not AL.

That music plays in the game sometimes when he shows up...sometimes it doesn't.  I don't know why it isn't a constant thing...

Likes:

Personally I really love the witches.  I do think they may replace the vampires as my favorite non-human sim.  I also like how they sparkle and I like both the evil green skin and the sparkly good skin. I made two sims with the intention of making one a perfectly good warlock and the other perfectly evil so I made one extremely grouchy and the other extremely nice.  When both of them were turned into witches they both became instantly maxed out in their alignment.  Neither one had to study to get maxed out.  I don't know if it is personality based or based on something else...

I LOVE the playground and vending machines.  Both have been something I have been wanting since I first started playing the game two years ago...especially the playground since none of the custom playground objects had any interactions with them.  Parks are my favorite things to build and I was always frustrated that I could only put swings in the playground area.

Neutral:

...the apartments themselves.  I like them and they are very handy for a poor sim to move into, but then they are left with all of this money that they can then furnish their apartment very nicely and STILL have money left over to pay the rent for a few weeks.  It kind of makes the trashy apartments pointless unless you have money mods or just pretend that the sims don't have all that extra cash. 

Dislikes:

I don't like my sims setting the tables out in the community areas when they serve food.  I suppose in the future before I move any more sims into apartments, I'll put flowers or something on the outside tables to prevent this.

Dream

[KnowitallSim]

Like:
Belladonna Cove. One of the better neighborhoods they've put together. Much much better then the awful one from FT.
New objects. Lots of new outfits and hair.
New interactions.
Cute little touches...the cuddling in bed is great.
Nice arrangement of Sims 2 theme and very nice loading music

Neutral:
Apartments. Just seem sort of pointless. I would rather have a normal home that I can freely edit and have full control of. Also, too easy. You can get a decent sized apartment with a starter sim and furnish it with top of the line stuff, and you'll be fine when it comes to the rent because of the 20k handout.

Hate:
Extreme borkiness
Some errors in Belladonna Cove families
Murphy bed. It actually takes up MORE space then a normal bed!
So many ugly outfits cluttering up the everyday category
Extreme hair recolor spam. We do not need SIX HAIRS WHICH ARE IDENTICAL IN EVERY WAY BESIDES A TINY LITTLE RIBBONS COLOR.

[Kyna]

Since I've mentioned a few dislikes in this thread, I'd thought I'd mention a few of the things I like.

- The loading music
- That the townies/socialites aren't restricted to the base game careers.  I've had townies come home from work in some of Seasons careers, which is nice, and there's a townie tenant in one of the apartments who goes to work in the show biz "french fries hat" uniform.  I was disappointed with previous career-adding EPs when I discovered that the townies never had jobs in the EP careers.  The main reason I made my own townies was to put some of them into EP careers before I townified them.
- The playground equipment.  One of my favourite items in TS1 was the jungle gym.  I was disappointed with the base game when it only had swings.  Finally my sim kids have something to play on.

[Lum]

Like:
I like the new everyday clothes, actually. Yay for more gym clothes too!

Dislikes: Not being able to edit the apartment lots.

I don't actually consider the game 'ready' until I get all my old hacks back in business. I'm willing to sacrifice Belladonna to the borkiness gods until then. Once the hacks get sorted, I'll return to my 4th gen main hood and really give it a try. I like what I've seen so far, though.

[Faizah]

I really like the start-up music, too. One of the more pleasant arrangements of the Sims 2 theme, IMO, which is a good thing if I'm going to be listening to it for who-knows-how-long.

But you know, you can copy a previous EP's splash.package to overwrite it, if you really hate it that much. (Make a backup first, of course.) I had to do that with FT's start-up. I didn't mind it at first, but it got annoying very quickly.

Ugh. Wish I'd known about that, I hated FT's music so much. Some of the notes were very jarring, at just the wrong pitch, especially considering my 'sound system' is a pair of headphones at top volume, left on the desk. I love AL's music, but only time will tell if I really like it, or just think I do because of what came before.

I probably should list what I love/hate about this EP, to get back on topic.

I like...
...the ceilings. But, I groan also, as I have recently been taking a whole bunch of photos in FT, to the point where I don't ever want to go through that again. The sky, the sky, must hide the sky! Aaargh.
...apartment neighbours, easy friends. Plus, I caught one actually sleeping, in bed, in her own apartment!
...the enormously overpowered thrones at level 9 witchery. Feels every bit the cheat that it is, but, keeps the sims happy. Good in large house-holds. (Because I'd rather not play a poky little apartment, actually.) I should try sitting evil on good's chair and vice versa though, may be good for a laugh.

I could live without...
...the butler, the landlord's garden/tidy/repair routine if it kept him/her from spitting out 'Nothing to do, bye!' messages every day.
...the bazillion hairs with different coloured clips/scrunchies. If scrunchie colour was that important, surely there could be another way of doing it, perhaps an accessory?
...the bookcase 'doors'. Cute idea, but only really useful to block something from autonomous use. Even then, there's probably stomping and whining and "I can't get that!"
...neutral spells (summon familiar, teleport) pulling the bar to neutral. I think the spell book 'neutral' option should still do that, but not the spells. They're the only ones I can see myself using. Inflammo is fun the first time, but, after that, not so much. (Note to self, must see if Inflammo appears on another Sim's 'Cast Spell...' menu.)
...NPCs being immune to spells. (Though I can live with this one, too.) The gypsy was just standing there polishing her ball, she was obviously not too busy to act like a chicken.

I hate...
...not being able to BUILD in apartments, or buy for outside. I've only recently gotten into building, and it's annoying to have that taken away now. I could understand 'no structural changes', but since when has a fence or a floor divider or a telescope been 'structural'?
...the floor dividers counting as walls, cutting off what's beyond them from the rest of the apartment. Bleh.
...the run-together "poems" in the spell book. This would have made the 'could live without' list, if it didn't bug me that one spell is actually formatted correctly. If they can make one work, why not the others? Just makes the rest more annoying. Grr.

[jlkeal]

The gypsy dropping off the genie lamp no longer works. At least not in the trailer park. I would imagine it's because she can't leave the lamp in a 'common' area. She shows up on the lot as usual in her 'sneaky' mode, gets to your sim's door, then leaves without dropping off the lamp. She says the usual 'You have blah, blah arduous journey', etc. and then leaves. No lamp.

[Tsarina]

...the bazillion hairs with different coloured clips/scrunchies. If scrunchie colour was that important, surely there could be another way of doing it, perhaps an accessory?

I'm kind of angry at EAxis because of this particular 'feature'. They said that they've 'added over 30 new hairs', and this is what we get.

[sloppyhousewife]

I don't like my sims setting the tables out in the community areas when they serve food.  I suppose in the future before I move any more sims into apartments, I'll put flowers or something on the outside tables to prevent this.

Eww - thanks for the warning. I think it's time to test if Monique's servecount hack still works with AL...

As for the butler - I don't think he's too bad. I kept mine until my sim had enough group meals for the next 183 years in his inventory, then fired him. I just wished he would do a bit more butler stuff, like answering the phone, bringing in the newspaper and pay the bills. Also, I think he should be more expensive (but maybe this will be taken care of in a future "expensive NPCs" version?).

The reputation thing is funny. My sim (2 nice points) went from neutral to "lousy loser" in no time. The responsible townie is now part of his private graveyard.

[witch]

Is annyone else annoyed by the fact that the vibrating bed doesn't use all the default bedding, just 3

Yep.

(or is it just me who has this problem?)?

Nope.

[SJActress]

As for the butler - I don't think he's too bad. I kept mine until my sim had enough group meals for the next 183 years in his inventory, then fired him. I just wished he would do a bit more butler stuff, like answering the phone, bringing in the newspaper and pay the bills. Also, I think he should be more expensive (but maybe this will be taken care of in a future "expensive NPCs" version?).

Should I be able to tell him to do things?  Because I can't.  The only way I can get him to make a meal non-autonomously is to Influence him.  Even then, sometimes I get the popup, "We don't have enough fish for that meal."  I lose my Asp. points through the Influence, and he doesn't cook anything.  I never asked him to make fish!   

This happens (we don't have fish!) with other Sims I influence to cook, too.  I don't know if it's an existing bug or a known issue.  No tight pants, I can say that much.

If not being able to command him to do things is a "feature", then I hate it.  I hate having to chase him around the house if I want a sim to talk>chat with him, and I hate that he serves plates.  Just cook, dammit.  I'll Grab a Plate my own damn self!

[Process Denied]

My butler sucked and I fired him.  I hired him for the household that only has kids and he washed one counter and then paced the bathroom till the kids were about to pee their pants .  They were half starved and the toilet was broken and he wouldn't fix it.  Not much worse than the nanny who stayed out on the playground all day, when the twins needed her on the third floor(with her elderly nanny gait, she didn't get to the tots before they peeed themselves followed by her peeing herself.  It is really hard to play that house without cheats.

[Zazazu]

Fantastic. Now I can't decide if I want to keep the (recolored) skin overlays or not. I think not. Princess Plum the Good Witch shouldn't be able to pick out the crime lords of the Vitelli family from a hundred miles away.

[witch]

FYI for anyone who hates that aura/witchy glow thing that high witches have. Black Spirit at MTS2 has a hack to get rid of it.

http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=299567

Nooooooooooo! They're not taking my shiny away. My precioussssssss.

I finally found Hysterical Paroxysms sparklies so even my neutral witches will sparkle now.