Seasons Impressions?

[mildlydisguised]

So the game has been out a couple of days now and I'm curious what people think?

The changing seasons are certainly beautiful but I've seen a fair few combusting sims in summer and heard tell of fallen leaves still on the ground in spring. I bought a scarecrow with redeemed festival tickets but actually received the witch/gnome thing instead, so there does seem to be a few glitches or strange features. I've harvested honey but am not sure what to do with the beeswax, maybe it has alchemical uses, although the bees attack was quite hilarious. It seems odd that the festival is accessible every day of the season and not just the actual day off work/school. Oh and I have not seen an alien yet.

So what, in your opinion, has been done well or what needs work, or should never have been included in the first place?

[Roobs]

It's nice to have weather at last, although the ep is lacking in assets.

Anyway I've had a whole bunch of problems. Seasons seems determined to kill off the population of my hood. Sims starving to death from the eating contests. Spontaneous combustions all over the place, in some cases getting stuck in a loop that prevents sims or rain from putting it out.

My weather stone has turned invisible, and AM's Nuke option has disappeared, so I'm not sure what to do to get it back. I can't even redeem festival tickets. As far as the merchant is concerned, the ones my sims have in their inventories don't count at all.

[JacquiES]

I was just playing it a few minutes ago when it froze and had my computer running like crazy.  The game in general has my computer running harder and it takes awhile to load.  I have a quad core and 8 gigs of ram so I am surprised at how hard it is hitting my system.  As far as the actual game itself, I haven't really seen much difference since it starts with summer as the season and the day was sunny.  I was just checking out the festival park when the game froze and it looked pretty cool set up for summer activities.  I still feel like I am going to default to the Sims 2 though for some reason, this game is just missing something for me.

[gamegame]

My weather stone has turned invisible too. Is this an AM or EA bug?

[Slymenstra]

I am loving this expansion pack. The glitches I have come across have been caused by out of date mods/hacks. I got most of them updated and everything is going well. For me it is running better than the past expansion.

I have had 7 or so sims burst into flames during the summer. One died. I put 2 out with my sim. I dislike how it does that mainly because the sims are idle outside of their house from the game mechanics. Wish it pushed them indoors.

I can't stop playing it.

[JacquiES]

Ok I am enjoying it a bit more now that I am getting into other seasons.  I put them down to three each and skipped summer because I had enough of that.  However it started with three days left of summer anyway.  I am in Fall now and the festival is cute. Weird thing happened though- my sim went into the haunted house and came out a fully floating ghost.  I sent her back in and she stayed like that.  A trip to the face painting tent fixed her though. No idea what that was about.

This is also my first full round playing Supernatural as well and I had about three zombies spawn at the side of my sim's house on the full moon night.  Is that normal?

[blackgryffin]

I have a quad core and 16 gigs of ram so I am surprised at how hard it is hitting my system :/

The Seasons Festivals in the park are not interesting at all :/

I never crashed my computer as much since I installed Seasons :/

I love the fact to get seasons in the gameplay : noise of the rain is very realistic

The weather stone is fun but a bit limited in actions

[HomeschooledByTards]

I'm loving it so far. Unfortunatly it rains too goddamn much, and the summer temps are not believable. 79F is NOT HOT, that is spring weather, not summer! It rained for almost four days straight, until jezzer told me that I could click on the ground to control the weather with cheats on. Dur, I'm a tard.

[witch]

That cheat is good news. I love the weather but I had seven days of straight rain in autumn and seven days of snow in winter. That's ridiculous, it should be a percentage chance each day. Also, the temps bounce around like a yoyo, there should be more of a relationship between the previous day's temperature and the current day. I understand that in seven days you can't really emulate a curve very well, but it shouldn't just be random.

I also haven't worked out what the damn weatherstone is actually for. My two witches have tried it singly and together and only once did it work - and even then I wasn't sure what it did except give an impressive lightning show.

[Giroro]

I was wondering why the festival was running all the time as well. I don't really mind too much, but it's kind of odd. I have the feeling it's going to irk me after a while. I did see an alien during my Seasons test play as the Goths. It came down, said hello to Cornelia, came into her house when invited, and then promptly left. It happened just a few minutes after I'd started playing, but I haven't seen one yet while playing my new family. I think I remember Graham saying something about it being a completely random event, but I could be wrong.

All glitches aside (and there are quite a few that are annoying the ever-loving hades out of me), I'm really enjoying how atmospheric the game is now. I've built my Sims a house on the hillside in Sunset Valley, and the view while raining is killer. And now there's a reason for Sims to wear winter clothes, so hey. Not bad, not bad. I'm a little annoyed over how fake and awful the Leaf Shelter looks, though. Every time I see it in build/buy I wish my Sims were able to take an axe to things. Well, I always wish Sims could take an axe to things, but more so when I see it.

[jezzer]

I don't mind the Festival running all the time because it doesn't affect your game unless you let it.  It gives you more flexibility in planning festival outings, and lets you use your holiday day for something else if you like.  My chief annoyance is related to the Soaked moodlet.  If a dog gets the Soaked moodlet, it shakes itself, squashing the queues of every single sim in the room as they react.  What's worse, the shaking decreases the time left on the moodlet, but may not remove it until the dog has done it two or three times, queue-stomping each time.  This was an easy moodlet to avoid with Pets, where all you had to do was make your dog avoid pools and sprinklers, but it happens EVERY SINGLE TIME it rains.

[JacquiES]

The soaked moodlet annoys me to no end as my sims constantly choose to do outside activities when it is raining (which as some have said above, happens 99% of the time), and then they are dripping water for hours after. I wish they were a bit smarter about the weather because the majority of the time they seem oblivious to it.

[That Eighties Guy]

The festival is disappointing as all fuck, but the rain is pretty atmospheric.

Atmospheric, not fun. Where the fuck do I get umbrellas? Or raincoats?

[vorpal]

Umbrellas are in Buy Mode, under Entertainment, I think, and can be bought from the festival merchants for festival tickets, too. And if you're lucky your umbrella will last longer than one day. They break faster than any community lot toilet.

[SendMeLies]

Atmospheric, not fun. Where the fuck do I get umbrellas? Or raincoats?

Surprisingly, at outdoor activities tab. Who'd have thunk it?

[witch]

And if you're lucky your umbrella will last longer than one day. They break faster than any community lot toilet.

I was clever, I made an unbreakable set of sun and rain umbrellas for my fambly, only to find the unbreakable ones last about 2 days longer than the vanilla.   

[vorpal]

And if you're lucky your umbrella will last longer than one day. They break faster than any community lot toilet.

I was clever, I made an unbreakable set of sun and rain umbrellas for my fambly, only to find the unbreakable ones last about 2 days longer than the vanilla.   

Could you delete them from your inventory after they broke at least? Because some seemingly have trouble once the "unbreakables" break and they get stuck. They're very delicate, aren't they? Probably made of balsa wood and fine hand-crafted Japanese screen paper.

[Jayroo]

I also haven't worked out what the damn weatherstone is actually for. My two witches have tried it singly and together and only once did it work - and even then I wasn't sure what it did except give an impressive lightning show.

The weather stone has differing effects depending on which supernatural sim interacts with it.  The effects are not always guaranteed to work.  Vampires will summon fog which allows for activity during the day iirc without the burning up moodlet.  It also allows for sims to become much more likely to accept vampires interactions such as being fed from among other things.  Witches summon rain which gives a boost to mood and causes those in the rain to dance wildly.  Werewolves summon a snow storm which causes collectables to fall from the sky.  It also increases their chance to find rare collectables.  And finally fairies will summon rain and flowers from the sky which helps gardening and makes a rainbow appear.

Vampires and Werewolves seem to have the advantage with the stone.

[witch]

Could you delete them from your inventory after they broke at least? Because some seemingly have trouble once the "unbreakables" break and they get stuck. They're very delicate, aren't they? Probably made of balsa wood and fine hand-crafted Japanese screen paper.

Haven't tried yet, just noted one was ragged again. Will check it out.

Yeah, they're extremely fragile!

Oh and cheers for the info, Jayroo.

[virgali]

From what I hear you can only try the stone once a day (per world, so if your witch fails, you can't try with your werewolf till the next day) and the failure rate is ridiculous. I haven't tried it myself yet but according to someone over at MTS, the chances of success seems to increase the higher level the supernatural creature is.

[lowbart]

fallen leaves still on the ground in spring.

That happens in real life, if you don't clean them up.



But yeah, after reading this thread I guess I can safely not bother to acquire this expansion.

[MrMugg]

The soaked moodlet annoys me to no end as my sims constantly choose to do outside activities when it is raining (which as some have said above, happens 99% of the time), and then they are dripping water for hours after.

The umbrellas are worthless. Walk to the mailbox in the rain with an umbrella, sim will put umbrella away to get mail, then pull out umbrella to walk back to the house. Result - soaked moodlet. They get a tiny bit wet, and the game acts like they wet their pants.

[J. M. Pescado]

Protip: Sims in swimwear are immune to the soaked moodlet.

[jezzer]

We need either a mod that prevents the soaked moodlet from occurring when a sim has an unbroken umbrella in its inventory, or a mod that allows more time to pass before the soaked moodlet appears, to allow for relatively quick outdoor errands, like using the mailbox or the garbage can.

[Turd Ferguson]

Wish I could join in the fun, but unless I can replace this shitty laptop quickly, I've given up on Sims. At least until Sims 4 comes out.

Which by the way, IS in the works. EA already purchased the domain name and there've been confirmations by EA employees.