We’ll dance where the ice gets thin
March 18, 2023 :: 9:36 PM
The Zest Legacy, 2nd Generation: Bryce and Nathan Richardson
I don’t make it a secret amongst friends that I retreat into video games when the world becomes too much.
I’m probably a year into hardcore playing the Sims again. I cycle in and out of the Sims because the game gets boring, but this might be the longest I’ve been in deep.
All that to say, the new Sims expansion pack is really frosting my cookies.
Let’s start with the size and scope of the expansion pack: Growing Together is a complete overhaul of generational gameplay.
They’ve reorganised the social pie menus. Added a whole new life state (infants). Changed the way Sims interact with different personality markers. A memory system of sorts.
I’ve only been playing with it today because it took me most of yesterday to update my mods. (I have a metric fuck ton of custom content and mods. WAAAAAAAAY too many.)
The Sims team practically rewrote huge chunks of code to shoehorn infants into the base game and then added even more into gameplay by adding the new expansion pack.
Let’s also add the fact that the base game is now free so there are more players using mods.
There are several major mod tech support Discord servers and, from what I can gather, they are shutting down for a few days because of the amount of abuse the volunteers are getting.
A change this large has broken every single mod I have. I knew it would. I was expecting it to.
Mod developers have been SHOUTING to remove their mods and to make sure they were updated before you put them back into your game.
Yet, people don’t pay attention. It’s easier to let the game get completely destroyed and then bitch in the support servers.
I haven’t seen anything this ugly in a long time.
It’s a fucking video game. A buggy video game which (I think) is almost completely unplayable without mods now.
I love my mods, and yes, it is a major pain in the ass to manage them but I made the choice to play with them, and that’s something *I* need to deal with.
Screaming at the person who has spent hours making the things I can’t live without, KNOWING that they’re not getting anything from EA for fixing the game, doesn’t accomplish anything except making the modders quit…
But… dealing with the fallout from that isn’t bad enough.
Nope.
Apparently, if you live in Ukraine, your version of the Sims is geolocked. If you want the new expansion pack, you’re screwed.
They get language choices of Czech, Polish, or Russian. No English language version at all.
But, wait, there’s more!
If you live in Ukraine, you can only pay for your game using rubles.
RUBLES.
This is problematic for two reasons:
1) The hryvnia is the official currency of Ukraine.
2) Russian rubles are not allowed to be used in Ukraine thanks to the invasion.
Apparently, Ukrainian Simmers are reaching out to EA and complaining about those things.
And EA is constantly deleting the forum posts, shutting them down, and otherwise ignoring them.
This makes me so fucking cranky.
Grrrrrrrrrrrrr
But, aren’t my Sims up there adorable? They’re from my favourite legacy to date.
THAT I CANNOT PLAY WITH BECAUSE EA BROKE MY MODS.
I started a new save file because I don’t want to destroy my boys and their kids. Once everything is up to date, I’ll go back to them.
And while I’m impatient, I’m certainly not going to go to Discord and scream at people.
