So, of the newer packs, which ones are worth it then?

[Sledge]

Looking to pick some new packs up, but no idea what I should be going for tbh.

Life & Death, For Rent, Growing Together and Lovestruck.

Not sure if I see value in Lovestruck as I can just use either of the Whims mods to get those features.

So, between L&D, For Rent and GT, which should I go for / prioritise.

[Coffee Addict]

lovestruck is only good for the dating app imo (all the dating app mods i know of are outdated) i hate the change to relationships with this pack, i hate that my spouses are always threatning to divorce me just because i decided to play a different household for awhile and therefor was unable to give them any attention i preferred the old relationship

growing together is great if your into the whole legacy style, i play with aging off so i dont get the full benefit of this pack

have barely put any time into life&death so not sure if i can recommend this to anyone yet maybe someone who has more time with it then me can comment

out of all the packs you listed i'd say for rent is my favorite, being able to create your own apartment complexes then choosing if you want to be the landlord or the tenant this is what city living should have been instead of the fixed apartments we cant change, i got 5 or 6 of my households living in apartments i've put way more time into this feature then i have with the other packs listed

[Michyx]

i love growing together especially if you're into family gameplay

[miamew3]

Im loving Life & Death, not to mention the grim reaper job is pretty cool. I also love the world the dlc comes with but i do wish it had more build plots.

[James3157]

Life and Death is awesome, but it is not on sale yet for a discount. As for Growing Together I overall like that more than Lovestruck that was rated at around 70% positive when it first came out. For Rent is the worst one of these four, but at the same time I do think it is underrated on Steam and think that it does not deserve a Steam rating that is lower than Dine Out. Funny that you did not mention Horse Ranch which came out after Growing Together, but I still think that it is one of the worst expansion packs for The Sims 4.

[Sledge]

I think I'd still use the SimDA mod or Sim Dating App mod prior to Lovestruck, though if that's deprecated then I'll have to consider LS I suppose. I just used SimDA with WW to get the most robust system for relationships, cycles, attraction etc.

I didn't mention Horse Ranch because I'd heard it was rather buggy, perhaps akin to Dine Out. I'd only get it to live out my Yellowstone role-play shenanigans anyway, in a way that Sims 4 would let me with it's limitations, PG Yellowstone basically.

For Rent, once again, I'd heard that it's buggy, SUPER buggy actually, at least at launch. It's hard to know whether it's good now without user input because history has shown that EA / Maxis launch packs and don't fix them whatsoever.

Growing Together seems like it'd pair nicely with Parenthood which is a pack that I do really like as I'm a parent myself and see value in that sort of gameplay.

I don't mind L&D being new and the price, what it really boils down to, is how feature rich it is for an EP and whether it's buggy, or reasonably polished.

At the moment, I'm leaning towards Life & Death and maybe Growing Together.

[Xeriath]

Horse ranch is one of the stable DLC which they released and is for sure certainly the less buggy DLC which at the moment exist but the content … yeah there is not much beside horses.

For Rent is still unstable and residential rentals can still corrupt your game. I personally don’t recommend it or only use the rentals with caution. Core rule for this DLC is still if you changed a lot to rental, don't change it to another lot type and don't dowload rentals from gallery. There are some rental builds which can/will corrupt your game!

Growing Together has some bugs, but not really bugs which harm you. It adds the annoying bun-out mechanic. So I don’t recommend that without any mods which remove/tweak it.

I don’t recommend Lovestruck without mods. You get too many couples on community lots which stargaze and the *love-mechanic* gets annoying after some time + There is a bug with the new mechanic that the romantic level can drop fast, which is a core gameplay mechanic.

L&D I only played a little but it has of course some bugs, so be caution with that. Don't have babys with Grim. The grimborn trait is at the moment broken and makes your sim ugly. Don’t go swimming and have an out of body experience the ghost buffs tend to get stuck on your sims.

[Sledge]

Some of the things you've mentioned actually sound amusing to me.

The game has been pathetically easy for the last ten years and I remember people on Reddit moaning years back that Discover University was too difficult because people love their easy, dollhouse-like gameplay.

Burn-out actually sounds interesting and something to work around. We experience burn-out in real life from working too hard to over-doing an activity or hobby, so that sounds like the sort of thing I actually want in a life-sim. Tweaks don't sound necessary.

I pretty much never use the gallery for anything anyway, I play offline / detached from the internet, no risk of downloading anything.

[Xeriath]

Okey, you get burn-out too if you paint after working or play videogames? Because this is design that it takes your skills in it. So your Sims go working trigger the first state of burn out which is a dizzy moodlet(24h). Its either mental or creative. So you are not allowed to use any of these skills as long you have that if you want avoiding burn-out.

This has nothing to do with real life. People don’t get burned out after 2-3 days working. They designed it the way that people can’t play the game as they like. If you focus too heavy on mental/creative skills you Sim will get burn-out.

So the game forces you to take a different hobby to your Sims jobs. So if your Sims has a creative job (painter), he will need to have a mental hobby to avoid this mechanic. If you have a tendency to have Sims with family-oriented trait, they will get burn out a lot faster.

Edit: you mentioned parenthood. Burn-out is not designed to work with this DLC. If your sims have the responsible trait they will work hard per default. So you get the first moodlet faster. Seems fun, no?

[Sledge]

Just sounds like some reasonable degree of video-game challenge to me.

Obviously, you can't mirror real-life burnout because Sims are designed, unless you change the life-span or turn off age-related death completely, to you know, pass away in a certain amount of in-game days.

The logic it in for me, is that 3 days of in-game sim time are equivalent to sizeable periods of life in real life.

Obviously, looking into mods if you play super long life-span or turn off life-ageing is fine, but the mechanic conceptually sounds fine.

You pointed out exactly what I don't like about TS4 the enabling of it by the TS4 community with this comment :

"They designed it in a way that people can't play the game as they like".

So yes, interrupting the perfect little dollhouse. Sounds like a fine mechanic to me, luckily mods exist for those who are bothered by it, I'm not one of them so I'll be grabbing it.

[Xeriath]

The problem is you don’t even know how it is. You never played with this mechanic and the other problem is you totally forget there are people which don’t use mods or play on the console. So what do you say to them? Just live with it? If I don’t like it I can use a mod. I don't care if other people don't like it. This mechanic got often complaints in EA AHQ. Mostly from console players which can’t use mods!

Please, after you played with this mechanic and say it is fine then I accept your opinion but as long you don’t played with it I don’t count it. So we agree that we disagree with this mechanic. I think is annyoing, you say is fine

[Sledge]

I honestly couldn't care less as to what people on EA AHQ complain about, The Sims community for years, as I've said, have been opposed to anything that interrupts their perfect little dollhouse-like gameplay. This is the easiest The Sims has ever been, I don't care for it, so I welcome more mechanics that make things more stressful or engaging.

Couldn't care less about console players, I'm not on their platform. People not wanting to use mods on PC is their prerogative but TS4 mods are laughably easy to install, unless you've no idea on how to use directories which, if you're on PC, is weird.

I'll be buying the EP later on and will no doubt be just as fine with the mechanic than as I am now.

[aikojaspers5]

Originally posted by Super Sledge Psycho:

Looking to pick some new packs up, but no idea what I should be going for tbh.

Life & Death, For Rent, Growing Together and Lovestruck.

Not sure if I see value in Lovestruck as I can just use either of the Whims mods to get those features.

So, between L&D, For Rent and GT, which should I go for / prioritise.

I only own Growing Together from these 4 but i really enjoy it and it's a pack that if you do family gameplay often you will really enjoy it cause it adds so much more for gameplay but also has one of my favorite cas items.

[Sledge]

Originally posted by aikojaspers5:

Originally posted by Super Sledge Psycho:

Looking to pick some new packs up, but no idea what I should be going for tbh.

Life & Death, For Rent, Growing Together and Lovestruck.

Not sure if I see value in Lovestruck as I can just use either of the Whims mods to get those features.

So, between L&D, For Rent and GT, which should I go for / prioritise.

I only own Growing Together from these 4 but i really enjoy it and it's a pack that if you do family gameplay often you will really enjoy it cause it adds so much more for gameplay but also has one of my favorite cas items.

Awesome, I'm going to pick up Growing Together + Life & Death later on, might grab Realm of Magic as well as I don't usually dabble in gameplay packs. Already own Parenthood though so I'll get some good gameplay out of Growing Together I imagine.

[aikojaspers5]

Originally posted by Super Sledge Psycho:

Originally posted by aikojaspers5:

I only own Growing Together from these 4 but i really enjoy it and it's a pack that if you do family gameplay often you will really enjoy it cause it adds so much more for gameplay but also has one of my favorite cas items.

Awesome, I'm going to pick up Growing Together + Life & Death later on, might grab Realm of Magic as well as I don't usually dabble in gameplay packs. Already own Parenthood though so I'll get some good gameplay out of Growing Together I imagine.

I have have Parenthood too and it goes together really well.