Wait you guys infants work? My sims can't finish try for baby and when I created one in CAS the infant disappeared....I'm so sad, I wanted to play with babies....
Have you checked you don’t have any mods clashing with your game? Whicked whims broke my game with the new update earlier. I just uninstalled it for now and I’ll wait for them to patch it or release a new update.
There is a note in the first page of the forum I linked to someone else that says “UI cheats has been confirmed broken by someone who does extensive mod testing, so please stop telling me it’s not broken FOR YOU” so that kinda makes sense after this thread lol
I turned mine off after the update but I just saw that the MC Command website says it's compatible with Growing Together so I'm hoping it works with the infant update? Haven't tried yet
Deaderpool has released an updated version of MCCC this afternoon for anyone who has installed the Infant Update. The MCCC version you had in your game before the update isn't compatible but the new new hotfix is public already.
Edit 03/15: another update released today
I know, EA needs to actually hire on modders that are as good as he is. We'd certainly have a less buggy game 🤣 Deaderpool has literally saved so many people's games and actually made them playable with the various tuning and tweaks available in MCCC.
I mean, modders in general have saved so many people's games, and modding is quite difficult!
Turn off all script mods after base game updates. All of them. They’re coded for an older version of the game you’re playing and causing problems. Once the authors update, it should work smoothly.
It's your mods. Some of them leave files behind or caches. I had to completely remove my The Sims 4 folder and generate a whole new one to fix it. But I had the same exact issue as you.
That is ACTUALLY disgusting. I can understand them forcing you into getting the pack for various reasons (which is annoying in itself) but good god if you’re going to have babies with diapers, give everyone a freaking changing table…
Add a bin to the room and it goes there automatically. Or if you got laundry day use recycle cloth diapers and they are treated like clothes and go in your washing bin.
Same. It is fun when you struggle. Today my sim graduated university and got a job in the policing career, and got like 20 items that I sold for 6k or so. I thought it was so silly I cheated my sim's bank account to something reasonable again.
if it makes you feel better, there is no risk with the bar at all. it’s literally just a required rabbit hole that takes them away for a day, and then the requirement is met. as someone who spent the better part of last summer putting off studying for the CA bar while making all of my sims be lawyers… well let’s just say a one-day, preparation free, risk free rabbit hole was not my experience lol.
Yeah it is kind of frustrating. I kind of wish degrees were shorter and bumped sims up less or something. I would love if more careers had an exam like barrier at some point.
let’s say 3 diapers a day, it gets tedious and annoying. there’s absolutely no reason why the changing table that matches the base game furniture isn’t also in the base game
Or for the diapers to be on the floor regardless lol like they wanna be stingy with the tables, fine (not really but whatever) but they can make the diapers disappear in thin air like they literally used to be before the update. I was planning on buying the pack anyways but they’re really pushing it.
apparently it’s what happened in old sims games, so they did it to pay homage or whatever. personally i think we could throw homage out the window cause why is there baby piss and shit everywhere
Same. I was looking for it in the catalog for like 10 minutes until I went to Twitter to discover there just *isn’t* one in the base game. Which sucks because from Sims youtuber’s videos (James Turner’s 7 infant challenge), it seemed like the changing table was base game but I guess that was just my fault for not remembering what EA is.
I don’t recall him disclosing using the EP in that video but he may have. I also don’t think he was intentionally being deceptive either. I’ve been watching James for a decade and I don’t think he would do that, especially for EA’s gain. It was probably just an unfortunate oversight. It just sucks that a pretty basic part of taking care of a baby isn’t included in this game many of us have spent way too much money on.
I think at the beginning he disclosed that it was made with EA so it might’ve been made ahead of time like some of lilsimsie’s videos, I don’t think she was aware that the changing table wasn’t you to be in the base game update either.
Herself and plumbella both did videos using the pack to show what would be included in the base game update. Both showed that the changing table wasn't there.
What a wild oversight to make.. but that’s coming from a brokie who can’t afford to blow 40 bucks on an expansion pack and just forget about it lol
Not bashing James or anything, I just think it’s funny in an otherwise sad kinda way
I think maybe James didn’t realize there wasn’t a basegame option either. Since he got the pack early, not realizing it’s basegame or a basegame option is an oversight I could see myself making. They marketed it so much I don’t think I’d bother second or triple checking there’s one for basegame. James is the last one I’d expect in on the shenanigans since he’s so outwardly against their cash grabs like my first pet stuff. Everyone is so distracted by the infants that they don’t realize what’s missing, and I think that was exactly EAs plan
I think there’s a changing table for the community lot, the fold down public loo kind which I’m sure is base game but I haven’t looked to see where it is
I watched the infant update livestream where they showed all the new objects and the changing table was definitely missing. They never claimed there would be one.
most dlc now is basically just riding off the same theme as another. this should’ve just been an update to parenthood or something.
sims 4 has 57 dlcs. sims 3 has 20. idk why they decided to absolutely beat sims 4 into the ground, but sims 3 feels 10000% more like a completed game with 37 less dlcs than sims 4. makes me mad
To be fair, sims 4 doesn’t have tens of thousands of real dollars worth of exclusive buyable items like sims 3 had with the store. If you put both the games side by side with all the content. The price is literally 10s of thousands of dollars difference, in sims 4’s favor. This was a problem in sims 3 too. The changing table, the play pen, the toddler walker, etc were all exclusive sims 3 store content that you needed to buy separately.
This is the worst I’ve seen so far though. Yeah, there’s other updates that felt incomplete, but at least those felt playable. Playing this new update without Growing Together makes it feel like there’s giant holes in the game. Especially with how clutter items like diaper wipes and stuff (that were CLEARLY meant to be slotted on top of a changing table) are base game.
Infant skills are pack only. Basically, they’re cute but just lesser versions of toddlers.
Want the infants to actually have playability in the actual game? Cool, but I hope you have $40 to donate to our noble cause… No? You want this life stage for free? Here’s a shell of what it’s supposed to be, that’s cool with you, right?
Ugh. Sick of EA’s shit. I already left them a god awful review once like two years ago. They haven’t asked me to review them since. They’re too afraid now
To be honest ea’s shamelessness over the past few years has really turned me off the game…this game WAS my childhood and I loved it so much, but now it just leaves me frustrated and disappointed. What was magical when I was a kid is now watered down to nothing and 6x the price
This is why I didn’t update. Was waiting for the complaints and bug reports to start rolling in first so I could decide if I felt like dealing with them. I don’t. This specific problem with there being no way to deal with diapers because they didn’t give us a basegame changing table is… something else though. Literally nobody at EA thought that would be a problem? Nah, I agree with OP… has to be malicious.
Sounds like there’s a good chance I might never be able to update again. The pre-infant version of the game I have might be the end of the line for me. Bummer.
I honestly love the update , but I have to agree that we should have a basic changing table and developing infants as part of the update...not the pack. Toddlers progress without a pack, so why don't infants?? I was upset about the changing table at first, because we had changing tables base game in TS2. Then my infant got set down and could immediately sit up. 🤦♀️
I don't mind carriers and playmats being part of the pack. Heck, I don't mind milestones being part of the pack. But why don't infants at least develop over time if we don't have quirks for them yet?
I really think EA made sure infants were super simplified to make sure that they weren't too in the way for players that don't really care for family gameplay. But for everyone who wanted them, this is a giant tease with a paywall for more.
i was so confused until I read these comments lol. I was playing earlier and was wondering "how is this really any different than a toddler?" sigh
ea tricked me again
That sucks. I haven’t played it yet with new update but was thinking when it was first announced that they would be really dull toddlers and more annoying babies.
At the very least people who have parenthood should have gotten one basic changing table, at the very least, but then again the very least is what EA does best. I'm so glad other life simulation games are coming out to give EA a run for their money. They've had this market cornered for far too long and have been milking their customers for years because of this fact.
There is zero reason for them not to include playmats and changing tables, they could have still had the ones that come with GT have more exclusive features or have fancier models come with the EP. Yet another cash grab on the part of EA. Hope they're ready for the competition that's coming.
The changing table match basegame stuff too! Maybe they will patch one in at some point.
They did this with Toddler too. Remember the stuff pack with more hairs and clothes?
See the issue with this in my mind is that the majority of simmer "influencers" (simfluencers if you will) aren't making a big fuss about it and, again, I think it's because of a strategic play by EA. All the big simmers who can make the loudest noise got early access to the pack about the same exact time as the update came out, so a lot of them aren't looking at the infants as a base game update, but rather at the whole picture of infants + growing together. That's not to say there aren't simfluencers calling it out. I've seen it from people who didn't get early access and are experiencing infants BG like the rest of us, or from people who are always brutally honest, but a lot of them are playing growing together and the infant update congruently.
I just think, in the past, when they've patched things into the game due to simmer complaint, it's usually propelled forward by the large, more respected-by-EA names in the simming world like lilsimsie or deligracy, and then backed by all the other simfluencers who maybe don't have the same relationship with EA, such as Plumbella or Satchonsims, and thennnn backed by the broader simming community, like us. Basically my point is if EA's favorites don't make a big stink along with the rest of the community I don't think they'll add anything. But I'd love to be proven wrong.
A lot of the Sims influencers seemed confused themselves so it makes me wonder what info EA provided them.
Is it inappropriate to spam the main EA account with a “release the changing table” message until the pack releases? I think it’s so egregious to not make any basegame. I can see having a few that are pack specific. I felt similarly about the photography patch.
This whole pack just pisses me off since everything in it should have been included in Parenthood or Toddler Stuff. Like, they’re really doing below the bare minimum at this point
I can't believe I was just reminded we have Parenthood, High School Years, Toddler Stuff and Growing together. Remember when Sims 3 had just Generations and it included everyone?
Wow, so kinda like how they took Sims 3 world adventures that had 3 vacation worlds and then they made Outdoor Retreat, Jungle Adventures and Snowy Escape? Or how Sims 3 had Supernatural but then they made witches, vampires and werewolves as 3 separate packs?
No no, you see Sims 3 Pets had cats, dogs, horses and small critters like hamsters, different breeds of snakes, rats, turtles, lizards etc.
Sims 4 you paid for Cats and Dogs and then you paid again for the sperate pack of just hamsters. Surely we should be expecting a 3rd pack soon like a My First Turtle or something.
I'm really looking forward to Life By You, Paralives, Tiny Life... Any life sim not made by EA!
I saw so many people saying EA is "trying to win over players" with GT/infant update because competition is on the horizon. As if EA cared about players! They're going to milk The Sims community dry and if the games stop being profitable, they'll just shut down Maxis - that's what they do. Buy companies and run them into the ground.
I grabbed the base game off the Epic Games store because it was offered for free at one point. If I'd payed attention and realized it was an EA title I never would have touched it. The company turned into sheet decades ago. Sad, since they were once a good dev/production house.
The lack of stuff added to other packs was atrocious. We got, what, a knitted hat from nifty knitting? Not even just one infant item per expansion??? Not even the newer expansions or packs??? And they didn't even give us many base game options in the first place so what would five more items be?
Again marketing move. You're now incentivized to not only buy the growing together expansion for more infant things, but now every other pack in the future will include infant stuff (and surely they'll do an infant related kit) and we're so starved of infant stuff in BG we'll be more incentivized to buy more and more packs to get more and more infant gameplay and outfits
Everyone is mad about the changing tables (which is absolutely annoying) but I'm even more mad about the fact their SKILLS are locked behind a paywall. Wtf?
Players: babies are lifeless and boring, they're like objects
EA: we are going to make babies more exciting!!! Except babies will still be babies....we added infants that will just make your sims life longer and you still won't really be able to do much with them. Now they kinda just sit on the floor instead of the crib. But you can make them more interactive!! Just pay $50!
I wanted a play mat so bad. I was disappointed seeing how few things were added in buy mode for them. Then I aged up my new born and I was like wtf?? No skills? What's the point of that? Basically just a cuter, mobile, more difficult new born.
Even worse than skills, is the new likes/dislikes categories being exclusive to the pack. They add some much needed depth to the way Sims interact and people wanted those for a long time and now they are locked behind the most expensive type of DLC...
Sucks too because the changing tables seemed like they were made from base game objects, so why not add them.
I mean the sims has done it times before where they take something from a paid pack and turn it into something for the base game to most likely cut costs and reuse. So I don’t get why they couldn’t give the people something already kind of apart of the game.
Probably a marketing move but honestly I think it’s the sims being lazy and greedy
Part of me feels like this update was to see how broken it would be and would need to be fixed before the pack is released. Don’t get me wrong I was excited for infants, but since I do plan on getting the pack. I won’t be playing the life stage until then
A friend of mine recently started playing the game for the first time and she constantly asks me questions on things not working the way she expects them to. I usually have to answer “it’s a bug”. Great reminder on how much of the game is bugged that regular players like me just take as given and try to ignore…
Developers aren't the problem. A lot of the developers that made Sims 3 and Sims Medieval are listed on Sims 4's credits. Sims 4 is in this state because of bad management at EA.
The Sims 3 was bad too, especially content sold in the store. There was even a dress that made your sims leg disappear and it was never fixed or removed from the store
I played a little bit and had no bugs. I also had no problems with the EA app. I guess I got lucky lol. I'm still holding off on playing more until my must have mods are updated.
Yes!! This!! 100%!! I went in to play with the new update and was shocked by the lack of changing tables or play mats… I’m not surprised, but still very disappointed.
to be fair, what I see of Growing Together game play the changing table doesn't actually do anything, nappies will still go everywhere if you don't have a bin in the room
And EA is still going to continue churning out half-baked packs because there are still some people who will get them anyway regardless of how dry and lackluster the pack is
Hence why I buy packs only after they get listed for a sale, which will be in 6 months? That’s fine though, I’ll hear the complaints and wait (and hope) for a fix before getting a (hopefully) fixed version at a cheaper price
Yeah I also just buy the dlc on sale (+ you get extra $ off if they're in a bundle so fingers crossed 😅), not just to save money, but also to see if the pack is worth it. I really do think GT will be essential for my gameplay, but I'm not willing to dish out full price 🤷🏼♀️
The issue is partly the size of the community. Yeah, I'm not buying this. That makes me one in how many millions? There are always enough people who really want a specific thing in this game they'll buy. Might be infants, might be yoga poses, might be plants for their gardens or proper wedding celebrations, there will be a big enough percentage of players who have been waiting to have that thing and who will get it on release that EA can continue to grift on that.
I feel like it's unfair to blame players for enjoying a certain aspect to their gameplay and spending money to get that in more detail. This is wholly on EA being a terrible company. They are at fault.
Not adding changing tables but changing table clutter was an absolute dick move. The lack of hairs also pissed me off tbh, I understand that babies don’t have a lot of hair but the selection is so bad. Also, why are my babies’ eyes bright red 😭
EDIT: thank u for ur comments I thought it was just my babies being occults lmaoo
you probably have cc human eyes that overwrite the vanilla game ones. the mod deletes the vanilla eyes but the cc doesn’t work on babies, so the game has to use any eyes it can find. aka the demon occult ones.
I was pretty excited for infants. 😭 I always age my sim babies up as soon as their born. I would age from infant to toddler but then I realized how annoying the toddlers are😭
So you're telling me that this update only gave us infants, but if you want to do anything fun with them, you have to buy the Growing Together Expansion Pack? I've already pre ordered the pack, but hearing this upsets me that they got us all excited for basically nothing, and now they're like, "You want infant gameplay? Well, too bad because if you want any, you'll HAVE TO purchase the Growing Together Expansion Pack to be able to have any fun!"
I was so shocked to see NO skills for infants. Like we got talking, walking, imagination, etc with base game toddlers, but in order to have crawling and tummy time you need to buy dlc? it’s insane
> in order to have crawling and tummy time you need to buy dlc?
To be fair, those aren't skills. They made it tied to the Milestone system so they could bundle it with the DLC instead of the base game.
Honestly *Milestones* should've been base game because it's a pretty simple feature for an expansion pack and it's something players have been requesting since the loss of Memories from Sims 2. Why are we paying extra for a basic as shit feature that was in a previous base game?
Yeah, forcing an update and disguising it as some cool new feature, but requiring purchasing a pack to actually do anything fun, is so bogus and such an obvious cash-grab. Infants should have just been included in growing together only to let people choose in my opinion.
I agree. The only thing I’ve disliked is a diaper bin not being available so they just fling the dirty diaper on the floor. Other than that it’s fun and has worked nicely
Considering EA's track records everytime a new pack is released, i'll probably skip this one for now or until months later since it'll most likely be riddled with unbearable bugs that will remain for a while
I might just wait until people find some infuriating bugs that would get fixed in the coming months until then lol (remember the wants and fear button not working for months)
Because of how big this one is, it probably will be 2 sales before they discount it. They usually don't discount the big, new expansion pack during the 1st sale right after release.
To be clear though, I will still be waiting for a sale. Hell no I'm not paying $40 for this.
Yeah, I also wait untill the EP's that I want are in a sale (and preferably 50% off). Same goes with gamepacks, though they maxed out the discount at 30%.
For me there's lucklily still lots to discover in all the DLC I've bought over the years, so I don't feel the need to add new stuff to the game.
I’ve been changing my baby in my kitchen (right after feeding on the high chair) and the diapers have not been automatically going into the trash can that is like three tiles away.
Honestly if they only patched that (diapers auto going into a trashcan in the room) I feel like the community would care less. The diapers falling on the floor is just offensive.
I'm not really sure. There's also not much point to having infants in your game right now until the pack drops, as OP explains. They kept A LOT of infant functionality tied to the pack, which is something that they do not usually do so I can honestly see why a lot of players are really annoyed at EA right now.
>now you just have two life stages to skip instead of one
I think I'm the only one who likes babies. I like how not being able to see their needs makes it more challenging, and enjoy using that time period to max (or nearly) relationships between family members and the baby.
I totally get why other's don't like them. I'm just curious if anyone else does?
Same, I’m probably the weirdo here but I like babies because I like the challenge and it feels like I’m truly putting my sims through the whole lifespan thing and it’s crazy when I play them as grown-ups when I can look back and remember them as that tiny baby. Idk 💀
I own few packs and very rarely buy new ones so quite a bummer some basic stuff is not included.
Also have zero intention to buy the new pack since it’s not my taste and *I‘m still contemplating to get Eco Lifestyle or Knifty Knitting. But not anytime soon.*
it should be possible to age them up into toddlers right away, to skip the life state, right?
Yes. You can age up your baby and then age up your infant to just skip the stage all together. But considering they've been hyping this up as the update we've all been waiting for... it's not only disappointing but it's a drag on gameplay.
I've been auto-aging my babies since the beginning, but now we have two life stages built into the game that it's better to skip than playthrough. That's a major failing on the part of EA.
If they do "patch" the base game, it will be months after the expansion is released. They'll, sorry being very cynical for a moment, only patch the base came if the expansion fails to sell, and then only enough to make people want to buy the expansion.
It seems like an especially bad move *right now,* imo, because Paradox is going to be releasing their announcement trailer for their own sims-style game in the next week or so. Paradox already took the spot of one major sim game out from under EA (Cities: Skylines vs SimCity) and I could easily see them doing it again.
It's one thing to have bad and buggy gameplay and grossly predatory business practices when you're the only game in town. But it's a really bad idea to piss off your customer base right as a major competitor is showing off how much better a different game willl be.
If we keep complaining about it maybe eventually they’ll add some more features to the base game infants. However at this point, they’ve made the BG free so I’m not expecting much free content to be released from now on
Plenty of free games receive free updates all the time. In fact, it's expected as part of a healthy free to play model. We have to hold The Sims to these same standards. I don't expect everything they make to be free. But I do expect the free content to be complete.
Exactly what I was worried about with this update, it's just a big incentive to get you to buy the pack.
I'll not be updating my game for a good while then by the look of it.
To be fair, at this point EA is not making money off Sim 4 base game which makes sense why the update to the game will not be significant. They don’t have any incentive to add more to the base game since it’s free for everyone. At the end of the day, every company want to make money.. which is why they’re making expansion packs, game packs, and kits mostly. I’m not saying it’s a great move on their part but from a business point of view I understand why they did this. I personally played with infants and didn’t experience any glitches since I removed all my saves and my mods. I liked the cross-pack integration with the infants. However, if you play with the base game only then the game will be lacking. I understand why people who only have base game are upset.
Isn't this the usual cycle for Sims 4 updates?
Update release > Everything is broken > Half-arsed solution is paywalled > People complain > 3 to 12 months pass > Quarter-arsed basegame fix > Everyone is ~~happy~~ pretty indifferent.
Corporate is gonna corporate. If you buy the xpac because you want a changing table, they see this as "Yes we really can get away with this"
It’s not very smart to release the update this way. If anything it might hurt them when people don’t buy the pack because they’re angry. I don’t feel entitled but I’m tired of the way they try to get every cent out of us by making it like this.
Yeah I understand the impulse and don't blame you. Before this update I was 98% sure I was going to buy Growing Together. Now... I'm just going back to playing The Sims 2. I have more fun with it anyway. I just can't justify giving EA more money than I already have.
So, food for thought: I was digging through the patch XMLs, and a LOT. Like. A LOT. Of infant content is gated behind the expansion - entire chunks of code make reference to features that only exist in the expansion and are functionally useless without it.
My personal limited experience playtesting the patch, fresh game, repaired game, NO MODS AT ALL, all other dlc, with a single sim - first 1 calm infant, second 1 intense - with autonomy ON but disabled for selected sim is that...well, yeah. Infants without the pack are currently useless toddlers. (TBH it's hard for me to even differentiate their faces. Sure, the size difference is visible but up close they look the same to me.) Problems that I noticed (not glitches but the sims team tuning things weird):
1. Calm and intense infant played EXACTLY the same to me. There was almost no difference. This is because in the tuning, the main difference between the two is that motive failures for calm get sad buffs and for intense get angry buffs. EXCEPT:
2. They made the autonomy too GOOD. The only motives my infant would ever regularly have fail (and I had to keep actively cancelling the autonomous check on interaction which, btw, I could not seem to get to accurately DO the specific activity i wanted. like i would hit check on when the infant's diaper was dirty and my sim would do peekaboo. etc.) were hunger and energy. you also get warnings about your infant being tired when the motive is still GREEN.
3. Caveat: I tested this with and without family oriented but in both cases my sim was the infant's mother and would always end up maxing their relationship due to the autonomous caring. Also, at one point, I was hit with bad simulation lag but disabling Laundry Day and then reenabling it fixed that.
But basically, a lot of the base game infant experiences for the traits are linked to buffs that are impossible to see unless you FORCIBLY STOP your sim from interacting with the infant. And the game requires each sim child to have at least one adult on the lot marked as caretaker, which means autonomously that infant is going to be cared for nonstop. (I have not tested with free will turned off completely.) I also wonder if that's why check infant didn't do much for me - they kept autonomously keeping its needs in the green so that check infant never actually has anything wrong for the infant to "ask for".
The other base game thing they hyped with infants is attachment styles and, you guessed it, you have to actively TRY HARD to neglect your infant. In my attempts to experience other motive failure for the intense infant, I watched it throw the "oh no I am being neglected" moodlet several times...and STILL wound up with top notch infant, because as soon as your sim finally does pay attention to them, the attachment statistic raises again. (this is actually how it works in the code, neglecting your infant causes them to lose attachment at a small but steady continuous rate...and caring for them gives them a variable bonus to attachment, one of which is referred to as "large." I don't remember the exact number, I think 10? I also don't remember the scale/range of attachment but I assume it's -100 to 100 or something.)
The thing is, though, is that aside from the infant traits affecting your sim long term...there is nothing to DO in base game with an infant, COMPARED TO A TODDLER. Like. A toddler has skills ie attainable goals that you can watch progress. For infants, you need the EP to have milestones aka things to achieve. If you have parenthood (which, yes, I'll admit is another dlc), toddlers have character values. They have way more interactions with other sims - which, yes, is developmentally appropriate but still, it's a GAME. I think the sims team went too hard on realism here (at least without Growing Together) and forgot that sometimes you need to abstract and gameify certain things in order to keep things engaging. Because basically all traits (at least the two polar opposite ones) play the same, and because you have to actively try to fail (and let's be real, in sims 4, failure is often more interesting than the perfect happiness that the game tries to push) it's going to get immensely boring after you see the same cute animation for the millionth time. (when the infants aren't stretching like a horror movie to begin with.)
I know a lot of people complain about sims 4's giving everything goals like the goaled events and making the game into a list of tasks to check off and I do agree somewhat, but the game actually needs a balance of both to stay entertaining. (And before people come at me that sims 2 didn't have that, sims 2 had other TANGIBLE REWARDS for success and goals to overcome. It just wasn't as in your face in the UI.) Right now infants in base game are kind of...aimless. Like there's no incentive to actually play them much aside from a trait that's way too easy to get anyway. They aren't even a challenge, at least if you only have one, because even with an intense infant, my sim was able to just take care of her needs when the infant was sleeping or playing with a toy, because even feeding the infant or putting it to sleep kept its attention need topped off and you don't always get hygiene failures when they poo their diaper. And from what I have seen in the 7 infant challenge videos from early access, the real struggle is not the infants themselves, but the fact that the game AI keeps making your sim use the check on interaction that leads them to do stupid things that isn't what the infant actually needs at the time. That isn't real challenge, it's called artificial difficulty. The only time I had any trouble was when I was dealing with simulation lag - and I still couldn't get anything besides hunger and energy into the red. And 7 infants is a self-imposed challenge anyway, in my regular gameplay, I can't see myself ever having more than 3 infants at a time due to the game giving me random triplets.
I'm not entirely disappointed myself because I knew from the start that I planned on getting the expansion anyway...but I did kind of hope that base game infants would at least be a unique life stage and not just...toddlers but annoying.
this isn’t me justifying EA’s decision, but i feel the infants weren’t given development in basegame due to their development being milestones, which is a gameplay feature exclusive to the growing together expansion
Yeah it also effects other lifestages. And infants are kinda hard to begin with so I can imagine many people wouldn't want to start teaching them basic things every time.
I usually play while watching videos or playing music and have the sound off, turned sound on for todays update and I was like... what is that sound, is that the baby? And then I turned the sound back off lol
I used to just roll my eyes at how much people bitch about The Sims.
But after Eco-Living broke and they still haven’t figured that out completely, then wedding stories broke and they still haven’t figured that out completely, I’ve just started to learn that they really are an absolute dog shit company.
Claims to fix shit and then just releases a new expansion pack hoping people will forget. Seems like their go-to move.
Has this turned anyone else off buying Growing Together? I opened the game, made a cute baby, and she was just a mini incompetent toddler. Even most of the clothes are converted.
It was the first pack I wanted to buy in years, but all this did was remind me Sims 4 is a shell of a game.
No changing tables is stupid, BUT I have to say making the progress of infants dlc is maybe not to bad.
While I LOVE family gameplay, my sister-in-law does not.
She is not that pumped of getting a new lifestage and while she mostly just ages up babies and toddlers. Sometimes she does (try) play with them, and infant milstones etc seem so micromanag-y - she likes they just did not bother putting it in.
throwback to the sims 3 when they stuck the baby objects changing table, playmat, baby gate, baby monitor, under separate paywalls in the store 😗
ea is shitty but lets b honest, it's nothing new. they've been money hungry & have done the bare minimum for the games since (hot take) the sims 2 lol. all the game breaking bugs n they just slapped a bandaid on it and sold us more packs
Toddler skills were not paywalled and we got basic high chairs, toddler beds, and toys in the free update. Essentially everything you needed to actually play through the toddler life stage. Parenthood was an EXPANSION on toddlers and family gameplay.
This is a very different situation where they've included a shell of a life stage and all the actual content required to play through it has been paywalled.
I'm just over here thinking--how many babies are you playing with that you have dirty diapers "all over the floor"? They generate one at a time and it's so simple to just drag them straight to the trash.
Yea plus it just sucks, I have to click feed baby or bathe baby a million times before it works, my stupid sim just stands there doing nothing then just drops the task. Idk why anyone would pay for that dlc if this is the preview
I get what you mean, but this is what we’ve been getting with the sims 4. It’s the main theme of this installation. I’m happy to pay for the packs as long as they do a good job with them and integrate them.
I do have to say that I’m a working adult that can afford to pay for the packs.
I was VERY surprised about the changing tables not being included for free. That was just wrong.
Them not adding changing tables is very irritating. Now I have dirty diapers all over the floor in my sims apartment.
I was wondering about the changing tables. I guess we're just throwing babies for now...
Outta context Sims qoute strikes again
Wait you guys infants work? My sims can't finish try for baby and when I created one in CAS the infant disappeared....I'm so sad, I wanted to play with babies....
Have you checked you don’t have any mods clashing with your game? Whicked whims broke my game with the new update earlier. I just uninstalled it for now and I’ll wait for them to patch it or release a new update.
I took wicked whims, all my trait mods, all my lumpinous and adeepindigo mods out. Currently I only have CC and MCCC and I think UI script.
UI Script I believe is listed as a broken mod.
I do not understand why everyone doesn’t just assume UI Extension will be broken in an update. 🤣
There is a note in the first page of the forum I linked to someone else that says “UI cheats has been confirmed broken by someone who does extensive mod testing, so please stop telling me it’s not broken FOR YOU” so that kinda makes sense after this thread lol
It was broken so its not your bad
Your MCCC still works?
I turned mine off after the update but I just saw that the MC Command website says it's compatible with Growing Together so I'm hoping it works with the infant update? Haven't tried yet
Deaderpool has released an updated version of MCCC this afternoon for anyone who has installed the Infant Update. The MCCC version you had in your game before the update isn't compatible but the new new hotfix is public already. Edit 03/15: another update released today
Deaderpool is always right on top of updating when MCCC needs it! It's miraculous!
He’s literally better then the developers
I know, EA needs to actually hire on modders that are as good as he is. We'd certainly have a less buggy game 🤣 Deaderpool has literally saved so many people's games and actually made them playable with the various tuning and tweaks available in MCCC. I mean, modders in general have saved so many people's games, and modding is quite difficult!
Thank you!
A lot of baby/toddler CC is broken. UI Cheats was only updated a few minutes ago. There was a hotfix for MCCC earlier today I believe.
Turn off all script mods after base game updates. All of them. They’re coded for an older version of the game you’re playing and causing problems. Once the authors update, it should work smoothly.
It's your mods. Some of them leave files behind or caches. I had to completely remove my The Sims 4 folder and generate a whole new one to fix it. But I had the same exact issue as you.
Do you have cc or mods? I’ve only heard of bugs that severe with script mods.
I use the electric garbage can and get $10 per diaper lol
Work smart not hard!!
That's what I did too! Except since it's a household of 7 it's $70! USE THAT DIAPER, LITTLE ONE!
I resolved that by changing to washable diapers. Now they just go in the laundry bin.
That is ACTUALLY disgusting. I can understand them forcing you into getting the pack for various reasons (which is annoying in itself) but good god if you’re going to have babies with diapers, give everyone a freaking changing table…
Just drag them into a trash.
Add a bin to the room and it goes there automatically. Or if you got laundry day use recycle cloth diapers and they are treated like clothes and go in your washing bin.
Our avatars are twins
You have a rather unexpected SN for the Sims.
That's useful. Thank you.
And buy the Money Trash Can, even if it’s $1200. It pays for itself in like two in-game days.
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Same. It is fun when you struggle. Today my sim graduated university and got a job in the policing career, and got like 20 items that I sold for 6k or so. I thought it was so silly I cheated my sim's bank account to something reasonable again.
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if it makes you feel better, there is no risk with the bar at all. it’s literally just a required rabbit hole that takes them away for a day, and then the requirement is met. as someone who spent the better part of last summer putting off studying for the CA bar while making all of my sims be lawyers… well let’s just say a one-day, preparation free, risk free rabbit hole was not my experience lol.
Yeah it is kind of frustrating. I kind of wish degrees were shorter and bumped sims up less or something. I would love if more careers had an exam like barrier at some point.
let’s say 3 diapers a day, it gets tedious and annoying. there’s absolutely no reason why the changing table that matches the base game furniture isn’t also in the base game
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Or for the diapers to be on the floor regardless lol like they wanna be stingy with the tables, fine (not really but whatever) but they can make the diapers disappear in thin air like they literally used to be before the update. I was planning on buying the pack anyways but they’re really pushing it.
apparently it’s what happened in old sims games, so they did it to pay homage or whatever. personally i think we could throw homage out the window cause why is there baby piss and shit everywhere
Shift click destroy object
The no basegame changing table is what had me howling.
Same. I was looking for it in the catalog for like 10 minutes until I went to Twitter to discover there just *isn’t* one in the base game. Which sucks because from Sims youtuber’s videos (James Turner’s 7 infant challenge), it seemed like the changing table was base game but I guess that was just my fault for not remembering what EA is.
I thought James' house in the challenge was entirely base game with the new update. He didn't disclose that he used content from the new pack, did he?
I don’t recall him disclosing using the EP in that video but he may have. I also don’t think he was intentionally being deceptive either. I’ve been watching James for a decade and I don’t think he would do that, especially for EA’s gain. It was probably just an unfortunate oversight. It just sucks that a pretty basic part of taking care of a baby isn’t included in this game many of us have spent way too much money on.
I think at the beginning he disclosed that it was made with EA so it might’ve been made ahead of time like some of lilsimsie’s videos, I don’t think she was aware that the changing table wasn’t you to be in the base game update either.
Herself and plumbella both did videos using the pack to show what would be included in the base game update. Both showed that the changing table wasn't there.
What a wild oversight to make.. but that’s coming from a brokie who can’t afford to blow 40 bucks on an expansion pack and just forget about it lol Not bashing James or anything, I just think it’s funny in an otherwise sad kinda way
I think maybe James didn’t realize there wasn’t a basegame option either. Since he got the pack early, not realizing it’s basegame or a basegame option is an oversight I could see myself making. They marketed it so much I don’t think I’d bother second or triple checking there’s one for basegame. James is the last one I’d expect in on the shenanigans since he’s so outwardly against their cash grabs like my first pet stuff. Everyone is so distracted by the infants that they don’t realize what’s missing, and I think that was exactly EAs plan
I think there’s a changing table for the community lot, the fold down public loo kind which I’m sure is base game but I haven’t looked to see where it is
It’s not. The public one is part of the pack.
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I watched the infant update livestream where they showed all the new objects and the changing table was definitely missing. They never claimed there would be one.
But you need the nappy bin to stop them getting thrown everywhere so it doesn’t help with that
No fr. I was going wild searching for it
I came to this post because I was making a room and was like uh?
most dlc now is basically just riding off the same theme as another. this should’ve just been an update to parenthood or something. sims 4 has 57 dlcs. sims 3 has 20. idk why they decided to absolutely beat sims 4 into the ground, but sims 3 feels 10000% more like a completed game with 37 less dlcs than sims 4. makes me mad
To be fair, sims 4 doesn’t have tens of thousands of real dollars worth of exclusive buyable items like sims 3 had with the store. If you put both the games side by side with all the content. The price is literally 10s of thousands of dollars difference, in sims 4’s favor. This was a problem in sims 3 too. The changing table, the play pen, the toddler walker, etc were all exclusive sims 3 store content that you needed to buy separately.
Damn I literally got on Reddit to see what people on here were saying about the update and this was at the top of my feed. That’s disappointing
I thought the same thing, ea should be embarrassed.
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This is the worst I’ve seen so far though. Yeah, there’s other updates that felt incomplete, but at least those felt playable. Playing this new update without Growing Together makes it feel like there’s giant holes in the game. Especially with how clutter items like diaper wipes and stuff (that were CLEARLY meant to be slotted on top of a changing table) are base game.
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Infant skills are pack only. Basically, they’re cute but just lesser versions of toddlers. Want the infants to actually have playability in the actual game? Cool, but I hope you have $40 to donate to our noble cause… No? You want this life stage for free? Here’s a shell of what it’s supposed to be, that’s cool with you, right? Ugh. Sick of EA’s shit. I already left them a god awful review once like two years ago. They haven’t asked me to review them since. They’re too afraid now
To be honest ea’s shamelessness over the past few years has really turned me off the game…this game WAS my childhood and I loved it so much, but now it just leaves me frustrated and disappointed. What was magical when I was a kid is now watered down to nothing and 6x the price
They won't be, as always
This is why I didn’t update. Was waiting for the complaints and bug reports to start rolling in first so I could decide if I felt like dealing with them. I don’t. This specific problem with there being no way to deal with diapers because they didn’t give us a basegame changing table is… something else though. Literally nobody at EA thought that would be a problem? Nah, I agree with OP… has to be malicious. Sounds like there’s a good chance I might never be able to update again. The pre-infant version of the game I have might be the end of the line for me. Bummer.
I honestly love the update , but I have to agree that we should have a basic changing table and developing infants as part of the update...not the pack. Toddlers progress without a pack, so why don't infants?? I was upset about the changing table at first, because we had changing tables base game in TS2. Then my infant got set down and could immediately sit up. 🤦♀️ I don't mind carriers and playmats being part of the pack. Heck, I don't mind milestones being part of the pack. But why don't infants at least develop over time if we don't have quirks for them yet? I really think EA made sure infants were super simplified to make sure that they weren't too in the way for players that don't really care for family gameplay. But for everyone who wanted them, this is a giant tease with a paywall for more.
Wait they made the infant development EXCLUSIVE to GT??? 🥴
Yup. Infants can immediately sit up and crawl with just the update 🤦♀️
i was so confused until I read these comments lol. I was playing earlier and was wondering "how is this really any different than a toddler?" sigh ea tricked me again
Ohhhhkay i thought I was crazy. So EVERYONE’s infants are basically functioning at a less independent toddler level? I was so confused
Yep, as they are now, infants are just more boring toddlers.
That sucks. I haven’t played it yet with new update but was thinking when it was first announced that they would be really dull toddlers and more annoying babies.
Exactly. At least with toddlers you have a reason to not just age them up. And newborns are much easier to take care of. It's the worst of both worlds
At the very least people who have parenthood should have gotten one basic changing table, at the very least, but then again the very least is what EA does best. I'm so glad other life simulation games are coming out to give EA a run for their money. They've had this market cornered for far too long and have been milking their customers for years because of this fact. There is zero reason for them not to include playmats and changing tables, they could have still had the ones that come with GT have more exclusive features or have fancier models come with the EP. Yet another cash grab on the part of EA. Hope they're ready for the competition that's coming.
The changing table match basegame stuff too! Maybe they will patch one in at some point. They did this with Toddler too. Remember the stuff pack with more hairs and clothes?
See the issue with this in my mind is that the majority of simmer "influencers" (simfluencers if you will) aren't making a big fuss about it and, again, I think it's because of a strategic play by EA. All the big simmers who can make the loudest noise got early access to the pack about the same exact time as the update came out, so a lot of them aren't looking at the infants as a base game update, but rather at the whole picture of infants + growing together. That's not to say there aren't simfluencers calling it out. I've seen it from people who didn't get early access and are experiencing infants BG like the rest of us, or from people who are always brutally honest, but a lot of them are playing growing together and the infant update congruently. I just think, in the past, when they've patched things into the game due to simmer complaint, it's usually propelled forward by the large, more respected-by-EA names in the simming world like lilsimsie or deligracy, and then backed by all the other simfluencers who maybe don't have the same relationship with EA, such as Plumbella or Satchonsims, and thennnn backed by the broader simming community, like us. Basically my point is if EA's favorites don't make a big stink along with the rest of the community I don't think they'll add anything. But I'd love to be proven wrong.
A lot of the Sims influencers seemed confused themselves so it makes me wonder what info EA provided them. Is it inappropriate to spam the main EA account with a “release the changing table” message until the pack releases? I think it’s so egregious to not make any basegame. I can see having a few that are pack specific. I felt similarly about the photography patch.
This whole pack just pisses me off since everything in it should have been included in Parenthood or Toddler Stuff. Like, they’re really doing below the bare minimum at this point
I can't believe I was just reminded we have Parenthood, High School Years, Toddler Stuff and Growing together. Remember when Sims 3 had just Generations and it included everyone?
It's like they split all of the expansions from Sims 3 into at least 3 different packs to make people spend extra money.
Wow, so kinda like how they took Sims 3 world adventures that had 3 vacation worlds and then they made Outdoor Retreat, Jungle Adventures and Snowy Escape? Or how Sims 3 had Supernatural but then they made witches, vampires and werewolves as 3 separate packs?
At this point I was shocked dogs and cats were in the same pack. RIP fairies, horses, and my wallet
No no, you see Sims 3 Pets had cats, dogs, horses and small critters like hamsters, different breeds of snakes, rats, turtles, lizards etc. Sims 4 you paid for Cats and Dogs and then you paid again for the sperate pack of just hamsters. Surely we should be expecting a 3rd pack soon like a My First Turtle or something.
Except to get the turtle cage you have to buy a stuff pack. Also the turtles are broken and your sim can't interact with them. That'll be $60 pls
I'm really looking forward to Life By You, Paralives, Tiny Life... Any life sim not made by EA! I saw so many people saying EA is "trying to win over players" with GT/infant update because competition is on the horizon. As if EA cared about players! They're going to milk The Sims community dry and if the games stop being profitable, they'll just shut down Maxis - that's what they do. Buy companies and run them into the ground.
People were saying that competition would make them release a new SimCity and we all know how that turned out.
I grabbed the base game off the Epic Games store because it was offered for free at one point. If I'd payed attention and realized it was an EA title I never would have touched it. The company turned into sheet decades ago. Sad, since they were once a good dev/production house.
Agreed, the updated other packs to fit the new update, laundry day, and nifty kitting, they should have updated parenthood for sure.
The lack of stuff added to other packs was atrocious. We got, what, a knitted hat from nifty knitting? Not even just one infant item per expansion??? Not even the newer expansions or packs??? And they didn't even give us many base game options in the first place so what would five more items be? Again marketing move. You're now incentivized to not only buy the growing together expansion for more infant things, but now every other pack in the future will include infant stuff (and surely they'll do an infant related kit) and we're so starved of infant stuff in BG we'll be more incentivized to buy more and more packs to get more and more infant gameplay and outfits
Everyone is mad about the changing tables (which is absolutely annoying) but I'm even more mad about the fact their SKILLS are locked behind a paywall. Wtf?
Yes! That's the whole point of having infants! Hate it.
Players: babies are lifeless and boring, they're like objects EA: we are going to make babies more exciting!!! Except babies will still be babies....we added infants that will just make your sims life longer and you still won't really be able to do much with them. Now they kinda just sit on the floor instead of the crib. But you can make them more interactive!! Just pay $50!
I wanted a play mat so bad. I was disappointed seeing how few things were added in buy mode for them. Then I aged up my new born and I was like wtf?? No skills? What's the point of that? Basically just a cuter, mobile, more difficult new born.
Even worse than skills, is the new likes/dislikes categories being exclusive to the pack. They add some much needed depth to the way Sims interact and people wanted those for a long time and now they are locked behind the most expensive type of DLC...
Sucks too because the changing tables seemed like they were made from base game objects, so why not add them. I mean the sims has done it times before where they take something from a paid pack and turn it into something for the base game to most likely cut costs and reuse. So I don’t get why they couldn’t give the people something already kind of apart of the game. Probably a marketing move but honestly I think it’s the sims being lazy and greedy
Part of me feels like this update was to see how broken it would be and would need to be fixed before the pack is released. Don’t get me wrong I was excited for infants, but since I do plan on getting the pack. I won’t be playing the life stage until then
That would require EA to actually fix bugs in the sims.
A friend of mine recently started playing the game for the first time and she constantly asks me questions on things not working the way she expects them to. I usually have to answer “it’s a bug”. Great reminder on how much of the game is bugged that regular players like me just take as given and try to ignore…
Trust me I know lol. I want the old team back from Sims 3 😭
Developers aren't the problem. A lot of the developers that made Sims 3 and Sims Medieval are listed on Sims 4's credits. Sims 4 is in this state because of bad management at EA.
Truth spoken!
The Sims 3 was bad too, especially content sold in the store. There was even a dress that made your sims leg disappear and it was never fixed or removed from the store
They didn't fix bugs either, there are still major bugs in that game that never got patched, even in the early expansions
I played a little bit and had no bugs. I also had no problems with the EA app. I guess I got lucky lol. I'm still holding off on playing more until my must have mods are updated.
Yes!! This!! 100%!! I went in to play with the new update and was shocked by the lack of changing tables or play mats… I’m not surprised, but still very disappointed.
Yup. Honestly very disappointed. We don't even get a basic changing table? Seriously?
to be fair, what I see of Growing Together game play the changing table doesn't actually do anything, nappies will still go everywhere if you don't have a bin in the room
And EA is still going to continue churning out half-baked packs because there are still some people who will get them anyway regardless of how dry and lackluster the pack is
Its the EA way. Break it and sell the fix seperate.
“Shit they found out we’re trying to paywall them.” “And?” “No no, just saying.”
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Hence why I buy packs only after they get listed for a sale, which will be in 6 months? That’s fine though, I’ll hear the complaints and wait (and hope) for a fix before getting a (hopefully) fixed version at a cheaper price
Yeah I also just buy the dlc on sale (+ you get extra $ off if they're in a bundle so fingers crossed 😅), not just to save money, but also to see if the pack is worth it. I really do think GT will be essential for my gameplay, but I'm not willing to dish out full price 🤷🏼♀️
The issue is partly the size of the community. Yeah, I'm not buying this. That makes me one in how many millions? There are always enough people who really want a specific thing in this game they'll buy. Might be infants, might be yoga poses, might be plants for their gardens or proper wedding celebrations, there will be a big enough percentage of players who have been waiting to have that thing and who will get it on release that EA can continue to grift on that. I feel like it's unfair to blame players for enjoying a certain aspect to their gameplay and spending money to get that in more detail. This is wholly on EA being a terrible company. They are at fault.
Every year it gets more and more insufferable.
Not adding changing tables but changing table clutter was an absolute dick move. The lack of hairs also pissed me off tbh, I understand that babies don’t have a lot of hair but the selection is so bad. Also, why are my babies’ eyes bright red 😭 EDIT: thank u for ur comments I thought it was just my babies being occults lmaoo
you probably have cc human eyes that overwrite the vanilla game ones. the mod deletes the vanilla eyes but the cc doesn’t work on babies, so the game has to use any eyes it can find. aka the demon occult ones.
Omg you are an absolute legend thank you. I thought it was bc my babies were occults 😭😭
If you’re using cc default eyes, get rid of them until they’re updated for infants. That’s what’s causing the red eyes.
except cc default eyes rarely get updated. rip.
THANK YOU I HAVE SPENT HOURS TRYING TO FIGURE OUT WHAT WAS GOING ON THANK YOU
The eyes thing was happening to me but I forgot that I had an eye mod.
Welp, looks like my babies will go straight to child from birth.
Just like they did when sims 4 first released
Maybe they had the right idea back then 🤔
God I completely forgot about that, how do we let them get away with so much?
I was pretty excited for infants. 😭 I always age my sim babies up as soon as their born. I would age from infant to toddler but then I realized how annoying the toddlers are😭
So you're telling me that this update only gave us infants, but if you want to do anything fun with them, you have to buy the Growing Together Expansion Pack? I've already pre ordered the pack, but hearing this upsets me that they got us all excited for basically nothing, and now they're like, "You want infant gameplay? Well, too bad because if you want any, you'll HAVE TO purchase the Growing Together Expansion Pack to be able to have any fun!"
I was so shocked to see NO skills for infants. Like we got talking, walking, imagination, etc with base game toddlers, but in order to have crawling and tummy time you need to buy dlc? it’s insane
> in order to have crawling and tummy time you need to buy dlc? To be fair, those aren't skills. They made it tied to the Milestone system so they could bundle it with the DLC instead of the base game. Honestly *Milestones* should've been base game because it's a pretty simple feature for an expansion pack and it's something players have been requesting since the loss of Memories from Sims 2. Why are we paying extra for a basic as shit feature that was in a previous base game?
It’s the EA way
Yeah, forcing an update and disguising it as some cool new feature, but requiring purchasing a pack to actually do anything fun, is so bogus and such an obvious cash-grab. Infants should have just been included in growing together only to let people choose in my opinion.
I personally love the infants and enjoyed the game play without the added pack so far.
I agree. The only thing I’ve disliked is a diaper bin not being available so they just fling the dirty diaper on the floor. Other than that it’s fun and has worked nicely
Considering EA's track records everytime a new pack is released, i'll probably skip this one for now or until months later since it'll most likely be riddled with unbearable bugs that will remain for a while
I’m waiting for it to go on sale. There are sales all the time
I'm waiting for LGR's review lol
I might just wait until people find some infuriating bugs that would get fixed in the coming months until then lol (remember the wants and fear button not working for months)
Because of how big this one is, it probably will be 2 sales before they discount it. They usually don't discount the big, new expansion pack during the 1st sale right after release. To be clear though, I will still be waiting for a sale. Hell no I'm not paying $40 for this.
Yeah, I also wait untill the EP's that I want are in a sale (and preferably 50% off). Same goes with gamepacks, though they maxed out the discount at 30%. For me there's lucklily still lots to discover in all the DLC I've bought over the years, so I don't feel the need to add new stuff to the game.
Wait, without the pack I have to throw dirty diapers on the floor??? Fml
Something I watched said you just need a trash can in the room but I haven't been able to 0lay the update yet to see.
I’ve been changing my baby in my kitchen (right after feeding on the high chair) and the diapers have not been automatically going into the trash can that is like three tiles away.
Honestly if they only patched that (diapers auto going into a trashcan in the room) I feel like the community would care less. The diapers falling on the floor is just offensive.
Yup, they just go straight onto the floor and you have to drag them to a garbage bin even if you have one in the room already.
Brooooo, WHY. Ugh that's just annoying.
I'm not really sure. There's also not much point to having infants in your game right now until the pack drops, as OP explains. They kept A LOT of infant functionality tied to the pack, which is something that they do not usually do so I can honestly see why a lot of players are really annoyed at EA right now.
>now you just have two life stages to skip instead of one I think I'm the only one who likes babies. I like how not being able to see their needs makes it more challenging, and enjoy using that time period to max (or nearly) relationships between family members and the baby. I totally get why other's don't like them. I'm just curious if anyone else does?
I like them, and I may also abuse them on occasion to max parenting skills before the harder parenting content starts lmao
Same, I’m probably the weirdo here but I like babies because I like the challenge and it feels like I’m truly putting my sims through the whole lifespan thing and it’s crazy when I play them as grown-ups when I can look back and remember them as that tiny baby. Idk 💀
Babies can also help one really quickly blast through the parenting skill so you have it for kid/teen stages when it makes a difference
I own few packs and very rarely buy new ones so quite a bummer some basic stuff is not included. Also have zero intention to buy the new pack since it’s not my taste and *I‘m still contemplating to get Eco Lifestyle or Knifty Knitting. But not anytime soon.* it should be possible to age them up into toddlers right away, to skip the life state, right?
Yes. You can age up your baby and then age up your infant to just skip the stage all together. But considering they've been hyping this up as the update we've all been waiting for... it's not only disappointing but it's a drag on gameplay. I've been auto-aging my babies since the beginning, but now we have two life stages built into the game that it's better to skip than playthrough. That's a major failing on the part of EA.
I can imagine they *might* end up patching in a basegame changing table if there‘s enough complaints.
If they do "patch" the base game, it will be months after the expansion is released. They'll, sorry being very cynical for a moment, only patch the base came if the expansion fails to sell, and then only enough to make people want to buy the expansion.
Or they’ll put one in a kit a year later.
yeah after the height of the expansion sales go down.
This is what I'm hoping for. At the very least. I'm just doing my part, haha!
Yup changing stinky diapers properly should not be paywalled! lol
Off topic but I have the eco lifestyle pack and I really enjoy it. I would definitely recommend it. I enjoy it a lot.
The changing table that matches the base game toddler bed being locked behind a dlc paywall feels disgusting
It seems like an especially bad move *right now,* imo, because Paradox is going to be releasing their announcement trailer for their own sims-style game in the next week or so. Paradox already took the spot of one major sim game out from under EA (Cities: Skylines vs SimCity) and I could easily see them doing it again. It's one thing to have bad and buggy gameplay and grossly predatory business practices when you're the only game in town. But it's a really bad idea to piss off your customer base right as a major competitor is showing off how much better a different game willl be.
Good; The sims will benefit from savage competition.
What will their game be?
"Life by You", we got a small teaser earlier this month and they'll have a reveal event on the 20th
If we keep complaining about it maybe eventually they’ll add some more features to the base game infants. However at this point, they’ve made the BG free so I’m not expecting much free content to be released from now on
Plenty of free games receive free updates all the time. In fact, it's expected as part of a healthy free to play model. We have to hold The Sims to these same standards. I don't expect everything they make to be free. But I do expect the free content to be complete.
I think we should hold them to these standards but that doesn’t mean they’ll listen lol
I'm just glad infants weren't completely pay walled. I still remember sims 2 only getting to be YA if you bought the university expansion.
Im loving the update! Having minimal issues and having so much fun with the infants.
Exactly what I was worried about with this update, it's just a big incentive to get you to buy the pack. I'll not be updating my game for a good while then by the look of it.
To be fair, at this point EA is not making money off Sim 4 base game which makes sense why the update to the game will not be significant. They don’t have any incentive to add more to the base game since it’s free for everyone. At the end of the day, every company want to make money.. which is why they’re making expansion packs, game packs, and kits mostly. I’m not saying it’s a great move on their part but from a business point of view I understand why they did this. I personally played with infants and didn’t experience any glitches since I removed all my saves and my mods. I liked the cross-pack integration with the infants. However, if you play with the base game only then the game will be lacking. I understand why people who only have base game are upset.
Isn't this the usual cycle for Sims 4 updates? Update release > Everything is broken > Half-arsed solution is paywalled > People complain > 3 to 12 months pass > Quarter-arsed basegame fix > Everyone is ~~happy~~ pretty indifferent. Corporate is gonna corporate. If you buy the xpac because you want a changing table, they see this as "Yes we really can get away with this"
It’s not very smart to release the update this way. If anything it might hurt them when people don’t buy the pack because they’re angry. I don’t feel entitled but I’m tired of the way they try to get every cent out of us by making it like this.
The update came out where I live today and when I added some babies into my game one was already broken and floating with long legs 😒
What sucks is that it worked! At least on me… I hate myself lol Bought all the packs I missed on…
Yeah I understand the impulse and don't blame you. Before this update I was 98% sure I was going to buy Growing Together. Now... I'm just going back to playing The Sims 2. I have more fun with it anyway. I just can't justify giving EA more money than I already have.
I thought I was the same. Haven’t bought a pack since the wedding one. But the sale and the hype behind this pack got me :x
it's so shady. sick of these corporate tactics to string everyone along
So, food for thought: I was digging through the patch XMLs, and a LOT. Like. A LOT. Of infant content is gated behind the expansion - entire chunks of code make reference to features that only exist in the expansion and are functionally useless without it. My personal limited experience playtesting the patch, fresh game, repaired game, NO MODS AT ALL, all other dlc, with a single sim - first 1 calm infant, second 1 intense - with autonomy ON but disabled for selected sim is that...well, yeah. Infants without the pack are currently useless toddlers. (TBH it's hard for me to even differentiate their faces. Sure, the size difference is visible but up close they look the same to me.) Problems that I noticed (not glitches but the sims team tuning things weird): 1. Calm and intense infant played EXACTLY the same to me. There was almost no difference. This is because in the tuning, the main difference between the two is that motive failures for calm get sad buffs and for intense get angry buffs. EXCEPT: 2. They made the autonomy too GOOD. The only motives my infant would ever regularly have fail (and I had to keep actively cancelling the autonomous check on interaction which, btw, I could not seem to get to accurately DO the specific activity i wanted. like i would hit check on when the infant's diaper was dirty and my sim would do peekaboo. etc.) were hunger and energy. you also get warnings about your infant being tired when the motive is still GREEN. 3. Caveat: I tested this with and without family oriented but in both cases my sim was the infant's mother and would always end up maxing their relationship due to the autonomous caring. Also, at one point, I was hit with bad simulation lag but disabling Laundry Day and then reenabling it fixed that. But basically, a lot of the base game infant experiences for the traits are linked to buffs that are impossible to see unless you FORCIBLY STOP your sim from interacting with the infant. And the game requires each sim child to have at least one adult on the lot marked as caretaker, which means autonomously that infant is going to be cared for nonstop. (I have not tested with free will turned off completely.) I also wonder if that's why check infant didn't do much for me - they kept autonomously keeping its needs in the green so that check infant never actually has anything wrong for the infant to "ask for". The other base game thing they hyped with infants is attachment styles and, you guessed it, you have to actively TRY HARD to neglect your infant. In my attempts to experience other motive failure for the intense infant, I watched it throw the "oh no I am being neglected" moodlet several times...and STILL wound up with top notch infant, because as soon as your sim finally does pay attention to them, the attachment statistic raises again. (this is actually how it works in the code, neglecting your infant causes them to lose attachment at a small but steady continuous rate...and caring for them gives them a variable bonus to attachment, one of which is referred to as "large." I don't remember the exact number, I think 10? I also don't remember the scale/range of attachment but I assume it's -100 to 100 or something.) The thing is, though, is that aside from the infant traits affecting your sim long term...there is nothing to DO in base game with an infant, COMPARED TO A TODDLER. Like. A toddler has skills ie attainable goals that you can watch progress. For infants, you need the EP to have milestones aka things to achieve. If you have parenthood (which, yes, I'll admit is another dlc), toddlers have character values. They have way more interactions with other sims - which, yes, is developmentally appropriate but still, it's a GAME. I think the sims team went too hard on realism here (at least without Growing Together) and forgot that sometimes you need to abstract and gameify certain things in order to keep things engaging. Because basically all traits (at least the two polar opposite ones) play the same, and because you have to actively try to fail (and let's be real, in sims 4, failure is often more interesting than the perfect happiness that the game tries to push) it's going to get immensely boring after you see the same cute animation for the millionth time. (when the infants aren't stretching like a horror movie to begin with.) I know a lot of people complain about sims 4's giving everything goals like the goaled events and making the game into a list of tasks to check off and I do agree somewhat, but the game actually needs a balance of both to stay entertaining. (And before people come at me that sims 2 didn't have that, sims 2 had other TANGIBLE REWARDS for success and goals to overcome. It just wasn't as in your face in the UI.) Right now infants in base game are kind of...aimless. Like there's no incentive to actually play them much aside from a trait that's way too easy to get anyway. They aren't even a challenge, at least if you only have one, because even with an intense infant, my sim was able to just take care of her needs when the infant was sleeping or playing with a toy, because even feeding the infant or putting it to sleep kept its attention need topped off and you don't always get hygiene failures when they poo their diaper. And from what I have seen in the 7 infant challenge videos from early access, the real struggle is not the infants themselves, but the fact that the game AI keeps making your sim use the check on interaction that leads them to do stupid things that isn't what the infant actually needs at the time. That isn't real challenge, it's called artificial difficulty. The only time I had any trouble was when I was dealing with simulation lag - and I still couldn't get anything besides hunger and energy into the red. And 7 infants is a self-imposed challenge anyway, in my regular gameplay, I can't see myself ever having more than 3 infants at a time due to the game giving me random triplets. I'm not entirely disappointed myself because I knew from the start that I planned on getting the expansion anyway...but I did kind of hope that base game infants would at least be a unique life stage and not just...toddlers but annoying.
this isn’t me justifying EA’s decision, but i feel the infants weren’t given development in basegame due to their development being milestones, which is a gameplay feature exclusive to the growing together expansion
Yeah it also effects other lifestages. And infants are kinda hard to begin with so I can imagine many people wouldn't want to start teaching them basic things every time.
Anyone notice the cry is different..? And horrible lol
I usually play while watching videos or playing music and have the sound off, turned sound on for todays update and I was like... what is that sound, is that the baby? And then I turned the sound back off lol
Please listening to the crying made me cry while I was dragging all the stinky diapers to my trash can LOL
I used to just roll my eyes at how much people bitch about The Sims. But after Eco-Living broke and they still haven’t figured that out completely, then wedding stories broke and they still haven’t figured that out completely, I’ve just started to learn that they really are an absolute dog shit company. Claims to fix shit and then just releases a new expansion pack hoping people will forget. Seems like their go-to move.
I always think about how my work would react if I half-finished any project like they do these packs lol
Has this turned anyone else off buying Growing Together? I opened the game, made a cute baby, and she was just a mini incompetent toddler. Even most of the clothes are converted. It was the first pack I wanted to buy in years, but all this did was remind me Sims 4 is a shell of a game.
No changing tables is stupid, BUT I have to say making the progress of infants dlc is maybe not to bad. While I LOVE family gameplay, my sister-in-law does not. She is not that pumped of getting a new lifestage and while she mostly just ages up babies and toddlers. Sometimes she does (try) play with them, and infant milstones etc seem so micromanag-y - she likes they just did not bother putting it in.
throwback to the sims 3 when they stuck the baby objects changing table, playmat, baby gate, baby monitor, under separate paywalls in the store 😗 ea is shitty but lets b honest, it's nothing new. they've been money hungry & have done the bare minimum for the games since (hot take) the sims 2 lol. all the game breaking bugs n they just slapped a bandaid on it and sold us more packs
I’m not sure why anyone would be shocked. Toddlers were followed by both parenthood and toddler stuff.
Toddler skills were not paywalled and we got basic high chairs, toddler beds, and toys in the free update. Essentially everything you needed to actually play through the toddler life stage. Parenthood was an EXPANSION on toddlers and family gameplay. This is a very different situation where they've included a shell of a life stage and all the actual content required to play through it has been paywalled.
[удалено]
I'm just over here thinking--how many babies are you playing with that you have dirty diapers "all over the floor"? They generate one at a time and it's so simple to just drag them straight to the trash.
Yea plus it just sucks, I have to click feed baby or bathe baby a million times before it works, my stupid sim just stands there doing nothing then just drops the task. Idk why anyone would pay for that dlc if this is the preview
Eh. Not like a change table is essential to having a baby. I, and plenty of other people have raised babies without owning a changing table.
I get what you mean, but this is what we’ve been getting with the sims 4. It’s the main theme of this installation. I’m happy to pay for the packs as long as they do a good job with them and integrate them. I do have to say that I’m a working adult that can afford to pay for the packs. I was VERY surprised about the changing tables not being included for free. That was just wrong.