I think, while not entirely accurate, TS2 and TS3 tried to at least infuse some culture into the game, however subtle. TS2 with Polynesian and Japanese, TS3 with Egyptian, Chinese, and French. Sims will more or less behave the same in these locations, but the gameplay objects (and hidden traits in TS3) give the impression of there being more to the Sim than the day-to-day behavior.

TS4 avoided all of this by putting several cultures into an American habitat. They tried A BIT with Selvadorada, but I wasn’t feeling it.

If the sims team bothered to do some research on Japanese culture, they would find there are many everyday traditions and customs that other countries don't have. EA, an American company, doesn't understand the history and culture of Japan due to it's lack of knowledge about the rest of the world. I think that Japanese players of the sims 4 would look at the city living pack and say, "Well they got the names right but that's not how we act at all." But it's just a game and it is what it is I guess even though Japanese culture is inaccurately misrepresented.

I've said it before and I'll say it again. EA does the bare minimum with different cultures in The Sims, often portrayed by inaccurate stereotypes.

I'm surprised that with Japanese culture they didn't stoop to having samurai and geisha Sims walking the streets, the implication being that that's all there is to Japanese culture and history, and sadly I know of several people who have this mentality.

The same could be said for other cultures involved in the sims. The French don't all wear berets, there's much more to Egypt than the pyramids and sphinx, and I'm pretty sure China has moved past feudal era architecture and clothing.

@matrix54 I would like to argue that you missed the point on some of the earlier sims 3 packs that actually aren't that broad because their theme is broad but because the whole focus of the entire game is actually broad. Instead of focusing on the activities, every one of those packs had THE WORLD in mind instead of the management and charm (sims 1) or simulation and individual sim diversity (sims 2), and in that regard the themes of those packs make sense. But because this is not The Sims 3 discussion, lets switch to sims 4... why do sims 4 packs do not have a clear focus? Because the game does not have a clear focus... or rather, the game does not have a fixed focus.

First focus of the game's targeted at young demographics... read parties and outings, all things trendy with teenagers. Which shows in first few sims 4 packs.
Then we have inclusivity, but this was mostly inclusivity not of the player types that you would usually see in the sims 4, it's inclusivity in a sense of positive media and public image that EA at the time wanted to create... but lets not bash this one, they executed this mostly well... however the game still had no clear focus of what it wants to be, so this as well might be a sidetrack to just get more potential buyers on board...

So we reach the final step, which is actually listening to fans (albeit a bit late) where we got seasons, get famous and now this pack (khm khm, lets ignore Grant, he does not seem to know what fans want even when they tell him straight to his face). But I feel that it's too late... and it's not just this.
Will they stick to this? Will they change the content produce/marketing plans again? Is this actually a path for the game that's focused enough to make it more enjoyable with all sims fans in the next years or is it still too broad? (to which I would say, definitely too broad, fans want everything)

The problem with this product arose from the moment it was decided for it to be conceived from an online, social, party/event oriented game in just a bit more than a year to a singleplayer next gen The Sims experience. It was bound to fail from the mere start because there was no other vision for this product other than 'How to make this work?', which is why there's so many design changes in DLC model throughout the years. They still don't have the focus, they still don't have the vision... and they still don't know how to make it work as they would... but it still kinda works and it will stick for us for few more years.

If it stays on the path that it's currently on, it will probably still be the best last years of sims 4... but after that? Well... time will probably tell what will happen with this franchise.

Again, I rarely write here but, when I do I write essays so... sorry for this long and mostly insignificant wall of text.

Another info dump here. Scroll down to the screenshot of the mermaid's face in CAS for the spot where all the relevant info starts.

Couple notable points:

-Child of the Island basically makes them love island life and probably spams them with happy moodlets for being there and doing island things. Child of the Ocean sounds more like an "Anti-Fishing" trait, since the only thing mentioned is they get upset about fishing.

-Off-hand mentioned mermaids can lure Sims to their death and honestly that sounds like the most interesting feature thusfar.

-Volcano sounds weaksauce in the sense it sounds like your sims actively have to go "huurrr durr some lava, let me touch it with my hand" before anything happens.

-Swimming got revamped by the fitness skill. Sounds like fitness determines swim speed

-Diving sounds like it's a rabbithole function similar to how the rocketship works

There you have it folks. Once again we can see where EA's priorities are.

That link adds some interesting infos:
- "Mermaids will have a special power to lure the sim, to make him/her falling in love or even drown the sim. Sim that has drown in the ocean can not resurrect. So you need to be careful. I didn’t play neither of these interactions, this information was shared by developers when I chatted after game session."
We can actually create deadly siren mermaids? I wouldn't have expected that at all.
- "Sims who will live in the houses on stilts will be able to jump in the water right from pier that is attached to the house."
Are stilts not a foundation? I was thinking we would be able to build with stilts, but this sounds like there's only one house with stilts.
- "Sims will be able to dive with scuba diving gear, but only at designated places at buoys. Buoys are rabbit holes. You can order a sim to dive if you buy a scuba diving gear for §2500, take pictures of the fish under water if you buy a camera for §1000 or go spearfishing. I am not sure 100% about spearfishing, though. This is something I overheard developers talking about, but didn’t really pay attention if this interaction was available at buoy. I think there was one interaction “buy a knife §250” that I didn’t test. So, there is no active diving except snorkeling. I didn’t see how it works."
Yeah, diving is really a rabbithole activity. I wonder if snorkeling works a bit differently.
- "Kids and toddlers don’t have a mermaid life state. Only teens and up. I forgot to ask if a regular sim can turn into a mermaid, or about cross-breeding between humans and mermaids, or mermaids and vampires or aliens."
I doubt there'll be "cross-breeding", but I would hope we can turn existing Sims into mermaids.
- "Mermaids on the land will look like regular sims, no scales, no fins or gills."
I loved how TS3 mermaids still had some scales on their legs

Mermaids can drown Sims? That's what I'm talking about. Sounds good to be true. Simocide is welcome in my eyes. Yeah, stilts kinda of like in that C&D pack.

Really? What got in developers in minds to introduce direct sim killing another? They hesitated with lighting bender. Can't help by find it fishy, pun intented. Hopefully there is no catch with it, pun unintented.

Mermaid with no scales on legs give quite the mystery to the Sim. You get to swim with them and moments later you see a trail appear.

Part of me already knew this would be the answer but I was hoping EA would surprise me. Toddlers I can slightly understand but why do kids almost always get forgotten when there's a new life state? Hell, even in TS3 you need to have a mod for them to be able to use magic. Speaking of....good God, that's gonna be the case in this upcoming game pack too, isn't it? So much for my Sim Hogwarts, I guess xD

It's unexpected for sure. But then, it's probably their way of skirting around diving and such not being completely interactable. If the mermaids were blah, then there's not much this pack would be offering that wasn't more set dressing.

I know it probably seems like I'm being a Negative Nancy, but I'm really getting sick of EA and the wasted potential of this game.

Exactly. Children are always left out. I didn't even see any new hairstyles for toddlers in the trailer

My heart is broken. I sometimes load TS3 just so I can hear the music of the the sea and watch the kelp sway.

About the diving rabbitholes, I hate to say I told you so but there it is. Maybe if a sims dives underwater in shallow areas and switch to first person mode, That would be close to diving as you are gonna get. At least that would give the illusion that sims are actually diving and interacting with the underwater environment. I can see diving mods ideas already and the pack hasn't even been released yet.

From what we know, there's more to the mod than what we know of vanilla take for life state... Ahhhh, at least it retains drown other sim quirk.

I'm getting on board with the "what exactly is this expanding" group. Everything. Every. Single. Thing about this game is so self contained. Why is it so hard for them to create things that can be used elsewhere? Self-contained adventure sums it up nicely.

I'm seeing a lot of people elsewhere saying that at least Sims can travel to every world in TS4 so they can travel there whenever they want. If this is the tradeoff, sorry. I'm not sold.

The game may need an airport or any other travel station to manage that aspect more. Like customize which sims come, how frequently, and whether is for a permanent (business leave) or temporal (vacation) stay.

Of course, it would be a rabbit hole as the transporation is absent, let alone I believe they would pull it off.

That would actually be a great idea if implemented properly. Would solve the issue of Sims from every world appearing everywhere, and give more control over which sims appear where.

I've proposed this in the past- why not have a temporal mini-world where your sims are in a bus, train, plane, or even on a ship?

There could be settings in the options to select which worlds would skip these scenes (i.e. between Willow Creek and Newcrest)- but overall it would give you a sense of distance, while also providing more unique places for your sims to be in.

I love this idea, too bad there's like negative chance they'd do it. But I'd be happy if even a little time passed while traveling between worlds to give some sense of distance. It's pretty ridiculous to go from a European type place like Windenburg in the winter to Oasis Springs where it's boiling hot and no time has passed.

And the worst part is if you try to relay that elsewhere, it gets shot down fast because everyone assumes you don't like the travel aspect period. "Whaaat?! You don't want everywhere available to visit when you want?"

It's not that at all. I love travel gameplay in the sims, but TS4 literally feels like when you travel that you hopped on the city bus and took a stroll across town. There's no feeling of "gee, I'm far away from my Sim's home" like with World Adventures and Bon Voyage.

It feels like that because you can travel anywhere at any time. Sims are constantly walking around towns they don’t live in. The Sims is typically American based so having Sims travel to explore the world is meant to be a treat.

Previously, when your game was in a town, you had to remain there (like we do in real life) until you actively moved. Traveling required money or a vehicle. Even then, all towns were semi-generic US towns.

In TS3, all do that changes. Towns where where-the-fuck-ever. Wanna live in Greenland? Sure. French Polynesia? No problem! Tuscany? We’re here!

This was made WORSE in TS4 because you can just go anywhere. Having vacations doesn’t even make sense because we can just go to Europe (Windenberg) on a whim. Why do I need a vacation rental to go camping but I don’t need a hotel to go shopping? It’s dumb. Oasis Springs and Sulani are not in the same climate, let alone region.

This actually reminds me of this map lol:

https://sims.fandom.com/wiki/Vacati...tion_Island.jpg

There's actually a reason Vacation Island was like that though. Can't remember where I originally read it, but it was because Maxis wanted to do some type of Seasons type pack for TS1, but the tech just wasn't there to make it happen so they combined all the different locales into one deliberately to give a "lite" feel of different climates between locations. Considering that they wanted rain to be in TS2's base game, they really wanted to expand on weather gameplay.

Then again, TS1 was released 19 years ago so it's understandable in its case.

That confuses me - How do you imagine that? I can imagine ship as a huge cruise ship where you can have everything you would normally have on land, but bus, train or plane? What would you do there? Or do you just mean as a cut scene?

I mean, with my idea (since airport having such options makes much sense and intuitive) you could put regulations what type of world a certain one is, removing the EA's altogether restrictions of "This will be a vacation/residential world and that's final". You will always hear a groan from fans about their sims unable to live there or townies are unrealistically leaping worlds. The solution described just now will be a win&win. However, a simple slider-toggle button in manage world to alter word's type would be even better.