The beaches are premade lots with a slope. From what I gathered from the chat, they will only be useable with a special terrain, I guess because of the slope that needs to be a certain height. Eventually we'll get custom ones too. I'm happy we can build homes on beach lots.

SilentPsycho- Thank you! I was there but must have missed it. I'm sure I was missing half the chat. I kept seeing random questions without answers and answers without questions. Strange.

Crocobaura- I hope thats easier than it sounds! Seems like the first thing I'm doing when I get this EP is building a house on a beach lot. Thanks for the explanation.

Here's the chat transcript.

http://thesims2.ea.com/community/chat_08_16_07.php

Initial reading shows that it makes more sense with all the missing questions shown.

You can make custom vacation neighborhoods but only the pre-made ones we provide will have the secret lots.

Well, that answers your question, Mutantbunny. Though I think the "secret" lots will function like the secret society lots in University, so I think you'll be able to make your own through the lotzoning cheat.

And the reason we can't run hotels as a business:

We really wanted to support it but simply didn't have the time.

Another example of how the expansions are released too closely together. Other than this, I like what I'm hearing. The pack sounds great.

I have to say this chat was a little disapointing. They seemed to answer the same question a few times, and didn't reveal anything new. I was trying to ask if there would be any interactions with the ninja, such as if you could become friends or marry him, but they kept answering questions about the big foot. They also talked a lot about how season affected this game.

Was the new "Walk to" feature well-known? I guess I just missed it, but it sounds cool. :p

I'm glad that there will be some, er, mingling among the EPs. If all the BV stuff could only be used while on vacation, I'd be a little disappointed.

Yes, thanks, bacon. Thank goodness for that at least.

So, sadly, it seems I was right about the custom sc4 terrain roads close enough to the water thing. We're stuck to their terrain--oh that hurts!! I hate their terrains! Roads all spread out stupid like

Like I said: they NEVER answer the questions asked. It seems to me they have a pre made list of qs they will answer consisting of the info already out, by and large anyway, and won't or can't deter from it. Why even bother with a chat is what I say...

The part about why we can't own and run a hotel of "we didn't have the time" really irks me! That just reeks of laziness to me. How hard would it really be. I'll be holding my breath for the awesome modders of the community to finish that job that EA dropped. I swear, if it wasn't for the modders, I wouldn't be playing the game!

The Walking thing is pretty cool! It'll make themed neighborhoods more realistic. A peasant family no longer needs to calla cab to go down the street to the farmer's market. Still wish we could go "next door" though.

This part rather confused me:


So only one family can go to a holiday destination at a time? That's rather awful, I mean several families could have vacation homes, and you're not allowed to have more than one in use at a time? Two different families can't stay in the same hotel? I'd like to pout over that!

ateKna- They put a little about the ninja, they said:
Can we learn the ways of the ninja?

MaxoidLittleL (Aug 16, 2007 4:38:14 PM)
You can learn his ways if you can pass his worthiness quiz

Vague, but still a hint that they did actually put some work into the other new npcs.

I think it would be good for The Sims 3 to have expansions released every nine months, instead of six. What do you guys think?

Regarding the chat, some of the questions asked were ridiculous LMAO
However some, like how it works with Seasons, were interesting.

Shenanigans: I suppose it would be hard to get that to work. Would the family that's alread there dissappear? Would they become NPC's? I suppose it would be hard to make work, but I"m sure with more time they would have figured it out (like with weather in Seasons, it was original in the base game but it wouldn't work).

Does anyone here think that EAxis will 'finish' the run hotel function at any time in the future?

If they simply 'didn't have time' don't you think they'd do it at some point?

Yeah, I had asked a question regarding to that when that question flashed by, but of course it wasn't answered. Hopefully they meant they can't share a hotel, not the actual vacation spot - because that would be crummy ><


And that one question that was in Spanish, I'm guessing it had something to do with buying housing on the island..? And I can't wait to see hammock woohoo - something tells me it's going to be spinning alot XD

It's the first one. It was announced on the Fan Day that you can't have more than one family per lot, but you can have a bunch of families at the destination.

E.g. Families A, B, C, and D all go to the Far East destination. Family A splashes out on the most expensive hotel, Hotel A. Family B contains only a poor Sim couple, so they don't need that much space, so they go to the cheapest, Hotel B. Family C is a moderately wealthy family of four, so they head to the middle one, Hotel C. Family D are the rich bastards, and they have their own vacation home, so they go there. All families are in the Far East, only different lots.

@ Shenanigans & LilG135:
A family can still invite their friends - another family - to a vacation, remember?

I knew most everything that they answered, but there were a couple of things I hadn't heard before. I didn't know that there would be bees at campsites or crabs on the beach. I only knew about tent woohoo, I didn't know about the sauna or hammock woohoo. And I didn't know about all the things you could dig up at the beach like sculptures, dog bones and treasure chests! LOL! It all sounds like a lot of fun to me! X)

Dream

I thought i saw somewhere it said that toddlers can go on vacation but not babies?

Nope, they said in the chat that toddlers and babies can not go on vacation. Their reasoning ran along the lines of "There's nothing for them to do AND they're too young."

Which is bunch of nonsense if you look at real life. I have four children and I've traveled with each and every one of them when they were babies. (Yeah, I'm the one the rest of the air travelers hate )

Thanks everyone that commented on my confusion. I still don't like that two different families can't go to the same hotel. I know you can invite friends, but I was thinking more along the line of having two teens, both playable, that don't know each other. Their families happen to be staying in the same hotel, or camp site, during summer break and they start up a romance. Well, hopefully the other families that are on Vacation will be like NPCs in that you can run into them on the community lots of that destination. I guess I'll just have to wait and see.

The real reason is probably that they "really wanted to support it but simply didn't have the time." Same for why can't run hotels as businesses (without future hacks.)
That alone shows that they slacked on this project which I think is insulting to the players. (It's a lot of money to buy the base game and then every EP that comes out.) So I don't think many people would mind if they delayed the game for a month if it meant that we could get more out of it.

That question "Will there be new objects in this EP?" is really dumb. Of course there will be more objects in the EP, why wouldn't there be?

Secondly, I think that we will most likely (99.99%) be able to walk to community lots in our home-neighborhoods.

Oh I don't know. Everyone wants different things out of the game. Personally I would not want to wait an extra month just to be able to run a hotel as a business, because that is something I have no interest at all in. Personally the only thing that I would have liked to see in this EP that we didn't get is a ski resort type destination, but I understand why they didn't add it because it would need Seasons.

Oh, I saw another thing in the chat that I didn't know. There will be food kiosks on the beach. Now is that like a vending machine? That is what a kiosk sounds like to me (what with the electronic kiosk and all) and if so that is really awesome and will make a lot of people happy. That was something I had heard nothing about til the chat so I will be a bit skeptical at this point about what exactly that means because that sounds like something fans at the fanday would have mentioned (though maybe it wasn't in the game at that point *shrug*).

Dream

A food kiosk is basically a booth where you can buy food from. You can find lots of them at concerts and festivals.

I think the food kiosks are actually the outdoor type kithens we saw in the previews.

Like I said:

http://www.centuryindustries.com/kiosk.htm

You can see them in the BV official trailer when they say 'Try New Foods'.

i cant wait till it comes out and if those who never made it to the chat like me then theres this transcript of it...
its got all the questions and answers on it
but i forgot the link ill look for it then ill come back with it

EDIT: lol i was looknig on the wrong bit of the website here it is
http://thesims2.ea.com/community/chat_08_16_07.php

oh silent linked to it before

You mean the same link I posted up near the top of this page?:P