For The Sims 4, EA has to date released a ton of expansion packs. So far, we've seen everything from Island Living, Vintage Glamour and Eco Lifestyle. However, we’ve seen very little advancement in any expansions relating to farming or gardening.
Fans are clearly interested in a farming-related expansion, so much so that there is now a fan mod, The Sims 4: Farmland. Limited by what can be worked within the bounds of The Sims 4, Farmland features a new semi-open world with five livable lots. Tractors have also been spotted in the trailer, but it is unclear if these are just modified cars or if they will impact the environment. Crops and harvesting remain largely the same, but a vineyard has been added, inspired by the Italian landscape.
A huge part of any farming-related game is the gathering of crops. Sims start with a Level 1 in gardening in the most recent game and plant flowers, herbs, fruits and vegetables on their lot from seed packets. Activities surrounding gardening revolve around a cycle of tending, fertilizing and harvesting. Even the Seasons expansion does little to breathe new life into the gardening cycle, apart from choosing if a plant will grow or lie dormant depending on the weather. Compared to gardening in the first game, it has remained largely unchanged throughout the series, possibly hinting that it is not at the forefront of concern for EA, who has just left anything to do with crops or harvesting a lackluster undeveloped feature.
Pets have been a huge feature for the series, with The Sims: Unleashed being the first pets expansion for the original game, released in 2002. It allowed Sims to own dogs, cats and smaller animals such as birds and have careers revolving around animals such as Animal Care. The Sims 2: Pets is a remake of Unleashed with largely the same amount of features. It wasn’t until The Sims 3: Pets was released in 2011 that we saw horses included for the first time and features including earning money through equestrian competition or taming wild horses.
The reasoning behind not including horses in the newest Pets expansion is due to the limited open-world concept in the new game. In The Sims 3, players could walk their sims from one end of the town to the other, whereas in The Sims 4, lots are smaller and separated into neighbors, with far more loading screens when moving around. There is no room to put horses on the current lots, and that limits the addition of larger farm animals such as cows.
However, with them being such a major part of the previous series’ expansion, not including horses in The Sims 4 almost feels like fans are being cheated out of features. Owning a cat or dog is rewarding in itself, but in the previous game owning a horse felt like more of a career path and opened up more opportunities for sims to become more rural.
In reality, a farming expansion seems like something long overdue for The Sims. Obviously, fans are unhappy with the almost-farming features such as owning horses being removed from the game and lackluster hobbies such as gardening. If The Sims were to give the expansion a Stardew Valley-style makeover, we would probably need to see a new town with larger and better-suited grounds for farming and new animals to farm. Running a market or farm shop would be a nice feature similar to owning the retail shops in The Sims 4: Get to Work and better reward players for their hard-worked goods.
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