Info about The Sims™ 4 Parenthood:

Official game description:
WHAT'S INCLUDED IN THIS PACK
============================
About the Game
==============
Develop your Sims’ parenting skills to help shape their children’s lives into adulthood with The Sims™ 4 Parenthood. Choose when to discipline or encourage child behaviors, teach life values, and leave a lasting impact on their future. Experience fun family activities, and personalize your household with new home décor and family fashion.  
**Key features**  
*   **Develop parenting skills** — Level up your Sims’ parenting skills to satisfy their child’s needs and influence their behaviors. Gain new abilities through experience and choosing when to discipline bad actions, encourage good behavior, or just let kids be kids.  
*   **Shape your Sim's childhood** — The decisions you make influence how your Sim parents and leaves a lasting impact on their child’s future. Each choice shapes their personality, affects their traits, influences their family relationships, and guides their path into adulthood.  
*   **Enjoy new family activities** — Gather your Sim’s family to participate in new activities and spend quality time with each other. Sims of all ages can work together to complete a variety of school projects, express their creativity using construction blocks, or volunteer their time for good.  
*   **Personalize your household** — Customize your Sims’ looks and their home with new family fashion and build items. Give the kids’ bedrooms extra personality, remodel the kitchen to feel homier, and let your Sims express their sporty or artistic sides with new outfits.

Release date: Jun 18, 2020

Categories: Life Simulation, Family Management, Needs-based Mechanics, Character Development, Choice-based Narrative, Social Simulation, Build/Buy Items Included


- Hardware Profile: No data
Feature extractions:
- Community Price:
  - Community fair range: $0.00 - $20.00
  - Reasoning: The reviews repeatedly emphasize waiting for sales and assert the product is not worth full price. This strong price sensitivity indicates the community would consider a fair base-game price to be well below full retail, likely in the $0-$20 range, especially if the base game is free or heavily discounted.
- Playtime Metrics:
  - Game completion: N/A
  - Story completion: N/A
  - Session length: N/A
  - Endgame: N/A
  - Reasoning: No evidence provides a target-specific playtime metric for The Sims 4 Parenthood. The 10-minute reload comment describes a bug-forced reload frequency, not a normal play session length. The comment about maxing out taking considerable time is vague and gives no hours. Spending over a grand is not a playtime metric. The 800-hour claim refers to 'this game' as the overall The Sims 4 experience rather than the Parenthood DLC, so it is rejected for the target game. Therefore all playtime metrics remain null.
- Time-to-fun: No data
- Player Archetypes:
  - Family Storyteller (sale)
    - Motivation: To create and continue family/generation stories through household roleplay.
    - Playstyle: Plays multigenerational families, raises toddlers and kids, and uses household events to tell ongoing stories.
    - Experience: familiar
    - Purchase stance: sale
    - Labels: family gameplay; family/generation playstyle; family and household roleplaying
    - Reference games: N/A
  - Grinding Progression Optimizer (sale)
    - Motivation: To efficiently grind skills and aspirations without travel or narrative interruptions.
    - Playstyle: Optimizes skill and aspiration progression, avoids travel, and evaluates content by mechanical rewards.
    - Experience: familiar
    - Purchase stance: sale
    - Labels: grinding
    - Reference games: N/A
  - Child-Rearing Pragmatist (buy)
    - Motivation: To make child-rearing gameplay manageable, motivating, and worth continuing.
    - Playstyle: Raises children and toddlers with an eye on caregiver motivation and practical family-management mechanics.
    - Experience: familiar
    - Purchase stance: buy
    - Labels: parents; caregivers
    - Reference games: N/A
  - Value-Conscious Bundle Buyer (sale)
    - Motivation: To get the best content-to-cost value through sales, bundles, and pack comparisons.
    - Playstyle: Waits for discounts, bundles purchases, and compares expansion packs before committing.
    - Experience: familiar
    - Purchase stance: sale
    - Labels: N/A
    - Reference games: Parenthood; Growing Together


Below are summaries of things people say about the game per category.
Each point is assigned a weight that represents how often it is mentioned across all reviews.
What players like:
- Family gameplay enhancement (weight 0.79): The pack greatly enhances family gameplay by adding depth to family interactions, making it a must-have for players who enjoy families and storytelling. It brings more drama, color, and meaningful interactions between parents and children.
- Upbringing traits and character values (weight 0.73): Children and teens have five character values that can be increased or decreased by their own or parents' actions, leading to powerful upbringing traits in young adulthood. This system adds depth and realism to the game.
- New interactions and activities (weight 0.72): Many new interactions and activities are added, such as family game nights, school projects, curfew, craft projects, and shared activities between parents and children. These enrich gameplay and strengthen family bonds.
- Build and CAS items (weight 0.67): The pack includes nice furniture, build items, and CAS items that are well-received, particularly kitchen furniture, teen clothing, and clutter items that add realism. These items enhance the overall experience.
- Positive reception and fun factor (weight 0.65): Many reviewers describe the pack as very fun, one of the better game packs, and utterly enjoyable, adding a lot to the game. This strong positive sentiment is consistent across numerous clusters.
- Parenting skill implementation (weight 0.59): A new parenting skill is added, which starts confusing but becomes efficient, making interactions with toddlers and babies easier and unlocking useful interactions like predicting baby needs. It forces more parent-child interaction.
- Discipline and punishment options (weight 0.48): Players can discipline children through scolding, praising, and various punishment options, providing more control over child behavior and adding realism. This feature is frequently mentioned as a key addition.
- Realistic child and teen phases (weight 0.36): Children and teens now go through realistic phases, mood swings, and emotional instability, making them more imperfect and realistic. This adds depth to the life stages and makes gameplay more interesting.
- Synergy with other packs (weight 0.08): The pack synergizes well with other packs like Growing Together and adds elements that work together for a richer family gameplay experience. This is noted as a positive aspect.
- Technical performance and stability (weight 0.07): At least one reviewer reported no pack-specific bugs on a mid-tier PC, indicating stable performance. This is a positive technical note.

Common complaints:
- Overpriced with little content (weight 0.63): Many reviewers feel the pack does not justify its price due to limited content and features that should have been in the base game. The general sentiment is that it is overpriced for what it offers.
- Bugs and technical issues (weight 0.43): Players report various bugs and crashes, including corrupted save files, time freezes, and Sims AI breaking. These technical problems severely impact the gameplay experience.
- Shallow relationship and trait system (weight 0.4): The system does not deeply develop relationships, and traits have little impact on Sims' behavior. There is no concept of attachment formation, making interactions feel superficial.
- Items and CAS disappointing (weight 0.39): The pack's items are sparse, often recolors, and not well-designed, with some being useless or buggy. The hairstyles and clothing also receive criticism for poor quality.
- Missing expected content (weight 0.3): The pack lacks many features players expected, such as physical punishment, teen problems, and effects of social class. This makes it feel incomplete and unrealistic.
- Parenting skill poorly implemented (weight 0.29): The parenting skill is considered worthless or poorly designed, with limited usefulness outside of infant care and not integrating well with other systems like the nanny job. Its implementation is criticized for being shallow and ineffective.
- Ask Advice causes issues (weight 0.28): The 'Ask Advice' dialogue appears frequently and can drastically alter character values, often knocking them out of trait range. It is also assigned to the parent with lower parenting skill, which can mess up progress.
- Loud trait bug breaks game (weight 0.25): The 'Loud' bug is a persistent issue that cannot be removed through normal means, often requiring disabling the pack. It significantly disrupts gameplay and is widely reported.
- Teen mood swings annoying (weight 0.24): Teen mood swings are overwhelmingly negative, unavoidable, and occur almost daily, even with high emotional control. They add frustration rather than meaningful gameplay.
- No consequences for neglect (weight 0.24): The game lacks meaningful consequences for neglecting children, who grow up normally even in poor conditions. This undermines the simulation aspect and makes parenting feel inconsequential.
- Repetitive and boring gameplay (weight 0.23): Parenting tasks like discipline and education become repetitive and uninteresting. The mechanics do not offer enough variety or depth to keep players engaged.
- Trait values too hard to raise (weight 0.22): Trait values like empathy and manners increase slowly and drop easily, especially during teen years, making progression frustrating. Some temperaments are nearly impossible to obtain without manipulation.
- Random events nonsensical (weight 0.21): Random event choices and outcomes are contradictory and nonsensical, and events like nightmares and thunderstorms are just harassment. They do not add meaningful gameplay.
- Limited target audience (weight 0.18): The pack is only valuable for those who focus on family and generation play; others find it nearly useless. It adds little for players who prefer other playstyles.
- Scolding ineffective and disliked (weight 0.18): Scolding lowers relationships more than neglect and does not teach children to stop bad actions, leading to a sense of futility. It is also limited by timing and can make diligent parents disliked.
- Purchase and support problems (weight 0.18): Some players experienced issues with the game not appearing in their library after purchase and being unable to repurchase. Support was unhelpful in resolving these issues.
- Interactions too few and shallow (weight 0.18): The pack adds only a few dialogue options and interactions, which feel shallow and do not significantly affect gameplay. The parenting system doesn't make parents and children interact meaningfully.
- School phone calls ruin progress (weight 0.14): Phone calls from school are frequent and can cause large drops in trait values, undoing player progress. They become repetitive and frustrating over time.
- Phases buggy and annoying (weight 0.14): Childhood phases, such as the 'bear phase', become intensely annoying and can get stuck, causing Sims to be stuck in them. They are considered more of a nuisance than a feature.

Gameplay feedback:
- Family-focused gameplay (weight 0.95): The pack centers on family gameplay, including raising children, building relationships, and storytelling. It expands interactions and activities for toddlers, children, and teens, making child-rearing less mechanical.
- Character value meters (weight 0.85): Children and teens have five character value meters (e.g., empathy, manners) that increase or decrease based on their actions, parenting, and daily choices. These meters determine which personality trait the Sim receives upon becoming a young adult.
- Discipline and punishment system (weight 0.6): Parents can discipline children and teens using options like yelling, grounding, scolding, or expressing disappointment. The available discipline choices depend on the parent's Parenting skill level, and children can only be scolded when caught in the act due to a time limit.
- Parenting skill added (weight 0.56): The pack introduces a Parenting skill that levels up through caring for children and unlocks additional interactions. Higher skill levels make managing toddlers and babies easier and grant a special all-in-one care interaction at level 9 or 10.
- Phases and mood swings (weight 0.51): Children can enter temporary phases such as Picky Eater or Bear phase, while teens experience mood swings that give a strong negative moodlet. These add realism and challenge to family gameplay.
- New traits and rewards (weight 0.51): The pack adds new personality traits for Sims, including positive and negative upbringing traits awarded based on character values. These traits can help with conflicts and negative emotions, and are described as very powerful.
- Parent-child interactions expanded (weight 0.46): The pack adds many new interactions between parents and children, such as praising, encouraging, asking advice, and packing lunches. These interactions allow players to shape their children's behavior and character values.
- Mess and misbehavior (weight 0.25): Children and toddlers can make messes around the house and engage in naughty behaviors like turning up the radio loudly. Parents must manage these situations as part of the parenting experience.
- Curfew and bulletin board (weight 0.22): Players can set a curfew for children and teens using a family bulletin board object. This adds a new parenting tool to manage household rules.
- School projects and homework (weight 0.22): Children can work on school projects that improve their performance and provide experience for certain skills. Homework also helps improve school grades.
- Toddler and child activities (weight 0.21): New activities for toddlers and children include picking up and feeding toddlers, using a feeding chair, and playing with dolls. These enrich family gameplay.
- Family events and traditions (weight 0.12): The pack adds family events and traditions such as family dinners, game nights, and birthday celebrations. These support storytelling and family bonding.
- Sibling and friend relationships (weight 0.12): The pack includes interactions and relationship dynamics between siblings and friends, expanding social gameplay for younger Sims.
- Parenting difficulty increased (weight 0.12): The pack makes parenting more challenging by adding complex behavior management and potential negative outcomes, such as completely collapsing the parent-child relationship.
- Temperament system (weight 0.07): A temperament system is included, which may influence how children develop and behave. This adds depth to the character value mechanics.
- Superstar parent achievements (weight 0.06): The pack includes achievements for superstar parents, providing goals for players who focus on raising children.
- Large households supported (weight 0.06): The game allows creating households with 7 or more children, enabling large family gameplay.
- Parent identifies with teen (weight 0.06): Parents can identify with their teen's experiences, adding an emotional connection to family gameplay.

Performance notes:
- Frequent bugs force reloads (weight 0.08): Players report encountering bugs that necessitate reloading the game approximately every 10 minutes. This significantly disrupts gameplay and indicates stability issues.
- Save file corruption reported (weight 0.08): Players have experienced corruption of save files, leading to loss of progress. This is a severe issue that can ruin the player experience.
- Time freezes occur (weight 0.08): A bug causes the in-game time to freeze, likely halting progression or breaking timed events. This issue affects core gameplay mechanics.

Recommendations:
- Ideal for Family Gameplay (weight 0.73): The pack is highly recommended for players who enjoy family dynamics, raising children, and generational storytelling. It adds depth to family relationships and parenting experiences.
- Buy Only on Sale (weight 0.52): Multiple reviewers strongly recommend purchasing this pack only during a sale, with many stating it is not worth the full price. Some suggest waiting for discounts before buying.
- Skip if Not Into Families (weight 0.36): Players who do not enjoy family or parenting gameplay are advised to skip this pack, as it offers little value for other playstyles.
- Enhanced Parenting Interactions (weight 0.31): Reviewers appreciate the additional interactions with children and the more in-depth parenting mechanics, which make raising Sims more engaging.
- Compare with Growing Together (weight 0.26): Several reviewers suggest Growing Together for a broader family experience, while Parenthood is recommended for focused parenting and cost-effectiveness.
- Highly Recommended Must-Have (weight 0.22): Some players consider it a must-have and definitely recommend it, especially for those who enjoy playing with children.
- Not Recommended by Some (weight 0.21): A few reviewers do not recommend the pack at all, citing it as worthless or not worth buying, while others call for a boycott.
- No World Included (weight 0.13): The pack does not include a new world, which is a drawback for players who expect one. However, some consider it acceptable if family relationships are the priority.
- Good for Builders and Roleplayers (weight 0.12): Some players find it useful for household roleplaying and building, though opinions vary on its overall impact.
- Realism but Limited Changes (weight 0.12): The pack adds realism to family gameplay but does not bring major changes to the overall game, according to some reviewers.
- Buy in Bundle for Discount (weight 0.07): One reviewer suggests buying the pack in a bundle to get an extra discount, making it more cost-effective.
- Disabling and Modding Functions (weight 0.07): A reviewer considered disabling the pack and uses mods to disable half of its functions, indicating dissatisfaction with some features.
- Positive Recommendation in Turkish (weight 0.06): A Turkish review recommends buying it while it is on sale before a price increase, reflecting a common sentiment.

Other player notes:
- Pairs with Growing Together (weight 0.19): Players recommend combining this pack with the Growing Together expansion for an enhanced family gameplay experience. Some believe it should have been bundled or grouped with that pack.
- Shallow cash grab elements (weight 0.19): Some reviewers criticize the pack's new elements as shallow and feeling like a cash grab compared to previous content.
- Parenthood is cheaper, bundleable (weight 0.18): Parenthood is noted as a cheaper option that can be bundled for additional savings. Bundling provides an extra 15% discount and often includes other packs like Seasons and Tiny Living.
- Content should be base game (weight 0.13): The pack includes content that reviewers feel should have been part of the base game or released as a free update. The content's perceived value is diminished by its separate release.
- Best mini pack for realism (weight 0.13): It is described as the best mini pack for realism, deepening gameplay in ways not really seen before.
- Missing world, requires expansion (weight 0.13): The pack does not include a world, and some players feel another expansion is required for a complete experience.
- Developer leaves bugs unfixed (weight 0.08): The developer is criticized for leaving bugs and needed AI fixes unaddressed, impacting gameplay quality.
- Increases parenting difficulty (weight 0.08): Similar to Growing Together, this pack increases the difficulty of parenting in the game, appealing to players seeking more realistic family challenges.
- Growing Together has split content (weight 0.08): Growing Together was released with obvious split content and no discount for owners of this product, frustrating some players.
- Compared to Sims 3 Generations (weight 0.08): The pack is seen as better than The Sims 3 Generations, offering more punishment options beyond randomly grounding kids from swings or attending school.
- Parenthood focuses toddler to teen (weight 0.08): Parenthood is a Game Pack that specializes in parenting from toddler to teen, distinguishing it from other family-oriented packs.
- Growing Together focuses family bonds (weight 0.08): Growing Together is an Expansion Pack that emphasizes family bonds and infant to child experiences, complementing Parenthood.
- Clutter items add realism (weight 0.08): The clutter items enhance realism in builds, especially useful for players who avoid custom content.
- More content than High School (weight 0.08): Compared to the High School expansion pack, this game pack is perceived to include more content.
- Improves family gameplay experience (weight 0.08): This DLC pack is noted to improve the gaming experience for family gameplay, enhancing overall enjoyment.
- Community popular pack (weight 0.08): One of the more community popular packs, indicating broad approval among players.
- Volume similar to Home Chef Hustle (weight 0.07): The amount of content is comparable to the Home Chef Hustle pack, with some reviewers noting it might be slightly more.
- Doctor toy kit requires other DLC (weight 0.07): The Doctor toy kit easter egg is linked to owning other packs such as Cats and Dogs or Get to Work, requiring additional purchases for full access.
- Includes Business and Hobbies (weight 0.07): The pack includes the Business and Hobbies pack, adding variety to gameplay.

Emotions:
- Enjoyment (weight 0.15): The pack adds fun and depth to parenting through managing adolescence, character traits, and discipline. Players appreciate the immersive Sims 4 parent experience, additional build items, and family gameplay details like projects and sibling relationships.
- Frustration (weight 0.15): Frustration stems from numerous bugs that break the game, such as the 'Loud' childhood trait bug and the baby chair bug requiring manual feeding. Additionally, repetitive and slow meters, failing volunteering events, and annoying children's phases like the 'bear phase' contribute to this emotion.
- Disappointment (weight 0.14): Disappointment arises from the perception that essential content is sold separately as DLC and that long-standing bugs remain unfixed. The parenting DLC is seen as shallow, lacking meaningful attachment and consequences, and the new traits are less impressive than advertised.
- Annoyance (weight 0.1): Annoyance is caused by bugs that make children unlikeable, frequent and repetitive 'Ask Advice' dialogue boxes, and mood swings. The school system ruining child behavior and children making messes also contribute to this feeling.
- Satisfaction (weight 0.04): Satisfaction comes from gameplay that affects Sims' life stages based on childhood and character values, making child-rearing less mechanical. The pack also adds good furniture and buildings for builders.
- Liking (weight 0.04): Liking is driven by the ability to punish children and the realistic impact of childhood and youth on adult Sims. Life stages reflecting how a Sim was raised adds to the appeal.
- Appreciation (weight 0.04): Appreciation is felt for the many ways to interact with and discipline child Sims, as well as the addition of a parenting skill. The pack expands parenting options and adds realism to child-rearing gameplay.
- Boredom (weight 0.03): Boredom results from parenting mechanics becoming repetitive, especially when players pursue efficiency too much. This repetition diminishes the enjoyment of the parenting process.
- Love (weight 0.03): Love is expressed for the high-level parenting interaction that allows caring for babies and infants all at once, making parenting fun and rewarding. The pack improves large family play.
- Anger (weight 0.03): Anger is directed at DLC packs being priced too high for the content they add, feeling like a cash grab. Poor design and split content further fuel this anger.
- Excitement (weight 0.01): Excitement is generated by new options to shape Sims and affect their future traits, adding anticipation for gameplay possibilities.
- Surprise (weight 0.01): Surprise is felt positively when the DLC exceeds expectations, catching players off guard with its quality.
- Pleasant surprise (weight 0.01): Pleasant surprise occurs upon seeing additional panels for children, indicating extra features that were not anticipated.
- Relief (weight 0.01): Relief is experienced because the pack is not just an improvement but a major improvement, alleviating concerns about its quality.
- Irritation (weight 0.01): Irritation is caused by family members getting on nerves and slowing down the Sim during other activities, disrupting gameplay flow.
- Confusion (weight 0.01): Confusion arises from a poorly written task in the Super Parent aspiration, making it unclear what is required.
- Cuteness (weight 0.01): Cuteness is felt from the ability to pack baggie lunches for children, adding an adorable element to gameplay.
- Warmth (weight 0.01): Warmth is evoked by added interactions that make the reviewer feel warm and fuzzy, enhancing emotional engagement.
- Stress (weight 0.01): Stress is caused by children in loud phases triggering neighbor complaints, adding pressure to manage behavior.
- Joy (weight 0.01): Joy comes from the ability to interact with children, bringing happiness through engaging gameplay.}