The shock,
the horror,
the disbelief that I witnessed after opening up The Sims Mobile after today’s client Update. I am still shocked and have no idea where to begin with this article considering that I’ve been enjoying the game since it’s soft-launch release. Sure there were some ups and downs such as replacing Needs with Energy, switching the To-Do List with LlamaZoom and replacing the tickets with LlamaZoom Tokens. Some changes were greeted pleasantly, some were not, but none of that can be compared to what has been done to The Sims Mobile today…
The Requirement to Pay for Individual Swatches
I know – it’s crazy for me to even write that headline without thinking Are they serious?!
But yes, The Sims Mobile now requires you to pay for individual swatches in the game. Those include both the swatches in Build / Buy and the swatches in Create A Sim.
Now, before I dig deeper into what exactly has been changed I want to point out the fact that I’ve reached the maximum Lifestyle Rank in the game – meaning that all of the prices you’ll see down below are really expensive because of it. Lower Lifestyle Ranks can expect lower prices, but still the same requirements such as purchasing Swatches in exchange for Simoleons / SimCash.
Placing items from Build / Buy will now only give you one basic recommended swatch for free. If you want to switch things up with, let’s say, a sofa and change its colors you’d have to click the Swatch button, choose the swatch of your choice and purchase it…individually.
SimCash that you see down below in my game funds have been provided by the EA Game Changers program
That’s right – each individual color has its own price that you’d have to purchase in order to change your desired object’s color. Cheap items will have a lower swatch price tag attached to them while pricier items will require more Simoleons / SimCash.
Some swatches in the game only require Simoleons in order to purchase the desired swatch…
…while some swatches exclusively require SimCash. Want to turn a basic Modern Blue Sofa and only change its color to Black? Well, you’ll need to pay a lot of SimCash for it…
In my case, I had to spend 197 SimCash to only get this one swatch in the game and let me tell you – this is not a cheap price, even for the maximum Lifestyle Rank that I’ve achieved.
This same sofa also has specific swatches which require Simoleons. However, it’s still an extremely expensive price to pay this much Simoleons (and LlamaZoom Tokens) for a simple red color variant…
But don’t worry – Create A Sim items haven’t been left out. There’s a slight advantage with Create A Sim items though and that’s the ability to choose any swatch of your choice without having to purchase the item first.
For example when choosing an outfit you have the ability to first try it on and then select any swatch of your choice before adding it to the Checkout section. The same case goes for all categories in CAS.
There’s a really minor upside to all of this and that’s the fact that all of the items (both CAS and Build / Buy) are now much less expensive than they were before. Also all of the items you’ve purchased before have all of the swatches and do not require you to purchase additional swatches.
I’ve played a lot of Free-To-Play Smartphone Games in my life that had a few money hungry features that I wasn’t really bothered about – but as someone who played The Sims Mobile since soft launch and had strong beliefs that the game won’t go to the extremes with spending currencies and microtransactions I have to say that this change feels like a huge slap to my face.
