Why Do Venue Types Exist? Businesses and Hobbies??? (Patreon)

Have you seen my Venue Series? It explains why Venues exist across all packs. Venues are complex and have a number of special features spawning certain sims and giving them certain behaviors.

...But Businesses and Hobbies just came out and EA actively encourages you to make custom owned venues with it, by handing out presets meant to mimic the existing venue types. From Bars to Arts Centers to Rec Centers, there are presets designed to replace a venue entirely.

So what's the deal here? Do old venues still have a reason to exist? Are they any different with Businesses and Hobbies installed? Do Businesses and Hobbies have upsides and downsides regular venues don't have?

Do old venues still have a reason to exist?

Yes and no? It depends on what you want to use them for. For example, Museums spawn Art Mentors...but do you need a mentor when your custom Museum can have an employee teach classes in specific, chosen skills? Not necessarily. But maybe you don't want a complex interactive museum and are just ok with the base one. It still has features that a B&H Museum won't- like the Art Society from DU having meetings there, or Archaeologists getting special buffs. But neither of those are really super necessary features. So it's a toss up.

Some venue features are useful and are not found in custom owned venues- like Bar Nights, Gym Trainers, Bowling Teams, Master Fishermen, Pools not having adverse temperature effects active... Really, it's up to you to understand what a venue does (BY READING MY POSTS ABOUT THEM!) and figure if you will be missing any of their features.

Are they any different with Businesses and Hobbies installed?

YES!

There are in fact new features on existing venues with Businesses and Hobbies! If you place a Tattoo table in a Bar, for example, it'll spawn a Tattoo Artist!

I haven't done a deep dive into other changes, but watch this space! I'll make a new post when I do. This post is just to remind you that venues have purpose and that I catalogued them all!

Do Businesses and Hobbies have upsides and downsides regular venues don't have?

The biggest upside is that you can customize what Sims do there. When not actively running one, it uses the last assigned activity set- so you can make a Museum where the guests are encouraged to view collectibles, and fish- and then put fish all over the walls, which will create a marine life taxidermy museum. Just one goofy example. That's not how a normal Museum would work. A Maker Space normally has mentors help you with fabrication, handiness, etc. But now you can make a learning center with 6 employees assigned to 6 different class types with a whiteboard that only affords those classes as options, and it can be non-crafty things like Dancing or Piano or Pet Training.

And when you ARE actively running one, you can decide the activities on the fly- and Sims will adapt! Which is a massive, massive, massive feature. You can make presets for different times of day and swap them at will. You can make presets for different activity rooms and move sims between them by changing the active set. It's really crazy.

The biggest downside IMO is that the venue must be owned by an existing Sim, and that the venue won't spawn "special" visitors. Arguably, the special Sims spawned by venues are kind of invisible and most players don't know they even exist. Like you can't really tell that a Sim is this or that type of gym visitor. Are you really engaged knowing that there's fitness buffs and lazy sims going to the gym for two different things- hardcore workouts and kinda just hanging out? Not really.

It's up to you, I think. Luckily for you I have those full scope guides explaining each venue. So if you read what a venue does and think you'll live without those special features- go for it! Make a custom one!