Dream Hideaway: Beauty Over Function
by Burbie52, HSM team writer
I love Lockwood products.
I want everyone to know that I believe that they are one of the best developers in Home when it comes to design, especially with their clothing lines. They have some of the most innovative personal spaces as well, and they are very good at rewarding the guest and owners when you buy them. This new Dream Hideaway is no exception, but it also has a few flaws that need to be pointed out.
One of the first impressions I got when I was invited to a friend’s Dream Hideaway was, this is way too big. The apartment dwarfs all of the others before it in terms of sheer floor space, and though it has a lot of burned in furniture, it still looks empty when you finish decorating it. A friend gifted me the apartment the other day, and with the inventory bug that everyone is experiencing right now from the 1.75 update, it took me the better part of a day to complete decorating mine. And, once it was done, it still looked empty. I wish they would have toned down the size of the house, and used the memory for something else, such as letting us explore the scenery. After all, this is a “hideaway” — a place where you escape to get away from it all. It doesn’t have to be a mansion.
Frank Lloyd Wright home
That said, the design of the space is magnificent. I felt like I was in a famous architect’s home. It’s very Frank Lloyd Wright, with sweeping curved lines and a wonderful setting around it, but that is all I can say about it. There is no extra functionality built in. There’s no swimming in the pool or in the surrounding pond, which you can’t even walk into. You can’t turn the lights off or on, and all of the lighting is built in, so putting your own out is a waste of a furniture slot. Perhaps Lockwood has spoiled us — we are now used to their personal spaces having some of their innovative bells and whistles, such as a swimming locomotion, a day-night control or a built-in mini-game. In many ways, this space returns to the older aesthetic of Home personal spaces — a pretty box you can decorate. Frankly, that’s not as special as it used to be.
The fact they have burned in so much of the furniture is both a turn-off for many and a godsend for the Home decorator. It isn’t quite as bad as the Mansion was in the “here’s your furniture — now enjoy it!” aesthetic, but it comes close. Without the burned in couches, kitchen and lighting, it would be next to impossible to decorate the space at all. If they had downsized the house, made the outside environment accessible and built in some diurnal control and other functions with the memory they saved, it would have been a much better choice in my opinion. I am one of those people who likes to make a space their own, as are many of the decorators I know, and having all of that furniture look the same for everyone is a bad choice for a decorator. It makes it harder to add your own personality, especially if you don’t really love the sleek ultra-modern look. Once again, this space really needed to be smaller. Bigger isn’t always better.
The new apartment that Granzella just released, the “City of Flowers,” has set a new bar for Home personal spaces with its deep customization. A sleek, pretty box isn’t going to cut it anymore with those who buy personal spaces in Home. I love the fact that this is a Gift Machine item, and it was probably a smart move on Lockwood’s part to do this, as I think they have probably sold more apartments that way than they would have through normal sales.
Door too small, no spawning spot.
There is one other problem that came up when I was decorating: spawning spots. When a space is this large, there should be spawning spots in every room, not just the three that they gave us. It takes a lot of your precious time to move things around when you are working on a decorating scheme.
But that isn’t the only problem in furniture movement. The two rooms intended as bedrooms, the smaller rooms on the left side of the space, have doorways so small that it is impossible to put anything large into the rooms. This includes the bed that is rewarded in the space itself — an obvious mistake on the designers’ part. I had to play a meta game of pushing a bed sideways through the door to even get one in there, unless I wanted to use a very small bed that looked entirely out of place in such opulent settings.
This is an obvious design flaw that should be fixed. The same thing happened at the Sodium Blaster space, where we couldn’t move larger pieces through the circular ramps to the beach areas. A new spawning spot should be added to each of the smaller rooms as soon as the space can be refreshed.
For the most part, I love the space and I appreciate the gift I was given. I won’t look a gift horse in the mouth, but with all of the new technology that Home now supplies developers, and with more to come in the future, I think they need to rethink their new designs and give us less size and more functions. Those are the kinds of places that people will want to revisit. We want our spaces to have something special, not just floor space. Looking pretty simply isn’t good enough anymore.
- Design is incredible, beautiful to a fault.
- Has nice sounds built into environment.
- Built in furniture helps some.
- Fourteen rewards attached.
- Way too big to decorate properly.
- Spawning spots too few.
- No real functionality built in.
February 22nd, 2013 by Burbie52 | 3 comments
Burbie52 is a 62 year-old published author and founder of the Grey Gamers group within Home. Born and raised in Michigan, she has lived there her entire life, with the exception of a twelve-year residency on the Big Island of Hawaii. She enjoys reading and writing, as well as video games, especially RPG's. She has one son in his twenties.
Share
| Tweet |
Great review with many valid points, I’ll make sure the team sees this -- thanks Burbie52!
Also, we’ve already added more furniture spawn locations and enabled swimming in the pool. We’re just waiting for Sony to approve and publish these updates.
I have to admit, I was a little bummed out when Lockwood missed the ball with a few common things on this place.
great review Burbie. What I WAS going to say, was that water looks way to cool not to swim in, but now I am going to say Thanks Tim and team Lockwood for opening that up for us.
This is such a good example of why Home is such an amazing place as it is right there!