THE HORROR: The REAL TS3 Scoop As It Unfolds

[crunk]

Still slowly downloading , but reading about the pathing /routing does this basically mean we have to go back to Sims1 style and put 2 doors in every room so they can move in and out properly .

Routing issues/bathroom issues, let me sho u them:
http://i44.tinypic.com/1z6yyat.jpg (Sorry, the picture is enormous.)

One interesting thing about aging kidlets: you can age them at any time as long as you don't mind 'negative' traits. I did that with this family's youngest set of twins. One was assigned the cowardly trait, the other the technophobe trait. Still - they were able to feed themselves, so I was happy. You may be able to pick traits if they have been taught all toddler skills.

[Scotty]

Yep, they still stomp their stupid feet when they cant get to something. I thought they were supposed to be smarter? And their need bars drop FAST. I gave a couple of them iron bladders with their reward points, so at least they dont have to pee anymore.

[Lerf]

This is awful.  I'm a respectable coven-going middle aged lady.  And I'm seriously considering downloading pirated softwar.  (Of course 80% of the software I had for my C vic-20 and C65, and my Amiga was pirated, but that was different.  Sorta.....

[coltraz]

Remember one of the very first pictures of TS3 we saw that showed a fireplace with half-grid tile placed around it? Yeah, impossible to do in the end. 

[rohina]

Well I guess that's why they call them bugs hehe.

It's not really a good idea to talk illegal stuff on any forum really, other than here (or anywhere where the hosting company doesn't care).  It can affect their hosting agreements, their relationships with the EA bastards, etc.  You might not have been talking about playing it, but knowing a lot about the workings of the game does imply you obtained it illegally, doesn't it?

Oh, I agree you should always be cautious when talking to people online. I have a personal rule not to take advice from known headcases.

[Kyna]

This is awful.  I'm a respectable coven-going middle aged lady.  And I'm seriously considering downloading pirated softwar.  (Of course 80% of the software I had for my C vic-20 and C65, and my Amiga was pirated, but that was different.  Sorta.....

You can't fool us with that veneer of respectability.  We've noticed that if we say your name backwards it's actually a cuss-word from Farscape.

[linz]

So I Have been playing TS3 for about 3 days now and here are some thoughts and issues I have.

My ultra speeds are not working well either and my computer is is well above the recommended specs.

My sims are spawning children randomly and are also only showing up with one parent. (its like the Virgin Mary only its the Virgin Sims!) one instance I can explain sort of is: SimFemale1 was married to SimMale1 and got pregnant, SimMale1 cheated and got SimFemale2 pregnant, SimFemale1 "divorced" SimMale1 before giving birth. Once both SimFemales gave birth SimFemale1 was the only parent showing for her child while SimFemale2's child had her and SimMale1 showing up as parents (SimFemale2 and SimMale1 were never married).

I'm not sure if that happened in TS2 but if you buy an inferno birthday cake you can have you sim blow out the candles and age before it is even their birthday.

I HATE that the stairs cannot be recolored.

You can't lock out sims from different rooms. This is a feature I love from TS2. The only thing I've noticed is that if you select a sim and bring up the pie chart from another sims bed it asks if you want to sleep in that particular sims bed.

No HotTub! I am disappointed! and also the pool ladder cannot be recolored as well, I had made a very natural looking pool using stone and pebble tile and wallpaper and with the bright blue steps it looks ridiculous. I have to admit I am nit picky about color matching, but then again i am also a Graphic Designer So small inconsistencies jump out at me and drive me nuts.

[Driskoll Xun]

I find the population cap (8 times the # of private lots) to be good.  The population for ghosts looks limitless, however.  Do the ghosts breed on their own?  Do NPC's breed at all?

[Scotty]

And there is no diving board either. And if you remove the ladder, Sims can still get out. That was always my favorite way of getting rid of unwanted Sims. They ruined my fun!

[Rockermonkey]

in TS2 you could grow up a day before their birthday. The hottubs and pianos missing bothers me sooo much. Grrr. But the game looks good.

[Lerf]

This is awful.  I'm a respectable coven-going middle aged lady.  And I'm seriously considering downloading pirated softwar.  (Of course 80% of the software I had for my C vic-20 and C65, and my Amiga was pirated, but that was different.  Sorta.....

You can't fool us with that veneer of respectability.  We've noticed that if we say your name backwards it's actually a cuss-word from Farscape.

It is?  Oh, coooool!

I just asked my husband if I could dl it--he's the one who'll have to fix any messes I make in the course of so doing and he said he prefered not to have to de-virus me if I goofed up.  Now, I understand his reluctance.  We spent most of Thanksgiving weekend removing something called Vundo from my machine, and he spends much too much time on weekends fixing his Dad's computer because if his Dad see's a popup saying, "Want a virus that will wipe your hard-drive? Click here." he will click on it."  (FIL also doesn't believe in firewalls, or rather he believes in them until a virus tells him to turn it off.)  So, I think I'll give it a miss.

[seanachai]

Oh Lerf, I had that awful Vundo Trojan on my laptop this past fall. I gave up and just did a fresh install. First time I've ever had a really bad virus on a computer, I'm usually really good about it.

I have a question for those with the game ... I don't think it has been answered yet. Is there same sex marriage in the game? Is it still "joined unions"? Or is it (gulp) not in there at all?

[TashaYarrr]

Maybe this is one of those things that everyone knows but me--is it an entirely different design team or creative director (or whatever) behind sims 3 vs sims 2? A lot of details just seem oddly different from what you'd expect (the forced female maternity leave mentioned in another thread is what got me wondering, along with lots of other franchise trademarks that really ought to be there but aren't).

I know the two aren't completely analogous, but it's sounding like Sims 3 is to Sims Franchise as SimCity Societies is to SimCity Franchise?

ETA: I know people are understandably reluctant, but just go to a well-known torrent site (not sure I can be specific here) and read the comments. It's really unlikely the highly-seeded ones (i.e., the ones that shows lots of downloads) will have virus or trojans without someone having caught it and commented already. Other than that you really only need two pieces of software (probably daemon tools and winrar, both of which are legit and can be gotten for free directly from their publishers). Well, and a torrent downloader.

Honestly, leaving ethics out of the question, which I like to do in this situation, getting arr'd stuff is way more akin to "just be an informed consumer" than "walk alone through the bad part of town at night and hope to god you don't get mugged." The torrent sites stay up because they're making money. (Or I suppose some of them have altruistic reasons). Either way they have a vested interest in making sure the torrents associated with them don't cause your computer to explode into, well, a fiery ball visible from space. And the community, via comments and whatnot, tends to be self-correcting. I'm definitely going to hell for my arring if hell exists, and I've yet to create a fiery ball visible from space. A firewall and common sense go a long way.

[coltraz]

Anyone know why there is no ceiling in my house? I put flooring above it to make a ceiling below and the roof disappears, I put the roof back and if the tiles are there it won't get on the house. Then, if I remove the flooring and put the roof back on there is no ceiling!

Also, does anyone have this problem ... hairstyles from far away have white speckles in them. When I zoom in they clear up.

[Insanity Prelude]

A couple of random "why"s:

Why do children have their own cell phones?

Do all females get a positive moodlet for being pregnant? That just doesn't sit right with me. For one thing, the third trimester just seems like it'd be too damn uncomfortable to make someone auto-happy. (then again, I say that as someone who doesn't have and doesn't want kids- what do I know, right?)

Why so many damn rabbit holes? The jobs, I can understand, no one really wants to watch their Sim sit at a cubicle. But restaurants and stores were fully playable community lots in the previous games. Is it just laziness that made them do it this way? (Probably.)


TashaYarr- yeah, instead of Will Wright they've got Rod Humble. actually, this may have been the case for a while, I'm not entirely sure.

[Sigmund]

Why so many damn rabbit holes? The jobs, I can understand, no one really wants to watch their Sim sit at a cubicle. But restaurants and stores were fully playable community lots in the previous games. Is it just laziness that made them do it this way? (Probably.)

Looking back, TS2 base game didn't have much for community lots either, those mostly came from NL. Probably just another example of EA intentionally limiting the game so they can cash in on it later.

[Kyna]

I saw a few of those promo interviews and articles.  Somehow I always assumed the rabbit holes would only apply to sims' workplaces (since they're mostly boring places that we wouldn't want to go to anyway), not to the community lots (that we've always been able to go to in TS2, even with just the base-game).

[chaos]

I suspect that the (over)use of rabbit holes is partially from laziness, but also to conserve resources. Community lots, especially large ones, used to cause major lag on my old computer. EA knows that they'd be shooting themselves in the foot (feet?) if their new toy game required players to buy a whole new rig just to play it. I figure that they decided to cut corners help players conserve RAM by replacing potentially lag-inducing interactive lots with rabbit holes. That's merely a guess, mind you.

[J. M. Pescado]

Personally, I am pro-rabbit-hole. All the rabbit holes are things that either we never had in TS2 to begin with, or are things so utterly boring that we made hacks just to avoid having to do it. See: Grocery shopping, buying crap, etc. All these things in TS3 have been turned into rabbit holes, because, frankly, we never actually liked doing those things to begin with!

[chaos]

Can't argue with logic like that.

[EsotericPolarBear]

Personally, I am pro-rabbit-hole. All the rabbit holes are things that either we never had in TS2 to begin with, or are things so utterly boring that we made hacks just to avoid having to do it. See: Grocery shopping, buying crap, etc. All these things in TS3 have been turned into rabbit holes, because, frankly, we never actually liked doing those things to begin with!

Although I do miss being able to run my own store/restaurant/whathaveyou rather than being an otherwise uninvolved "partner".

[laylei]

I've been playing it for most of the day today (though I can tell it'll get old fast). There are so many things that annoy me. I miss macrotastics so much- especially macro/socialize, because nothing is more fun than jumping from household to household trying to get four teenagers at four different schoolmates' houses to make friends. I've taken to simply playing with testingcheatsenabled always on, so I can drag the mood bars up, else they spend so much time sleeping and eating and peeing that there is no time for anything else.

Is anyone else immensely annoyed by the limitations on toddlers? They can only earn 3 points in logic and music, and then what? The playtable does nothing. After getting their six points and talking/walking/pottying, you're stuck with another 2-3 days of absolutely nothing (and man, do I miss Inge's bottomless bottle and the sleeping mat/dog beds. I'd forgotten how annoying toddlers are when they're not self-sufficient). I used testingcheatsenabled to force age my triplets to childhood, because I didn't feel like dealing with 3 cakes, but then they were unable to go to school until the time when they would have aged to childhood naturally. So annoying.

[Lum]

So. Played some more for a few hours. I've warmed up to the game somewhat, since I managed to get an evil sim and a good sim in love and later married. (Wasn't that difficult, but it took me a bit to figure it out.) Lack of wedding arch is so lame, lack of wedding-dress-like clothes is saddening...

Also, I figured out that after flirting for awhile, you CAN get the other sim in the mood... both the 'kiss' and 'confess attraction' showed up after some flirting. I assumed that once there, they would stay there; but no. I repeated other romantic interactions, spammed them actually, then the other sim got bored and both 'kiss' and 'confess attraction' disappeared. In other words, I ruined the moment. I had to sit them in the couch and do other stuff so they would show up again. Everything was smooth sailing from then.

Also, I don't like it the whole 'building outline loads first, then it gets filled with detail'. Once I fooled around with the settings, it became more acceptable; currently, I set it up as make everything non-detailed except the current lot and the sims, just so I could avoid the eyesore. It could be that my graphic card is made of fail, though. Meh.

I also like the houses. In fact, I want to recreate them on Sims 2.

[BlueSoup]

Is anyone else immensely annoyed by the limitations on toddlers? They can only earn 3 points in logic and music, and then what? The playtable does nothing. After getting their six points and talking/walking/pottying, you're stuck with another 2-3 days of absolutely nothing (and man, do I miss Inge's bottomless bottle and the sleeping mat/dog beds. I'd forgotten how annoying toddlers are when they're not self-sufficient). I used testingcheatsenabled to force age my triplets to childhood, because I didn't feel like dealing with 3 cakes, but then they were unable to go to school until the time when they would have aged to childhood naturally. So annoying.

Babies and toddlers are at that age for way too damn long.  I got so bored and annoyed with them.  I was able to send them to the cake early though, and then send them to school.  Maybe the school thing was messed up because you used testingcheats and they borked that?

[Insanity Prelude]

How'd you get them to be able to kiss? I have a pair of sims up to "Y thinks X is very alluring" and they can woohoo all they like, but unless they're cuddling in bed (or presumably on the couch) the option to kiss is nowhere to be found.