THE HORROR: The REAL TS3 Scoop As It Unfolds

[Zarifeke]

What's their relationship bar at? There's probably still a certain relationship progress they have to be at for certain interactions to appear.

Unless of course your couple are already at a high relationship. In that case, something weird is definitely going on, especially if woohoo is showing up but nothing else.

[Insanity Prelude]

Well, okay, they're just at Friend status but I still expected a plain kiss to be available by now.

[rohina]

For those of you who like to express your opinions via Facebook, there is now a group called "The Sims 3 sucks".

[Lum]

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.

That's exactly what happened to me later.

When the interaction showed up, they were best friends and I had the relationship panel all maxed out, since I had them talking and flirting for a few days before that. She had the kiss want for awhile; I didn't control the other sim, so I don't know if he had it too.

Like I said, I was spamming the romantic interactions, then the kiss/confess attraction showed up. I didn't go for it, so continued to spam flirt and other stuff, the other sim thought I was boring, so I blew it. It didn't show up again, no matter how much I tried. That's when I decided to sit them on the couch; kiss and cuddle showed up again, along with make out.

Same thing happened on the bed. However, they were able to kiss normally after kissing/makingout/whoohooing. In fact, I think they fell in love after making out in the couch, when confess attraction showed up again and I used it. Now I'm not sure...

If kiss isn't showing up for you outside the bed/couch, my pet theory is that there's some sort of one-shot deal thing involved between 'true love' and 'fuckbuddy'. Maybe if they don't comply with some sort of invisible love parameters, they stick to fuckbuddydom? Maybe if you don't use kiss right away, you lose it?

Dunno. Further tests are needed.

EDIT:

Well, okay, they're just at Friend status but I still expected a plain kiss to be available by now.

Maybe that's the problem. My couple was maxed out all the way to best friends when the kiss showed up.

[Zarifeke]

Basically this whole system seems to be a pain. Sure I don't mind it so much when I'm still exploring the game and figuring stuff out and not worrying about the socialization so much. But when I want to do story type stuff and not have to go through each tier every single time I want them to do something specific, ugh it's a pain in the butt. 

[Zazazu]

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?

Far as I can see, the only drawback to aging a toddler early is that you don't get to choose the third trait. Since I randomize mine anyway, I don't care. Since babies/toddlers are so damned annoying in TS3, I've been shoving up the social bar always and hunger bar only during the night. And, of course, tweaking the energy bar so they won't sit in their crib until 4:00AM wide awake. There seems to be some magical level of energy that allows them to actually go to sleep. I hate them. Why does my current family have to have a sim with the want for five of them?

Color me unimpressed with the effects of filling a LTW or power wish or whatever they are called. My angler got his 13 perfect fish in fishbowls and all he gets is 40k reward points? At this point he doesn't need rewards! All he has to do is go to work, eat, and piss.

[Zarifeke]

Is it possible to get another lifetime wish after you've already completed one, by grabbing the "change lifetime wish" reward? I'd check myself but I don't have anyone even close to finishing their lifetime wish yet.

[Blaise]

I have played it this evening and my initial impression is that the Sims' heads, once in game, truly look doughy and demented. I had all settings maxed as I have a brand new computer with 4gb ram.

I just could not get over how the look and move. Although I did encounter a cool looking sim named "Gunther". :-)

I agree with another poster who said that s/he could not connect with the Sims because of they way they look. I will be going back to TS2 and keeping this on the virtual shelf until, or if, mods and CC come out.

The world itself is very pretty, but since I cannot make my own custom hood, the pretty does not hold enough appeal to make the game cost worth it. (If I were to buy it, which I am not going to.)

[Tigerlilley]

The way they move is awful.  Jerky, weird, ugh.  This is definitely been another minimum effort from EA.   

[BlueSoup]

Is it possible to get another lifetime wish after you've already completed one, by grabbing the "change lifetime wish" reward? I'd check myself but I don't have anyone even close to finishing their lifetime wish yet.

I've finished several lifetime wishes, I'll test this out soon with one of my Sims.

Edit:  Actually, that particular lifetime reward seems to be gone for both my adult Sims.  Guess you can't do it :\

[spookymuffin]

I finally managed to fix my game (managed to get a corrupt install two times in a row) and I've been playing for most of the last 24 hours.

I like the game. I suppose that I'll do up a list of what I like and what I don't, just because all the cool kids are doing it.

I liked:

• Moodlets. They are more dynamic and realistic than I had expected.
• The expanded interactions. Sure, "ask about day" and "enthuse about house" may both be more or less identical interactions but it does manage to give the impression that you can now do more than just chain chat/hang out/gossip until the sims are friends.
• I like the rabbit holes. My reasons are more or less the same as expressed by Pescado above. I don't want to watch my sim shop or take a cooking class.
• The new labels in the relationship panel. Husband/wife rather than "married", daughter/son rather than the generic "family" label.
• The eye textures. I know that most of you seem to hate them but, in fairness, they look a lot better than the default eyes in TS2. They also, coincidentally, resemble one of my favourite eye-sets from TS2.
• The CAS. Contrary to popular opinion, I don't think that it's all that hard to make a unique sim. Although I would recommend putting the "head width" slider all the way to the left to get rid of the whole fat-head thing.
• It's great that going to a community lot is so easy now. My sims never used to leave their homes unless it was necessary because it was such a pain in the ass to get anywhere.
• That it feels different. I was becoming so bored with TS2 that I'm glad that this is more of an overhaul than just "TS2 with better graphics".
• The fact that the rest of the neighbourhood looks after itself and continues on without me. As someone who rarely plays more than one or two families seriously I'm really loving this new element of gameplay.
  I mean, if I really want to have full control again I can always fire up TS2. It's not like I can't have both of them installed at the same time.

I didn't like:

• The fact that hair, eye and skin colour don't have genetic values anymore. I understand that it would have been very difficult to give them fixed values now that we can pick from such a huge range of colurs but I'm sure that there could have been a way to work around that. They could have given us a genetic slider so that we could assign specific pigment dominance at our own discretion, it would have been nice to be able to make some eyes really dominant and others extremely recessive.
• The skin tones are awful. I'm really hoping that people will find a way to override textures in the game in the near future. They are just too low-res and plain for my taste.
• Animation glitches. Hopefully this will be fixed in a patch.
• Gender is not taken into account when a child is being assigned its facial structure. There is no effort to feminise inherited masculine traits or vice-versa, there are so many little girls running around with manly jaw lines.
• Lack of hair/clothes meshes. A minor gripe and one that I know will be rectified in later EPs.

All in all, I think that I'm going to enjoy playing this almost as much as I enjoyed playing TS2 when it first came out.

[lindaetterlee]

I never realized how much I missed the maxmotive cheat.

[blackcat]

I never realized how much I missed the maxmotive cheat.

You can still do it wil testingcheatsenabled true and then shift click the mailbox or drag motives bar.

[aussieone]

I've started up the TS3 on four separate occasions and played for a couple of hours each time.

When I've played,  it has felt like I have to spend time with with people I really do *not* want to hang out with.

Then I've quit the game, fired up TS2 and it has felt like "Honey, I'm home!"

Maybe it's too big of a change for me; maybe the game sucks donkey's balls; but I really can't see myself warming to TS3 anytime soon.

[BlueSoup]

Does anyone know how to actually work this stupid food replicator?  Figured it out.  What a pain in the ass these things are.

[jello]

The way they move is awful.  Jerky, weird, ugh.  This is definitely been another minimum effort from EA.   

It seems that there are two different "walk" animations: one of them is a power walk, which is ugly, blocky, and hideous. This is likely the one you're talking about.

The other walk is a normal walk, and it looks nice and *human*. Sadly, it seems that sims will rarely do this one except for short distances (i.e. walking to a bookshelf in the same room).

If we can find some way to put in a mod that eliminates that power walk, I'm all for it. I don't care that the normal walk is slower, at least it isn't an eyesore.

[Dizzymental]

Well I'm just wondering, maybe all these bugs, like the speed problem, the graphic glitches, etc. are caused by the crack you're all using. I don't mean the stuff you buy on the street. The crack that comes with the torrent download is probably suspect and that's why you're all experiencing these bugs in the game.

I remember the missing build mode in the crack for Sims 2 when it first appeared on torrent.

[rufio]

Question for people who have installed:

How many gigs of free space are required to install the game?  I finally got the rar downloaded and unrared it, but copying the "disc" contents in order to circumvent the spyware wrapper resulted in a "Oops, you're out of disc space!" message.  I wound up moving the iso onto my external drive and deleting all TS3-related stuff from my main drive.  Is 5-6 gigs enough?  If not, I might have to rearrange some more stuff, or install on my external drive.  Why the heck do games have to be so huge anyway?  I have an incredibe game installed on this computer that takes up a wopping 700 MB of disc space.

It is partially my fault for partitioning my disc two or three ways, but I need my linux, and 70 GB should have been enough, dammit.

ETA:  So, I'm 700 MB short.  Fuck it, I'll just put it on my external drive.  It doesn't sound like I'll be keeping it long anyway.

[blackcat]

Main folder takes 5.59 GB. And save games and crap folder that's in My documents takes about 700-900 Mb. I also suspect that there are hidden folders with temp cache like in Spore, and god knows how much space they might take.

Edit: It seems as cache file is in saves folder for everyone to see. At least I didn't find anything hidden away.

ETA:
I am confused.
I tried to move my family to another home. I used a computer, checked “pack furniture” option, and then I had to choose a house to move in, but I can’t buy it unfurnished.
I also tried to evict them and then to move in (through “edit town”), but I can’t pack furniture  

Also I can’t figure out how available funds are calculated:
A: House unfurnished: 12782; number from buy mode
B: House furnished: 17402; number from buy mode
C: Free cash: 7649
D: House value: 16759; number from moving out menu
Available funds to buy a new home with furniture packed: 17349 (A+C = 20431. 3000$ difference!!)
Available funds to buy a new home: 24408 (B+C= 25051; D+C= 24408)

Numbers just don’t add up  
Maybe I don’t get paid for bushes and trees? Maybe the numbers from buy mode are without depreciation? I have no idea.
Still it seems impossible to move out with packed furniture and to move into an empty house, unless you pack furniture manually OR empty the destined house manually.

[nekonoai]

Cool, my sim started a fire on the stove and it burnt the counter next to it too!  Way more realistic.

Lucky! I haven't even SEEN a fire yet.

Has anyone gotten triplets yet?

pianos missing

Yeah, why aren't there any instruments that kids can play? This is not acceptable!

Why does my current family have to have a sim with the want for five of them?

Five? mine wants 10! And he's not even a Fambly sim!

[Gelina]

I think I found a bug.  I was playing one household that had 3 children in it, then I switched to playing a different household.  When I switched back to the first household, it was time for all 3 of the children to grow up (1 to adult, 2 to teens).  Apparently when you don't babysit your family, the children's grades tank which means that you don't get to pick their traits on their birthday.  So I aged up all three children and their new trait was randomly picked.  All three of them ended up with the "artistic" trait, which is alphabetically the first trait.

[mistyk]

I only played for a few minutes last night, before my daughter took it over, she played for a while. (will find out how she liked it when she wakes up).
 
I did notice a few differences though. When I played I just wanted to check it out so I just grabbed the Martinez family from the bin and plopped them in a house. I played the female, I think her name was Jennifer, and when I clicked on her it gave options to go to the park, public pool, etc.
 
When my daughter started she created a female in CAS, moved her in, and the only option she got when clicking on the sim was to change clothes.
She came from CAS with 2 books in her inventory and all she wanted to do was read.

I thought this was strange, for hers not to have the same options.


I wonder if the other hood will be easier to play, without all the forced control over the game. They have time to sneak some fixes into that download...I hope.

[abaris]

Well I'm just wondering, maybe all these bugs, like the speed problem, the graphic glitches, etc. are caused by the crack you're all using. I don't mean the stuff you buy on the street. The crack that comes with the torrent download is probably suspect and that's why you're all experiencing these bugs in the game.

That's a little bit far fetched. A crack changing animations would be a wondrous being.

[blackcat]

I tried to figure out, how available funds are calculated and here’s what I found out:
Variables:
A = House unfurnished – see in buy mode. This is NOT a price of a bare house. It includes kitchen and bathroom furniture, similar to AL, includes also trees, bushes, flowers, driveway, ceiling, wall and outdoor lights.
B = House furnished - see in buy mode, includes everything.
C = Free cash.
D = House value - from moving out menu. There is a slight difference from B sometimes, but I can’t figure out why.
E = House value unfurnished - can’t see from moving out menu, but it is the price of a bare house, with NO furniture, includes trees, bushes and flowers.

Calculation:

Available funds to buy a new home with furniture packed and selling only a house: E+C
Available funds to buy a new home with selling furnished: D+C

So if you want to change a house, you should not base your decision on buy/build mode number, but instead try to move out with the computer and check numbers there. And when choosing a house keep in mind that unfirnished house still includes appliances and lights.

[carliegirl]

Thank you everyone for giving such good details. I have a question, though, that one of you might be able to help me with. Did anyone get a box saying that you have to connect to the internet while on the loading screen? And if so, how did you get past this? I would greatly appreciate the help.

Thank You.