THE HORROR: The REAL TS3 Scoop As It Unfolds

[vecki]

So, if I'm figuring correctly, it would cost $80 ($79.75) to buy everything up on the Sims 3 Store right now.  For the cost of 2 regular Sims 2 EP's you get 142 items, 16 outfits and 11 hairs and 0 new features. Fuck EA.
<snip>

First we get bugs, and only half of the game. And now they expect us to pay ransom for the second half of the game?  How stupid do they think we are?  

... I'd say about as stupid as your average BBSer.

[Avi]

I'll volunteer to share!  I preordered the collector's edition and it should be arriving on the 2cd.  What they're doing with the Sims Store is just not right; it was bad before but now it's just unbelievable.  How greedy can one company be?  Granted, all I can promise is to hand it over.  I have no modding knowledge and would have no clue how to make unsharable content sharable.

Now to back up a bit . . .

Dunno if anyone has mentioned it, but seeing how some of you think that is sexist for EA to make the game force maternity leave and all..

I have a sim who Dislikes Children, she gets a negative moodlet every time she is around a kid. She got pregnant, and when she started showing and got the pregnancy moodlet, its positive and she has the wish to read a pregnancy book and to have a girl. Why? Do ALL female sims like being pregnant? I thought having the Dislikes children trait would make it a negative thing, but its not. I don't get it.

Yeah, I agree.  I find this fact really sexist and presumptive.  I'm glad you let me know the "Dislikes Children" trait didn't make a difference . . .  *sigh.*  This is totally not the way I play.  My Sims are mostly gay/lesbian and adopt rarely and the straight couples don't have kids.  The only time I play with babies, toddlers & kids is if they're already at Maxis created characters lots or on the rare occasion it makes sense for the story I'm creating.  You can imagine my horror when I left my SelfSim for one Simday while I played a bit with another family and returned to find her preggers.  Ugh!  Do not want!  What was EAxis thinking???  Can't wait for some sort of birth control hack or something if the final cut is anywhere near this one regarding pregnancy.

I am slightly warming up to the game, but the Sims are more or less still fugly though I managed to create a half-way decent Draco Sim.  I like the moodlets and the expanded traits as well as the variety of food and books.  I don't like the overuse of the rabbit hole buildings and how long it takes for Sims to be at work or sleep.  It's pretty boring to watch nothing basically when both of your Sims are at work for 7 or 8 Simhours.  :^\  I definitely don't like the aforementioned magical happy pregnancy shit.  No thank you!  Also don't like the forced Legacy style play.  That's totally NOT how I play my game.  I usually play each family in a neighborhood for a SimWeek at a time before I switch.

I haven't had any of the weird glitches yet . . .  worst thing that happened was my game 'sploded spontaneously to nothing.  It just blinked out, not even typical crash style.  Only happened once, though.  I believe like a lot of you here now that this definitely can't be the final cut, more like a leaked preview.  Dear god, I hope so!

[Raicuparta]

Riverview is free, so if annyone manages to download it share it as soon as possible!

[WearsHighHeels]

I'm getting really tired of the "feature" which causes my Sims to leave town. It irks me that after spending time creating them, and fostering a career and relationships they can just pack up and go. I have been losing my Sims left and right only to have them replaced by townies, and my Sims spawning. They need some sort of "lock household" feature. The only thing I am liking about the new game is that I can move Sims into a lot and not have to actually enter the lots.

The hair styles all look like they were developed as a collaboration between Peggy and XM Sims. Really the whole games reeks of having been cooked up by a team of pay site artists. The hair styles for sale in the store do not look any better.

Another thing this game is in serious want of is an eyedropper tool for the paint workshop. Is there one and I am too blind to see it? It would be fair easier to grab color off an object to match it than have to save the pattern.

[Roflganger]

Another thing this game is in serious want of is an eyedropper tool for the paint workshop. Is there one and I am too blind to see it? It would be fair easier to grab color off an object to match it than have to save the pattern.

Pick the object that you want to copy the color (or color scheme) or texture from.  The horizontal palette above the color wheel should display the color channels used.  Simply drag the color you want from the palette onto the object you want to update.  If the object has multiple channels, it will let you pick which one to replace.

If you want to copy the whole scheme, kit and caboodle, the vertical palette has a "grippy" corner that you can click then drag to the object you're updating.  Somewhere around here someone explained this in pictures, but it's fairly straightforward.  The only real hassle is that it tends to be a bit sluggish, at least for me.

[iHateyou]

I'm getting really tired of the "feature" which causes my Sims to leave town. It irks me that after spending time creating them, and fostering a career and relationships they can just pack up and go. I have been losing my Sims left and right only to have them replaced by townies, and my Sims spawning. They need some sort of "lock household" feature. The only thing I am liking about the new game is that I can move Sims into a lot and not have to actually enter the lots.

The hair styles all look like they were developed as a collaboration between Peggy and XM Sims. Really the whole games reeks of having been cooked up by a team of pay site artists. The hair styles for sale in the store do not look any better.

Another thing this game is in serious want of is an eyedropper tool for the paint workshop. Is there one and I am too blind to see it? It would be fair easier to grab color off an object to match it than have to save the pattern.

There's no eyedropper, but you can use the create a style edit feature to go into the object that has your desired texture, drag it out of CAS onto the item you want to inherit that texture. You'll then get a pop up asking which place on the new object to put that texture. I hope that made sense... I've been awake all night.

[phyllis_p]

I didn't want to post this in the "rigorous genetic testing" thread, since it didn't conform to the standards of the test and since the test is over anyway.  However, I did want to share my andecdotal evidence.

Founding generation:  Holden - dark brown hair; Gwen - red hair

1st generation:
  Single birth: Grant - red hair (married Felicia, lighter red hair)
  Twins:  Moira - dark brown hair (married Claudio, black hair); Angelica  - dark brown hair (married Patrick, black hair)

2nd generation:
  Spawn of Grant/Felcia (active household)
    Single birth: Eldon - red hair
    Triplet girls - one dark brown, one red, one lighter red (I remember their names, but not which hair goes with which girl yet - they just became children).
  Spawn of Moira/Claudio (unplayed)
    Single birth: Lane, red hair
  Spawn of Angelica/Patrick (unplayed)
    None so far

Conclusion:  Either there really is some way the hair traits are passed down, or my families have been coincidence-ridden thus far.

[DaSpecialone]

I think the "brave trait may give you a higher chance of someone else(i.e., police) stepping in for you.  My sim has the brave trait and is a mad scientist so she's starts fire's doing experiments.  She just whips out the extinguisher and takes care of them herself & the fireman just says something like "I see you handled this on your own".  She's had 3 attempted robberies but the crook doesn't interact with her nor does she run thepolice come & haul him/her off.  She only jumped a little once with a ghost then it was like they were anyone else.

On another note mods this game needs (to keep it from boring you to tears):

Slower motive decay

One-click "Fertilize all"  & " talk to all" for gardening possibly added to "tend".  Tend garden takes care of everything except those which you have to do one plant at a time..a waste of gameplay.

It's been mentioned ad nauseum but true ultraspeed.  One sim sleeping for 6-10 minutes actual time is just dumb.

Faster skilling.

Explore options, so you can walk longer if you want to. Game makes you take a cab to certain places.  Then again I'm biased, I liked walking for good health.

Would it have killed then to make experiments you can see? If you're a mad geneticist who mixes genes you should be able to make fish walk & talk or something. I know, too much to ask.

*******

Really the game needs more action.  I don't want to read that my sim met a bear in the catacombs, I want to see it.  Heck If I can't explore the catacombs let the darn bear chase me out and fight me in the graveyard.   Let me see a fish attack.  A little narration is cute but 75% is excruciating.  I spend half the game doing something else while my sim is busy.  Maybe I'm just a control freak.

One day back in TS2 made me want to kiss my screen.

[/end rant]

[nekonoai]

How stupid do they think we are?    How greedy can one company be?

Baa baa, black sheep. Have you any wool?

*gets out shears*

[buny]

So, if I'm figuring correctly, it would cost $80 ($79.75) to buy everything up on the Sims 3 Store right now.  For the cost of 2 regular Sims 2 EP's you get 142 items, 16 outfits and 11 hairs and 0 new features. Fuck EA.

    I did some figuring and I get a total of $241.00 if you were to buy all the sets, clothing and hair.

[Angelo]

Despite the fact that I'm an accomplished gardener (10 skill and omniplant seeds), I still haven't figured how the hell fertilizing works. I've tried fertilizing individual plants with perfect fertilizers, but they still grow with the same speed and yield the same quality produce with the rest of the batch I planted. Help.

[Batelle]

So, if I'm figuring correctly, it would cost $80 ($79.75) to buy everything up on the Sims 3 Store right now.  For the cost of 2 regular Sims 2 EP's you get 142 items, 16 outfits and 11 hairs and 0 new features. Fuck EA.

    I did some figuring and I get a total of $241.00 if you were to buy all the sets, clothing and hair.

It's definitely cheaper to buy the sets whole rather than piece by piece, but I think you're looking at the price given per item in the set listing (which is the price for subsets) rather than the a la carte menu.  A la carte everything seems to be between 25 and 100 points each.

[buny]

   The Furniture sets come to $59.75 total, it's the clothing and hair that adds up.

[Caupi]

Despite the fact that I'm an accomplished gardener (10 skill and omniplant seeds), I still haven't figured how the hell fertilizing works. I've tried fertilizing individual plants with perfect fertilizers, but they still grow with the same speed and yield the same quality produce with the rest of the batch I planted. Help.

I have in no way tested this scientifically, but it seems to me that fertilizing with better items (fish, in my case) might make your plants live longer.  I've noticed that plants that have been fertilized with perfect fish seem to live longer than those which are not fertilized, or fertilized with poorer quality fish.  I'm openly admitting that it's not something I'm watching with a magnifying glass, so it could be observer error, but I do think this is what I'm seeing...possibly.

Edited to add that I've also seen the quality of plants increase over time, but I don't know if it's because they've been fertilized (most of my long-term plants are) and/or talked to.  This has mostly happened with my money trees, but I believe I've also seen my apple trees improve quality.

Also, someone long ago in this thread mentioned that money trees don't drop seeds - I've found that they do - rarely, but they do drop seeds.  You just need to keep your eyeballs peeled.

[farmersimmer]

So, if I'm figuring correctly, it would cost $80 ($79.75) to buy everything up on the Sims 3 Store right now.  For the cost of 2 regular Sims 2 EP's you get 142 items, 16 outfits and 11 hairs and 0 new features. Fuck EA.

    I did some figuring and I get a total of $241.00 if you were to buy all the sets, clothing and hair.

So glad the RLD version will compensate for that and has the built in recolour the boring items feature.
To buy the game here is $99.00 AUD ,with all the items at that price above
you would be up for a whopping $581.00 AUD !

[Sparks]

Is it possible that TS3 EP's will only add functionality and new towns, but no hair/clothing meshes (non-NPC)/objects? If they're already starting with the nickel and diming method of selling objects, then I would hope they wouldn't burden people with having to worry about if an EP has furniture they've already paid for.

[Jelenedra]

It's EA. Nickel and diming is their THING. Have you seen the downloadable content lists for the 360 EA games? 100 pts for a TUTORIAL VIDEO.

[Papercut]

Is anyone else being driven mad by craptacular plumbing?

Every fucking day at least one piece of the plumbing will break down in one of my houses (and one night three pieces did all at once). Doesn't seem to make a difference if I hire the repairman, replace the piece, or get one of my handier sims to fix it.

It is far more frequent than in TS2 and incredibly annoying.

Though I haven't had a single fire ... yet.

[TashaYarrr]

Yes, I've commented on the ridiculously high clog chance, etc.

I think they can be upgraded to unbreakable with handiness, though. And not sure if cheaper plumbing = more break.

[Zazazu]

With the party perk you will always get a good result. I have been using parties to lure ugly sims to the house en masse to kill off. As the last one dies they always report how great it was.

Yes, and this is even better when it's a campaign fundraiser. I've had six of them, and always made $49k-$52k a party, getting the highest level for job performance purposes. Before that, all parties for me were awful, even with guitar or boombox on lot.

[Lorelei]

A little narration is cute but 75% is excruciating.  I spend half the game doing something else while my sim is busy.
[/end rant]

That's the biggest downfall the game has, in addition to crappy camera controls. It gets  incredibly boring to watch 45 REAL minutes of garden tending / skilling. The collecting gets you out and about, then you can't really DO anything with what you find (besides seeds/ fish to grow / eat) except name it, cut or smelt it, or stack it.

I find I miss memories, and a better clue about what my Sim is whining / yey!-ing about. If it isn't a routing issue, I'm often left thinking, "what was that all about?"

Game opportunities don't seem to take power-skilling into account. One Sim is maxxed in all skill bars and is only now starting to catch special fish (has read the books, too), or to get special gardening tips / seeds.

I, too have found pink diamonds. No plutonium yet.

What I've found, and a very rough guesstimate of which are the most popular in my 'hood:
(green) Emerald
Blue Topaz
Yellow Sapphire
Smoky Quartz
(white) Diamond
(red) Ruby
Luminorious (sic)  Gem (dark; looks like black opal)
(purple/indigo) Tanzanite
Rainbow Gem (light; looks like regular opal)
Pink Diamond

Cuts so far:
Emerald
Oval
Pear
Plumbbob
Marquis
Crystal Ball
Brilliant
Heart-Shaped

My kingdom for a surface that can display either all of one colour or all of one shape together! A gem cabinet would be great, esp. if it worked like the fridge and you could drag / drop the tiny gems on it to be displayed. The heart cut is, BTW, a huge waste of money (so far as I've seen) if you accidentally request two heart cuts of the same gem and then try to sell one.

Smelted / cut stuff occasionally gets returned with a note explaining that it was really a Magic (i.e., moving) Gnome. Catalogue gnomes don't do walkabout.

I did not find a single non-butterfly insect prior to earning the Collection Helper perk.

I have had collectibles drop in uncollectable places, like directly under the bordering boxwood hedge line at the graveyard. Argh! My kingdom for build/buy 'hood-wide"!

Re: earlier comment about fish--I caught vampirefish at the Science Center.

Salt/fresh water makes a difference in what you'll get.

Occasionally you'll fish up an apparently water-tight box full of odd stuff. I got a mess of ducks and gnomes.

Some wishes do not register success; I was asked to befriend Sim Whosits / grow lettuce / catch # of fish (etc.) and did so, did not get rewards.

If Sim A sits at a kitchen counter to eat, it is more likely that Sim B will trek to the next room to sit at a table than next to Sim A, despite ample room.

If TS2 was a genetics-based  / CC-enhanced self-determined Simverse with several hoods to explore, including the option to make your own from scratch, then TS3 is one long series of LEVEL UP!s and collecting jags and mini-games that have had "make your own character / homebase" playability added on to make it a Sims game. It could be Splotch with the same gameplay, really, or any number of "adventure" games that make you run your player character back and forth across the game 'verse to collect tokens / clues / points.

It is a TS2 supplement / level-up game more than a true successor to TS2.

Also, should the other 'hood leak, I vote that download links / discussion related to it or other game content leaks and instructions on how / where to put them should go in their own thread and not here, where there's 70+ pages to wade through.

[phyllis_p]

Is anyone else being driven mad by craptacular plumbing?

Every fucking day at least one piece of the plumbing will break down in one of my houses (and one night three pieces did all at once). Doesn't seem to make a difference if I hire the repairman, replace the piece, or get one of my handier sims to fix it.

It is far more frequent than in TS2 and incredibly annoying.

Though I haven't had a single fire ... yet.

If you manage to get a Sim up to level 10 in handiness, anything they repair will never break again.

[jolrei]

If TS2 was a genetics-based  / CC-enhanced self-determined Simverse with several hoods to explore, including the option to make your own from scratch, then TS3 is one long series of LEVEL UP!s and collecting jags and mini-games that have had "make your own character / homebase" playability added on to make it a Sims game. It could be Splotch with the same gameplay, really, or any number of "adventure" games that make you run your player character back and forth across the game 'verse to collect tokens / clues / points.

It is a TS2 supplement / level-up game more than a true successor to TS2.

This, coupled with seriously depleted hard drive space and an inadequate video card, in addition to graphics that look like a throwback to TS1 more than an improvement on TS2, has influenced me to uninstall for now.  I will do some rig upgrades and then get the final release version and give it another go.  I'm having more fun with TS2.

TS2 = MATY hoods, vampires vs. werewolves, genetics, sudden instant death.
TS3 = Scavenger hunt and fugly sims.

I have made my choice for now.

[EdenNintyNine]

Seems like nobody mentioned yet that the Store is up, along with Riverview.

Sims 3 Store

*waits*

Wow. Just wow. Now I know the new trend for video games is to have a lot of ‘extra' stuff you can go buy- profits for the company- but this is just ridiculous; absolutely absurd. To have the gall to put so many items up for sale right off the bat is insulting! Much of the fun- that I have anyways- in The Sims is being able to decorate like a mad man and have access to lots of different hair and clothing to keep at least a semblance of uniqueness to my sims; this however is beyond greedy. The game itself- mind you the ‘official' copy might have more items in it, but I highly doubt it- feels devoid of décor and options therein! Decorating a single house is a nightmare without putting up doubles of various items, let alone trying to do an entire neighbourhood!

This is a terrible direction for TS3 to be taken, especially given the prices of the items- perhaps if they were significantly slashed, you know a few cents each, then I would have less of an issue here, but as it stands I am insulted; no, beyond insulted; I am bloody well offended and disgusted by this repugnant direction EA has taken.

On the bight side, I can only hope that the community- beyond the pay sites- will come together as a few have mentioned here to… deal with EA and their cohorts.

[Carokube]

I have in no way tested this scientifically, but it seems to me that fertilizing with better items (fish, in my case) might make your plants live longer.  I've noticed that plants that have been fertilized with perfect fish seem to live longer than those which are not fertilized, or fertilized with poorer quality fish.  I'm openly admitting that it's not something I'm watching with a magnifying glass, so it could be observer error, but I do think this is what I'm seeing...possibly.

Edited to add that I've also seen the quality of plants increase over time, but I don't know if it's because they've been fertilized (most of my long-term plants are) and/or talked to.  This has mostly happened with my money trees, but I believe I've also seen my apple trees improve quality.

I really hope fertilizer is there just to lengthen the life because my gardens tend to be giant and fertilizing each one of those freaking things individually is really not fun. I moved in a sim to be my fulltime gardener. I make him sleep in the shed. So let me know if you have any more updates/observations.