The Sims 3 Expansion In My Head

[Lotti]

Wanna have a baby?

Why? Does it really matter? The babies are just gonna be fug anyway.

Wanna get to the top of your career?

Why? What are you gonna do with that money?

Wanna skill and grind your entire life?

Why? You're just gonna DIE anyway.

There's just no reason to play the game anymore, and I hate it. /emo

Too right! The game is starting to get as boring as watching fresh dog turd drying in the sun! But I still play...why? Because I'm friggen bored and the dog shit on the lawn hasn't turned white just yet..get a good giggle watching the hubby mow the dog bombs...white powder...wee...it's snowing.

 On topic though, I really don't give a crap what EP they bring out..I'm still gonna buy it.

[Marhis]

My actual game is lurking in the awesomemod thread and testing the stuff. Following various modders, too, is fun; playing the game in itself, not so much.
I've found all the rocks, all the metals and all the gems, and had every gem cutted in every shape. That sim's house looks like a Geological Museum - that part is finished: no way I'll have another sim doing the same, ever; there's no purpose.
Fish: finished.
Garden: finished.
Cuisine: finished.
Object upgrades: finished.
Music: finished, both Rockstar and Symphonic (I don't even remember what's its name)
Athletic: finished.
Criminal: finished (Master Thief)
Once I finish the other careers and hobbies, there's not much more to do with them.

The traits should give them a higher differentiation - instead, they all behave the same. Look at them socializing autonomously: they look like robots, programmed to run a specific (pointless) task every x ticks, nothing more. In TS2 they had personality: I remember all my sims, each one had its own unique behavior; I could gave them a facial surgery and still recognize them. I guess the personality points system allowed more combinations and more subtle variety. A better variety, to me. All these traits sum the shticks, don't merge them in some unique combination.
I'm at the 4th generation and still don't give a damn of any of those fuckers. They have no depth.

[Georgette]

On topic though, I really don't give a crap what EP they bring out..I'm still gonna buy it.

Baa, sheeples!

[Lotti]

Baa...mooo...hell why not.

[Georgette]

Baa...mooo...hell why not.

Aww bless. You don't understand.

Visit BBS much, huh?

[Drakron]

In TS2 they had personality: I remember all my sims, each one had its own unique behavior; I could gave them a facial surgery and still recognize them.

This is complete bullshit.

In TS2 there was no difference with the zodiac system since that system only worked to some degree on the extreme, neat Sims were only neat when having 8/10 or more neat points as sloppy sims were only sloppy when having 3/10 or less neat points.

In TS3 traits dictate some behavior without the "point allocation dance" on TS1/TS2 Zodiac system.

At worst there no difference of the Zodiac and Trait system, outside one being straightforward (Trait).
 

[PirateFaafy]

I've also found that it's easier to attach myself to my sims in HORROR. They haven't helped much in that you can choose all positive traits, but I've found that choosing a couple negative traits, plus not giving them perfect appearances (Screw up faces, make fatties, etc.) can give them some actual differentiation. It's amusing, especially when they're left to their own devices while you control other sims.

[Marhis]

This is complete bullshit.

In TS2 there was no difference with the zodiac system since that system only worked to some degree on the extreme, neat Sims were only neat when having 8/10 or more neat points as sloppy sims were only sloppy when having 3/10 or less neat points.

In TS3 traits dictate some behavior without the "point allocation dance" on TS1/TS2 Zodiac system.

At worst there no difference of the Zodiac and Trait system, outside one being straightforward (Trait).
 

That's why I was specifically referring to socialization (not clear enough, probably, in my previous post). The way they approach each other, the frequency of their autonomous choice of socials, the romancing style - there were many, and different each other, depending on the personality combination. I had a sim which acted like a stalker, when in the same lot with her crush; another one apparently didn't give a damn about his girlfriend and was always busy around his friends - different combinations of outgoing/slob/nice and other points together lead to different overall behavior.
Just in romantic actions, some sims tend to always smooch at first sight, others will never do it autonomously for their whole life, others will grab asses and never give peck kisses. I loved to watch them.

In TS3 the differences are sharper: flirty sims will always flirt, inappropriate sims will act inappropriately, fine, got it. My point is that all flirty sims seems to do the same, there are no other traits that modify the flirty trait. The same is for inappropriate, and such.

[Drakron]

TS3 is safer on autonomy, unlike TS2 were Sims were absolute social morons.

Also traits do affect on how they socialize, Sims with Good Sense of Humor will tell jokes autonomous as Snob Sims will gloat also autonomous.

And yes flirty Sims do flirt but at least they do it because they are flirty, unlike the social retards of TS2 that would do it because its a possible interaction without any regard if that was acceptable or not.

[Marhis]

Quite probably we have different game habits and different things we like/dislike; apparently they're quite the opposite. I want max autonomy and unpredictability, even if it results in stupid social actions; "safe" social autonomy is only boring, to me.
And again, I'm not saying that traits don't affect their way to socialize, I'm saying that - at least so far - they affect the socialization in a fixed way, not compound. Hyperbolically, I would roughly define it like the difference between binary and analogical.
In TS2 I had sims who flirted a lot and sims who almost never did because of their different personality ensemble, not because they had the flirty or unflirty trait, and the rest doesn't matter.

[Drakron]

The purpose of autonomy is allowing Sims to take care of themselves without need micromanagement.

In TS2 that was broken in many levels, social autonomy was one were the Sim would never check social interactions beyond if they could be autonomous initiated (some were locked to "player initiated" only) so Sims could screw up relationships fast if they were left to their own devices but since relationships were easy to mend the problem was simply a irritation for most part.

But TS3 altered the relationship system so its not as easy in TS2 to gain friends, that means autonomous initiated socials are less and more restrict in order for Sims to NOT screw up relationships by AI stupidity.

Unless you MAKE THEN that way, Snob Sims can "brag about" and that social is not going to make then many friends as Flirty Sims are likely to screw up things by using a flirt interaction, autonomy in TS3 also make Sims to stay in character, even when that is negative.

Also gaming habits be damned, its never good design or work when things are unpredictable ... its good ethics to make things as plain and clear in order for the player to be informed and in control over possible decisions, I would not buy a car if sometimes when I turned the wheel left the car would turn right and it would never told me how much gas was in the tank.

[kazebird]

Marhis is right. Predictability is very boring. Half of the fun of TS2 was getting sims into, and out of ridiculous situations.

Besides, I have never 'played the car' before.

[Doc Doofus]

The differences in sim autonomy and personality are the least important differences, to me, between TS2 and TS3.  Why?  Because it is the easiest part of the game for them to radically change in future expansions.  Or even in awesomemods.

The big problem for TS3 are all the bridges they permanently burned.  Like the skins and the vector graphic patterns and the miserably few choices we have, especially over faces.

With TS2, I could go through the body shop section on MTS2 from week to week and constantly see new things that I hadn't seen before, sometimes things that I hadn't thought possible.  With TS3, there are no such possibilities.  The game was deliberately crippled, in some of these respects, in order to keep it simple and save ram, and the result is that there will never be a face that surprises us.  There are only so many things you can do with those sliders and all faces and eyes and makeup and hair are based on two to four color swatches.  That's permanent.  There will be no change in that until TS4.  No hack will ever change that.  This game will never be like the seven-year orgy of creativity that TS2 was.  It's a dead-end, and the mind-boggling thing is, they made it that way on purpose.

[Saikatsu]

... the vector graphic patterns ...

Patterns aren't stored in vector format, they're plain old raster images.

The completely backwards progression being made with customization infuriates me, no doubt about it. Not being able to do neat eye textures or have skins that aren't just some pre-set tone is sad, I could even do that in TS1 if I took the time to make all the images for them.

[Drakron]

Depends on how you look at things.

You have no custom skins (at least, yet) but you get control over how light and dark they are.

And I cannot understand why people complain about not having TS2 clothing textures ... in TS2 if you wanted a brown vest over a blue shirt with green jeans with black shoes ... well better load up Bodyshop and learn to use a graphic editor program (something many clearly never did) if that happened to be the colors of the texture.

Also considering the incredible LOW standards the community accepted ... are we missing much by NOT having obvious photopainted textures that seem to be the only thing Koreans were capable of making?

And all the drama that is now lost now that Drama Queens cannot complain about how their textures were stolen or how someone copied then ... heck even paysites taken a severe hit since the majority of their content was nothing but recolors.

TS2 clothing method is superior, skins can be annoying to a point but hey! we got BODY TEXTURE OVERLAYS ... maybe THIS TIME people will use it instead of "tattoos genetics" of TS2.

[simsdesperado]

TS3 skins look very bad in game, especially during strong outside light. In my game sometimes they look like zombies but with pink skin instead of green. And clothes and textures on all objects become blurry if you don't have the camera zoomed in on them. So meh about coustomability if you can't see it effects properly in the game.

[Doc Doofus]

How many colors can you have in the overlays?

[Drakron]

Well ... socks for example are overlays and allow more that one color.

[Tangie]

With TS2, I could go through the body shop section on MTS2 from week to week and constantly see new things that I hadn't seen before, sometimes things that I hadn't thought possible.  With TS3, there are no such possibilities.  The game was deliberately crippled, in some of these respects, in order to keep it simple and save ram, and the result is that there will never be a face that surprises us.  There are only so many things you can do with those sliders and all faces and eyes and makeup and hair are based on two to four color swatches.  That's permanent.  There will be no change in that until TS4.  No hack will ever change that.  This game will never be like the seven-year orgy of creativity that TS2 was.  It's a dead-end, and the mind-boggling thing is, they made it that way on purpose.

I totally agree with this! I miss my custom eyes and make-up, and custom hair. And it's not just the cartoonish puddings, I'm afraid. One of the things that bothers me about TS3 is the very limited/lack of animations, which has been discussed before, but I think this is why the puddings seem to lack personality. And this, to me, in addition to their looks, is why they are so boring; the same half-assed animations are repeated over and over. The lack of social interactions of all kinds (I have found that sims can't even initiate conversation with another sim that is sitting down, but maybe that's just me), and I'm tired of listening to them fret at the stove over food that isn't even burned, or cough every frigging time they eat (and yes, I know if I would have them make the same meal x number of times they would probably stop that but I LIKE variety even if they don't care), and my toddlers are constantly facinated by boogers (and isn't it amazing how that one simlish word is the same as the English one) and repeat that animation about every 20 sim minutes. And the half-assed animations like the dish clearing and the "tornado" baby changing have been discussed many times, but UGH! There are dozens of examples that you all are well aware of so I'll stop now.

And story agression! Don't get me started on that. They essentially made the neigborhood one family's giant (comparatively speaking) lot, and saved computing power by not rendering things when unviewed, and then threw in random stupid events to supposedly make it look like it was an actual neigborhood. Like THAT was ever going to satisfy anyone! AwsomeMod proves that it COULD have been executed in a much better way if EA only had a clue.

I do realize that additional animations will be added with expansions (at least I sure hope so), but right now this game is quickly becoming boring and lifeless to me, and I wonder about some animations, like cars for instance. In TS2, driveways took up an out-of-proportion space due to the animations. Now driveways are sleeker and take up less space, and you can even build garages at right angles to the road. Good for creative building, maybe, but the reason this works now is precisely because they took out the car animations. Vehicles just magically appear and disappear, so no need to "drive into" your garage. I am afraid they won't be coming back, either. Maybe I'll be proved wrong, but it seems as if they have made transportation completely irrelevant in this game, and I miss the cars. This feels like a step back in many respects.

OK, enough; end of rant. I realize that people play differently and like different things, but I just had to say I agree with some of the observations made about the hollowness of this game.

Well ... socks for example are overlays and allow more that one color.

Oh, goodie! Tons of boring elderly, single, childless Pudding Sims on phantom bikes or in pass-through cars, searching for rocks and seeds, all wearing a virtual rainbow of socks. 

[Shai Hulud]

I frankly don't give two shits what it is. All I want is more than the what, 6 skills in the game? Some more jobs and objects would be an obvious good addition as well.

I would love to see another Free Time or Apartment Life. The fact that Free Time added 10 hobbies, which were essentially skills, and a shit ton of jobs was great. Apartment Life is exactly how I want to make my Sims, start out in some hovel and move their way up.

This 'Destination Adventure' is going to be a flop just like Vacation and Bon Voyage. I'm not going to spend a cent to get it, and will wait a week for a good torrent of it. The only thing I liked from Vacation was the ability to make Hotels, and Sharkey Shark. Bon Voyage was if I wanted to spend 3 weeks out of the space time continuum getting Big Foot to rape the hell out of the Celebrity Career and rake in the money.

It better be fucking good, or hope to God they release one before Christmas.

[J. M. Pescado]

In TS2 they had personality: I remember all my sims, each one had its own unique behavior; I could gave them a facial surgery and still recognize them.

This is complete bullshit.

In TS2 there was no difference with the zodiac system since that system only worked to some degree on the extreme, neat Sims were only neat when having 8/10 or more neat points as sloppy sims were only sloppy when having 3/10 or less neat points.

I mostly concur with Drakron. In TS2, the personality bars were mostly meaningless except for when they hit critical behavioral "breakpoints", like an Active Sim being able to run when Active exceeded 500, Slobby sims peeing on the floor in the shower, etc. As for sims and their "unique behavior"? Horse puckey. I'd know. I had to *WRITE* unique behavior to get it to happen. TS3 doesn't really have unique behavior either, but at least some of the non-bland behavioral traits provide a limited form of the "Schtick" system, which was essentially the same thing in Awesomeland 2.

Of course, the sheer number of "bland" personality traits that have no really visible effects tends to swamp this feature, especially given the trait system. There's just too much that is invisible. Sure, we can see that Excitable sims get the Excited moodlet, but they don't really BEHAVE any different.

[Shai Hulud]

In TS2 they had personality: I remember all my sims, each one had its own unique behavior; I could gave them a facial surgery and still recognize them.

This is complete bullshit.

In TS2 there was no difference with the zodiac system since that system only worked to some degree on the extreme, neat Sims were only neat when having 8/10 or more neat points as sloppy sims were only sloppy when having 3/10 or less neat points.

I mostly concur with Drakron. In TS2, the personality bars were mostly meaningless except for when they hit critical behavioral "breakpoints", like an Active Sim being able to run when Active exceeded 500, Slobby sims peeing on the floor in the shower, etc. As for sims and their "unique behavior"? Horse puckey. I'd know. I had to *WRITE* unique behavior to get it to happen. TS3 doesn't really have unique behavior either, but at least some of the non-bland behavioral traits provide a limited form of the "Schtick" system, which was essentially the same thing in Awesomeland 2.

Of course, the sheer number of "bland" personality traits that have no really visible effects tends to swamp this feature, especially given the trait system. There's just too much that is invisible. Sure, we can see that Excitable sims get the Excited moodlet, but they don't really BEHAVE any different.

It's all moodlets, never personality. All Sims talk the same, every action is the same. If two different Sims have the same traits, and pick the same trait specific social action it won't be any different than the Average Joe doing it. Like you said, Excitable Sims don't act excited, they just get a moodlet.

[Heinel]

It's all moodlets, never personality. All Sims talk the same, every action is the same. If two different Sims have the same traits, and pick the same trait specific social action it won't be any different than the Average Joe doing it. Like you said, Excitable Sims don't act excited, they just get a moodlet.

That's a false generalization.  Some traits do have specific interactions, and they also autonomously use them from time to time.  You need to pay more attention.

[Euphemism]

It's all moodlets, never personality. All Sims talk the same, every action is the same. If two different Sims have the same traits, and pick the same trait specific social action it won't be any different than the Average Joe doing it. Like you said, Excitable Sims don't act excited, they just get a moodlet.

That's a false generalization.  Some traits do have specific interactions, and they also autonomously use them from time to time.  You need to pay more attention.

Oh, gee. Insane Sims wear their panties to the bookstore. LOL THIS IS GUD GAMEPLAY!!!!!111

[Shai Hulud]

It's all moodlets, never personality. All Sims talk the same, every action is the same. If two different Sims have the same traits, and pick the same trait specific social action it won't be any different than the Average Joe doing it. Like you said, Excitable Sims don't act excited, they just get a moodlet.

That's a false generalization.  Some traits do have specific interactions, and they also autonomously use them from time to time.  You need to pay more attention.

That wasn't what I was getting at. I meant that traits that have social interactions are never different between Sims, and I'm pretty sure that's what I said, I guess you just didn't catch that.

And for instance, the Evil trait, they laugh sometimes. Yes, it's autonomous, but it's not an interaction. They just do it for the hell of it.