Apocalypse! How many are left?

[Mootilda]

Unfortunately, Pes has decided to take the AwesomeMod in a direction which doesn't work for me.  Although he says that it's important to have a toy, rather than a game, I find that he's making too many decisions about how I should play the game, rather than giving me the options to decide how I want to play.

Which options are you missing now? I haven't seen your name in the list of people griping about anything.

No, I haven't been bothering you for features.  I've been reading people's requests and your responses; didn't see any reason to repeat things.  Once you've made it clear that you do not intend to make a feature optional, what's the point in bothering you?  Primarily, I don't seem to care about the neighborhood economy as much as you do, and I find your efforts to make it consistent make the game less fun for me: no move-out money, limited numbers of sims allowed to have a particular job, etc.  As I've said before, it's easy for me to sympathize with your desire to give people features, while giving yourself a mod that makes the game fun for you.  Plus, it sounds like you're not getting a chance to play the game as much as you'd like.

I suppose that the deal-breaker for me was the time-bomb.  I completely understand why you added one (I've seen all of those bug reports for things that were already fixed), but I have a strong objection to using anything which will not work if I decide to run the game in 10 years, much less a couple of weeks.  And, yes, I understand that I can just remove the time-bomb, but the real question is: how much has to change for this game to be fun for me?

I think that what I really want is TS2 with some new features.  I hate not being able to change my neighborhood: no new lots, no ability to move lots around, no ability to create smaller lots, no ability to control building placement when expanding lots, no obvious ability to place fish, rock, seed, and insect spawners, or beautiful vistas.  I find the TS3 build mode fundamentally broken, especially for modern homes.  I don't like my chosen families changing while I'm gone; I want to come back and find them basically unchanged, so that I can pick up where I left off.  I find playing multiple sims in a family difficult with the new time-model, but playing single sims isn't much fun.  I also hate the new relationship model; they seem to have removed all of the fun from relationships and turned it into this bizarre (and time-consuming) mini-game.  Who feels the need to flirt with their spouse for a couple of hours before being allowed to hug and kiss them goodbye before going to work?

So, I'm trying to decide whether TS3 could be enough fun that it would be worth writing my own core mod.  At this point, I'm tending towards giving up on TS3 and going back to TS2.

I think you pretty much need to achieve an extreme level of combined control-freakery and workaholism to really want to try that. One thing you can try is simply meta-modding. Rather than going all out to try to make your own core mod, just pick one that you like and mod that one to your taste.

Yes, I agree.  As I said, I'm trying to decide whether to mod TS3 or just go back to TS2.  Discussions that I've had with friends sound like I should go back, but I haven't quite made that decision yet.  I plan to mod AwesomeMod a little bit first, then make a decision.

[Insanity Prelude]

I kind of like Sims 3, but I miss a lot of things about 2, and 2 doesn't heat up the laptop to unacceptable levels.

[J. M. Pescado]

No, I haven't been bothering you for features.  I've been reading people's requests and your responses; didn't see any reason to repeat things.  Once you've made it clear that you do not intend to make a feature optional, what's the point in bothering you?  Primarily, I don't seem to care about the neighborhood economy as much as you do, and I find your efforts to make it consistent make the game less fun for me: no move-out money, limited numbers of sims allowed to have a particular job, etc.  As I've said before, it's easy for me to sympathize with your desire to give people features, while giving youarself a mod that makes the game fun for you.  Plus, it sounds like you're not getting a chance to play the game as much as you'd like.

Well, the thing is, making the neighborhood economy consistent is integral to the systems I am building on. Installing a switch to try to turn that OFF again would destabilize the entire system, not to mention be against my religion. Many of the specific issues you don't like are controlled within tunings. You're skilled, if you REALLY think your game benefits from having 30 Presidents and the stupidity of it all isn't enough to make your head explode...

I suppose that the deal-breaker for me was the time-bomb.  I completely understand why you added one (I've seen all of those bug reports for things that were already fixed), but I have a strong objection to using anything which will not work if I decide to run the game in 10 years, much less a couple of weeks.  And, yes, I understand that I can just remove the time-bomb, but the real question is: how much has to change for this game to be fun for me?

Heh, yes, but it's not meant to do anything to YOU. In fact, the mechanism for it is trivially easy for someone of your ability, intentionally so. It's purely an anti-tard device. As for how much has to change for the game to be fun...well, a lot, obviously, We have a long way to go.

Yes, I agree.  As I said, I'm trying to decide whether to mod TS3 or just go back to TS2.  Discussions that I've had with friends sound like I should go back, but I haven't quite made that decision yet.  I plan to mod AwesomeMod a little bit first, then make a decision.

Back, forward, these are dichotomies for those with insufficient hard drive space. Drive space is cheap. TS3 will someday catch up to what TS2 has, but that day is not today.

[ChibyMethos]

I am definitely sticking with The Sims 2.  I have no desire whatsoever to have Sims 3. After reading all of the threads, there is no way in HELL I would EVER have that bloated piece of shit on my computer.  The gameplay looks horrible, all the Sims look like they need Midol to get rid of the bloating, and it just over all looks like shit.  Until there is a way to not have have those larded up, plastic surgery nightmares from fucking up my game, then, and only then, will I being considering it.  Is there any reason whatsoever I should even bother with The Sims 3?  I just need to know if it's remotely worth having since I need to download a separate mod just to fix the majority of the fuckups EAsshole always makes.

Ditto.

Plus, I haven't seen anything that justifies the price tag, the sims look just horrid, and I understand that the gameplay is very restrictive. I don't need that. If EA had kept making EPs for TS2, I would have happily kept giving them money, but as it is, I'll wait and see what 4 looks like. Maybe they'll try VR or something. 

[nocomment]

My computer can't run Sims 3, but I was very intrigued by it and read all the threads.  Then something happened.  Someone mentioned picking up the paper to get a job, and a little bit of me died inside.

I got tired of sims heading off to work in Sims 1.  I got even more tired of it with Sims 2.  OFB revitalized the game for me.  It gave me something really different to try.  I don't think I could go back to the regular jobs, even with the little challenges and things EA added.

I fear that the Sims 3 doesn't offer enough that's fresh and different for me.  The jump from Sims 1 to 2 was huge.  Sims could change their hairstyles!  Remember how amazing that was?  A dress made for a whilte sim could also be worn by a black sim!  The camera could zoom in and out.  Children grew up. 

Sims 3 just doesn't seem to have that wow factor.  The seemless neighborhood is the only big "wow" I can think of, and that may not be enough for me. 

What I think might have worked for me is very dramatic story progression.  From the very beginning I've had the impulse to sit back and watch the game, like it's a soap opera.  If the sims would autonomously fall in love, get married in a big ceremony, cheat, divorce, reunite, and on and on...I think I could fall in love with that.  But there would have to be an off switch, for people who prefer sandbox play.  And in my fantasy game, the off switch would work!!!

[Alie]

Haven't even bothered arrquiring TS3.  The reports here and elsewhere indicate that it's just not that interesting.

Still plodding along in TS2, where for the first time I've actually gotten an entire neighbourhood and sub hoods into their third generation without either getting bored and starting from scratch or being bugged into oblivion by a new EP (yes, JM, I need to make more backups).

This is me, except I'm only on a second generation.

[Tikkititi]

I kind of like Sims 3, but I miss a lot of things about 2, and 2 doesn't heat up the laptop to unacceptable levels.

Ha! I didn't even think about this. Yes, TS2 does not give my thighs third-degree burns. This is a good thing. 

[sleep]

I'm still on Sims 2.

It happened that I had to get a new computer just as S3 came out, so I could play it if I liked. But there's still masses of stuff in TS2 that I haven't really explored, and I have no desire to abandon all the tweaks, mods and interesting CC that improve my game. It will be a long time before Sims 3 matches that.

I followed all the threads for a while when S3 came out, but it didn't appeal beyond a certain level of curiosity.  And besides, they all look like puddings.

[pbox]

I initially got TS2 in order to build stuff -- I made countless lots and several full neighbourhoods in it, but after finishing Elsewhere this March, I was kind of done with it. I did some meshing (which was new to me) and recolours after that, but I never built anything again and basically shelved the game itself -- also because my "actual game", a neighbourhood I had built from scratch in a sort of "settler" game, had been wiped out in a harddrive failure the year before and I had never seriously started playing after that again.

So when TS3 came out I didn't really switch so much, rather restart under different conditions -- I'm not sure whether I'll stick with it, or eventually start with TS2 again, or what. On one hand, I never want to look at shitty TS2-style lot impostors again (even looking at my own TS2 hoods makes me cringe now), on the other hand I want the TS2 sims back -- I never really paid attention to that, but playing TS3 made me aware of how good their animations actually were, and how much an animation can suck when done badly. The difference between old and new animations in TS3 (it recycles some TS2 ones) is glaring and obvious in my eyes. Same with the artwork (icons and stuff), I was never a big fan of the TS2 art but TS3 made me appreciate it  .. at least it's consistent.


The look of the sims themselves doesn't really bother me either way -- I have no townies anyway, neither frog-faced TS2 ones nor identical puddingface TS3 ones, and the sims I make myself look decent to me in both games without too much effort. My standards are not terribly high when it comes to that -- they don't scare me, and I can tell them apart, that's good enough. Clothes/hair, same thing -- for TS3, there's CAST to make things look decent, for TS2 there's 345627 fanseelamb downloads; both are good, easy solutions. Genetics seem to have been ditched more or less, but I played the whole breeding game in TS2 already so I'm not too heartbroken.



CAST does play a huge role for me when it comes to build/buy mode, though -- even the simplest starter shack now takes forever to build, because I spend hours picking out wallpaper. I probably should like it, but it's a timesink within a timesink .. argh.

Build mode itself hasn't really changed; new suckage and new features pretty much even out in my eyes. The fact that neighbourhoods aren't editable right now is of course a disappointment, but I'm pretty sure they *will* be editable so I'm not really conting that. Same with the non-stackable, non-recolourable stairs -- they've been made recolourable for TS2, so why not for TS3 as well --, and the usual random pile of windows/doors where nothing fits together .. it's just a matter of time for add-ons to become available. Right out of the box, TS3 plant meshes are way better than any TS2 custom content that I've ever seen, so it can only get better. I wouldn't even be terribly unhappy should it turn out that we can't change the neighbourhood terrain, since I happen to like the Sunset Valley map anyway (except for the big-ass lots -- but now that there's trees the size of real trees and not bonsais, 20x30 isn't all that large anymore since a few trees will already take up a lot of the space). Only that the lots aren't next to each other (but have useless little gaps in between) is bugging me -- not very much right now, but it may become a PITA in the future.

Apparently, split-levels are broken in TS3 in a way that becomes manifest on some tpyes of modern building -- right now I don't worry about that, since I start out with a traditional fisher/farmer community so the style is appropriately oldfashioned. By the time I get to build anything contemporary, this may be fixed or I just stick with the traditional style anyway. Still, it's a pity they didn't even change it, only broke it needlessly.

One nice little change is that we can now build anything up to 1 tile from the edge with no further ado; it just works. And the seamlessly rendered TS3 environment has made me finally understand, I think, why they made that last tile off-limits in the first place -- what would happen with the outer side of the wall, which is the same as the inner side of the same wall on the next lot? There would have to be endless graphical fighting if a wall would occupy the same space twice. If I'm right, I believe I simply never realised this since in TS2 you never see the actuall wall on more than one lot, only the impostor -- but in TS3 the limitation is obvious and makes sense.

That placement of buildings on lots can't be controlled in TS3 is certainly idiotic. I don't usually move lots, though .. so it's not really an issue for me.


The unified time, unified light, unified rendering in and of the neighbourhood in TS3 are a huge plus -- this will never be possible in TS2 with any amount of modding. Makes a big difference for me, seeing as making neighbourhoods is why I play in the first place. For the same reason, the "seamlessly disconnected" way the sims are acting within that neighbourhood (or "being acted", rather, and terribly), unless you try to babysit every single one of them simultaneously, is a major show-stopper. Right now it's still feasible (albeit a bit nuts) for me to attempt to babysit (I only have 15-20 sims), and I can tweak a lot of things since that's become really simple, but I'm not sure how it will work out when the town becomes too large to manage manually. This is where it may turn out I'm going to revert to TS2 .. I'm not looking forward to do nothing but queue up things all the time.



Overall progress in TS3 goes much, much faster -- I played my one "actual" TS2 neighbourhood for more than a year (RL), and some of my founder sims were still alive when I lost it. I'm at the same point in TS3 now, after only a few weeks.

I miss keyholder doors, or other access management facilities. I miss LotFullOfSims. I want to have multi-household lots again, without having to work around things all the time -- right now I can only put close friends or family members on the same lot (so that it's not going to be weird when they use each others' stuff, I mean). The fact that sims now at least recognise their own beds is making it a bit easier, though.



I'm not sure if it's a mac issue, but it looks like they completely ditched the idea of realistic light now. But since their workaround actually works -- lights simply stay on 24/7, but it's very unobtrusive so you don't really notice --, fine with me. It doesn't look too weird, it's just odd.

TS3 introduces some stupid and useless gameplay aspects (gems? the hell? they look like they're dropped in from some sort of Nintendo game for six-year-olds .. and i DNW your silly opportunities), but so did TS2 and every single EP. I'm already used to ignore what I don't like.


TS3 actually works on my mac. I have no crashes, no lagging, no issues whatsoever (except assorted graphics things they didn't bother to make work for OSX, and two CAS crashes so far). This is vastly different from my TS2/Aspyr experience. It may make a difference that I also got a new mainboard and a system upgrade in the meantime, but other than that it's the same machine.

I'm not exactly sure since I don't recall anymore when and how I became aware it was even possible to mod TS2, but my impression is that TS3 modding is a lot more fast-paced, and much easier too. Needless to say, that would be the biggest plus. The XML tuning system is a simple and efficient solution that works very well for me -- I don't have to keep track of oodles of different mods from different sites written by people who may just disappear without notice, but just change stuff myself instead with very little effort.


Mootilda, from my own egoistic point of view it would be a pity if you'd decide to entirely ignore TS3, but I understand your reasoning. I also cannot imagine to spend time on both games in parallel .. there are only so many hours in the day.

[J. M. Pescado]

I miss keyholder doors, or other access management facilities. I miss LotFullOfSims. I want to have multi-household lots again, without having to work around things all the time -- right now I can only put close friends or family members on the same lot (so that it's not going to be weird when they use each others' stuff, I mean). The fact that sims now at least recognise their own beds is making it a bit easier, though.

Lot Full Of Sims is an optional component of AwesomeMod. Lockable Door Control is being investigated.

[pbox]

Lot Full Of Sims is an optional component of AwesomeMod.

I know -- I already had 9 or 10 sims on a lot by way of moving in/merging, not sure if it was awesomemod that made this work of if if works by default -- but they still have only 8 icons, don't they? For some reason it irritates me no end when a sim has no icon .. I imagine that with a couple of multi-household lots, it would be rather a pain to keep track of who actually lives where when half of them are only accessible by shift-enter or shift or whatever it was .. particularly when they run off to "visit Stoney Falls" all the time. The TS2 LotFullOfSims handled this more gracefully (or rather, TS2 handled this more gracefully since the ability for 20 sims per lot was apparently already there).

Maybe it can be made so that alt-clicking also works on sims from the same household? (Right now, in my game, it does not -- may be because I'm unpatched and outdated) That would already make it a bit easier, not having to shift-cycle through 20 sims all the time.

Good to hear about the doors!

[J. M. Pescado]

Alt-clicking? THere's no alt-clicking. You can rightclick to autoselect any sim in the household.

[pbox]

Alt-clicking? There's no alt-clicking. You can rightclick to autoselect any sim in the household.

I'm on a mac, maybe that makes a difference? It might be alt-rightclick, not sure atm, but definitely alt is involved for "Select Sim" (from different households) for me. I'm aware that "There's no .." may also mean "you are running outdated code" -- I know, I know  I'll patch next weekend, I promise. I'll try rightclicking too, although I believe I already did (may not work due to said outdated code) -- wouldn't help in case they're at Stoney Falls, but it's better than shift-cycling ALL the time.

[Aquilegia]

Back, forward, these are dichotomies for those with insufficient hard drive space. Drive space is cheap.

This is why I have both installed and play whichever I feel like when I want to play something. I really, really don't understand why people are uninstalling TS2 when they aren't totally bored with it and aren't hurting for hard drive space. Computers aren't first- or second-gen gaming consoles; you CAN have more than one game installed at a time, even more than one game in the same series!

Even when TS3 is modded enough to be an actual sandbox, I'll have 2 still installed and played--they're different enough games to me (I see TS3 as a lateral step from TS2, not one up or down) to warrant having both until the time I'm utterly bored with one.

[Tsarina]

I initially got TS2 in order to build stuff -- I made countless lots and several full neighbourhoods in it, but after finishing Elsewhere this March, I was kind of done with it.

Elsewhere is awesome. Baa. It's one of my two main neighbourhoods.

[Arina]

The only TS3 thing I find appealing that TS2 lacks is the absence of rubbish lot impostors. However, that's not so annoying that I'll install what appears to be a broken console version of TS1 that's been given a fresh lick of paint. I'm far too much of a control freak, and I don't want my years of obsessively editing CC and settings to go to waste! Plus, I only just installed SC4 (to make my own terrains), which reminded me that I generally like to be 5 years behind with games and 3 years behind with hardware. I made exceptions for TS2 and TF2, so I'll only make future exceptions for anything called Tx2, and TS3 doesn't fit that rule. That's called logic!

[LynnMar]

I just got all the latest sims2 ex-packs and sp's, so I am sticking with them.  I still have to get M&G.

Sims 3 sounds like a mess to me.  I don't want it, no way.   

[nil]

I really enjoy pbox's post so that I can know more about TS3.

Just one thing I have to state out my view point.  In TS2, even if the overlapping of walls at the lot edge can cause graphical competition, but there're still at least 2 ways I can think of get rid of that.  EAxis should know enough to solve it by itself easily.  Thus, that can't be a strong cause.
Indeed, unidentified crashes are the real culprit.

Anyhow, I've no say about one's play style in TS series.

For TS1, I used to play sims mostly, and painfully obsessive enough to queue up every posssible command box in order to feel the sims won't mess up relatively easy.  The same extended to TS2 in the beginning before my immersion in lot-building and then modding.

Still, should I play them again, I may become a control-freak again, that I bet.


PS:
nil just killed another topic...