Deadly Ghosts

[HazelEyes]

I've had limited experience with ghosts in TS3, for whatever reason. So far, I've only queue-dropped a "see ghost" interaction from a sim's queue a couple of times, since homebound ghosts seem to wake up after my sims' bedtime, or whatnot. The cemetery ghosts have been oddly quiet. As such, I haven't seen a ghost scare yet, and certainly not a malicious, needs-dropping, pee-in-your-pants, virtually lethal ones, like the kind that made TS2 so interesting.

Is it safe to assume that, like violent raging jealousy, the deadly ghosts have been vanillified? Has anyone witnessed a killer ghost? Had a sim die from ghost scare? Is there any hint of such a possibility in the game's package files?

[Snowflakes]

I've had a lot of experience with ghosts (but I've never looked at any game files about them, I'm going to wait a while until I try modding TS3) and they've scared my sims a lot, but it's never really done any harm. It's pretty much just the "scare" interaction that sims with the mean trait will autonomously do. I haven't tried anything with sims that have the coward trait, but so far...No deaths, no peeing of the pants, no fainting. I think it's safe to assume that the evil ghosts from TS2 are gone.

[J. M. Pescado]

Yup, all that's gone. Ghosts are nonfatal, mostly harmless, and no one pees. Aren't you tired of pee yet? TS2 sims peed themselves a bit too easily, anyway.

[Kyna]

I haven't tried anything with sims that have the coward trait, but so far...No deaths, no peeing of the pants, no fainting.

Cowardly sims will faint, and so will cowardly ghosts.  The Goth lot has a ghost with the cowardly trait, and she is constantly fainting when she sees any of the other ghosts there.

[HazelEyes]

Yup, all that's gone. Ghosts are nonfatal, mostly harmless, and no one pees. Aren't you tired of pee yet? TS2 sims peed themselves a bit too easily, anyway.

The pee interests me only as a metric of lowering of needs to the point of fatality. There goes my fatal ghost apocalypse.

[sewinglady]

They did say they were moving higher up Maslow's Heirarchy of needs...

Just in case y'all skipped Psychology 101 the day the prof talked about Maslow, here's a link

And I have to say, I cried tears of joy upon finding that they were actually serious and the whole peeing obsession in TS2 was left where it belongs - in TS2.

As for the ghosts...have found that actually killing sims by something other than old age seems to be darn near impossible, so pretty sure there's no scaring them to death either - not even the cowardly ones. When I first started the family I'm currently playing, I kept hearing this 'creepy music' right after everyone went to bed - turned out to be the game's way of notifying me that ghosts were driving by in their ghost cars...but haven't heard it for a while now - they must have decided to stop taking the scenic route.

[Bouncing Pink Ball]

Happy, non threatening ghosts get so dull after the first encounter. I mulled over the idea of populating my graveyards with deceased sims carrying the evil, grouchy and hates the outdoors traits in hopes that I could get them annoyed enough - what with being outside in a graveyard and grouchy all the time - and mean enough to at least make half-hearted attempts at scaring the odd sim to death rather than making them into new best buddies just because some loony rock star wannabe sim came and played guitar for them every night.

TS3 really is in desperate need of creative sim death. Yes, yes, I know; some folks want to keep precious, so-much-loved sims all safe and cosy to old age but I want death, dammit! Sim plagues, violent ghost apocalypse, death from collected radioactive meteorites. I could, theoretically, lock the occasional sim into a stove-and-counter equipped locked torture (torching?) room, but I'm a softie and would rather the game killed off my pixels than having to do the job myself.

[edalbformat]

This could be made by any sado creator once to kill a sim seems to be the easiest thing to do. We softies that like to keep our "beloved" sims up to old age have enough trouble to solve the inconsistencies added by EA. The worst thing for me is to have a feature added that depends on a lot of modding to revert. EA is unfortunately unable to give real "options" (most of them do not work or stop working anywhen and have to depend on modders to correct them).

[aspinL]

I agree with the "more creative dying options". In sims 2 you could have a sim die from flies, or a satellite falling on them. Of course if you were cloud watching or in a room with plates full of flies, you were asking for it.

[Kyna]

It's just getting harder to kill your sims as the series progresses.

The first time I saw TS1 was when a friend of my daughter was playing it, and she showed me some of the different ways you could kill off your sims.  It looked like fun, and I went out and bought the game for myself so I could have fun killing off sims on my computer.

TS2 made it harder to get accidental death.  I never had the choking-after-giving-birth death glitch, and I never had an illness that went around my neighbourhood killing off my sims.  I think I had less than half a dozen genuine accidental deaths in all the years I played TS2.  I tried to get both "death by flies" and "death by satellite" the first time I played a Legacy, but I lacked the necessary patience and eventually gave up.  Sure, EA gave us "running with scissors", but then they took it away - they replaced the download with a less-fatal version.  Hello EA?  What's the point of that download if it doesn't kill our sims?

Now in TS3 it's become even harder to kill our sims.  We've lost "remove the ladder" to drown our sims, instead we now have to wall the pool in.  Removing a ladder was much quicker.  Electrocution isn't as easy as it used be, now we get a warning when trying to electrocute our sims - the singed moodlet.

I like the idea of accidental deaths, they add interest to the game.  They're almost impossible to achieve now, probably due to too many complaints from whiny BBS sheeple who didn't know how to look after their sims.  It's also become harder to deliberately kill our sims, and there's no reason I can see for EA to have done that, after all we wouldn't be deliberately trying to kill our sims if we didn't want them to die.

[aspinL]

Yep, the accidental deaths are more fun and realistic. They're like freak accidents in the human world, not that those are fun, but it made the game slightly more cool. And my bet is that they made the ability to climb out of the pool, because some players thought it was stupid the sims just didn't climb out of the pool...

That's always been one the intrigues or interesting quirks about sims. The fact that there's random things, such as the satelite and being abducted by aliens, or even the sea monster that popped up out of the water in sims 1, makes people wonder what happened. But sadly once again, they're taking stuff like that away. The only alien reference in sims 3 is the rocks with the cavedrawings on them . I don't think looking through the telescope at night will send the spaceship for you and impregnate your female sims with aliens. The only mysterious family was the Goth's and they didn't even add anything, just said, oh look it's the Goth house, remember Bella.

The least they should do is make Strangetown neighborhood for download. Or one like it.

[Catangi]

Now in TS3 it's become even harder to kill our sims.  We've lost "remove the ladder" to drown our sims, instead we now have to wall the pool in.  Removing a ladder was much quicker. 

How do you even add walls around the pool? When I try, I get an error message telling me that I can't intersect the pool. The game insists that there be at least a 1-tile border around the pool, which my sims can use to climb out and save themselves. I've tried adding walls, adding fences instead, changing the order in which I do it, moveobjects on, etc... the only way I know to drown my sims is to either put a bunch of objects (like the pedestal) around the pool, or to use a cheat to drag their energy down while they're swimming (which I haven't tried yet).

This is way too much work to get the ghost I want on my lot.

Is there a trick to it? Or could it be that being on a Mac interferes with some stuff?

[aspinL]

Have you tried using "moveObjects on" Catangi? You type that into the line after pressing command-shift-c and press enter.
Does anyone know if that is right to pull up the command prompt for a mac, on windows that's what it is(ctrl-shift-c).

[Aliera]

turned out to be the game's way of notifying me that ghosts were driving by in their ghost cars...but haven't heard it for a while now - they must have decided to stop taking the scenic route.

I think my ghosts don't have drivers licence.
I never saw a ghost car, and that puts my sims so out of the achievements slot in Maslow's needs hierarchy piramid  
Where are my ghost cars?

[kimmyfrmtx]

The cars are not ghostly, just the drivers.

[sewinglady]

thanks for clarifying that...and I'm not even sure how it is that they have cars available to them as when my elder sims have died, their possessions go to closest relative on the lot. At least so far...

lately have been playing a Riverview lot and haven't seen a single ghost driving a car so far, which does not hurt my feelings.

[Tangie]

As for the ghosts...have found that actually killing sims by something other than old age seems to be darn near impossible, so pretty sure there's no scaring them to death either - not even the cowardly ones. When I first started the family I'm currently playing, I kept hearing this 'creepy music' right after everyone went to bed - turned out to be the game's way of notifying me that ghosts were driving by in their ghost cars...but haven't heard it for a while now - they must have decided to stop taking the scenic route.

Only recently have I been hearing the random "creepy music" but I've had no clue why it was occuring. Now I'm wondering if it was because a ghost was driving by the house! I'm going to hurry and put the game on pause when I hear it the next time so I have time to check out the area.

[Ellatrue]

Perhaps the ghosts are playable ghosts?

[Rockermonkey]

I don't hear much from the ghosts, or even see them really. Only when I go to the graveyard, even then sometimes they never "come alive". But when I talk to them I sadly don't even hear their whispers, sometimes I'll hear a laugh but never any consistent simlish. 

[Writin_Reg]

Anyone ever see the Tragic Clown yet? I had a Sim fishing there every single night, as he had a half dozen Ghost kids that needed reanimated to life, so I wanted lots of perfect death fish, but never once saw that stupid clown. I just about matched up a ghost to every single grave - but that one.

[chaos]

Does the Tragic Clown even exist in TS3? I thought it was a TS1 thing, and only if you hung that hideous picture somewhere on a sim's lot.

[aspinL]

I've never seen a ghost driving a car, but I do have a car that just sits in a parking place in front of the workout place in Riverview. I have Awesome mod and it says it's a car from one of my lots that doesn't even have a family in it. It's just an empty house. I've also never played a family in it.

[HazelEyes]

I've found that sims drown easily after working out to exhaustion, and are usually too stupid to make for the ladder once they float the "Drowning" moodlet. The loss of killer ghosts is saddening. What I would have liked is if there was an easy interaction to toggle ghosts' homicidal urges. It's my second most wanted mod, after the genetic donation baby incubator.

[Sleepycat]

It's easy to drown sims in TS3. Once they are in the pool, just drop their energy and then drop their hunger = instant death by drowning. 

[unstuck]

Sorry to indulge in 12ish EP speculation, but this thread has got me thinking that perhaps there is a Makin' Magic-type expansion coming.  Now that you all mention it,  the game is conspicuously devoid of all things mysterious/supernatural, which have always been a hallmark of the series.

The ghosts are, after all, just transparent sims.  I'm quite disappointed in/annoyed by them.  I'll prolly just delete all my tombstones.  There's no drama to the deaths if the Sims never really die! DIE, damn it!! DIE!


_{edited my wee-hour dumb.  thanks HazelEyes}