question about the death of a Chosen sim, when the family wasn't being played

[minonda]

I was playing a family yesterday, and the Chosen elder female's life meter was full, so her death was imminent. The next day I played a different family, one of whom invited the previous family to their house, and the husband arrived heartbroken because his wife had died. I have the awesome mod installed, but have not enabled Awesome Story Driver, so shouldn't that death have waited until I played the family again?

Also I have been noticing that when I haven't played a Chosen family for a while, most of the food in their fridge has spoiled, and one of them is usually off the lot even though they were on the lot when I left them. I usually shut the game down when everyone has gone to sleep for the night.

Are these effects off the Awesome story driver even though I didn't enable it, or have these things been in effect all along and I'm just now noticing?

[Process Denied]

Life goes on with the Sims whether you enable Awesome Story or not.  The only way to stop it is to turn aging off.

[Mootilda]

Turning off aging doesn't stop a lot of things from happening.  For example, the food will spoil regardless of aging; unplayed sims will still go off-lot, to school, to work, to the park.  There doesn't seem to be any way to get your unplayed sims to just freeze until you are ready to play them again, the way that they did in TS2.

[minonda]

Life goes on with the Sims whether you enable Awesome Story or not.  The only way to stop it is to turn aging off.

Okay, I guess I misunderstood what awesome mod does, because I thought it prevented things happening in the lives of the Chosen by turning off story progression.  I guess it just prevents the stuff that really ruins the game, like making families move out of the town and parthenogenesis, and having them age while you're not playing them, etc. Although I thought that if she aged enough to die while I wasn't playing the family, then she was aging while not being played, which I thought wasn't supposed to happen with the awesome mod.

Not suggesting that the awesome mod is wanting, because I wouldn't be able to play Sims 3 without it, just saying I must have misunderstood. Which happens frequently when I try to grasp the mechanics  behind games and mods.

[J. M. Pescado]

I think your fundamental issue is that you still want this game to be TS2. That is really not how it works. While I have added a few options to allow you to emulate a more TS2-style, this is still TS3, and the entire point of TS3 is the unified time and world, so you cannot simply entirely FREEZE a sim in its tracks like a TS2 save. You can configure the aging to behave like TS2, but microscopic events like actions will simply march on anyway, as part of the Open World thing, because a sim cannot simultaneously be frozen in its tracks in its house, AND visit you, like in TS2.

[minonda]

I think your fundamental issue is that you still want this game to be TS2. That is really not how it works. While I have added a few options to allow you to emulate a more TS2-style, this is still TS3, and the entire point of TS3 is the unified time and world, so you cannot simply entirely FREEZE a sim in its tracks like a TS2 save. You can configure the aging to behave like TS2, but microscopic events like actions will simply march on anyway, as part of the Open World thing, because a sim cannot simultaneously be frozen in its tracks in its house, AND visit you, like in TS2.

I guess that's it, I want it to behave like TS2, and didn't realize that even without story progression TS3 was a different game. I thought it was TS2 with the option having things happen that the player does not initiate, i.e. story progression.

[edalbformat]

I have nothing against the way things happens to other Sims independent of your interaction but it is just that TS3 is simply killing the previous attachment that we had to our Sims, the entire hood, where we could follow each story individually. Now it is much more "I choose my favourite and give a damn for the others". It is particularly bad for me as I'm a recognized Associal. I play TS to simulate sort of connection to somewhat humain. The way it is, it aggravates my nature once it is adding more disruption to my own personality that is not recommended but unfortunately already irreversible.

[minonda]

I have nothing against the way things happens to other Sims independent of your interaction but it is just that TS3 is simply killing the previous attachment that we had to our Sims, the entire hood, where we could follow each story individually.

Have you installed the swesome mod? You won't feel that way if you install the mod. For me, with the addition of the awesome mod, I am the one driving the story. When I stop playing a family for a while and then begin playing them again, things are basically as they were when I left them, except that their food is spoiled and one of them is off talking to someone in town. If you haven't installed the mod, you should, because you will feel like you're playings sims the way you used to.

The death I mentioned above is still puzzling because I have two chosen elder sims who I haven't played in about a month  but they're still alive. Shouldn't they have died by now, even though I haven't played them?

[J. M. Pescado]

I have nothing against the way things happens to other Sims independent of your interaction but it is just that TS3 is simply killing the previous attachment that we had to our Sims, the entire hood, where we could follow each story individually. Now it is much more "I choose my favourite and give a damn for the others".

Yeah, I had that distinct sensation of severe alienation from the rest of the neighborhood when I first started with stock TS3. It became intolerable. So I made AwesomeMod, and gradually that sensation has been stripped away. Now that we can follow everything that is going on through a proper God's Eye view instead of a constricted viewpoint of a single sim fambly, and can easily direct actions on a neighborhood-wide level, it is starting to capture the sort of feel I had in TS2 when I took up "lot play" instead of "single fambly play".

[edalbformat]

Minonda, the death of an elder is not a consequence of a fix number of days, but the lifespan can be increased by gaming factors, as for example, if you elder Sim uses to jog or do any kind of fitness activity it can add some or many days to the life of your elder. The logic of the game is that each age has a counting down up to the next age phase. The elder starts counting progressively and there's not a dead end. I had elders that became more than 100 just because they were fit or have accomplished several positive experiences that you can read in their lifetime points (the one you can buy rewards). When they die, the game considers how many points they have in lifetimehappiness even to choose which tombstone they will get.

Pescado, yeah, I hope EA will continue to consider that we buy the game because we like our Sims. If we cannot make any distinction on their life style or cannot identify ourselves with any of them, it is the same as observing an aquarium - it is fun but fishes don't use to irritate the watchers.

[J. M. Pescado]

Yes, but having them cark it from oldness is not a NEW concept, and if you don't WANT this to happen, there are many different aging modes one can resort to. Besides, by the time they're elders, they look so miserable and decrepit that dying off is really better for them. If I looked like that, I'd probably keel over and die at parties, too. Fortunately for you people, *I* have a beefy arm and won't be crushed to death by my computer anytime soon, and look nothing like sim-elders.

[minonda]

Minonda, the death of an elder is not a consequence of a fix number of days, but the lifespan can be increased by gaming factors,

Thanks, edalbformat, but I don't really mind that she died, I was just curious about why it happened offstage. In fact I couldn't wait for her to die because I didn't like her, but I didn't kill her myself because I didn't want to cause her family unhappiness that was my doing. Generally speaking I find elders a bore and am happy when they die,  although in TS3 they are more interesting because they can spend time gardening, fishing and collecting. In TS2, until the ability to garden and fish was in the game, they were a complete bore.

[Mootilda]

Have you installed the swesome mod? You won't feel that way if you install the mod. For me, with the addition of the awesome mod, I am the one driving the story. When I stop playing a family for a while and then begin playing them again, things are basically as they were when I left them, except that their food is spoiled and one of them is off talking to someone in town. If you haven't installed the mod, you should, because you will feel like you're playings sims the way you used to.

I've been playing with AwesomeMod, but I can't agree that it makes TS3 feel like TS2.  I can hardly bring myself to play TS3, but I still love TS2.

[kuronue]

My philosophy is that TS3 is a different game, and thus is meant to be played differently. I don't try to play it like TS2 and I'm pretty happy with it. It's easier to get disconnected from the neighbourhood, true, but it's not a given.

[minonda]

Have you installed the swesome mod? You won't feel that way if you install the mod. For me, with the addition of the awesome mod, I am the one driving the story. When I stop playing a family for a while and then begin playing them again, things are basically as they were when I left them, except that their food is spoiled and one of them is off talking to someone in town. If you haven't installed the mod, you should, because you will feel like you're playings sims the way you used to.

I've been playing with AwesomeMod, but I can't agree that it makes TS3 feel like TS2.  I can hardly bring myself to play TS3, but I still love TS2.

For me it's what I want. When I come back to a family I haven't played in a while, most things are pretty much as they were when I left, as opposed to the way it was before I installed the mod. Because I didn't realize what story progression would do, I missed out on one of my first TS3 sim's adult life. I went back to her house, not realizing that she had already become an adult a while ago. After playing her for 2 sim days, she suddenly became an old woman. What a waste. Another of my new sims had two daughters by miraculous conception by the time I went back to her. That's the stuff I hate about TS3 and that doesn't happen with the awesome mod. Maybe there are things going on that I haven't noticed, but playing TS3 with the awesome mod is the only way I will play this game.

[minonda]

My philosophy is that TS3 is a different game, and thus is meant to be played differently. I don't try to play it like TS2 and I'm pretty happy with it. It's easier to get disconnected from the neighbourhood, true, but it's not a given.

My experience with the unmodded TS3 makes me feel like an observer, not a participant. If I want to observe, I'll watch TV.

[varmint]

I really see both sides of this. I actually kind of hated some things about TS2 style aging - like twin sisters who were two life stages apart from each other and other credibilty-straining stuff like that.

But I also felt the weird pressure to keep up with all of my beloved characters in TS3 before they aged without me and I couldn't even enjoy playing them.

Awesomemod has been a great help in enabling easy household switching and being able to protect sims from the more obnoxious forms of story-progression tampering, even if it doesn't stop aging. The other mod that has saved me from feeling so disconnected in TS3 is Jboat's SLAM lifespan mods from MTS. They allow you to stretch and play with lifespans so even if you miss a week or two with one family, they won't all have become decrepit or died. You can lengthen the lifespans during stages that you want to experience all your separate families and speed it up when you want to move things along.

[kuronue]

My philosophy is that TS3 is a different game, and thus is meant to be played differently. I don't try to play it like TS2 and I'm pretty happy with it. It's easier to get disconnected from the neighbourhood, true, but it's not a given.

My experience with the unmodded TS3 makes me feel like an observer, not a participant. If I want to observe, I'll watch TV.

That's because you're used to the perspective of the entire neighbourhood. TS3 is meant to be played from a single perspective (or well, single family). You don't boot up Morrowind and bitch about not being able to control the NPCs...

[Kyna]

Generally speaking I find elders a bore and am happy when they die,  although in TS3 they are more interesting because they can spend time gardening, fishing and collecting. In TS2, until the ability to garden and fish was in the game, they were a complete bore.

In TS2 I was using the Director's Cut set of hacks, with included a hack to allow elders to find adult jobs.  Once I had that in my game the only difference between elders & adults was the fact that female elders couldn't bear offspring (although they could adopt).  Are you arguing that it is the ability to get pregnant and give birth that makes sims not be a "complete bore"?  Why would an elder male be any different to an adult male in terms of interest and playability?  There is no difference in the things they can do, and Motoki's "adult clothes for elders" mod got rid of the pot bellies and saggy boobs.  Elders in TS2 were always useful.  If I didn't keep them working in their jobs to bring in money for the household, then they were useful as unpaid, controllable child-care workers.  They were great for encouraging personality traits in their grandkids.

BTW, we have a modify button for a reason (and yes, it does work).  There is no need to double post.

[minonda]

Generally speaking I find elders a bore and am happy when they die,  although in TS3 they are more interesting because they can spend time gardening, fishing and collecting. In TS2, until the ability to garden and fish was in the game, they were a complete bore.

In TS2 I was using the Director's Cut set of hacks, with included a hack to allow elders to find adult jobs.  Once I had that in my game the only difference between elders & adults was the fact that female elders couldn't bear offspring (although they could adopt).  Are you arguing that it is the ability to get pregnant and give birth that makes sims not be a "complete bore"?  Why would an elder male be any different to an adult male in terms of interest and playability?  There is no difference in the things they can do, and Motoki's "adult clothes for elders" mod got rid of the pot bellies and saggy boobs.  Elders in TS2 were always useful.  If I didn't keep them working in their jobs to bring in money for the household, then they were useful as unpaid, controllable child-care workers.  They were great for encouraging personality traits in their grandkids.

BTW, we have a modify button for a reason (and yes, it does work).  There is no need to double post.

Apologies for the double post. I am not aware of where I repeated myself but am profoundly sorry for doing so. In TS2, the jobs were not as interesting as they are in TS3. Sims went to work, and you didn't see them again until they came home. They had to make more friends and increase skills for advancement, and all you saw from the advancement was a better car picking them up for work and more money. When OFB was released, I enjoyed that because if your sim owned a business, you could go to work with him and do a variety of things to help the business. Aside from that, I never found employment to be that interesting in TS2, so for an elder to have a job in TS2 was not all that much fun.

Are you offended that I find old people boring? Sorry,I do, that's all. And guess what, I'm an old person. Just as in real life, in any Sims version, young people have so much to look forward to and experience. For elders, everything has happened and there is only death at the end. No more surprises, no more goals to attain. Although (and now I am repeating myself) in TS3 they can pursue hobbies and that makes playing them more interesting.

[Bouncing Pink Ball]

(cut unrelated response to Kyna)

Are you offended that I find old people boring? Sorry,I do, that's all. And guess what, I'm an old person. Just as in real life, in any Sims version, young people have so much to look forward to and experience. For elders, everything has happened and there is only death at the end. No more surprises, no more goals to attain. Although (and now I am repeating myself) in TS3 they can pursue hobbies and that makes playing them more inteersting.

Really?
Helen Hooven Santmyer was a woman's rights activist and prominent scholar who, after a lifetime of mild writing success, was 88 when she published her most famous book, ...And Ladies of the Club. I've always admired that.

[Kyna]

minonda, I think you missed my point.  I mentioned the Adult Jobs For Elders hack (or whatever it was called) simply because it removed one of the few significant differences between adults & elders in TS2.  It's not that I found the jobs inherently interesting in themselves.

Once you took away the employment discrimination there really wasn't a great deal of difference between adults and elders in TS2.  The main differences were that elders could not get pregnant/give birth, and that elders had an advantage over adults when it came to encouraging personality traits.  Did you find pregnancy & birth so fascinating in TS2 that sims who were no longer capable of it were suddenly boring?

I'm not elderly myself, being only in my mid-40s.  I do think it is unfortunate that our beauty-oriented, youth-obsessed culture tends to fear elderly women (oh no, is it catching?) & the aging process (zOMG, it IS catching!).  I suppose my gameplay reflects my values when it comes to the elderly.  Personally I'd rather play sims who are elders than sims who are in the overly-long teen stage.

BTW, double posting does not mean making the same post twice.  It means making two consecutive posts in a row, without anyone else posting in between your posts.  We have a modify button so that you don't need to double post.

[minonda]

\  Did you find pregnancy & birth so fascinating in TS2 that sims who were no longer capable of it were suddenly boring?

One of the things I enjoy most about the sims is getting them together and then seeing what offspring they produce. It's interesting to me to see what traits the children inherit. I don't have big families, because I also find taking care of babies and toddlers tedious, although the babies in TS3 are easier because you don't have to clean up their dirty diapers and pick up their spoiled bottles. The toddlers are still work because you have to spend so much time teaching them to walk, talk, and use the toilet. In my TS3 game so far each family has only one child. In TS2 there were usually 2 children.

I like seeing family trees grow and find the whole genetic thing interesting.

[J. M. Pescado]

My experience with the unmodded TS3 makes me feel like an observer, not a participant. If I want to observe, I'll watch TV.

This is very much a problem in stock TS3: There's basically nothing for the player to do. Witness how quickly Macrotastics was resurrected in a totally different system. This system is simply EASIER. That's fine and good that we don't have to focus on peeing anymore, but at the same time the micromanagement is made easier, the number of playing pieces you have is reduced! From Stupid Kuronue's Morrowind example, what it comes down to is a bare-bones RPG where your involvement is either that of the menial bean-counting inventory sorter, or the token rubber stamp. A General without an Army.

I really see both sides of this. I actually kind of hated some things about TS2 style aging - like twin sisters who were two life stages apart from each other and other credibilty-straining stuff like that.

Yes, this was an ongoing problem with TS2, where some characters tended to become window-dressing, but if you wanted to avoid this problem, you were stuck at least going through the motions of slamming through them on Macrotastics at speed 3. In TS3, you can slap them on Supreme Commander and let them do their thing while you DO SOMETHING INTERESTING.

But I also felt the weird pressure to keep up with all of my beloved characters in TS3 before they aged without me and I couldn't even enjoy playing them.

There is also this. But then, we have Aging Off, and Aging Scale. Epic Aging is roughly equivalent to the timeprogression of 20 famblies, anyway, what with the lifespan being about 600 days, which is equivalent to the TS2 lifespan of about 30 days * 20 famblies played in sync, the difference being that you can spend it with whoever interests you more...in AwesomeMod, anyway. In stock, forget it.

Once you took away the employment discrimination there really wasn't a great deal of difference between adults and elders in TS2.  The main differences were that elders could not get pregnant/give birth, and that elders had an advantage over adults when it came to encouraging personality traits.  Did you find pregnancy & birth so fascinating in TS2 that sims who were no longer capable of it were suddenly boring?

No, and therein lies the problem. The problem *IS* that there wasn't a great deal of difference, and what differences that existed were either irrelevant because we simply DIDN'T find those aspects that fascinating, or decidedly negative (crappier motive decay, hideous near-death appearance, etc.). Basically, all you get for your troubles is an uglier, less capable adult. You didn't get to do anything of the GOOD things. Even retirement was a curse in disguise, simply remanding a sim with lousier motives to the player to deal with. No shooing kids off the lawn, no ranting about how much better things were in the old days, no discussions on how much tougher things were and you liked it, nada. Even in TS3, you are not rewarded for your efforts with anything like, say, another personality trait. All that additional life experience is worth precisely zilch. You are rewarded for your efforts with a gimpier sim that looks uglier. You don't even get to have a longer beard. What a gyp.

I've been playing with AwesomeMod, but I can't agree that it makes TS3 feel like TS2.  I can hardly bring myself to play TS3, but I still love TS2.

You're right on both points. It doesn't make TS3 feel like TS2. It makes TS3 feel BETTER than TS2: The best of both worlds...but Awesomeized TS3 is young and stupid. Perhaps a smarter than average baby, but still a baby. TS2 is a mature game with stuff to actually play. TS3 is a baby of a game waiting to grow into its shoes. Time will tell whether it grows up to be a Jedi, like its father before it, or whether it will be eaten by a dingo.

[edalbformat]

I have TS2 reprogrammed in a totally different way. Me and my friends made a giant work to place all the EPs in one, taking out all the things we didn't like. I still play it very often. I have also another system for aging that allows me to age visitors everytime they enter a lot and this aging recognizes if it is in the same day. Well.

Back to TS3, if I feel that I would like to live all the inhabitants while in one determinated age, I extend the lifespan to Epic. If it becomes too boring I shrink it again to normal.
I installed today the Awesome Story Mode after almost one hour to read all the posts about it to keep me updated. I still don't have any results to report because I'm readjusting the hood once I started a new one.

There was no need at all for EA to make elders so decrepit. I'm an elder and as most of my elder friends we meet at the gym (training regularly). I'm strong, little overweight but very strong.
Most of the youngers think that elders are boring, even elders think so. Well, I think babies should be food, toddlers should be hung, children should be in prison and teenagers should be deported, but I can live with them.  In TS3 I simply detest everything that is younger than YA. In the country I live parents would suit a school that requires kids to repair boilers or clean bug cages. I simply abominate the "Opportunities", one more stupid than the other. Also for the adults, if I make some burgers and bring to the police station here I will not leave the police station at all and the food control department will fine me in many thousands.

The unmodded TS3 should be banned.