More Awesome Than You!

Well, I have had one night of playing.  I made a little self-sim of Doc Doofus, the first time in nine years I have made one.  (Some people suggested they wanted one to torture, so I'll upload him here as soon as I figure out how you export).

There are some things about TS3 I am VERY PLEASED about, and others that are a real Squeeze Technique issue.  But first the good things.

I am so very, very pleased that there is an actual town that you can explore.  You can run around to your heart's content from house to house, park to park, store to store.  This is how I always wanted it to be.  The first time I played GTA Vice City, I asked myself, why can't the Sims be this immersive?  And here we are closer to that, although this isn't quite that immersive yet.  And we don't have chainsaws.  (I'm counting on Pescado to make that his FIRST MOD.  I want CHAINSAWS, DAMMIT.)  The freedom of it all is such a huge rush.  I can understand some people used to TS2 being too stunned to appreciate that yet.  Going from TS2 to TS3 may be a shock, but going from TS3 to TS2 basegame would be a huge letdown.

I have yet to fully experience the story progression of the rest of the town.  I'm sure it's happening, but that will take more play on my part still.  I've only had about a week in-game.

Now for the negative, and it's a very big negative.  The Sims themselves are FUGLY beyond belief, and I fear the tools that one might use to fix that don't exist, and, worse yet, may never exist.  In EA's quest to make the game more moddable at game time, it appears to have been made less moddable overall. 

I am OUTRAGED that there is no BodyShop program.  If we had that, we could at least begin the process of trying to customize skin textures (dear God, they are ghastly), to maybe make things a bit more Stefan-esque.  But I think it may be worse than just that, because it appears that the skin textures available in game-CAS may not be really moddable at all.  The actual skin color choices seem to be color swatches which, I am guessing, are applied to a single global skin texture.  If that is the case, then we can do some good by changing that global skin, but we won't be able to have distinct inheritable custom skins.  We might end up having only our choice of one global default skin, not changeable in game.  If that's the case, then a BodyShop program would offer no relief for changing skins.  We can probably customize skins using custom clothes, if we ever get tools for that -- that's how we often did it in Sims 1 days -- but that would clearly not be inheritable.

If the default skin is truly awful, even more so are the eyes, which are hideous.  If I had had the tools, I would have stayed up all night making new eyes alone.  But, no tools.  EA's message to world: "Suck on it."

It would be nice to customize the make-up.  Same problem.  In fact, let me say, the tools are so specialized for changing the color of the default game makeup (and clothes and hair) that I find it hard to visualize how they would be easily extensible to custom made makeup.  The hair and makeup come in four different colors which can be color-changed with a color-wheel, thus enforcing a four color scheme, not allowing for more sophisticated coloring.  This might seem nicer than in Sims 2 where you had to make (or download) at least five different colors for any hair tone, thus a timesaver, but it has to come at a grave price in customization possibilities.  I imagine a first-time player of the game might find it dazzling to play with the color wheels, while those of us that remember headier days of Sims 2 and being able to make our own textures with Bodyshop and Photoshop 2 are bound to be left-down.  And if/when tools for importing content arrive, just think of the difficulties of translating a custom hair tone into something that could fit into the four-color color-wheel system of the game.  What a bitch.

Also, I am very disappointed by the face manipulators and default face structures in the game-CAS.  I have heard some people say they are more powerful than the equivalent TS2 tools.  This is UTTER, COMPLETE, TOTAL BULLSHIT.  I fought with the TS3-CAS last night, trying to come up with some eye shapes that wouldn't look like space aliens or hentai and came up short.  The jaws can either be round and fat or pointed like a hatchet.  It would take a loving Sim-mother to look at just the face-shape of any of these Sims and think they were lovely.  I am despondent over this.  I don't see how any tool could come out to change this.  I was looking forward to making some replacement default face structures, as we did for TS2, but if you can't even get half-way there with the CAS, I don't think it can be done short of going to Milkshape, and with or without that drastic step, there's a chance that a decently shaped face might be incompatible with the game tools and animations.  We might be stuck with this shit for a long, long time.

And since I spent most of my fun time during the last several years trying to de-fuglify ugly townies and Sims, this leaves me in a quandary about where this is all going to go.  EA always had a certain cartoonish style to their Sims  content.  It was, at least, a certain consistency and humor to it.  But it was something that CC makers immediately veered from.  Even the lowliest of pre-teen skin makers wanted to make their Sims look like Britney Spears or the Jonas Brothers, or whoever they idolize nowadays.  I dread to think of what that will look like with TS3. 

Please, JM, please, make me a chainsaw!!

For custom content (shall it ever exist) and the CAStification of it, I'd just readily assume that CC would use some variety of greyscale base with some system to denote what texture goes to which area.  That seems to be how it works with the game at present, anyway, though it may be woefully more complicated to create CC as a result.  That seems to be a common trend with this iteration of The Sims, "making it harder to do what made people actually like our stupid game".

Anyway, I haven't had any problems with the CAS facial editing tools, though I don't like the general lack of extreme ranges and have troubles with the cheek bone sliders.  I've successfully made little vinyl skinned simulacra of my partner and friends and I have aggravatingly high standards for such.

Of course, the possibility exists that myself and everyone I know is ugly.  I'm open to that.

Little late for it to be his first hack. ;)

Nice of you to review the game, but why you saw fit to start a brand new thread when a thread ALREADY EXISTS where people are reviewing their impressions of the game...THAT I do not understand. Kindly do a search next time to see if your desired topic of discussion already has a thread where it would fit.

Thanks.

There is?  There's Pescado's impressions, but that doesn't seem like a general review thread to me.  I was looking for one earlier, too, because I trust the people here to be more sophisticated in their understanding of the game than anyplace else.  I eventually ended up buying it anyway, and I'm mostly enjoying it, despite the puddings.

 - Gus

I agree broadly with comments about the fugly puddings (*sings: "Now bring us some fugly puddings..."*), but it IS possible to use the various CAS sliders to make an acceptably non-fugly sim.  While not as sophisticated or "fine" as the sliders in TS2 Bodyshop, they are allow more fine-tuning than in TS2 CAS, I find.  Residual fugliness seems to be due to the overall default skin textures and the weird lighting that seems to give all sims a double chin.

The fact that the EAxis3 townies, etc. are fugly is potentially not so much the fault of the game, but a continuation of the clear EAxis policy that game generated sims must be fugly as sin.  I shall personally run a Bene Gesserit breeding program in my game to hopefully weed out the fugly (and develop the Kwisatz Haderach, of course).

Seconded.


Yes, this is depressing the hell out of me, too. I was looking forward to possibly working on new templates for TS3, but I'm starting to wonder how much improvement can really be made. Granted, I haven't reached nearly the level of familiarity with these sliders that I had with the old ones, but I have put in many hours in CAS and am fairly horrified by it. You can't even change the shape of the forehead. You can't even achieve a proper cupid's-bow mouth. The lip controls are really the worst.

I think it's back to lot building for me. That at least is much improved.

I think the dudes are okay looking, maybe even better than Sims 2, but chicks are fugly.  There is not one female in both Sunset Valley, Riverview, or the Sim bin that look good at all.  Fat cheeks, large double-chins, and round moon faces seem to be the norm for women in Sims 3.  It really looks disproportionate on the slimmer sims.  First thing I did was make a better looking female sim, she came out alright, but the ones I made in Sims 2 are still better looking.

Also, the in-game lighting makes them uglier.  I noticed the pie menu pic of my female sim is far more attractive than her in-game appearance.

The skintones might soon be fixed. HP over at MTS is *hinting* and *winking* a lot so she probably has something brewing.

Hello! Let me stick up my own 5 cents into this buzz :)
I guess for now we do not need a lot of custom skintones - just a set of decent a bit more realistic default ones.
And a set of good default eyes, not a bunch of.

The dudes are pretty OK, but most all of them are look-alike, but chicks are mostly grumpy looking

I wish that were really true. I haven't been able to get Sim-Wife to look really ANGRY at all.

Give her the unibrow; nothing says angry quite like the unibrow.

@Pes: There is a set of eyebrows that will make anyone look angry. I used them on my teen son... :-D

I generally agree with this statement.  I have found one or two of the game-made townies in Sunset V. to be acceptably non-moonfaced, but the strange lighting tends to give sims that double-chin look, even where a second chin does not exist.  As mentioned in other threads, by several people, lips are extremely difficult to make attractive, especially for female sims.

I like the options for recolouring clothing - nothing like dressing everyone in totally garish stuff (Drapes from the Sound of Music?  We can do better!).  Some of my formalwear is beautifully horrendous, as a fashion crime.  I am enjoying that very much.

Yep. (http://"http://linna.modthesims.info/download.php?t=343769")

This is something I've been enjoying greatly myself.  Now if time would pass slower at spd 1 and faster at spd 3/4 I think my sims would get the most out of their days and I would get the most out of their nights/down time.


They're beyond ghastly and the same texture is used no matter the weight of your sim.  I was highly dissapointed when I noticed that as I was making a male character. At first I wanted him to be lanky after making his wardrobe I changed my mind.  While he was in swim trunks I discovered the lack of texture change from light weight to heavy.


Yes, those people are full of crap.  I've only found one way of making female sims look somewhat decent and that's a heart shaped, slightly elongated face.  The only downside is that when sims loose weight (which is WAY too fast IMO) the cheeks get really sunken in.  If I make a heavy sim it shouldn't take one work out session for them to shed 40/50 lbs!  I like female sims with a body similar to mine, kinda curvy and muscular and EAxis just takes all the curves away the second your sim touches a treadmill.  Fit women can have breasts damn it!

ETA:  HP has made some re-textures of the TS3 skins.  For some reason I can't get the link to work even after using the direct link to this thread option on MTS3.  It's on the first page of MTS3 though.

Insanity Prelude, you fucked up the link (http://www.modthesims.info/download.php?t=343769).

How'd that " get there? Thanks for fixing it.

I agree completley! I don't see a whole lot of hope for this game as far as extreme custom content goes, but who knows! I hate the way the Sims look in the Sims 3. I don't see the Sims 3 Sims ever looking as real as the Sims 2 Sims even with new skins, hacks, ect.  I wish they'd of left the Sims alone and added on the new features like exploring the town, story progression, traits ect. Also, another thing I really do not like is how they took away memories. I liked to keep up with who my sim dated, who their first kiss was and now I can't do that. Another good thing about memories was that you could go into a family such as the Goths, go into the memories and see what they'd been up to. Memories weren't the only thing to go, a lot of things went including certain interactions such as in the Sims 2 if I wanted to hand the baby to someone I could. Now in Sims 3 I have to put the baby down for someone else to pick it up. In the Sims 2 My sims could talk to the baby or some kind of interaction while the mother was holding it, now there is no such interaction.  So far, my Sim didn't spin into a Wedding dress and tux when they got married, which I know it's nice that we get to pick our own now, but I didn't see any dress in CAS that looked like a Wedding dress? Why didn't they atleast throw a veil into accessories for Weddings? They took away the Wedding arch which is fine because now we don't need it, but now we have no decorations for weddings at all!

The best thing about the Sims 3 is that it doesn't take long for me to load it, however when I get a bunch of CC and hacks for the game that may change, and the trait system and being able to visit neighbors is great. However, if the Sims 2 with all my CC and hacks would load as fast as the Sims 3 game then personally I'd rather play it.

I think what would of been nice if they'd left all the features from the Sims 2 in the game, but just added to it. For instance, the sims would look the same as the Sims 2, they'd still have memories, and I would rather they left CAS alone. I liked just downloading new clothes and outfits. If I wanted a different color I could always open body shop and Photoshop and make a different color and put it back in the game. The pattern system is not a big plus for me nor is the color wheel because now it will be harder for CC creators to make all together different outfits. I hate the outfits that came with the game and I was really looking forward to someone making new ones, but now who knows when and if that will happen. I wish they'd of just left it the way it was and then added the ability to explore the neighborhood, added the traits feature, and all the other cool new features, but left the way they looked alone. Another cool thing they should of done was made it where you could go to a hotel for the night, that way if a Sim was cheating on their spouse they could go to a hotel or if the Sims wanted to get away from the kids for a night they could hire a babysitter and go to a hotel. Also, why do Sims have to leave at a certain time at night, I'd like my visitors to stay as long as I want them to without having to ask them to stay over because they may not want to stay over. Also, when I through a party I hate that my guests just all of a sudden leave when I might not want them to. I know it was this way in the original Sims 2 game but I wished they'd of fixed this in the Sims 3. I also think you should be able to click a household and switch to playing that family if you want to.

If I was asked what do I miss the most in the Sims 3 that was in the original Sims 2? The way the Sims looked, memories, and CAS & Body Shop.

Have, not of. "They'd have..."  "Should have..."  I can even handle it if it's "should've". Whichever you choose, it is not "of"!   This particular mistake just makes be bonkers, especially in an otherwise inoffensive post. 

About memories...  I miss those too, but I haven't given up hope that we won't ever get them back.  One of the problems with Sims 2 with old well-played neighborhoods was that the neighborhood became clogged with memories.  They may or may not have taken up all that much space, but they surely must have slowed down the game, having to sift through them.  So getting rid of that wasteful canonical memory system may have been a design decision for TS3. 

But it seems to me there must be SOME memory system that we can't see.  Memories are important to evaluating new Wishes (or "Wants" in TS2 jargon).

And if you have played with the "Gossip" action (highly recommended!) you'll find out that there is an active town memory of recent town events that is stored in the system somewhere.  Your sims will happily gossip about a stranger across town having a baby or somebody having a fight, so that information has clearly been stored, however briefly.  It's in the system.  Where, or how extensive it is, I don't know. 

As for fugly sim chicks...  It occured to me, they all look like Thora Birch. 

(http://popwatch.ew.com/photos/uncategorized/2009/04/13/thorabirch_l.jpg)

Now, I know, for some people, OoOOooOh that's hot, and you'll say you whacked off to Thora Birch's pasty face countless times.  God bless you and your hairy palms.  I've been turned on by stranger things..  I just disagree about Thora Birch, and I dread the idea of spending the next five years trying to make a prettier Thora Birch over and over and over again.

I makes me  bonkers too.

To Brooke: 
  Actually, I love the color wheel and feel it is one of the game's strong points. It makes it so much easier to have matching clothes without tons of recolors of the same outfit showing up. One thing that drove me crazy in the Sims 2 was having the same outfit with a whole bunch of colors clogging up the bins. I can match objects so they can have the same kind of wood and design effortlessly. I much prefer that then going through the whole process of loading up bodyshop or simpe, exporting the textures, making every color for every object I want to match(which is a process in itself clothes wise when you want to do it right or target specific areas), then importing it all back into the game. That's what, a 1-2 hour process for a 5-10 minute thing now in the Sims 3. 
 
  Also, I highly doubt the wheel will be the thing that will create the biggest obstacle when it comes to making different clothing and object meshes. All the color-wheel and style thing is is a recoloring tool. It is roughly your own in-game Photoshop without the technicalities. The CC I was really worried about was the skins and eyes but HP already came out with a set of skins. Yes, they are default but it is a start. I have yet to find someone who likes the original skins anyways.

   I also disagree when you say it limits uniqueness, if anything it makes it easier to make different looking outfits and objects because of all the design options. That's like saying all T-shirts are the same because they are the same style. If there is a rack of plain white Ts and there is a lone lime green snake skin one with zebra print sleeves and collar will it not stick out?

  Other than that, I miss the memories as well. I find myself looking around for the memories only to realize they are not there anymore...

I'm pretty sure you don't HAVE to do the whole color wheel thing if you design new clothing, hair, or objects.

Even if you choose the blank pattern and pick white on the color wheel, all of the objects in the game still have their own texture.  Furthermore, there are areas on some objects where you CAN'T apply patterns or colors.  It's not unreasonable to assume that you could design entire objects, hairs, or clothes that use texture areas that can't be patterned or colored.  What you would have is something exactly like in TS2 where the player had no control over the color scheme in the game.  Granted, the color wheel interface would still be there, it just wouldn't DO anything.

They remind me more of Kelly Osbourne. Or perhaps an unholy lovechild of the two.

(http://i110.photobucket.com/albums/n99/neuraldamage/crap/kelly_osbourne.jpg)

I actually find both Kelly and Thora visually interesting, but I detest being limited to one specific sort of look, regardless of what that look is.

The color-wheel system is one of the things I really love, though it does raise questions about how CC will be possible.

They always look a bit like they have Downs Syndrome to me. The subtle 'wrongness' of the eyes and the, well, pudding face.

  Maybe so...but the game only came out a few days ago, well, a few weeks if you want to count the leaked copies, and we already have custom skins, hacks, and textures. Are they perfect, no, but they are there. As much as I hate to sound like EA, I am sure if we give it some we will be able to have the wheel usable with custom objects. There has to be a way because Maxis can do it with their own. Just have to figure out their secret. Or the miracles of miracles will happen and they tell us ::).

  In the very early days of the Sims 2 if you told someone we were going to have custom meshes and animations you will most likely get laughed out of the forum. There were a lot of near impossibles that we overcame in the Sims 2 and coming from my usual pessimistic self, I have hope that we can overcome the same quagmires(SAT word, go me!) in this game as well.

  Otherwise, you are allowed to throw pies at my face.
 
 

I have found the slow passing of time the single most annoying thing in the game.

Go to work, put game on full speed, wait five minutes for Sim to finish work, Sim is tired out, go to bed [Sim will not be fully rested by 10am, extend sleep icon to 'fully rested'], put game on full speed, wait five minutes.

After staring at the screen for ten minutes watching time pass slowly, exit Sims, go online to play GTR Evolution.

Riverview must have the only juicebar in the world with no bar staff, Sims can walk in and help themselves. No barstaff? Come on EA, this is Beta standard programming.
A completely unstaffed, FREE gym in the neighbourhood, why would I bother buying gym equipment?

There are some great new features, but somehow it all seems a bit unfinished, like a demo version, I can see a lot of potential in the game, but the only salvation is to spend another $30 on the first expansion, then another $30 and another $30 etc etc etc.

Or, as I have seen in much of the feedback so far, rely on modders to rectify the flaws and improve content and gameplay.
So, here we are again, waiting for, not EA who are trousering the cash, to fix the flaws, but for Sim enthusiasts to provide all of the innovation and creation that Sims3 requires to make it a great game.

The OP's complaint about the color wheel was that it restricted object and clothing design to use of only 4 colors.  I'm pointing out that, even if you do use the color wheel, it is not restrictive.  You don't have to apply ANY areas to the texture that can be patterned/colored IF you don't want to.  Allowing the player to customize patterns and colors does not automatically limit what the creators are able to make with it.  I'm just saying that if the whole pattern/color thing turns out to be too restrictive, it should be entirely possible to design textures that don't use it at all.

Agreed.  Some of the in-game t-shirts have complex patterns with lots of colors, but the only thing that you can change is the color of the t-shirt underneath the pattern.  So, if you really want a pattern with more than 4 colors, you can do it; it just won't be as modifiable in-game.

I wish my fugly sim chicks looked like Thora Birch, she's not bad!
A lot of the female sims do look a lot like Kelly Osbourne.

I saw this awful lady on the news.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090608/ap_on_re_us/us_pregnant_woman_killed
I thought, "hey, some of my female sims look kind of like her".  I have some with fat faces and skinny bodies, it looks so disproportionate.

:o
It's scary how many sims I've seen that look just like that! Good call on that.

Oh, look. What a surprise. She was killed by some LUNATIC she met from the INTERNET. Didn't I tell you that NO TWO PEOPLE ONLINE ARE NOT AXE MURDERERS?!?

Mom? Is that you? :P

Ah, they changed the pic to the victim.  It's the lunatic's mugshot (http://d.yimg.com/a/p/ap/20090608/capt.e1604ae1da8a465fa004161961073e05.pregnant_woman_killed_ny117.jpg?x=293&y=345&q=85&sig=h5RmQNKjxxLA4yAuw8xE4g--) that made me think of Sims 3 sims. :)

Hmm, I thought I posted on MATY but apparently not as search turns up no posts. I picked Kelly Osbourne from the beginning, my very first TS3 sim was named Kelly Osbourne, the likeness was remarkable.

That's really weird, I was SURE I posted. Cue spooky music.

I finished doing degree type things yesterday so finally got round to installing TS3 today and managed to get in a few hours playing.

Likes:
Build mode interface.
Having to work at relationships and get a sim's partner in the mood to woohoo.
The option to do different things at work/school which seem to generate different opportunities.
CAS - separate shoes.
The Sim/Map switch.
Food doesn't last forever in the fridge.

Dislikes:
It feels very slow, not that there's anything wrong with slow I just like to speed up gameplay to suit my taste.
The pudding factor.
Maggot babies.
Baby and toddler care is a bit too easy - fetid nappies added to gameplay in TS2 so why take them away?
Lack of transition animations - not cut scenes - the sudden jumps from one action to another jar.
The way EA appear to have made a concerted effort to remove the need for CC beyond their patterns.
The game doesn't stay paused when you save.


@Witch: I didn't think of Kelly Osbourne and instead opted for a morbidly obese Paris Hilton.

I bow to Kelly Osborne.  She's definitely more the TS3 puddin'-face than Thora Birch, although they look related.  I pray I don't hurt anybody's feelings, but they both have that bovine baby-fat faced look that some adolescents grow out of very slowly.  (Admittedly, I did, too.  They used to call me Poppin' Fresh)

Speaking of which, Poppin' Fresh could be the mascot of TS3.
(http://www.fpsmagazine.com/uploaded_images/dancin-717671.jpg)

And, of course, there's his evil big brother, the Stay Puft man.
(http://www.ghostbustershq.com/media/desktops/staypuft.jpg)

Actually, I've been thinking that there is a hell of a resemblance between the Sims 3 and those characters..now I know I wasn't going mad.
Or else the Michelin Man-close enough to have a three way tie!

I finally got TS3 and have logged a few hours playing it with a couple I created, along with playing with some of the tools.

My initial impressions...

LIKES:
Rendering of the game. It helps running an Intel Quad Core, 4 GB, and a nvidia 9800 GTX+. Everything is smooth with settings maxed out. I wonder how badly it'll degrade when/if we can start loading a lot of real CC.
The color wheel. (Thank god I can do my own quick recolors instead of hunting for them for hours online.)
The town is pretty cool although I haven't interacted much yet with the townies.
CAS shoes and accessories for every clothing type.


MIDDLE OF THE ROAD:
Hair. Four layers of color is great, but I seriously hope we'll get real CC for this category. I'm already bored with the style choices.
Eyes. They're OK but too doll-like just like TS2 default eyes were.
CAS facial controls. Good, but they feel a lot more limited than TS2 controls.

DISLIKES:
Pudding face. (At least EA marketing was smart enough to outright LIE about that with the box art. Out of all the faces, I only see two definitive puddings. If they'd used only faces truly rendered in the game, probably would have scared most buyers off.)
The facial hair styles for men are shit -- AGAIN. The full beard is the best this time around and some of the stubble is OK, but whatever artist designed the styles obviously has no fracking clue about male facial hair grooming. (The hispanic chinstrap beard looks like someone drew it on with magic marker. The chinstrap + stubble is just laughably hideous.)
The tilt control near ground level is whacked. It also doesn't work with the wheel button on my standard mouse as described in the instructions.


The biggest thing that hasn't changed between TS2 and TS3?

Pescado and MATY delivering us from EAxis evil.

I think this player review is a good read. I get the impression he's very well acquainted with TS1 and TS2. I also get the impression he really likes pudding, but the rest of the review makes up for that.

http://www.gamespot.com/pc/strategy/thesims3/player_review.html?id=662835&tag=player-reviews%3Bcontinue&page=11 (http://www.gamespot.com/pc/strategy/thesims3/player_review.html?id=662835&tag=player-reviews%3Bcontinue&page=11)

That review is the best I've seen so far-very thorough and even handed. It gets right to the core of the major problems this game has, and pulls no punches.

I thought this was perhaps one of the most important critique points of Allen's link, one I couldn't have voiced as well until I played the game longer.  There is no sense of humor, artistry, and life breathed into mere clay in TS3 as there was in TS1 and TS2.


EA made a big mistake here.  I know that I, for one, was sick to death of the old animations of TS2 and didn't want to watch them anymore, but they helped establish the tone of tongue-in-cheek humor that suffused the game. 

We are also kept very distant from our Sims faces.  That may be a blessing because they all look like Poppin' Fresh, I suppose.  But in TS2, the thumbnails were larger, the pie menu faces were larger, the opening load scene for the family showed a large picture of the family, the special cut scenes (like first woohoo and childbirth) were all close-up with well-choreographed expressions...  Those things made us feel that we were on the same flat playing field as the sims, themselves.  With TS3, however, we have these new, very distant Godly cam angles.  The playing field itself is so much larger that we may spend little or no time looking at the Sims themselves, except as little ants moving through a large hive colony.  They become less personal to us, as a result.  EA should put more thought into this and give us moments of up-closeness with the Sims so we can appreciate them visually and emotionally, not just as little specks moving around with an action queue.

What resolution did you have your TS2 set to? Mine was set to 1024x768, same as I have TS3. Sim facial icons are almost exactly the same size. The side ones were smaller, as eight sims just fit on the side there, whereas 12 would fit on TS2. Family picture is the same on game load, though not on that household summary interface when you are switching households.

And there is this pearl ...


First, he does not get this is a God Game.

Second, he does not get what is a "roleplayer" (lets ignore the fact you are not making a ingame avatar but creating a Sim) and just in case anyone is stupid enough to try to argue with me ... roleplay is exactly that, play a role but if I am playing the role of William Tell it does not mean MY (the actor) skills are the same of William Tell (the character) ... some dumbfucks think "roleplay" is using their (player) skills in some mini game and this lead me to ...

Three, Mini games are not replacement for skill system ... if there is a skill system then DITCH then, I tolerate mini games when they are used for breaking pacing and entirely optional but at least he did not directly mention what is the bane of current video games ... Simon-says mini games.

A lot of the issues with TS3 is because EA tried to appeal to people like him (the so called "gamers", I call then "proof we need eugenics") , its more of a "game" and that is why it fails.

Guys, there's a new slider for almost all facial slides, as well as body, available at modthesims. And there's also skintones there. I'm not too sure on the skins yet, but I'm not using the slider, it seems to extreme for me :).

It's true. It's like they took a look at all the shitty console ports of the series they've done and said, "Hey, wait a minute. It wasn't that they didn't like the gameplay. It must've been the controller!"

It always seemed to me that the real strength of the Sims games was the creative aspect. You could build the terrain and roadways, fill it in with houses, parks, and facilities that you built, and populate it with people you created, and when that's done, you direct those people through life in what way you see fit. Most of that is still there (give us the fucking neighborhood tool), but it hasn't really been expanded upon all that much. Look at Build Mode: I can count five things that are actually new and were never part of The Sims 2. So now we have stairs that build their own little designable (or destroyable) underwalls, and we can put any railing on any type of stair, yet we still can't use the design tool on the stairs themselves or the damn rails. We can't even change the color! Same with roofs: you get x shingle designs in y colors, but that's it. We still can't redesign fences. Ground-level walls can't be built against foundations without geometry-warping workarounds. Same thing for stairs with landings. Windows and doors can't be placed on the half tile. Half-length walls could be useful, but it's still one wall per tile, just like in The Sims 1. Some things you can look at (the lack of hair, clothes, objects in general) and say, "Well, that'll get filled in with expansions and store items," but the aforementioned build mode things are core and won't be changing.

The key word in that article is "laziness".  After playing this entire weekend I have to agree. 

I feel like I've been forced to dumb down and fit into my spawn's console world or play one of the RPGs I have.  The sims move like little robot people (what is WITH that stance they have when standing still?), have little to no personality and building stuff is painful.  I think I hate the speed problem more than anything in this POS.

I do like being able to follow them as they move from one lot to the other, color customization and the interactions with the ghosts.  I'm determined to get a ghost baby for which the Son of Perdition's self-sim has graciously agreed to take one for the team to provide.  After that I see myself going back to TS2 to fulfill my goddess complex.

As a Sims player since day 1 I feel like I've been bent over and fucked in the ass with no reach around.

I like that Sims can do things that make sense, whereas before they couldn't.
Adult Sims can now sit down in chairs while holding babies and even watch TV with them. I don't know about anyone else but I squee'd when I saw that.

Fuck yeah, laziness. The game gives the feeling of incompleteness a lot.
More than pure laziness, though, I blame marketing/corporate strategy: just do the bare minimum so the player has the feel of the thing and conceal the leaks and cracks with some paint on: when the players will realize the con it will be too late. EA will already got the money AND spout out another tease in form of EP, refreshing players' hopes. Repeat ad libitum.

See the story progression, which is 90% a fake feature, not mentioning the fact it's also BROKEN.

I am finding it rather fun to ignore the "mini-games" like collecting stuff, chasing after wants, buying all the lifetime rewards, etc., and just playing it like a story.  That said, there is a lot of new breadth to the game (contiguous neighbourhood, no load screens, story progression), which promises a lot, but delivers less than desirable (rabbit holes being one case in point).

I think the summary line in the review/article is that you can not eat the cakes.  Caek exists, but it is a lie.

My thought's exactly. All of it.

This game was blantantly rushed, and it's been sloppily and lazily developed. I'm only playing to see everything, and then I too shall return to the clearly superior TS2. There's some nice stuff in there, admittedly, but it's floating around in a sea of crap. The Sims 2 is an eternal sandbox that I can play until my fingers bleed. The Sims 3 is a shallow, generic game I will be sick of by the end of the week not least because of the numerous technical problems and it's tendancy to fuck it self up when I'm not looking.

It's like a PC version of the console games really... In fact, come to think of it, it's more of a horrific second coming of Simsville. One can now see why that game got canned.

The only mini game I like is exploring the catacombs in the graveyard.  I've gotten all my gnomes there (which btw is a hilarious addition), some of the rare seeds and some weird rock.  Plus I enjoy seeing my simself come out fried when it's been particularly traumatic.  She's gone in there so many times I think I've gotten all the scenarios multiple times.  

I disagree that he doesn't get its a "God game."

I believe he was just trying to think of something else that might break the MORPG "grind"-like aspect of skilling in TS3.  In that respect, he has a point:

MORPG = set your character to make 150 longswords in the workshop. Execute. Wait.
Sims = set your character to learn cooking skill by reading a book. Execute. Wait.

The difference however is that with a MORPG you go fix yourself a snack, maybe start a load of laundry, or take some time to play with the dog while you wait. In the Sims, you can simply switch to a different active sim and keep playing. So I disagree with him on the point of needing to "fix" skilling with some kind of mini-game. I don't think it would hurt to add mini-games that increase skills purely for the sake of variety, but I wouldn't make them required.

What I have noticed in the bit I've played is that the Sims seem to lack soul. I've seen very few animations so far that I really like or that have brought a smile to my face. And there is something odd about the way they walk I can't put my finger on.

I also came across another review where someone directly accused of EAxis of making TS3 more MORPG-like. I have to admit I'm getting that feeling myself.  I drifted away from TS2 to play "Lord of the Rings Online" for the past two years because I was getting bored and it was refreshingly different from TS2. LOTRO has now gotten boring, and so I thought maybe TS3 was perfectly timed to take over as my new major video game interest.  However my experience so far has been that it's not different enough from TS2 -- and in some ways very inferior to it -- to hold my interest for very long AND parts of it do remind me of playing LOTRO.

 :-[

They stand and walk like they're going to a gunfight at the OK Corral.   It reminds me of Yul Brenner's character in "Futureworld".

Or they have hemorrhoids.

In some ways, it reminds me of the game "Bully."

They took out 85% of the humor, and (I suspect on purpose) about 95% of the "sexy," and I think that's where at least some of the "soul" of the game went.  I was never "turned on" by the TS2 sims (though apparently some people were,) but I could at least understand why the sims would be turned on by one another. TS3 text messages about so-and-so being alluring or irresistibly-whatever-it-is just can't compare to animations in TS2 for the make out actions, or the romance sims' walk.  I do appreciate the messages about one sim considering another sim's actions to be "extremely awkward," because yes, yes they are. 

I always hated the YA amble in TS2, but I'd love to have it back now, instead of the way sims of all ages charge about like sims-on-a-mission--which causes me to wonder: since it appears that many animations were taken directly out of TS2 and plugged into TS3, is it at all possible that modders might be able to do the same thing, and replace some new animations for actions with the old ones?  I am hating that damn walk more and more with each passing day.

That's what I thought too. Although, when they are cooking it looks like they've got diarrhea and they're about to rush off to the toilet.

They are actually doing a speeded up Michael Jackson moonwalk.  Slow the speed down to a really annoyingly slow crawl and you'll see what I mean.  Their feet slide on the ground when they walk.  This is mostly imperceptible at normal speed, but if your computer starts to drag, it becomes ridonkulusly apparent.

I finally realized that the face controls in CAS lack any way to manipulate the forehead and brow aside from changing the position of the eye brows.

This is one thing definitely lacking in making more masculine-looking male sims.  A more prominent brow immediate translates as masculine feature... if you go ALL OUT it'll make a guy look neanderthal-like.

But lacking any way to give brows even gentle enforcement, the foreheads on male sims are more or less fixed and helps contribute to them having that look of "same-ness."

Given this, I seriously doubt you could use TS3 CAS to make good copies of some well-known male celebrities. Like Hugh Jackman, for instance.

I pointed that out awhile ago, because there is absolutely no way to replicate my forehead properly, and so all attempts end up as this kind of slopey-foreheaded monkey, rather than my proper tube.

Here are some of my thoughts - okay mostly complaints... cuz 'omg i luvzzz sooo much ea is my favvvv!!1!!11 isn't productive. Also I dont feel much like gushing. 

I'm finding I am growing very bored very quickly with TS3, and I played the base games for both sims 1 and 2 way more than is healthy.  I dont remember ever really getting bored with either of them.  I think the biggest reason is I really enjoyed making the sims in both 1 & 2.  I do not enjoy making the sims this time around.  I am also finding that I do not feel like I like these little pixelated people.  Maybe its because they are all such little maggots as babies...  Or maybe its that as toddlers they can't interact with other toddlers or children...  or maybe its that all the children look like little square jawed oompa loompas.  hard to say. 

re: pudding face and general annoyance.
Adding a layer of chub may make the facial animations smoother but thus far I havent been able to make the sims I want.  And its not like the chub has eliminated the chunky accidents of cas where a jaw juts out in a disturbing pixelated mess, and nostrils fail to connect to the face resulting in choppy and unnatural animations.  Some sims turn out alright looking thanks to awsome mod, but never as good as I had hoped. 
I dunno if any of you guys played fallout 3, but the face controls remind me of the character creator from that game.  So many options... but they give only the illusion of control.  youre still stuck with certain parts of the face that cannot be altered.  That was just fine in fallout where you had to go out of your way to see your character's face... but i like watching my sims! i mean, isnt that the whole point?  Why does it seem like they put more effort into decorative outdoor plants than the sims themselves?  No actually, they put more effort into that than any other objects.  (Really?  We're back to octagons pretending to be circles?  The furnature looks like poorly made ts2 cc with low poly counts. just look at the cheapest lamp and you'll know what i mean.)

I guess I expected the graphics to be better.  I didn't expect every sim to have a weird spare tire around their necks.  I didn't expect that nearly ALL the (very limited) hair styles we were given to be horribly ugly.  I didn't expect them to all storm around town looking like theyre hunting for whoever put that stick up their bums.  My boyfriend asked me the other day "why are you still playing sims 2?"  to which i replied "im not, its sims 3." "then why are they all so pug-fugly?"  he laughed uproariously.  He went on to demand to know what happened to a particular cc'd out female sim who he had always heckled with cat calls as i played her or as she came onto a community lot.  'wwooOOooo there she is.  thats what im talking about.  make her date the bigfoot!  do it!!'  Regarding the sims 3 sims, he considered them for a moment before declaring that they looked like playmobile people. 

i really didnt expect to still see route-fail-splosions resulting in all the sims nearby stopping to tap their foot and bob their heads like my awkward older brother at a club.   It takes them over fifteen sim minutes to get back on track.  and its not even when they run into each others squares, it seems like even one sim walking behind another will without even bumping into the back of them stop and do the foot tap, as wil the one in front, until finally they find alternate directions to their target both abandoning the straight route.  I guess my expectations for mobility were too high.  I had hoped after hearing how they climb out of pools to avoid death even without the ladder, that maybe they could climb over the couch to avoid driving me crazy.  (little do they know failure to do so may also result in death for them if i get bored enough.  Tap your foot at me will you?!) 

on the time issue, i really wish the 1x speed would be slower.  it takes them half a sim hour to get from bed to the kitchen in a 2 story house, and im not talking about a mansion here.  Maybe then the 3x speed would feel faster without having to turn all the graphics to the lowest setting.  I thought this would be the sort of thing they would look into since sims are having to travel all over town.  time travelling too fast for the painfully slow sims to catch up with results in them being late for everything and never having time for leisure activities.  I feel like they have just enough time to sleep work and fullfill basic needs then an oppertunity rears its ugly head and their whole day is a write off. 

I dont even want to talk about the way they eat (or dont eat) group meals/birthday cake.  Sit down damnit, enjoy a family meal!  I feel like my freaking mom herding insolent kids to the dinner table. 

I do like the trait system - but the traits are pretty poorly balanced in terms of how they effect game play.  'Extreme sleep?'  WTF?  I guess they think thats funny but that should be a bonus to the actual trait feature.  that - oh i dont know - doesn't suck? 

I was also shocked at the poorly underdesigned genetics system. 

In terms of gameplay, while i love the open neighbourhood i am constantly unable to find the sims im looking for, and with new sims moving in (one more ty for awsome mod keeping them from moving out) and households switching around, its really time consuming and annoying to hunt down the sim you want.  Maybe if they had added a sim by sim run down in the family info screen in edit town, like in ts2.  I want to be able to click on each sim in the house and see their name...  maybe even see the information availiable in their bio card.

on that note, is it me or does alot of stuff seem about half done?  i love that theres a little bio card run down in the relationship menu, and i think its cool that you have to make your sim ferret the info out.  however, if our sims have wishes to 'cook so-and-so's favorite food' shouldnt their favorite food be listed on that card?  how am i supposed to know?  i dont examine every speech bubble and write this stuff down.  Similarly collecting seems pretty lacking.  wtf are we supposed to do with the metals and gems?  theyre not even pretty.  why would i want to display them?  maybe if i had a display case...  same deal with fishing.  i dont want 40 tiny fish bowls.  plus i think its a little cruel to keep a 10lb salmon in a tiny goldfish bowl - even if it is a lazily described extra dimensional whatever-the-hell. 

and then theres the whole barely any objects thing.  then there the whole lazily chosen colour schemes for defaults forcing us to redesign every single item thing.  and theres the whole story progression being totally broken thing.

oh man.  ea is lucky there are people like jm out there willing to clean up after their shit.  i guess theyre also lucky its next to impossible to return a game.  lol.  if i had something better to do i would so stop playing this game.  but who am i kidding, it just means playing WoW while i procrastonate instead.  *Sigh*.  Anyway, wow what a ramble.  I apologize, this is time I would normally be playing the game, but i already played for half an hour, so I'm bored.   ;D

i hate u

FREE apostrophes; pick as much as you want.



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You've just experienced the Bangelnuts Effect.
http://wikka.moreawesomethanyou.com/Bangelnuts#Bangelnuts_and_the_Grammar_Police

I just haet1! EA's design team. Everybody is left handed? Their mouses are wired differently? Why the heck every single control is on the left? I mean, seriously?!?
The "we read from left to right"  paradigm has to make room to the new one "the mouse is on the right (most of the times), damn it!". Ergonomics.
On the same issue, isn't it adorable when you go to CAS create a sim on low res (1280) and have to guess how the puppet looks like because the huge controls (that control nothing) block the mirror view? Craptastic, EA. Really. I mean, really.
Trait system, editor for all things tacky, etc, all very clever. But why, oh my, Why can't I create my own neighborhood? Or at least build anywhere as on TS2?

(http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/crapola/pancake_bunny.jpg)

Every menu of the game is on the left. Action takes place everywhere, mostly on the right because it's where the mouse rests. On a 24" monitor it gets really tiring to drag the mouse all the way around the screen to change anything.
Also, because every control on the game is on the left they often block the view of the Sim on the mirror. Because design team doesn't test the game before shipping.

I don't like how they went back to the way they used to have lots, like the sims 1.

Weener of the foot-in-mouse award.

I think you need to turn up your mouse sensitivity. Because the motion of the mouse on the screen is not dependent on the size of the screen. I can flip my mouse across any screen of any size with merely a slight wrist movement.

I agree with everyone who said the puddings lack the ability to make you give a shit about them. Don't get me wrong, I've never really given a shit about any of them since TS1, but at least in TS2, most of them escaped random death just because I got bored and instead had to piss me off first by refusing to stop doing stupid stuff. Some even got a pass to die peacefully of old age for doing something endearing. Like, I'll never forget the first toddler I ever saw cuddle with a puppy. That earned her the privilege of fulfilling her LTW and dying as an elder. There's nothing the puddings do that even comes close to this level of cuteness, which is probably why I have yet to have any controllables die of old age, they haven't earned it.

The lack of proper romance and weddings is another thing that makes puddings inferior. In TS2, my sims were destined for each other from birth. They'd play together as toddlers and children, have their first kiss with each other as teens, live together in Uni, and then marry and live happily ever after with their soul mate as adults. Each milestone worthy of many pics taken by proud parents. It actually seemed like they gave a shit about each other, which in turn, made me give a shit about them. I still have pictures on my desktop from my first TS2 wedding. My first pudding wedding was the first of many disappointments. I went into it thinking, "OMG, this is going to be so awesome, a destination wedding at the pretty little park behind their house! I'll get a buffet table and some flowers and balloons. I'll set up the cake right in the center, on display. Ohhh, I gotta take lots of pictures!" But the caek was a lie. I got so fucking bored, the sims getting married were the first to leave, long before the party was over.

Also, families just aren't worth the trouble anymore. I prefer to micromanage, so I'm not going to waste valuable skilling time raising boring larvae who don't even have the decency to be cute to make up for being a drain on resources. And I cannot believe that EA has forced the 1950's on me by making my sim mothers stay home until their spawn goes to school. WTF is this? This isn't even realistic. IRL, if you're kicking ass in your career as a doctor, you don't take years off to raise some kids while you're husband is a level one musician. No, you make his slacker ass stay home, while you bring home the bacon. This is why ALL of my controllabe families have been one-child homes. My sim females are go-getters who take the world by the balls, so they just can't afford to spend the best years of their lives raising children. This is another contributing factor to the early deaths in my game. In TS2, elders had their usefullness as free baby-sitters while the adults worked. Now, since mothers can't work, elders are just another drain on resources.

Another thing that's already been complained about is the lack of group socials. Most of my sims have NO friends because it's not necessary for a lot of jobs anymore and it's such a fucking hassle. The only sims who can make friends while doing something relevant to their lives are logic sims and musical sims. Everyone else is a loner because they don't have time to waste in front of the boob tube when they could be improving themselves.

Although this post is already quite long, in an effort to not be Ms. Negativity, here's some stuff I do like:
1. The openness. I like that my sims can wander around town for hours. Especially when I set them to exploring places with no roads, on foot.
2. Being able to let my male sims procreate without the hassle of actually living with the brat or it's mother. Although, forcing him to pay for this in the form of child support would be even more awesome.
3. The ability to learn how to do things by actually doing them. My sims hardly ever read skill books. If they wanna be good at cooking, they cook. Makes sense.
4. The fact that if I stop paying attention to a sim in the controllable family in favor of a more interesting sim, they won't starve themselves and scream, "Look at me, NAO!!!"

I'm actually starting to enjoy the game, more.  I suppose part of it is because I, perhaps foolishly, have begun to hope that there will be some CC and tools before long and I'll get to be one of the first guys in there, modding things. 

But the story progression is GREAT.  I can understand why people that are still trying to play it TS2 style are disappointed.  I'm disappointed in a number of things.  But the story progression feature of TS3 is the core of the game.  TS1 was about humorous Ozzie and Harriet kitsch  (I still miss that Leroy Anderson type music), TS2 was about genetics and mods.  TS3 is about story progression.  I actually wonder what is going on with my fellow neighbors.  The fact that EA didn't make it easier to switch between families baffles me, and I can't help wonder if it was a result of unresolved bugs in play-testing that they just wanted to sluff off for a future EP.

I always got bored with my families in TS2 after a while.  It got the point where I just abandoned one and started a new one.  The old family still showed up at the park and the restaurant, just the way I left them, making me feel guilty for dumping them.  I kind of like it that they can move on with their lives and that I can peek in on them, once in a while, to see if anything interesting happens. 

It's okay. AwesomeMod has a command for that. No more mandatory time off.

Oh, it's not even the SIM choosing to take that. It's MANDATORY, they aren't given a choice at all!

Well, that's a certain level of culture shock from TS1/2. In TS1 and 2, you were basically forced and encouraged to befriend everyone. In TS3, sims are more predisposed to keeping a realistic number of friends. How many friends do YOU really have?

Negativity? This is MATY!

I don't believe in child support. Not paying child support is a privilege you earn by not getting your head eaten.

That's not NEW. TS2 had that.

Oh, they still do that. You need Less Whiny to make it stop. They're not quite as inclined to starve themselves, but the screaming continues.

My view is that the CONCEPT of story progression is good. The implementation, however, is terrible: It has no respect for the rules of common sense, logic, or the player's wishes. A version that FIXES these issues would be perfect. But a version that doesn't is worse than nothing at all!

Well, it's not easier to switch between them because you're NOT SUPPOSED TO. The game basically destroys your progress if you do.

I would love story progression if the neighbors actually did anything with their lives. Married couples will produce spawn, but their spawn (with parthenogenesis disabled) will most likely not get a job, never marry or breed, and die single and childless in the house they were born in. The parthenogenesis was a lame fix for the inherent problems with the way they handled story progression. I feel like I'm being forced back into the TS2 model, having to go into each house and manage their lives for them if I want them to have jobs, marriages and kids. My problem is that I also got bored with TS2 families because I didn't want to micromanage the whole neighborhood, and I hate having to play TS3 like it was TS2, creating the story progression myself.

I think this is because rather than trying to figure out a good algorithm, or even a good implementation, they used a bad implementation of Ethernet's CSMA/CD as their navigational algorithm. In Ethernet, a device doesn't transmit when it sees the line is in use. However, if two devices see the line is not in use and try to transmit simultaneously, a collision results. When this happens, the devices in question stop transmitting, and each wait a random period of time before attempting to retransmit. And this is exactly what sims do in TS3: When they collide, they both stop and stare into space for a random, indeterminate period of time. Due to the poor tuning of the retransmit delay, it will commonly occur that both will then attempt to retransmit in close succession, resulting in another collision, so just like in Ethernet, they wait to retransmit again, waiting even LONGER this time...

Are you manually navigating, or are you relying on them to limp there using their impulse thrusters? That takes forever just like in TS2. You must always plot their course and engage their main engines, otherwise they will never arrive in a timely manner.

Ugh, no! STFU, eat, and GTFO. Family meals are gross. You want to EAT in the presence of OTHER PEOPLE? I want to haul my kill back to my lair and eat in peace. At least now they eat in a timely manner. It could be faster, though. I can finish an entire steak before a sim can even manage to put down its plate. Sims are SOOOO SLOW.

So if you speed up eating - please make it optional.  :P

Yay! But how do you do that? I can't find it in the RTFM.

Yes, but it wasn't possible to max the cooking the skill by cooking alone, unless your sim did nothing else, such as a baker with OFB. Now sims can learn more from doing than by reading, which I infinitely prefer IRL.

I forgot about that! I only played the game for 2 sim days without Awesomemod, so I forgot that in a vanilla game they still whine about every little thing. -1 for EA, +2 for Pes.

I still say that story progression is only acceptable if we can toggle it on/off per family. I was under the impression that we could do that in the pre-release interviews. Of course, EA continues to disappoint. As it is, my chosen sims cannot be doing anything unsanctioned. That's the price they pay for being chosen. I haven't yet gotten to the point where they can do what they like, but face the consequences when they break my rules for the 'hood. Currently, it's iron fist all the way. Ella Marvin has just learned that she can no longer associate with her childhood best friend as he is now Evil. I'm fighting a freaking battle here against the evil De la Torres' influence.

I do like that it is so easy to move families about in Edit Town mode, and I don't have to dump them, load the lot, save the lot, then go back to the neighborhood view. I just consolidated my 20 townie homes into 15 (all the spinsters/widows/widowers now have an old folks' home) and moved everyone into close quarters to make rounds easier. It took just a couple minutes.

Cheat console "backtowork". Do it right after they pop and right after they deliver for absolutely no enforced maternity leave.

Word!  I have just moved Jesus Christ into the Roomies household, getting rid of StupidSw0rd in the process.  MATY sims have similarly supplanted various other horrible townies.

I am also liking story mode so far.  I am experimenting to see if various townies will actually get jobs, get married, spawn, etc. on their own.  With parthenogenesis turned off, I am hoping so.  Perhaps Jesus will marry a MATY sim.

I find that I can quite happily ignore the "beat the game" aspect and just play a legacy style story.

Oh, it is a terrible implementation.  In fact, it's so terrible, I'm not my usual pessimistic self about EA being able to improve on this.  Why? 

THE STORY BUS HAS TO BE THE SIMPLEST, CHEAPEST, LEAST RESOURCE CONSUMING PART OF THE WHOLE GAME.  It requires no graphics.  It can't possibly have the resource-locking issues of the socials, the objects and all the QA headaches that must arise from that.  That means it should be cost efficient for EA to put a little more effort into this.

They still have to pay someone to think. That's been too heavy a price for them all along.

Yes, I have been plotting their courses by hand to avoid collisions, but it's more that every activity takes an unreasonably long time for them to complete.  They walk so slowly compared to the 1x speed that combined with the slow activities it just feels unnatural.  It takes half an hour for them to get out of bed, then they wait next to the bed for no apparent reason before responding to my poking, turning the whole thing into 45 minutes instead.  Not a huge deal, takes longer than that for me to wake up sometimes, but its with every friggin' activity!  Why is it that they have to stand around considering every activity before and after completing it?  Its only a few sim minutes but since they are already doing everything so slowly the lag or whatever it is becomes painfully noticable.  "Hurry up theres only an hour left for you to scarf down your bowl of mush!" 

PS.  TYVM for all the apostophe's.  I had misplaced mine was unable to make it to the apostrophe store because I had a piano tied to my leg.  ''''''''''!!!

Here's another thing I hate that has already been mentioned: The maniacal laughing of idle toddlers. I greatly preferred their old method of screaming their little fucking heads off, if left in the crib or highchair for too long. As a part-time babysitter, I can attest to the realism of the old way. It was actually kinda cute the way as soon as they woke up, they would immediately throw a tantrum at the audacity of the adults to not be standing there waiting to release them. Less whiny toddlers is a big fat DNW.

How did you find that cheat?  I have not seen it anywhere.  Also, since I have used it, all of my pregnant sims are being forced back to work instead of just the one that I used it on.  After having the baby, my sim did not get any leave and is due to return to work tomorrow.  How do I turn the cheat off?

ETA:  I see where you found it at.  I am currently looking for a way to turn if off.  Does anyone know of a way?  Or am I stuck with it on in this game now?