Before TS3 was released I read an interview with an EA employee, and they talked about how EA considered integrating an online component into TS3 but decided against it 'cause when they did the market research they discovered that players really did not want other players interfering with their own games. Even the idiots over at the BBS are whining about this EP.

I understand that EA wants to cash in on the social networking boom. But I wish they would fuck off and do it elsewhere. SHT should be released as a separate Sims game.

True, that.

Un-modded OFB was a headache. But what I liked about it was how one could make any kind of business. I hate being shoe-horned into a few EA-provided options, and that's all Ambitions offers. I'm not particularly awesome, but I'm guessing that Ambitions has a lot less mod potential than OFB.

Eh, fuck it. I won't be happy until I get a TS2-style ticket machine. And I don't hold out much hope for that, given that it's too open-ended for Humble and co. What on earth will players do if they don't have enough mini-games and collecting busywork to keep 'em occupied?

I heartily agree.

Actually, I paid zero dollars and I still feel a bit ripped off. Compared to OFB - which granted infinite possibilities - Ambitions is a steaming pile of crap. It's just more mini-game tedium, with little replay value. Given WA and now this, it looks like TS3 is definitely shaping up to be a half-arsed RPG. Way to fuck up the greatest game franchise of all time, EA.

On the other hand, I'm getting less lag now. I like how Twinbrook is so scummy. Ooh, and there's a new male hair that I quite like.

While I'm not happy about it, I can kind of see why they might choose to release Pudding-Pets sooner rather than later. They probably don't want to repeat what happened with TS2, where for several years every second post on the BBS was "wen r we gettin PETZZZZZ?"

Also, wasn't Pets the highest selling EP? If Pudding-Pets is as popular it will look good to EA stake-holders, as EA can point to it and go "see how successful our second EP is! And there's plenty more EPs to come!"

WA is the big riddle, I reckon. Even sheeple have been wondering why they chose to release it first.

Same here. Those remakes plus an OFB-style pack and an urban/apartment pack are the only expansions I really care about.

I'm pretty disappointed with the sequence TS3 EPs seem to be taking. Adventures and pets should come later, what we really need is stuff to expand on the basic gameplay, especially when it comes to social interactions which are really stripped down at the moment. The main problem with WA is that it adds bugger all to the base hood and basic gameplay. And TS2 pets added nothing to the gameplay except for pets. There wasn't even any new hair or much decor IIRC.

No doubt Pudding-Pets will be the same. I can't wait for the new "Animal lover" and "Hates animals" traits. The anticipation: it burns. Oh, and I hate to see what kind of goal-orientated tasky stuff Humble and co will cram into this pack - I'm betting there will be Pudding-Pet opportunities - like: "Send Rover to the park and have him make friends with another Pudding-Pet!", and I bet they'll be able to collect stuff too.

I hate that kind of crap. I rarely skilled up my TS2 pets beyond the "don't scratch furniture" skill. None of them ever had a job either - because they're pets, dammit! They're supposed to eat, sleep and occasionally fetch a stick! Not have careers.

So, you're saying my card is too crap to bother with the limiter even though my FPS is 70+ without it? It normally runs much smoother unpaused - I generally only suffer from explainable lag on lots with too much decor or too many sims when not using the limiter.

I usually don't get major heat issues as my case is completely open, but I noticed with TS3 that my fans would start grinding away at max speed periodically. 'Twas like a jet gearing up every 5 minutes, and frankly, annoying. I turned on FPS to find it was bouncing between about 70 and 120 in live mode, so chucked 3booter and FPS limiter on.

When paused, it hovers around 30. Scrolling and camera rotation is smooth. But when unpaused it tends to oscillate between 12 and the low-twenties, which makes for a  jerky, lagtastic experience. It looks like FPS limiter is working too well. Any ideas as to why this might be? I know very little about video card stuff.

Eh, and after installing, I still had a CTD and a freeze over 2 hours of gameplay. At least the fans are quieter though - my computer room no longer sounds like the inside of a factory.

Shop Mode sounds craptastic. And I don't want new items because the trade off will mean an even more broken game. EA updates are the devil's work.

On the other hand, I do want Create a World. I heard this piece of L&P was supposed to be released today, but I suppose I can wait a bit longer. I really want to make a more urban/compact hood than Sunset or Riverview. Having looked at the screenshots, this tool looks pretty good - much, much better than using SC4 to make terrains.

If it turns out to be as good as it looks, then I won't even hold a grudge against EA for not giving us neighborhood tools from the outset.

Hmm, so it's not just WA. The only mod I'm using is AM (and I check for updates every time I play). Maybe I'll try getting them to school earlier.

I've been having a problem with homework resetting. There are two children in this house, and every day they come home and do their homework to 100%. The next day they get on the school bus, and all is well, the bus does its u-turn ... then suddenly the two children are somehow booted off the bus and end up standing back at the front door of their house, with homework now at zero completion. I have to manually send them to school, where they have to re-do last night's homework.

It's happened several times now. The previous generation of kids that lived in this house didn't have this problem. It's incredibly frustrating.

Tested, and plate-dragulation is now functional. THANKS, THIS IS GREAT!

So I have to bribe a lady with food in Egypt. I have the food but I am unable to drag it to my inventory - the hand option never appears over the plate, only the cog with the usual options. I tried putting the plate into the fridge so I could move it to the inventory from there, but since it is a community lot it wont let me. I've made sure there are no queued actions that may be affecting the plate, but no dice. Am I missing something incredibly obvious here? I recall being able to drag plates into the inventory in the home hood.

I'm patched up to 2.2, and AM is my only mod.

I meant the .dll that came with the razor crack, not the framework one. I only mention it because I kept getting the same error until I changed it back to the original - it drove me nuts until I figured out that was the problem.

And make sure you change the .dll file back to the original too.

I miss the DJ booth. And dance contests. And owned community lots with BRU. I want my sleazy clubs back!

I also miss all the urban stuff that came with AL. At long last I made the perfect ghetto town, but now I'm back to gentrified suburbia. It will probably be another 3 years before an urban themed EP is released for TS3.

I miss the wide variety of death to be found in TS2.

And I miss attraction and dates. Actually, I'm missing TS2 romance generally. Even the base game had a better variety of romance socials - a whole bunch of kisses, hugs and flirts to choose from - TS3 romance seems so sparse in comparison. And having to build up to the higher level socials EVERY TIME makes the whole thing a chore. And the animations are so ... chaste.

It's like they took out all the oblique smut and replaced it with more wholesome pursuits like bug and gem collecting.

I do Teh Art. I'd make you something, but I'd be worried that you'd end up choosing some generic clip art in the end anyway 

* lamenting the failure of Pack Peeper, despite its success. Fake democracy is fake.

On a serious note, glad to hear progress is going well. Looking muchly forward to using this tool.

Sadly, you speak the truth.

I'm already getting bored with TS3. This is a far cry from TS2 - when that first came out I was riveted, and my real life fell apart for a few weeks due to massive playage. Unlike this.

Collecting shit holds no interest for me. Nor does completing unrealistic, tasky opportunities. Skilling seems like more of a grind in TS3, which is strange, as I thought it was grindy in TS2, but it has somehow been made WORSE. Maybe it's because the game puts so much emphasis on A!CHIEVE!MENT! - I'm guessing Rod Humble is a fan of personal development tapes and motivational speakers (also that he loves to collect random useless shit).

While I do like the improved social interactions, friends seem kind of pointless, as others have mentioned. And friendships are strange. On one hand you have to make an effort to build and maintain them, even if it's between sims living in the same house (unlike in TS2 where sims living together would eventually build up the relationship score by nattering over breakfast and the like). But on the other hand if you have a guitar sim with high charisma they seem to accumulate friends every time they go out busking.

And romance seems like a total afterthought. They really should have put less fish types in the base game and included an attraction system instead. In TS2 I used to orchestrate a lot of tragic romances and illicit affairs. But in TS3 everyone is too busy working and sleeping, and without the lightning bolts there doesn't seem to be any point, as they are neutral towards everyone else anyway.

While moodlets are a rather nifty system, they make the game too easy in some ways. In TS2 you had to make an effort to satisfy wants otherwise you'd end up with asp failure. But in TS3 as long as you put someone in nice house and keep their needs filled, then they remain content, more or less. It's almost like everyone is perma plat.

Also, spawn-raising and playing the generation game is no fun when you know you're gonna get batch after batch of pudding-faced children. I wish there was a way to force ALL born-in-game sims to have head-width maxed to the left. And I can't believe EA borked the genetics so much. Having a toddler with Grandpa Alto's silver tipped hair is fail.

I just want TS2 with an open neighborhood and traits, pretty much ... not this goal-orientated, gotta catch 'em all frankengame.

Is anyone else being driven mad by craptacular plumbing?

Every fucking day at least one piece of the plumbing will break down in one of my houses (and one night three pieces did all at once). Doesn't seem to make a difference if I hire the repairman, replace the piece, or get one of my handier sims to fix it.

It is far more frequent than in TS2 and incredibly annoying.

Though I haven't had a single fire ... yet.

The real question is, which one were you aiming for - a pussycat doll or a bratz doll?

Pack Peeper 3000!

Whatever it ends up being called, I definitely want it.

Yeah, 8600 GT here, with periodic crashes to desktop. Shiny drivers fixed some graphical weirdness, but I've still had one crash since updating.

Is anyone else ticked off about what EA has done with the ghosts? In TS2 ghosts were probably too limited, but they've gone in the extreme opposite direction in TS3. They are just like regular sims, only with effects. I mean, ghost babies? Come the fuck on ... it beats the whole purpose of ghosts being mysterious non corporeal entities.

EA can never find the happy medium, it seems.

I finding romance a bit irritating too. On one hand I like that it seems less arbitrary, but the way the romantic interactions work is so fiddly. Again, EA misses the happy medium. In TS2 sims fall in love at the drop of a hat, in TS3 trying to make it happen is more trouble than it's worth.

Yes, this is one of the positives that really struck me - skilling and expertise seems far less generic and more sim-specific than in TS2.

I really like the trait system too, more for its open-endedness than its effect on gameplay (I've not played long enough to really suss out the full effects). I imagine it would be quite easy for EAxis to add new traits in each EP, much more preferable than the aspiration and personality points regime.

I'm still not sure on the moodlets though. Already I'm finding the basic ones annoyingly repetitive ... Squeaky clean! Hurrah! ... I mean, having a nice shower sometimes puts me into a good mood, but not every bloody day.

The rabbit holes are less crap than I expected, but I hope they make an OFBish EP eventually and open up some more community lots. I want my seedy bars and overpriced knick-knack shops, dammit!

Playing around in CAS, I was able to make some passable sims (as someone mentioned before, sliding head width to max left seems to help). I don't dislike the way the sims look, but there does seem to be problems with the way features are blended on born-in-game sims. Also the skins are atrocious. They're like something out of Second Life (shudder).

I'm not enjoying the collectibles much. Just knowing there is stuff lurking out there that I should be collecting annoys me. But I knew it would, so no surprises there. Ooh, and I fuckin' hate the opportunities. Goal-orientated gameplay has a short shelf life for me, and so far TS3 feels very goal-ish to me.

Overall I think there's good potential, but it all rests on having an unborked story progression toggle. Without that, it's just a demo.

Well, I've had it installed for a few hours and have had several random crashes. Granted, my rig isn't fantastic (GeForce 8600, hobo ram), but I know it well - all signs are pointing to a software issue rather than a hardware one - no locking / lagging / glitchtastic behaviour ... it's like the game simply decides to shut down periodically and dump me onto the desktop. Interestingly, it seems to happen when attempting something for the first time. The first time I switched to map view the game crapped out on me, the next time it was fine. The first time I called a sim, the same thing happened, the second time it was fine, etc. 

Given this new EA announcement propaganda, I'll be interested to see if the mystery crashes are rectified in the June release. I highly doubt it though.

Just on that, I am so sick of reviewers and their multiple disclaimers of "not that me and my gonads would ever actually choose to play the sims". I mean, how fucking insecure - just review the damn thing and stfu about your Y chromosome, or give the job to someone who does choose to play the game.

On mods, well ... for me that's the dealbreaker. I lost interest in the EAxis vision and borkiness around OFB. Discovering awesomeware brought me back into the fold and sustained me through the rest of the EPs. I can't see myself getting very far with TS3 without it. I had sort of suspected that TS3 might make third party CC and mods more problematic, what with the ghey store concept and all. Screw EA. If I win the lottery I'll commission my own sims game ... with blackjack, and hookers.