That'd be pretty cool if it were actually random. Sadly I'm guessing it's hard-coded into the game, so I have no choice but to get over it keep a few chosen sims attractive by unnaturally prolonging their lives while the neighbourhood gene pool degenerates.

Or it could be a milestone for the hood. First sim to Habsburg becomes mayor of the town.


The kind who spends close to 50 hours meticulously hand-picking custom content and replacing the default clothing meshes and textures in simPE to their liking. If I were smart enough to take meds for my sickness, I already would have.

So I recently learned about the "offspring face distortion" issue in TS2. Most people have likely experienced this in-game, where sims' faces become more distorted with each generation no matter how non-offensive the parents look. Some folks have tried to figure out why it happens and how to prevent it, but have yet to find a solution, and few people have the coding expertise to dig deeper. You can read more about it here. No matter what facial templates (Maxis or otherwise) were used to make the parents, all offspring born in the game (and created in CAS) will inevitably have some degree of facial distortion, even if they were spawned from parents with identical faces.

Some examples from people on tumblr:

(it seems to be worse for female faces.)

As funny as it is to imagine that these are genetic defects arising from frequent inbreeding and lack of genetic diversity in small hoods, I don't want to be forced to immigrate new sims every few generations just to keep the offspring looking decent. Even if that's the moral of the story.

Any idea what causes this, and how it can be fixed?

Seconding all of the annoyances reported by tinylittleparty.

Also:

- Bed ownership in this game is dreadful. Since the update, Good Friends can no longer sleep in the same double bed if at least one of them has claimed it, even if they're in the same household and both have claimed a side. Sims automatically claim a bed if they sleep in it.

- Parties last forever; dates end too quickly. With all the queue-dropping and route failures in this game, it takes me the entire length of a date just to get seated at the goddamn table.

- Time passes too quickly because sims take forever to do anything. Everyone in this game apparently suffers from catatonia: they'll wait 5-20 sim minutes (depending on game speed) before moving on to the next action. It seems to occur more often when there's a lot of auto-queuing involved (i.e. when task-relevant actions pop up in the queue without your intervention). This might explain why cooking and socializing are some of the worst offenders, since there are a lot of actions being shuffled.

- Also a minor annoyance, but there's no option in CAS to copy makeup from one category to the rest. There is ONE way, and ONE WAY ONLY, to have your Everyday makeup carry over to the other categories, but from what I've read on the forums, this occurs only under extremely stringent conditions. (It has to be a "fresh" sim from CAS, you can't press the Randomize button, you can't click anywhere on the Sim's body or bring up the Outfit tab, you have to enter and exit Detailed Edit mode and jump straight to the Makeup tab, etc...)

So... hate sex is a thing.



It was actually incredibly tedious getting to this point. I had to keep alternating between "Criticize woohoo ability" for the huge relationship drop and "Apologize...in bed" to keep the friendship meter down and the romance meter high. Ironic, but it was the most effective combination. Eventually I got the option to FIGHT, and then they became Enemies with Benefits. 

I miss the social reactivity from TS3. Your sims could congratulate each other if they got a promotion, or got engaged, or whatever. It created the illusion of smart, self-aware sims...something that is sorely missing in TS4.

Actually, that sounds hilarious.

Focused
(+1) Chess table -> ponder chess moves
(+1) Computer -> web -> browse simpedia
(+1) Telescope -> stargaze

Inspired
(+1) computer -> web -> browse art

Confidence
(+1) mirror -> psych self up

Flirty
(+1) mirror -> freshen up

Also, watching the relevant TV channels give +1 to the corresponding emotions

Now that I've fixed the mosaic (thanks ariffrazalin) and played the game for a couple of hours, here are some thoughts on gameplay:

- Very basic story progression. I've seen inactive sims advance in their careers and cultivate new relationships, but haven't seen babies popping up yet. Implications: your neighbours will eventually die out (if aging is enabled) and be replaced by new townies. If you want them to have children and leave some sort of legacy behind, you have to play them. Heavily encourages Sims2 "rotational" playstyle where you disable aging for other households and just play them cyclically.
- Really, REALLY fast load and save times. Good performance. Important for me, as I personally stopped playing TS3 because of the insane lag and load/save times.
- Something weird going on with weight/muscle gain. Sims put on weight really easily if they don't exercise, especially if you feed them fatty foods. While some consider this "realistic", people do have natural metabolism and maintain a steady body weight even if they lead sedentary lifestyles. Looking forward to a mod that limits the amount of weight you can put on simply by breathing. Muscle gain is broken, I've had a sim work out for a few hours and he went from lean to ridiculously ripped.
- Haven't experienced the demon baby bug yet; my NVIDIA drivers are up to date.
- Socialization feels much more natural. I hated the Social system in TS2/TS3, it was annoying how you queued up a bunch of socials and stood there chatting until you became friends. This is related to the multitasking feature but now it feels better.
- Lack of content becomes obvious once you make enough money to buy everything. Personally, I don't care that they stripped gameplay mechanics out of TS4 -- whereas TS3 was about quantity, TS4 seems to be about "quality" (or at least polish) -- but it irks me that there's so little furniture/buyable content to choose from. This is one area where quantity IS quality.
- Weights of moodlets/emotions need to be adjusted (with a mod?) Certain events should cause more "permanent" moods. For example, my sim's spouse died and he was sad for all about 3 hours until someone brightened his day. I assume this can be fixed by adjusting the weights on the relevant moodlets. Actually, emotions need tweaking in general.
- Need more worlds.
- Need better story progression, so that unplayed households don't just all die out and get replaced.
- Experienced CTDs upon opening up the world map. This can occur when you press 'M', travel to a lot, or ask someone out on a date. May be related to the crack. Save often.
- Sometimes the game doesn't successfully save. This usually happens after an autosave overwrites one of your hard saves. Solution: make another hard save.
- The game is essentially a framework for future dlc/expansion packs. Suffice to say I won't be spending money on any of it. 

I'm playing the pirated version (skidrow release + 3dm crack downloaded from private tracker) and here are some of my thoughts:

- Create a Sim looks and feels great; the sculpting feature is so much better than the old slider system
- Decent variety of outfits that actually look good and are more "stylish" than in past games
- Sims generally look way better than in TS2/TS3. Of course this is a matter of personal preference, but this is probably the first Sims game where unconventional features don't automatically make you ugly as fuck. The in-game lighting is also way better; TS4 avoids the problem in TS3 where sims look different in CAS than they do in-game.
- Emotions are glorified moodlets
- Multitasking feels smooth
- UI is a lot more streamlined

I can't say much about the gameplay because I hit an anti-piracy measure 10 minutes into my playthrough. The mosaic censor takes up half of your screen and doesn't go away after your sims are finished showering/peeing. This hasn't been addressed in the Day 1 patch so I can only assume it's an anti-piracy measure.

Requesting a re-tuning of the new attraction system. I want it to be more logical and selective, although I don't know how feasible some of these ideas are. There's already a similar mod available at MTS, which is fairly extensive, but the attraction scoring for that mod is too arbitrary. (Here's the mod if anyone's interested: http://modthesims.info/download.php?t=492102)

Anyway, here are some ideas of what the retuned attraction system could incorporate:

• Opposites Attract: Sims with incompatible traits will be attracted to each other -- this is the main thing I'd like implemented, because it's already far too easy for trait-compatible sims to strike up a relationship, whereas sims who are incompatible take forever to get anywhere. The attraction system could be useful for balancing this out. And it could lead to interesting households, instead of just families with homogenized traits.
• Body Types: Sims are more likely to be attracted to sims with the same body type
• Lifetime Rewards: Sims with the 'Attractive' or 'Eye candy' LTR will be more likely to attract other sims
• Interests: Sims are more likely to be attracted to each other if they have the same favourite music genre / food / colour
• Tattoos/Accessories: Sims with tattoos, or sims who wear glasses, will be attracted to other sims who do the same (or the opposite could be true)
• Skills: Sims with high proficiency in a skill (i.e. => 7 bars) will be attracted to other sims with the same proficiency
• Moodlets: Having certain moodlets could contribute to attraction (e.g. Minty Breath, Attractive, In the Mood, Love is in the Air)...
• Reputations: Having certain reputations could affect your chances of being attracted. (No effect for faithful reputations, positive chance for experienced reputations, negative chance for betrayal reputations)
• Facial Hair: No idea how this could be implemented, since TS3 lacks a "turn-on" system, but it'd be nice if some sims could be attracted to sims with facial hair
• Celebrity Status: High-ranking celebrity sims will be attracted to other high-ranking celebrities.
• Age range: Sims will be more attracted to sims in their age range (YA-YA, A-A, etc). Alternatively there can be age discrimination, and sims will be more attracted to Young Adults than any other age

That's all I can think of for now. 

With awesomemod, the game occasionally spawns homeless sims to fill in certain necessary NPC roles (maid, mixologist, etc). Is it possible to create a family in CAS, then make them part of this homeless NPC group? I don't even want/need to assign them specific roles, I just want to be able to create a pool of homeless filth from which the game can select individuals for certain roles, rather than spawning new fugly pudding-faced ones.

Any help would be appreciated!

Made this poll because I was curious about how everyone else played TS3, and because I have no idea how I should play.

On one hand, I enjoy micromanaging my sims, so I dislike it when households age without my input; but on the other, I get bored playing TS2 mode, because then I'm obligated to play EVERY household in order to keep the neighbourhood in sync.

Just wondering how everyone else is doing it.

Using latest patch (6.2).

For some reason, my game keeps getting stuck on the loading screen. The problem disappears when I remove awesomemod. My CC is correctly installed in My Documents/EA/Sims3/Mods/Packages, with the Resource.cfg in /Mods, so I'm not sure what could be causing this.

This happened to me when I invited a corrupt NPC over. The minute she walked onto the lot (I assume this is when the game loads her information), all sound cut off, save for loud buzzing in one of my speakers.

Thanks, Zazazu, for the explanations. I was aware of the ancestral home workaround, but I don't like relying on it due to its limitations - primarily, if your sims get married off and have name-changes, they'll have to find their own place. Also, I think I've seen a family get moved out by awesomemod even though it's assigned to an ancestral home, just to get moved back in an hour later.

A few questions about how Storymode moves families into new homes:

1. Does the number of beds always have to match the number of sims in the household? For example, if a family consists of a married couple and a kid, will a double bed + a single bed suffice? Or will I need 3 beds total, regardless of the size? Or what if it's just a single parent and one child? Will just a double bed suffice?

2. If I have a household full of "roomies" who are friends (but otherwise unrelated) living on a lot with a crib, will the storydriver move them out into a non-cribbed lot to allow married couples to move in and spawn?

3. Do WA tents (in either the packed/unpacked state) count as beds?

4. Are lot sizes taken into consideration? So if a 1-bedroom 40x40 lot exists in tandem with a 1-bedroom 20x30 lot, will a household with only 1 sim choose the smaller one?

I'm really curious about how the story driver decides whether or not a family is living in an 'appropriate' home. I'm trying to separate sims of different social standings and isolate them in certain regions on the map (sort of like Apartment Life in TS2), but awesomemod quickly mixes them all up.

I think she's asking if there's a mod that will let her zoom in further than the game currently permits.

@Motoki:

The guide is pretty much bullshit. You have to finish a small fire in before 3 hours to get the A grade, and 4 hours for a large fire. I've rarely gotten an 'A' for large fires unless a) everything is upgraded, b) I notice the fire right away (alarm bell and fire truck should be at 100% maintenance), and c) my sim is already dressed in firefighter 'gear' and doesn't need to change before hopping on the truck.

For some reason it takes an entire ingame-hour for my sims to get dressed.

edit: reading comprehension fail. Didn't catch that you were already aware of the small/large fire difference. Anyhow, disasters are easy to handle - your sim just arrives at a lot, enters a rabbithole, and does their thing.

I'm having trouble fulfilling the new lifetime wish for Kleptos ("Possession is 9/10ths of the Law"). I'm certain I've accumulated more than 50,000 worth of stolen goods, but the stupid LTW just isn't being satisfied.

Does anyone else have this problem? Only playing with Ambitions, latest AM (6/11/2010 8:15PM) and decrapified store content.

"NoKillWantsOnUnselect" is borked. I selected another family via 'ctrl+click Select Sim', and when I reverted back to my original family, all wish slots were wiped clean.

Also, Logic skilling may have lost functionality - I'm not too sure about this one. I made my sim skill Logic on supcom, and instead of going to the library where skill gain is doubled, he went to the fire station.

edit: Otherwise, I have not CTD during gameplay at all - only once when I was exiting to the main menu, but I already saved the game.

edit 2: Never mind. Experienced random CTD at night.

Dammit! Never mind. I'd assumed it was deletable, considering all CC is now labeled with that collections/folder icon, and the trashcan button is no longer grayed out. I booted up my game to test this theory and it was not so.

Hopes: crushed.

Personally, I appreciate this thread.

Since I didn't shell out any money for Ambitions, and therefore harbour no expectations of EA, I concur that EA has done amazingly well for a game that I obtained for $0.00 (excluding bandwidth fees).

I do feel bad for those who paid $40 and $50 for this EP and the base game respectively, though - many of the sparkling compliments in this thread about what EA has done 'right' should have been included in the base game. They did not receive the "bang for their buck" at all.

(That said, I'm so glad we can finally delete CC from ingame. FINALLY.)

This has been around for a while, in the MTS test forums. Apparently Delphy is also working on some sort of height/waist enhancer.

Not sure if this is intentional or not, but ever since I've installed Brighter Nights and Longer Shadows, the in-game afternoons always look overcast.

See here:





I thought the longer shadows only applied at dawn/dusk, but these were taken at around 4 pm in the afternoon.

If you have awesomemod installed, try the 'nukeimposters' command.