The Good, the Bad, and the Randomly @Toaded

[Marhis]

Ok, now this is just retarded.
The two Bunch old farts kicked the bucket; result: TWO different Grim Reaper's acquaintances. It's a UI glitch? Does the game pop up a brand new Grim Reaper for every death? Has EA found a new way to have a BFBVFS neighborhoods?

[J. M. Pescado]

Maybe each type of death has a Death. Like Death of Being Sat On By A Giant Frog, Death of Overpowered Fireballs, etc.

[Marhis]

That would be logical (and cool), but both died of old age within a couple of days.

Same lot, same family, same play session, same death, same room, too, now that I think of that. That's why I'm sincerly worried about this sign.

EDIT: a note, too: their sons and daughters had the bad moodlet for the mother's death (2 days long), but the father's death the next day didn't give them another moodlet, nor the time added up. Both parents were equally liked by their spawn.

[WatersMoon]

I had a sort of similar problem, in my Razor version, where every couple days it would give me a different maid. I think there were about 5 or 6 when I uninstalled that and installed the Retail version. Now I just have 2 maids, one that comes on weekdays and one that comes on weekends. I haven't noticed any extra spawning (yet).

I have recently noticed some things, in the Retail version (which were probably also present in the Razor version) that amuse me. I like that Sims "upgrade" the compute by jabbing it with a screwdriver - and upgrade the toilet by banging on it with a hammer. Also, I just noticed that mirror reflect the walls of the rooms they are in - even if those walls are down to the player. No longer can my mirrors magically reflect my sim playing guitar outside when they have three or four walls in the way, which had bugged me somewhat in the previous game.

Sometimes this game does make me want to jab my computer with a screwdriver...

[Elvie]

My roofs have been @Toaded 
I can't see the roofs on houses I'm either playing or building. I can see the NEIGHBORS' roofs, though, both in live mode and build mode. After I play or enter a house to build, the roof "disappears" forever. I took a house from the lot bin and placed it on an empty lot. I never entered the house, but the thumbnail in the lot description is missing a roof    Before I placed the house, it definitely had a roof.
A few people have posted about this on the BBS, but not many.
Has anyone else here seen this?

[dorquemada]

Does anyone else get the criminal career broken if a superspy sim raids the warehouse? I remember someone mentioning that, wonder if it's random borkage or if it's always like that.

Amusing fact of the day: my sim was reading the "Zombies? Zombies!" book when he got the message about his townie girlfriend spawning his son, whom she named Brain.

[CharleeRose]

Does anyone else get the criminal career broken if a superspy sim raids the warehouse? I remember someone mentioning that, wonder if it's random borkage or if it's always like that.

I've only had one sim in that career so far and had no problems raiding the warehouse (yet).

For my own issue, I can't seem to make Ambrosia no matter what I do!  I'm hoping it's just tight pants but I certainly can't see what it is I'm missing.  My sim is maxed in cooking, knows how to make the recipe, has all the ingredients (as far as I know) but can't make the damned Ambrosia no matter what time of day I try it or what pie menu I look under.

Can someone who has successfully made this dish give me an "Ambrosia for Idiots" breakdown?  I just don't want to think that my game is quite that borked that I can't even cook such an important dish.

[BlueSoup]

For ambrosia, you can't serve it, you can only have it (one plate only). I've seen it under breakfast, but never looked for it under lunch or dinner.  With Awesomemod, it should be there all the time.

[witch]

Do you have to read the recipe first?

[CharleeRose]

For ambrosia, you can't serve it, you can only have it (one plate only). I've seen it under breakfast, but never looked for it under lunch or dinner.  With Awesomemod, it should be there all the time.

Aha!  Thank you, I didn't even think to look under the single serving stuff.  I knew it had to be me just being a complete idiot (as usual).  I can't seem to store it in the replicator either and I thought that was an option.  Oh well, at least now I can make it.

Do you have to read the recipe first?

Yes, you have to buy the recipe and learn that first.

[BlueSoup]

You can't store it in the replicator either.  That's by design.

[BrokenRobot]

My roofs have been @Toaded 
I can't see the roofs on houses I'm either playing or building. I can see the NEIGHBORS' roofs, though, both in live mode and build mode. After I play or enter a house to build, the roof "disappears" forever. I took a house from the lot bin and placed it on an empty lot. I never entered the house, but the thumbnail in the lot description is missing a roof    Before I placed the house, it definitely had a roof.
A few people have posted about this on the BBS, but not many.
Has anyone else here seen this?

I'm having the same problem.  I can see roofs on premade houses in the map view and on lots far away, but when I get close they disappear.  Houses that I build have invisible roofs even in the map view.

What kind of graphics card are you using, Elvie?  I'm running the game on Intel integrated graphics for now, so that may be what's causing it.

[Lorelei]

I'm annoyed that I can't tote an easel to community lots and do portraits of people and things there (the "paint from memory" trick is not the same), and that the newspaper can't be unsubscribed from. Enough with the newspapers!

[OpiumGirl]

In the past, at least, they have recognized CC as a good thing, but that may have been while relatively sane Maxis was in charge. I would hope that they just see the store as an additional source of income, because they CAN, rather than trying to stop 3rd party CC as many seem to fear. There will be CC whether EA likes it or not, and unless they like footbullets more than Jona does (and I'm not saying they don't), they most likely won't actively try to stop it.

 I keep wondering if they're just being jerks about it in the beginning when the game is fresh, people are still excited about it, and ready to buy content. Perhaps when things die down and people start getting bored, they'll start plugging CC again. Near the very last few EPs for Sims 2, EAxis seemed to be pretty actively involved with modders. As in, interviews, workshops and other things of that nature.  I'm totally shocked about the change....but then again, when I think about EA being in charge now, it isn't so surprising.  I keep thinking about how wretched they were while trying to buy Rockstar Games...Downright sleazy.

[moondance]

This game makes me irritated for what it could have been, and is not.
The trees, flowers, and shrubs bend and sway in the breeze. The hair does not. This pretty much sums up where I think the focus in development of this game went wrong.  Everything else is just pure rant.

"Story progression" is actually sort of a neat idea. It's too bad it's a lie.  There is no "story." I've just spent some time checking out random sims in my neighborhood--a neighborhood in which my original CAS family is now on its sixth generation.  Here's an elderly sim with the "perfect garden" lifetime want, and the green thumb trait--and as a bonus, he loves the outdoors. He has no gardening skill. Across the street there's a family consisting of three grown siblings (only one of which had a mother.)  These three siblings have lived their entire lives together, and yet they are only the barest of acquaintances.  One of them has the lifetime want to be a master thief, and yet he's chosen the law enforcement career.  Another is a young adult whose "love interest" is an elderly lady.  Down the street lives a family consisting of two parents and two children.  The children are twins, and I am positive of this because I was playing that family when they were born.  Somehow twin one is three days older than twin two.  And on it goes.  Athletic sims who are adults and have no athletic skill, family-oriented sims approaching old age without so much as a friend, much less a love interest, outdoors-hating sims with tons of fishing skill, and on and on. 

If these sims, as EA indicated, are living their own lives, they are doing a piss-poor job of it.

I've come to the conclusion that the clone-babies with only one parent are actually not a bug, but intentional, and meant to mask another problem--sims rarely get married on their own.  I've never seen an announcement yet in the newspaper about a marriage between sims I actually was familiar with--and at this point I'm familiar with all the town regulars. Instead, I see an announcement about a marriage, immediately followed by an announcement that the same sims that just married, also just moved into town. Without the clone babies, there'd hardly be any babies at all, unless the player ran around switching families and marrying off sims.  A few do manage to have love interests on their own, but they don't seem to actually DO anything about it. 

There also seems to be the occasional sim whose existence seems to make no sense at all.  One household had a toddler in it whose family tree indicated she was the daughter of Mortimer Goth and Bebe Hart. That would be all well and fine except that Bebe Hart and Mortimer Goth had both been dead long enough that their other children had died of old age. In my main family's family tree there is a fellow named Johnnie who I've never seen since he was a toddler.  His portrait in the tree suggests that he is alive and well and is an adult or YA--and this has been so for about three generations now. He's not in any of the houses though, and he never appears at the park or any other public places. I suppose he might have moved away--and if he did, he apparently moved to a place where sims live much longer than they do in my neighborhood. 

It seems like even in houses I've played for long periods of time that the sims who live in them don't really get to know one another--much less become friends--unless I constantly direct them to interact with one another.  They just don't interact much on their own--but then, it takes an agonizingly long time for a sim to take a bath, but a few minutes chatting on the phone will raise the social bar to full, so I guess I can't blame them.  In TS2 (with ACR,) I know I can take a sim to a downtown club and be entertained just by continously maxing my sim's motives so I can stay and watch the antics of random other sims. In TS3, I can spend days in the park with a sim and very little happens at all. 

I wish I could drop ACR and my TS2 sims, with their looks and quirks and ability to get into hilarious trouble into the seamless neighborhood of TS3, with its ability to allow sims to marry, split up, and have babies on their own.  Then I'd have a game I really loved.   

[dee]

Story Progression? Pfft. Okay...I'm boring, and have always tried out a femme fatale in every Sims incarnation as a first family. Gave her all the traits, played for a bit and then left her alone whilst living real life. BF tries his hand out at the game, makes a thief and plays for several days.
Eventually I get play and 'lo behold my femme fatale has adopted a child. WTF? For a commitment phobic, flirty, mean, lucky socialite to ring up and actually want a child is so unbelievably unrealistic it was criminal.  Plus I don't really like the idea of something so major to be left to half cooked AI. Give me the big decisions and continue with the banality of the game please (i.e skill building, meeting friends, etc).

I thought that maybe she shagged some random without protection, but the baby had NO father present in family tree. Strange. Needless to say, entire family was nuked. Urgh why can't they get the game right!??!

[sloppyhousewife]

Eventually I get play and 'lo behold my femme fatale has adopted a child. WTF? For a commitment phobic, flirty, mean, lucky socialite to ring up and actually want a child is so unbelievably unrealistic it was criminal.  Plus I don't really like the idea of something so major to be left to half cooked AI. Give me the big decisions and continue with the banality of the game please (i.e skill building, meeting friends, etc).

The spontaneous spawning has been discussed extensively already. I recommend the awesomemod (Armoire of Invincibility) to prevent surprise babies.