OK, so why would I want this mess?

[Mimisims]

Everything else seems akin to the Sims2 base game play with enhancements.  I mean what is there to do in the base Sims2 game? Build a house, get a job, socialize with other sims, have a family and skill, basically what you do in the Sims3 with collections added for those who like those.

I agree with this wholeheartedly.  I don't really understand why some people have such high expectations of what a game is able to do.  I've been "testing" it out and other than my game suddenly dissappearing from the screen right in the middle of gameplay (which I surely hope is fixed with the final released version and/or patch), I am enjoying the game just as I enjoyed TS2.  I think they've done wonders with the abilities to decorate and match everything to your own desire.  Sure, the base meshes are limited, but with the thousands of color/text combinations you can use to change the base game items, it seems to me your choices are limitless. 

And it's just a base game, so I don't expect it to be "all encompassing".  I know I'll have to put out some bucks later to get expansions, but I'm okay with that.  I'm not okay with the Sims Store, but then I never did like that with Sims 2 either.  I just wont use it, but I'm not going to gripe about it - some people actually like it and that is their preference.

As for the collections part, that is a fun side thing to do, but yeah, you don't have to if you don't want to.  You can also make money at it if you find certain rare items and they're fun to look at too.  Oh, and I love being able to catch a fish and then place it in a fish bowl if I want to.

All in all, I am enjoying the game play as it is and that is my opinion.  The OP should just go ahead and downlad it for now and try it out for themself.  If they like the game, the buy it, if they don't, then just don't buy it.

[LauraW]

There's no one to kill!

I have seen some creative ways to kill off townies and unwanted Sims. Also, in a way, you kill off the bugs of this game and torture EA and paysites constantly. I think that goes quite well with your killer instinct.

[LauraW]

After playing for an extended time last night, I think I finally figured out what is missing from this game for me. When I play Sims 2, I play each family for a specific amount of time. So I play family A for 4 days, then B, etc., until I have played all the families. While playing each family, I interact with all of the other families in some way. I have parties, socialize, bring kids home from school, visit them on community or business lots and develop relationships with them plus move my own storyline forward.  It takes months and sometimes years of real life time to get through one generation. I have one hood that I have played for a long time and the second generation is just finishing college. I become very attached to my Sims and even though the personalities are lacking, I build them in my head. I even become attached to the regular townies, which I created in an empty template.

I had hoped that Sims 3 would improve the personalities and that the randomness of having families in the background moving on without us would aid in the storytelling, as someone mentioned above. However, after several hours of game play, my second generation now has children of their own. It happened so fast, that I am not attached to my sims like I am in Sims 2. I barely know the neighbors because I don't play them. While my sims can socialize with them, I don't have any connection to them other than one is ugly or one is chubby or one is cute. The 'legacy' part of the game moves to fast for me because we are focusing on just one family and then on one branch of the family rather than alternating between a group of interacting families.

This isn't necessarily a bad thing, its just different and I must learn to adjust my thinking. Rather than attach to the individual sims, I need to attach to the entire legacy, the family generations. I need to force myself to do more with the townies, get to know them, spend more time with them, because their lives will go quickly as well. I also changed to a longer life span hoping that will help.

The other issue I have is that in Sims 3 there are some things you just can't do until you do something else first, such as make a certain recipe or plant a certain item. This bugs me as its simply not realistic. I should be able to plant everything..but maybe I won't be able to make a good quality until I get to a certain skill level. It also bugs me that if you some things can't be moved from the inventories so are lost if you change families. I have lost valuable things that are stuck in my inventory when I change families. However, these are minor things and once I learn the game, they will simply be inconveniences.

[Lurker]

Sims will stop Doing That before they finish tending / harvesting / watering / weeding the WHOLE GARDEN. I said DO IT. That doesn't mean do HALF of it. There is also no "fertilize many" option, which is a pain in the ass.

They'll only stop tending the garden to take care of a red need and then continue with the gardening. You haz a bug. Your first memory leak is here though: Sims 2 didn't have a macro/tend garden, you had to add to the queue water/tend/harvest, which they do automatically now. But yes a macro/fertilizing is needed.

Let's say you get ambitious and decide to play with more than 1-2 Sims in a household. Juggling their needs is more frustrating than challenging.

I currently have a house of four and it's actually easier than in Sims 2. They take care of their needs themselves. Example: kid is tired, kid goes automatically to his assigned bed. Btw no one seemed to notice that finally beds are really assignables. In Sims 2, kid would have fainted on the floor, or if you're lucky would have gone to sleep in his parents/bros/sisters bed because the wrong bed comes closer than his one. No need to lock doors or put in a lot of mods to avoid that now. Sims A is hungry. He'll automotically go grab a leftover in the fridge, thing they never did in Sims 2 unless you had a mod. Btw, leftovers only came with Seasons.

Getting two Sims to sit at the same table, sleep in the same bed, sit on the same sofa, etc., is an exercise in frustration. More than likely Sim A will sit in the diningroom, 25 tiles away from Sim B, who made and served a meal, who is sitting at a counter.

Yet another memory leak you haz. We had the same problem in Sims 2, otherwise why would you think Inge made the table and counter controller? Why do you think i have her handy controller in every room of every lot? About the beds see my previous answer. No more problems with that.

Sims can spam up wants / wishes to Woohoo and be offering menu options to allow it, but the "you're in my way" bed dance often cancels the action out of queue. Fine.

Why do you even bother using that option, use the old way: couple relax on bed, couple woohoo. Because yes the relations drops damn fast and non-bed woohoo menu seems to always be unavailable. However their 'go to bed to woohoo' never dropped for me even when the 'oh, you're in my way' happened.

Sometimes they will accidentally wind up on the same couch, but it has not happened by design very often.

Agree, they seem to have broken the seat choice, in Sims 2 they valued comfort, now it seems totally random. I'm sure El Presidente will correct that. On the other hand in Sims 2 you did often ended up with sims going for the higher confort, even if that meant a porch couch in the middle of the night when it's raining.

Visiting other Sims is also broken, at least from my perspective, as you can't take care of most of your needs while visiting.

Just like in RL when visiting, you're not supposed to be a mooch. That is logical and realistic. But indeed the 'Stay the night' is borked, you or the visitor should be able to take a shower.

I miss being able to buy clothes at a store, or sit in a restaurant, or go to a club / pub, or work out at a gym, or shop inside a supermarket, or....etc. Honestly, I was not aware you could go inside the library, as I got so tired of running up against  empty buildings I couldn't go inside, I stopped even trying to enter most of the others.

And you also seem not aware that you can enter the gym, it's not a rabbit hole. And there'll always be sims working out with you in that fully equipped gym, ain't that cool? You can choose to sit outside at the restaurant to see your sim. Just like in Sims 2 he'll be automated to seat/eat/speak with the other customers. I do want a real opened movie theatre though, it's the only rabbit hole that indeed annoys me to hell.

There are hardly ANY content items included in the game, and it fills me with rage that EA apparently decided beforehand to strip them out and sell them individually to make a bigger buck, thus crippling the already grossly limited hair / clothing / object selections. Why are all accessories only worn on one arm / hand?

Ditto for the lack of items and the store. And i still can't understand the left-arm-only accessories. Fail.

One glaring omission, since they decided to add this "collecting" aspect to the game, is a place to PUT all the crap you collect.

Yes, shelves are badly needed. But do you remember that the first Sims 2 usable shelves only came with BV and the more handy ones came with Apartments? It's not optimistic at all to forsee the shelves being shipped with an EP.

Are they going to make us pay for card tables [...]

I hope not but anyway don't care since any store item will be shared after being corrected by awesome modders.

(Why can't Sims set up as caricature artists in the park and make some bucks like that, if they allow buskers?)

That would have been nice. The problem is that making a painting takes more or less three days as in Sims 2. So you'ld have two dead sims when the portrait is finished. But yes a mere fast drawing caricature has always been needed, even in Sims 2.

Another fantasy would be an auction house to get rid of the surplus of rocks, gems, paintings, etc. Sims struggling with poverty could sell off household goods, perhaps. You stand a chance of earning more or less than the default selling price or catalogue price if you auction your goods, or of the goods not selling because of a glut on the market of a particular item.

Oooow i totally love that idea. But that would ask too much work from EA's monkeys. Think about the monkeys damnit!

Why can't Sims sell fruits / veg / fish at home in a stand? Where did the kid lemonade stands go? Why aren't there any lemon trees? I suppose some of the things I miss will be added in an EP.)

If no OFB like EP is made, you can be sure that it's a sign of close apocalypse EA will redo all the previous sims EPs *sigh*
I didn't even notice the missing lemon tree. Too bad.

How is the second 'hood supposed to work? Will it be a destination tacked onto the current 'hood, so you don't have to ditch your playables to explore it, since they were asshats and practically force us to play The One Fambly, or will it be a matter of "play THIS 'hood OR THAT 'hood, you can't play both with your One Fambly Sims"?

I guess the second hood will work like the Sims 2 different neighbourhoods: different universe bubbles. Pescado said he's working on the borked story progression. For the time being only play one family or do different saves if you want the second family to appear in your hood. Put family #1, go to Edit Hood option, add family #2 to a lot, return to family #1, save your game using the family #1 name, go to Edit hood and change the active family, select family #2, save the game using their own family name. You now have 2 saves with 2 different families that are neighbours and can socialize and whatever. It'll only be artificial: each family/save will bear its own different bublle universe. But it works and you can in fact put in this way as much families as you want. Each one will have its own save you'll select by going back to the main menu. *short of breath*

[Lorelei]

Not so much memory leaks as those are Awesomeware-stomped annoyances for the most part. More like a failure to recall that I pre-emptively trusted The FOJ to make the game work properly / better and did not put up with default EA game options for long. 

Yup, in the interest of full disclosure, I took a lengthy break from the TS1 nonsense online after I got bored by Makin' Magic and wandered off to pursue other interests. Since I played TS1 from day one, I already knew there'd be hax / fug replacements for TS2 and promptly sought out and d/l'ed Awesomeware and default replacements before buying TS2 + all EPs / SPs (up to Seasons, and I added Seasons in weeks after it was released, to wait for Awesomeware to catch up). So some new annoyances for me are annoyances that were stomped by Awesomeware, and, frankly, I'd almost forgotten this.

So, yes, I did have a memory lapse and forgot that I prepared for and fixed some of the default Simsly stupidity waaaay in advance; but also  no,  I can't have a memory leak / forget about annoyances I never suffered through first-hand. I probably played an unmodded TS2 for less than 6 hours total, and some of that time was spent building a no-CC-allowed Awesomespec House.

* They aren't stopping gardening due to red needs. I cheated them up while stress testing the game. They are stopping because the macro is not set to "do it until it is done or I say stop." (I also noticed occasional wishes staying in the "promised wish items" 4-item queue even after requests were fulfilled. No lifetime points earned, ugh.)

* I did enter the gym to meet with Gobias Funke. It's not a gym I can design / build myself. Still, awkward phrasing, as I implied that it was a rabbit hole in TS3. Sitting outside a rabbithole cafe' is vastly different from being able to design / build your own cafe' and send your Sims inside it. Also, speaking of clothing stores, it looks like you can only store three or fewer options for clothing items per category. Not much point in shopping for new clothes if you can't add to the pile you have, is there, though? (Also, a "closet" mod that acts like a fridge / wardrobe inventory item would also be cool.)

* Sims in my household are not faithful to any one bed so far. Nor to any chairs. They ignored a top-of-the-line bed for one just as far away but of lesser cost / etc.

* I don't recall if I had Inge's table / counter controllers, though I did have a lot of great Ingemods.

* No one said anything about mooching, just noting here that "stay the night" should not = "stay until 2 or 3 am, after which you will be awakened and tossed out onto the stoop".

* Why bother using the game-dictated woohoo menu options? Stress testing. Why should I have to go through the lame "relax at same time" intermediate step each time?

* As for shelves, I spent more time describing a fridge-variant object that would hold collections inside than pining specifically for shelves, but in both scenarios the question still remains: why have Sims collect piles of crap if there's no storage / display surface / container for them?

* Re: caricatures: just as 'photos' are instant, and as paintings often have an underlying sketch step, it wouldn't be hard to 'take a glance' at target Sim(s) and then do a super-abbreviated "painting-type" action. Amateur Sim painters' paintings have obvious Photoshop-esque filters added, and Photoshop has filters that emulate sketching / pastel drawing.

* Yes, 2nd hood 99.9% confirmed by Pes to be likely to function as separate bubbleverse, not subhood.

* Yes, I obviously grok the saved games concept, as I stopped what I was doing with The One Fambly long enough to save their game and to create Fambly Two and make a quick TS3 movie. Then I went back to The One Fambly, still in Limbo from their last saved game.

[Zazazu]

Fishing and painting are slightly less boring because the image or the fish may vary slightly, but once you have seen all the game's fish and painting images, they are about as exciting as watching water boil.

Painting is still amusing me. Well, amusing and annoying. I was really into doing portraits and texture still lifes in TS2, so wanted to do the same in TS3. However, camera controls on still lifes and portraits are near non-existent. The camera moves too violently, and you have no control over the Y-axis. You can control tilt, but it will randomly reset itself. Then you have the stylization that sims do for still life:



Portraits seem to be without the stylization, but are even more impossible to control the camera on. Now, it does seem like they get a little clearer as painting skill increases. The first from the left was at level 6, then level 7, then level 8.

[Blaise]

How the hell is that any different than TS2, though? In both games, the Want trees are pretty much completely deterministic, and adding "life" or individual personality to a Sim pretty much comes 100% from player imagination and creativity. What the text says when you click on a shower to play that animation really doesn't say anything in terms of storytelling or whatever. Whether you come up with a cool personality and plotline for any given Sim is mostly going to come from you, because in both games there's not all that much going on that's not going to be the same across every single Sim you have.

*edited for brevity*

There's a lot that pisses me off about TS3, but in terms of the storytelling sandbox specifically, the "it is game, not toy!!111eleventy!1" argument makes no freaking sense. Lack of CC, SPT, potential unmoddability, yeah, sure, but I really don't get where "zomg it forces you to do grindypantsery!!!" comes from. Not much more than TS2, really.

Best post in this thread. I too am a Storyteller, having created a very in depth hood in TS2. The game mechanics do not determine story, the Storyteller's imagination determines story. The Sim taking the extreme shower? Well, you are the only one who sees that and once you adapt, i.e. block it out, you won't see it either.

I still do not like the look of the Sims, but the world itself, the potential integration of the characters into a living breathing town, is a delicious enticement - after I get my hands on a neighborhood creation tool, that is.

After playing for an extended time last night, I think I finally figured out what is missing from this game for me.

I had hoped that Sims 3 would improve the personalities and that the randomness of having families in the background moving on without us would aid in the storytelling, as someone mentioned above. However, after several hours of game play, my second generation now has children of their own. It happened so fast, that I am not attached to my sims like I am in Sims 2. I barely know the neighbors because I don't play them.

This isn't necessarily a bad thing, its just different and I must learn to adjust my thinking. Rather than attach to the individual sims, I need to attach to the entire legacy, the family generations. I need to force myself to do more with the townies, get to know them, spend more time with them, because their lives will go quickly as well. I also changed to a longer life span hoping that will help.

*edited for brevity*

Being able to "get into" your Sims does take time. Everytime I read about Story Progression being broken, I think about how build mode was disabled/broken in the first Reloaded Sims 2 release. I think once the folks start getting the store version into their hands we will see Story Progression working as intended (not that that means much with EA).

But I really feel that once we can turn off aging AND Story Progression, the immersive and connected feelings some of us desire will grow. In fact, I have a Sim that I am already becoming attached to. Sadly, I am afraid to switch houses because he might move outta town!

[sanmonroe]

Fishing and painting are slightly less boring because the image or the fish may vary slightly, but once you have seen all the game's fish and painting images, they are about as exciting as watching water boil.

Painting is still amusing me. Well, amusing and annoying. I was really into doing portraits and texture still lifes in TS2, so wanted to do the same in TS3. However, camera controls on still lifes and portraits are near non-existent. The camera moves too violently, and you have no control over the Y-axis. You can control tilt, but it will randomly reset itself. Then you have the stylization that sims do for still life:



Portraits seem to be without the stylization, but are even more impossible to control the camera on. Now, it does seem like they get a little clearer as painting skill increases. The first from the left was at level 6, then level 7, then level 8.

They don't get much clearer than that. They look bad at lvl 10.

[LauraW]

[
But I really feel that once we can turn off aging AND Story Progression, the immersive and connected feelings some of us desire will grow. In fact, I have a Sim that I am already becoming attached to. Sadly, I am afraid to switch houses because he might move outta town!

Same here. I am so afraid my Sim's grown sons will move away or spawn children without a partner that I find myself needed to check on their houses all the time. This is supposed to be fun, not add stress! I have real kids I have to worry about all the time...sighs.

[vagabondher]

The still life paintings don't necessarily bother me because unless you're taking a photograph (which would be awesome) or creating via computer-generation, the quality of the work isn't going to be 100% photo-realistic. In the eye of the beholder, though.

On the note of having a camera, I would welcome that feature with open arms. You could open up your own photo gallery! What's that Stewie line? "Every hot girl who can aim a camera thinks she's a photographer. Oooooooh, you took a black-and-white picture of a lawn chair and its shadow and developed it at Save-On. You must be so brooding and deep."

[Sagana]

How the hell is that any different than TS2, though? In both games, the Want trees are pretty much completely deterministic, and adding "life" or individual personality to a Sim pretty much comes 100% from player imagination and creativity.

The difference is that sims2 doesn't get in my way (much) while I do that and sims3 does.

It's obvious, though, that I didn't make myself clear in the previous post. I'm talking about telling myself stories and using the sandbox/toy for myself. I'm not talking about blogging and I'm not talking about machinima. In both of those, all that would count was what I was showing the audience as it's the audience's suspension of disbelief that counts. So what the game says/does matters not a bit if you're using it as a stage. I'm talking about becoming attached to the characters, giving/finding their personalities and playing a game that I play for myself, and what counts there is my *own* response. I've been playing for a couple of weeks now and have run the sims through the first generation and well into the 2nd. At this point in sims2, I was hooked on my sims. Not for me for this game.

What the text says when you click on a shower to play that animation really doesn't say anything in terms of storytelling or whatever.

Actually it does. It's part of the "wall of text" mentioned in the post I quoted and drags on the concept. The daredevil trait is very poorly done. If I imagine that I'm going to make a sim/character that likes danger - jumps out of airplanes, rides on motorcycles and takes chances in life - it not only adds nothing to the characterization to have almost every single thing he touches be listed as "extreme," it actually pulls away from imaging a serious character of that nature (breaks the wall, makes it difficult to suspend disbelief) and takes him into the absurd. The occasional extreme game of chess might be reasonable, but not for (almost) every item (extreme sleep, extreme shower, etc.) and every single time you do that action.

As a contrast, the neurotic trait is a lot of fun and adds to that characterization. Randomly a neurotic sim comes up with desires to "wash his hands 3 times" or "check the sink" etc. It's easy to put your own interpretation into those. He has his first kiss and wants to brush his teeth 3 times. Maybe he's afraid of germs, any germs, and can only really have a relationship with a girl that doesn't cause that reaction, or maybe he's paranoid about how well he kisses and scared to death the girl doesn't like him. He wants to brush his teeth and try again. Or maybe he washes his hands all the time because Lady Macbeth's blood has appeared. It's random, different enough to offer lots of options and not so absurd that it's hard to explain in some reasonable (for being neurotic) fashion. The only "advantage" to extreme is that it happens often enough that you'd probably get used to seeing it and tune it out at some point. That's not much of an advantage.

Now, TS3 currently sucks for storytelling and sandbox play because Story Progression Toggle is borked; but if that gets fixed, honestly, it's probably going to be a slightly better game for storytellers, because if you're the type who likes to make up the story of your Sims as it happens through random stuff in play, the space for random crap is a bit bigger in TS3, because of Traits and the random missions at jobs, having actual bosses/coworkers - but that's really just a matter of slightly more inspiration fodder, really; unimaginative people will still probably fail it up and write crappy stories; creative people will come up with amazing ones no matter how barebones the game is.

Story Progression isn't the only issue. All the stuff you're talking about - traits and missions at jobs and bosses/coworkers are *game play* things. It's a good part of how the game convinces you to move along its pre-destined line to "finish" the game. It imposes upon you little missions and opportunities *whether they make any sense within your story or not.* The problem isn't that the game is too barebones - it's that it's not barebones *enough*. The gameplay parts get boring really quickly, for me. Honestly, I've seen almost all of them in sims2. A lot of it is just recycled with another name/description. (I was quite disappointed to find that a fascinating sounding LTW was really nothing more than level 9 in the science career.) But it imposes the game's story upon me, rather than offering me a spot to make my own.

(Skips all the stuff about Legacies and machinima.)

There's a lot that pisses me off about TS3, but in terms of the storytelling sandbox specifically, the "it is game, not toy!!111eleventy!1" argument makes no freaking sense. Lack of CC, SPT, potential unmoddability, yeah, sure, but I really don't get where "zomg it forces you to do grindypantsery!!!" comes from. Not much more than TS2, really.

Well, I guess we play very differently. (The 'toy' analogy is Pescado's and I'd accuse him of many things but not leet/12ness I don't know if you don't characterize your sims, don't mind if the game changes your characterizations, find it easier than I do to suspend disbelief and to characterize within the game's limitations, prefer gameplay (or building or something else) or what, but I'm talking about MY experience of the game, and what makes no sense to me is that you seem to be claiming that can't be my experience.

I tend to play about the same way I used to play table-top dnd a long time ago. I have (or the GM gives me) a base idea of the world and I come up with a character concept intended to fit within that world. Without the EPs and CC, there are certain characters I can't make. That's fine. I'm a cooperative player and don't fight the party or insist my world view trumps the GMs (or at least if I make a cowboy, I know I'm playing him in a world where everyone has a cell phone.) So I've come up with several character concepts that should fit in the TS3 world (modern, maybe slightly post-modern, town-y/cityscape or something, slightly nutso, a world with ghosts and Goths as NPCs). The thing is, my characters still don't fit. Even if I'm giving them traits off the list and expected careers within the game, the characters break. I've got one more idea to try that's pretty much perfect for this world and if that still doesn't work, I'll just give up and go back to TS2. I'm kind of surprising myself by trying this hard to like this game anyway. And there is a lot about it I do like. And maybe I'm underestimating JM and he can fix more than I'm crediting. Or if the first EP really is business and is like OFB maybe that will help as it opened up so many options in TS2. I'm not sure, but of course TS2 is always there for me.

[Scotty]

[
But I really feel that once we can turn off aging AND Story Progression, the immersive and connected feelings some of us desire will grow. In fact, I have a Sim that I am already becoming attached to. Sadly, I am afraid to switch houses because he might move outta town!

Same here. I am so afraid my Sim's grown sons will move away or spawn children without a partner that I find myself needed to check on their houses all the time. This is supposed to be fun, not add stress! I have real kids I have to worry about all the time...sighs.

I left my self Sim alone for awhile to work on another family. He has the hopeless romantic trait, and when I decided to check on him, he had a romantic interest in some female townie. My Sims are always gay, especially my self Sim. So, I ended what interest he had to her, and hooked him up with a guy Sim. I'm glad I checked in before he married her!

[sanmonroe]

The still life paintings don't necessarily bother me because unless you're taking a photograph (which would be awesome) or creating via computer-generation, the quality of the work isn't going to be 100% photo-realistic. In the eye of the beholder, though.

On the note of having a camera, I would welcome that feature with open arms. You could open up your own photo gallery! What's that Stewie line? "Every hot girl who can aim a camera thinks she's a photographer. Oooooooh, you took a black-and-white picture of a lawn chair and its shadow and developed it at Save-On. You must be so brooding and deep."

See the way I look at it, if you reacht he top of the skill tree, and make masterpieces, you should be able to crank out things like this for quality and realism



or at least this




Instead the game runs the picture through a cheap pixelizer to make it look painted and we get this

[NameGame]

See the way I look at it, if you reacht he top of the skill tree, and make masterpieces, you should be able to crank out things like this for quality and realism

I'm not disputing that the paintings look like poo… Photoshop filters are for sheep. However, the examples in you counter argument are perhaps not the best. That Chuck Close painting would be in a museum long before that photo referenced mess. Like so much of what I've been reading about TS3, the abstracting of paintings should be an optional feature. On the up side, photography is almost guaranteed to be in an EP.

[Hook]

Lurker:  Very interesting post.  You mentioned a lot of things I didn't know existed for Sims 2.  I was surprised at a few of them.  Here are my observations from the Sims 2 base game.

Sims always slept in their assigned bed in my game unless someone else was already relaxing there.  I was always amazed when people said Sims never slept in their own bed.  I wonder if it was because they kept their Sims busy until they dropped from exhaustion and they'd end up using the closest bed instead.  After you'd sent them to the same bed a couple of times, they'd always use that one.

I even saw evidence that in a house with several toilets that Sims had a preferred toilet they'd use.  I finally got some confirmation of this when I had a ghost complain because I'd sold the original toilet.  That was what finally convinced people that Sims did indeed have a bed preference:  how else would a ghost know that you'd sold their bed?

I never ever had problems getting Sims to eat at a particular table.  I had posts on the BBS showing how to set up a house so that cooked food was eaten in the formal dining room while uncooked food (cereal, sandwiches) was eaten in a breakfast area.  I had several different house setups where this worked without problems.  This was all in the base game.

If you sent a Sim to water some flowers, he would continue watering other flowers that needed it.  If not all flowers needed watering, he'd stop before watering them all.  There may be something like that going on here.

When we first had gyms, Sims would use all the exercise equipment and even take showers.  At some point that was broken, and Sims only used certain exercise stuff and never showered.  I forget exactly when that happened, but it annoyed me considerably.

Sims would go to the fridge and fix food if they were hungry.  There were no leftovers at the time.

I ran a dozen or so totally autonomous households, three adults each, through about 27 days.  After getting it set up and everyone had jobs, it was totally hands off.  The only hack I used was Pay-At-Box so we didn't have a repo man coming.  My Sims not only survived, they thrived.  A few got fairly high in their careers.  No one ever died.  I don't even remember anyone peeing on the floor.  It did take setting up enough fridges so they wouldn't run out of food, and putting two stoves in each house in case one got glitched.  Broken showers and toilets gave them plenty of opportunities  to skill up in cleaning; a swimming pool built body, two easels each with paintings already started built creativity, a telescope (set up inside) built logic, they'd cook autonomously.  Oh yes... they usually slept in the same bed the whole time.

It will be interesting to see how much of this carried over to TS3.   I'm waiting for the retail game.

Hook

[GloamingMerle]

Some people will think I'm crazy, but I actually prefer that third picture sanmonroe gave. At least it has some personality! Granted, it's amazing that the first artist is able to make a digital painting that looks exactly like a photograph, but making a painting that looks exactly like a photograph is pointless. You may as well just take an actual picture, and call it a day. Not to mention, in order for such artists to make those pieces they need a photograph of it first, which makes the whole situation redundant. I'd rather have imperfect creativity than robot-like perfection any day.

Aside from that rant, I would actually prefer to see diverse filter effects for sim paintings. I think it'd be pretty spiffy to see a sim using pointillism, a charcoal effect, ect.

[Zazazu]

See the way I look at it, if you reacht he top of the skill tree, and make masterpieces, you should be able to crank out things like this for quality and realism

I'm not disputing that the paintings look like poo… Photoshop filters are for sheep. However, the examples in you counter argument are perhaps not the best. That Chuck Close painting would be in a museum long before that photo referenced mess. Like so much of what I've been reading about TS3, the abstracting of paintings should be an optional feature. On the up side, photography is almost guaranteed to be in an EP.

We do have cell phone pictures. However, they suffer from the same problem: the photos are darkened even more than still paintings/portraits, and the camera movement is unacceptable. It is nearly impossible to actually capture your subject. Cell phone photos are also small compared to paintings.

[Lurker]

When we first had gyms, Sims would use all the exercise equipment and even take showers.  At some point that was broken, and Sims only used certain exercise stuff and never showered.  I forget exactly when that happened, but it annoyed me considerably.

Community showers being autonomously used were broken by an EP, can't remember which one, and never repaired.

Sims would go to the fridge and fix food if they were hungry.  There were no leftovers at the time.

Leftovers were introduced in Seasons, but EA in all their failness forgot to code the 'autonomous take leftovers when hungry'. You had to put a mod to solve that. At least in Sims 3 base game they've put the leftovers options and it really works: they'll randomly take one if they're hungry. Knowing EA that still do amaze me.

If i get it correctly to make your houses have different dining parts without mods you have to build the house differently, like create two kitchens and two dining areas? 'cause otherwise it won't work as they'll always sit at the closest chair from where you've put the meal - counter or table, sims don't care. No i never tried this because there's not a single house in the whole world that have a double kitchen and i rarely ever use a grill, so i have to use Inge's table/counter controller. If it's not that, i really want to know.

Hook, beds indeed never worked for me in Sims 2, neither sleep nor relax. However i did not always called it a day when they were exausted. For example a tired or even just bored sim will go relax in a random bed, yet he always end up in the wrong bed. I always had that, from the base 'til now. My latest example: family living for more than a year in the same house, same beds, aging off. For a year i guide them to sleep in their 'own' beds. Yet a year after the kid will go relax on parents' bed because parents' bed is closer than kid's room, preventing daddy to sleep. Arg. I read a lot of stuff about that concern & it seems that the bed auto-assign is indeed coded in the game but it's totally broken. At least for single bed as the only left feature more or less working thing is the bedside memory (so only for a double bed), but even that was screwed, repaired and broken again several times with the EPs and anyway won't prevent a third sim to actually use that bed, may it be sleeping or relaxing.
Now when i'm in sims 3, a tired sims autonomously goes to his own bed, regardless of his bedroom location in the house (tested in a big house with 3 bedrooms and 4 sims). And if you control sim A and click on sim B bed the pie menu will clearly say "Sleep in sim B bed", i.e. the bed owner's name appears to warn you you've clicked on the wrong bed. So i'm darn reliefed to have that working in Sims 3 since it highly annoyed me in Sims 2.

[daisywenham]

I concur about the beds.  My understanding of how it was intended to work is that, the more you directed a sim to use the same bed, the more they would start to see it as their bed until they eventually would always sleep in the same bed.  I never had it work.  The more common situation would be grown sims autonomously sleeping in their kids' beds regardless of how many times I'd wake them up and force them back to their own bed.     

[Druscylla]

Our sims only get 3 custom outfits per category - can we remake those custom outfits if we change our minds or are those the clothes they are stuck with for the entire age? And does this include EA made clothing as well?

[Lurker]

Druscylla, you can 'remake' your 3 outifts whenever you want by clicking 'plan an outfit' on the closet. Just like when you've done them the first time, small numbered tabs will be on the upper left of the CAS screen; these are your outfits numbers for each category. Click on the number tab that you want to edit and make all the changes. Exit the mini CAS normally, your outfits will be updated.

[sanmonroe]

See the way I look at it, if you reacht he top of the skill tree, and make masterpieces, you should be able to crank out things like this for quality and realism

I'm not disputing that the paintings look like poo… Photoshop filters are for sheep. However, the examples in you counter argument are perhaps not the best. That Chuck Close painting would be in a museum long before that photo referenced mess. Like so much of what I've been reading about TS3, the abstracting of paintings should be an optional feature. On the up side, photography is almost guaranteed to be in an EP.

Yes the ugly one would end up in a museum. However, the artist was TRYING to make a painting that looked like modern art crap, not trying to make a realistic one. If I tell my sim to make an abstract painting, it is fine if it comes out looking like modern art. But if I tell it to make a portrait, or realistic painting, and the sim is a master of the art, it should come out near perfect. Its not like near photo-realistic art is a new thing



not like this

[sanmonroe]

Some people will think I'm crazy, but I actually prefer that third picture sanmonroe gave. At least it has some personality! Granted, it's amazing that the first artist is able to make a digital painting that looks exactly like a photograph, but making a painting that looks exactly like a photograph is pointless. You may as well just take an actual picture, and call it a day. Not to mention, in order for such artists to make those pieces they need a photograph of it first, which makes the whole situation redundant. I'd rather have imperfect creativity than robot-like perfection any day.

Aside from that rant, I would actually prefer to see diverse filter effects for sim paintings. I think it'd be pretty spiffy to see a sim using pointillism, a charcoal effect, ect.

Thats not a digitally made photo. That was done by hand by three guys.

It may not be high art, but it shows that when you want to hand paint something realistic, even burn out hippies with an airgun can do so.

[coltraz]

It's not that bad. That's what I thought at first but it's starting to grow on me, slowly but surely. On a positive note does anyone have any idea how to move in a sim from another household? Im getting irritated now because I CAN'T DO IT. They've woohooed, they can try for a baby yet there is no option for move in. How? Enlighten me please.

I get that option under "friendly" as soon as I become friends with a sim. I'm not sure why you wouldn't have it.

I can't find the option to, 'ask to move in' either. WTF! It's just not there.

[Hook]

This is the house layout I published on the BBS:

http://s43.photobucket.com/albums/e375/lhookins/SimsPics/Kitchenlayout.jpg

One kitchen, a formal dining room and a breakfast area.  If the distances were correct, they'd always use the closest spot.  When cooking food, the closest counter to the stove was the closest to the dining room, and that's where they'd put the serving platter.  The prep area was closer to the breakfast area than to the dining room, and that's where they'd leave the serving platters for food that didn't require cooking.  I never had a problem with Sims eating in the wrong place.

Other houses had the "breakfast area" on the back porch, right off the kitchen.  As long as the serving counters were closer to the tables you wanted them to use, they'd use the right tables.  In one case the serving counter for the main dining room was IN the dining room.  I never thought to coordinate the comfort of of the chairs involved, so I don't know if that made any difference.

I never had problems with grills, but I don't remember exactly how I solved that.  I may have had a kitchen counter somewhere between the grill and the outdoor tables, or they'd use the closest kitchen counter for the serving platter.  On community lots where there were no kitchen counters, I would always put an empty table next to the grill, and after putting out individual plates on tables with chairs the serving platter would usually end up on the table next to the grill.

One thing I always did for the beds was have identical beds as much as possible.  The kids' beds didn't have more comfort than the parents' beds if the beds were different.  While Sims would relax in the closest bed, they'd seek out their own bed to sleep... as long as someone else wasn't already relaxing there.  If that happened, you usually had to retrain them on which bed to use.  Sometimes that got a little wonky.  I suspect that if the comfort was different, Sims would seek out the highest comfort bed first.

Nice of them to fix the beds in TS3.  Will they still relax on the closest bed, or do they use their own?

Hook