My review of TS3. What I liked, don't like.

[Doc Doofus]

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!!

[Czezechael]

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.

[Insanity Prelude]

Little late for it to be his first hack.

[Lorelei]

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.

[Gus Smedstad]

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

[jolrei]

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).

[Nailati]

I want CHAINSAWS, DAMMIT.

Seconded.

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.

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.

[GnatGoSplat]

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.

[Krippakrull]

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

[Ailias]

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

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.

think the dudes are okay looking, maybe even better than Sims 2, but chicks are fugly.

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

[J. M. Pescado]

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

[GelatinousSubstance]

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

[SciBirg]

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

[jolrei]

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...Also, the in-game lighting makes them uglier. 

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.

[Insanity Prelude]

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

Yep.

[Marq]

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.  

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.

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)

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.

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. ... We might be stuck with this shit for a long, long time.

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.

[BlueSoup]

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

Yep.

Insanity Prelude, you fucked up the link.

[Insanity Prelude]

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

[brooke]

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!!

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.

[Roflganger]

they'd of...
should of...
they'd of...

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. 

[Doc Doofus]

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. 



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.

[GelatinousSubstance]

they'd of...
should of...
they'd of...

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. 

I makes me  bonkers too.

[SlickCee]

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...

[MasterDinadan]

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.

[Nailati]

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

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



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.