One of my summer projects is to get a new computer, one that might be better suited to my current TS2 building projects as much as anything. I'd kind of like to try out the later games as well though, but lacking much information, I figure the forums here are as good a place as any to start! I'm sure many of you have played TS2 in the past, so what do you see being the biggest differences? What upsides and downsides are there to shifting games (especially with regard to the building design aspects of the game)? If I like the gameplay of TS1 but never really got into anything beyond the building side of TS2, will I be happy with the gameplay here? Etc., etc.

I don't try to build, so I don't know about the differences in building between the games. As for the gameplay, one difference depends on if you are a rotational player in Sims 2. In the Sims 3 open world, the player controls one household, and Story Progression controls the rest. The player can switch households, however the one she/he just left will not remain the same it will be controlled by Story Progression and there most likely will be changes. I've seen some Sims 2 players complain about that, not wanting the household to change when they are not playing it. I've gotten the Nraas Story Progression mod to the point that the changes made when I'm not playing the household don't bug me.

There will always be Story Progression. The default is EA's Story Progression, but there is also Twallan's Nraas Story Progression mod, or the Story Progression that comes along with Pescado's Awesome Mod.

The next is rabbitholes. Most of the jobs are in rabbitholes, except for the Professions that come with various EPs. Most of the community lots are rabbitholes and the player can't go inside with the Sim. Sometimes there are pop-ups and selection screens.

The Supernaturals are more interesting. The witches have more useful spells and the Fairies are fun too.

Sims travel in the Open World, and a big problem can be routing issues. Routing issues can cause lag because the game engine is trying to get the Sim unstuck. There is corruption that occurs that is not dependent on the player (meaning the game will corrupt itself without the player doing things they shouldn't). As far as I know there isn't a well known list of player actions that cause corruption for Sims 3 as there is for Sims 2.

Dear Zarathustra - I'm a great admirer of your TS2 builds - they all are the kind of essence what I personally like in sims building. Alas, I don't play Sims 2 so I don't have a chance to be so lucky to enjoy them in my game. But if you begin to play and build in Sims 3... oh f......! ... I mean, I'm overwhelmed by the perspectives of finally downloading great TS3 lots from you! (fangirling)

Building in Sims 3: just imagine a world where you can paint over every possible surface to any kind of color, pattern, texture you want with every possible shade you want, and you have even sub-layers to put a little dirt or patina on them. Where you can put "hidden room" markers into rooms that you don't want to use in a building so the unnecessary space would fade to black. Where you can place "special effect" emitters to certain places on the lot if you want to create some "smoke effect", or some fire into a trash can in a dark alley, Oh, and also, in Sims 3 you can see clearly the neighboring buildings (how much, depends on your settings), so if you build an urban district, you can place all the lots right next to each other and you will see all of them clearly together as an organic city district because of the open neighborhood - not as blurry and separated as in Sims 2.

Surely there are some annoying elements of playing TS3 - it tends to crash, it can't be played without serious core mods etc. but I think the building is fun and constantly inspires you to push the limits even more further.

Yes
You will almost certainly be happy if you make the leap. The main thing Ts2 does better than Ts3 is running a business. But if you use Ani's Savvier Seller mod, it's approaching that level.
The open world is the real reason to change to Ts3. You won't look back once you see the advantages.

It's pretty great if you don't consider it from an either-or binary approach and just keep both games around.

I keep TS3 for the creativity

I keep TS2 for the gameplay

With that, I'm almost completely satisfied.

Oh, you're gonna have a steep learning curve, that's for sure. It takes longer to build in ts3 because you can survive without cc for so much longer.

I also see you do cfe? You can do that in 3 as well.

I always like to think that in terms of building, TS3 is like TS2 but better in every way. Except for multi-floor windows, and that one cheat where you have no height limit, you can do everything.
And you can of course do more with the lots themselves. They don't need to be near roads, so you can just turn it, twist it, bop it, that sorta stuff.
And indeed, CASt. It's probably the best thing they've ever put in a Sims game, and it also kinda ruined all the other games for me.

I can only second Floraflora2. Yes, please, come over to Sims 3 Let us have your genius builds, too!

If you don't really play Sims 2, you won't miss anything. Instead you can explore the build options of Sims 3. Imagine to fully rotate an object! And paint that wall in that slightly darker tint that you always wanted but didn't find a download for it? Now you can give your builds and interiour grunge, natural, plastic, victorian.... look without having to download a ton of cc. Simply give the walls and objects etc. a different pattern, or a different colour scheme! But if you wanted it, there is of course a ton of awesome cc (and mods) to download and spice up your builds (and play) even more. The only limit is the height limit (5 floors), but as long as you don't plan on making every floor fully usable there is cfe for that, too.

Also, the open world gives you a lot of options. Maybe you even want to try CAW? And who knows, maybe you'll even enjoy playing a bit, too.

See? There is no reason not to try it

[Edited to add] The only thing you would need to consider is if you want to be tied to Origin or not. If you want to have your game offline available all the time and not be automatically patched (not that there is much to expect nowadays) or whatever Origin/EA comes up with you will need to install from CD following certain guidelines. After that - happy simming!

[Edited to add even more] Many of the issues Orilon describes can be helped with the use of mods. Especially the NRAAS mods are quite helpful to even out EA bugs. Other mods add to and enhance gameplay, like career mods that allow you to get rid of rabbitholes.

Also, you can turn story progression of. A lot of instability in players games comes from to the enormous amount of cc people put in their games, outdated mod versions, bad cc and stuff like that. But I guess that's the same for all games.

Can I add no more loading screens?

Yeah, don't forget that TS3 won't just work flawlessly out of the box, like TS2 will. You need to make sure it's installed in the right way, and you'll need to set the NRaas mods up. And after you do that, you've still only got the game in it's barest, defaultestest form.

In terms of building, I think TS3 is a bit more creative... and actually easier than TS2. For one, you can actually just plunk a basement down in TS3 - and in TS2, it was a matter of foundation, stairs down and removing them, leveling terrain, etc, etc. Roof-pitching is also much simpler, I think, because it's not "cheatcode"-based, like before. You have your own slide on how far you want your roof to pitch and you can set the pitch individually by grabbing each roof piece.

Designing the inside is also a bit easier with CASt (Create-A-Style) which lets you change the wallpaper almost to your heart's content. Of course, you can also change the pattern/color of furniture; so you can easily make a living room with whatever furniture you want, but still give them similar wood patterns, to give it a more uniform appearance, if you like that.

Minor downside, a single household starts up with 16.500 (1 Young Adult) rather than the 20.000 the household got overall in TS2. Upside, I think the furniture is a bit more varied and you can't just fill a small house with the best furniture, but have it still be starter. (At least, from what I recall from TS2 building)

There's no basements in TS2? Really? I thought there were. But I haven't played in a really long time, so...

And yes, you really can't afford to have nice furniture in a starter. On a 16k house, only about 1/10th of the cost goes to the lot itself and the construction of the house. The rest's all in furniture.

I tried TS2 and TS4, but I'm completely addicted to TS3 with the packs, mods, open world and so on.

As I posted in your same thread in 4: Every version has good and bad points and opinions here are about as unique as we all are. If you love to build, which I do, I would suggest getting 3 first and then move to 4 later if wanted. I still prefer to build in 3 even though 4 has nice build features. I am currently on a mansion with boathouses building spree in 3 in a world that is very hilly in places. I love building on irregular lots, the steeper and odder the terrain the more fun to me. I love to build over the water. I love to build the houseboats. Soooooooooo, that is my suggestion. The terrain sculpting is great. Being able to add ponds is great. CASt is wonderful. I love the open world. 3 is still my fave for these and other reasons.

And I love the gameplay in 3 also, as there is so much to do. You can scuba dive, waterski, explore tombs, and many, many other things. And there are seasons and all the life stages. The teens in 4 drive me nuts.

And I love building worlds in 3 in CAW. You cannot only create the lots you want more easily in most cases, you can create whole worlds in an endless number of ways and themes. You are only as limited as to what your imagination is and all that can inspire it.

Not to make this topic about rating the games and the franchise as a whole, but I would strongly argue that the only two things that keep TS3 from being the perfect* The Sims game, are the questionable graphics and the unreliable performance.
* as in, the best The Sims game that could realistically be made, if you disregard the possibility of a similar but more advanced game being made today.

I play all three versions of Sims now I have my own laptop.
Three is nice and the open world is a great leap from Sims 2. It is a bit more demanding on your computer but with the necessary mods (we can help you here) you will like the game. I find as far as Sims 3 forum as opposed to Sims 2 is you get less feedback from people. Threads can often sit for days without a peep. That's just my opinion.

Maybe I'm a thread killer? LOL...

I like to build my own houses in Sims 3 and with the decorator tool, you can do a lot with the patterns.

In Sims 2, if you think your building may need a basement sometime in the future, you need to put it on a foundation with a properly sized hole already in place. Just in case. Otherwise, you are going to be doing a lot of digging out and rebuilding.

In Sims 3, if your building is not on a foundation, you can add a multi-storey basement at any time. If it is built on a foundation, you can still prepare it the way you would for Sims 2, except that it doesn't like putting stairs in foundations so you also need to add the stairs before putting your foundation around the edges. And you might have to argue with it a few times before it will decide to put a foundation around the outside edge of a hole that has a real wall around the inside so that you can hang pictures or toilets on the boundary wall. But the basement tool can be used under a foundation-hole basement so you can still go down several stories.

It doesn't require a driveway on the left side of the lot, or at least far enough to the left of the edge for the "tail" to fit. You can park a car parallel to the street, or even stick it into an inaccessible attic. (And I still get nervous when I see my sim walking right past his motive mobile to go drive somewhere because I still have a momentary reaction of "Don't tell me you've called a taxi!")

Nobody has mentioned the possibilities of using tomb building commands (and objects) in a lot. Staircases that vanish and reappear, doors that lock when the tv is on and unlock when the tv is off so that you cannot go turn on a stereo while the tv is running (well, magic gnomes can because they teleport.) and even bathroom doors that lock until the toilet is flushed are all possible. Yesterday I even built a lot that was an unmarked grave for a starter home for a vampire. It looks on the surface like a vacant lot covered in bushes. It would have been impossible to build that in Sims 2.

It's been a decade or two since I've played Sims 1, (although I still remember the technique for winning a magic duel... and that silly puzzle with the gravestones.) As I recall, Sims 1 was more like Sims 3 in that you focus on one household and let the rest do their own thing. But in Sims 3, they actually do things. And when/if you switch, the family you left will have been doing things on their own according to the Story Progression settings. This can, and often does, result in them having done something you don't want them to have done such as breaking up, changing jobs, or even moving out of town and vanishing into oblivion. Awesome Mod and NRAAS Story Progression have ways to prevent this. EA Story Progression does not unless you turn it completely off, then periodically check to make sure it stayed off.


One thing in Sims 3 you may like: Speed 4. You have a sim engaged in a long-term activity like reading a skill book. You've gotten bored watching the sim just turning pages. Hit Speed 4 and it goes into Speed 3 until the sim is finished. Then it goes back to normal. (Like it does when all the sims in the house are asleep, but with any activity that a sim is engaged in. )

And yes, you may join the ranks of those of us who think that each iteration of the Sims loses more of its whimsey and imagination. You may still consider the game worth playing anyway.

Yes, you can, but it's really the last thing you should pay attention to. I'm a self-proclaimed expert in TS3, and after 7 years I still haven't run into a scenario where I need or want to use the tomb commands. Sure, if you have a specific purpose for them, go for it, but it has little do within the scope of Build Mode.

I will say that at this point, TS3 has taken a commanding lead over TS4...

If you want to avoid Origin/1.69, the Steam version is one option.

See it for yourself: http://sims.wikia.com/wiki/Comparis...Sims_base_games

That goes for pretty much everything, everywhere. Ask the official forums, ask Reddit, ask the YouTube comment section, ask Sandy from ATS, ask the Metacritic ratings, and you'll see a commanding lead.

Good
And we didn't even mention travelling to the future, riding across the whole town on your horse, playing as a Firefighter, the pyramids of Egypt, rollercoasters, ferris wheels, the cows, the chickens, living on a boat, scuba diving, the choice of CAW hoods available....the list goes on and on

You're right, we didn't. Nor did we mention that there's a boob slider, which is the best and most useful thing I can come up with right now.

Yeah, but it's not even really a new feature now that I think about it. They had that shit in CAS back in '85.

So yes, Create-A-Style it is then. The greatest new feature in TS3.

Here's why TS3 is my favorite, even moreso than TS2. You may note that a lot of these are specific to my playing style, so of course YMMV.

- Simultaneous aging. Back with TS2, I wanted my Sim families to all stay on the same timeline, but I got SO bored with rotating households. TS3 was amazing to me because it fixed that problem from the getgo.
- Story progresson (NRAAS, not the game's). It's like the town is alive and I love it. Sometimes the game makes choices that I wasn't planning on, but that's part of the fun for me. Also, again, I don't have to play a household just to make sure that Sims get married and have kids to keep the generations going. Also, I tell stories in the game and with NRAAS mods my stories can have so much detail. I can set up a neighborhood to have just the background I want, like careers, relationships, former relationships, family connections, etc.
- Open world!! I LOVE the open world. The images can be absolutely gorgeous and it just makes the game feel so lifelike to me.
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