Hi all. I have browsed through the forums here to gauge the impact of night life, and I have a few questions about this xpac that I would like to know more about before deciding wether to take the plunge and spend some cash on this.

So from what I’ve read about Late Night it looks like it is really centered around an urban environment and that there are problems with this environment (Ie long elevator times, apartments are 1 per square). Personally am not a big fan of urban environments and I would prefer playing in a more suburban environment (ie River brook, Sunny Vale - the two towns from Ambitions & base game, not sure if the names are correct). So I was wondering if all the things that you can do in the new town, can you do in your old towns? Would you have to change much? So would I be able to start a garage band in my old towns? Would there be hot night clubs, in the old towns? Or would I have to modify the old towns and adding and building night clubs & bars. (personally I don’t think I’d mind modifying it, if it didn’t take too long).

Again I really don’t see myself playing in an urban environment, just too crowded I didn’t care too much for the sims 2 apartments, and this aspect of this xpac reminds me of it.

What about Vampires? Would they “appear” in my old towns?

If I am correct the main benefits of this xpac are a few new careers, musical instruments, clubs & celebrity status (not that interested in the latter), mixology (semi interested in this).

Thanks for any and all responses.

You don't have to play in the urban settings if you don't want to. I don't much care for Bridgeport either. Yes you can have vamps in any town....even the suburbs ;-)

thanks a bunch for the reply. I guess was also wondering what peoples experience editing hte other towns with late night type stuff as well. If they had success with it and such.

When I edited my towns for Late Night they became a bit laggy, ESPECIALLY with a lot of apartment shells, but other than that it's been successful.

I, for one, HATE Bridgeport. Don't get me wrong, I think EA did a wonderful job creating the town, with the exception of the high rises. It seems to me they were a bit lazy. They made the apartments small, surrounded by annoying blackness, didn't give you any neighbors in said blackness or even building capacity, and said, "Ah, good enough." Also, I can't tell you how many sims I've made visit other sims in their apartments, then try to leave and get stuck in the hallway for an eternity, because they forget how to use the elevator. I had to turn my game off and lost a lot of valuable playing time.

Bridgeport is also EXTREMELY laggy, but I find this is due to my computer, not the game. I have an outdated laptop that I play on, and I'm not even sure I have a graphics card. If I were you, if you have an older laptop or even just want the game to run smoothly, I would go out and buy a graphics card. It's WELL worth it. It sometimes takes up to 6 minutes to load my towns. Oi.

I prefer to play in the smaller towns, but I add my own LN perks. Like, for instance, I'll play in Sunset Valley, but I'll make a few residential lots to be community lots, and place some new venues from the lot bin. If you add the vampire hot spot, vampires will show up in your town. You can create garage bands in any other town.

... And now I realize I may as well have written a novel. If you sat through all of that, congrats. You get a cookie.

In reality, urban and suburban environment in The Sims 3 are pretty much the same (to me). You can add all the community and commercial lots in the both world. The only different is just the atmosphere and feeling. Living in apartment and surrounded by skyscrapers, it feel wow. The view of clustered tall skyscrapers from across the river is also very breath taking.

In my opinion, buy LN is not a bad thing, probably the best TS3 EP so far. A full and richer experience of TS3, why not?

Thanks for the replies. I went ahead and got it, and have been steadily building bars & such in twinbrook. Unfortunately my band family havent received gigs yet, hence the building bonanza I just went on. Hopefully will help. I am enjoying it so far, time will tell how much longevity it has.

I was quite surprised how fast the vampires seem to be populating the join, will have to think of some sort of vampire culling solution if they get too out of hand. Maybe forced regression, a family of vampire hunters, or the good old edit town option. :D

If you'd like to have a "mini-urban" feel, there are lots like these: http://www.modthesims.info/d/364827, http://www.modthesims.info/d/368815 (and I'm sure others) that replace the central park (whice I've never found to be all that functional myself). The benifit is that they free up space for the Ambitions and Late Night lots in the central area, and don't change the "feel" of the original worlds too much.

I have heavily edited versions of these lots, which I also feel makes game-play much easier, as you don't have to travel too far, and can get a lot accomplished in a smaller area. Using the WA register, you can replace the bookstore rabbithole with a "working" bookstore that also gives the same bonuses as the library, which gives you another lot to work with. They are great locations to add-in the stylist and tattoo parlors, it allows you to replace the lot that originally has the grocery/bookstore/threater with 3 20x30 lots for the fire dept, consignment store, and laundromat, the library lot with a bar/club/lounge, the diner lot with yet another; if you replace the current town hall with the Late night one, you can delete the police station and army base and replace with yet another club, and the movie lot (although the movie lot looks kinda strange by the airport/launchpad lol!) You get that downtown urban density without having to have all the high-rises.

On a seperate note, one tip I have with Late Night is to replace the elevators to the basement clubs/lounges with double wide stairs, you get rid of a lot of that "one sim per ride" BS. Unfortunately, it dosen't work so well with going up. My only semi-solution for that is for those shells that have multiple floors, the elevator only goes to one, and the rest require stairs to get to; and to place all the NPC doors on the lobby level. You can do this using the "restrictbuildbuyinbuildings" true/false cheat.