good morning/afternoon
i think it would be good to have a little stand selling coffee and icecream in the park (it would be just a bit more realistic to real parks) i am dissapointed that there is no way to do this oh well maybe in the future.what do you all think would be a good item to be added to the parks in the sims3

An icecream cart sound fantastic. Remember the minstrel in Hot Date for TS1. He walked around the restaurants playing the violin? I think it would bee cool if they had some type of minstrels or a band that played in the park. Concerts In The Park!

I do miss the little coffee stands.... but I'm sure a lot of this 'boring' stuff will be expanded upon as more CC and expac's starts coming out. *nod*

Indeed they are boring, just as pretty much all community lots except perhaps for the gym.

There just aren't enough things to do in the game for now, it lacks objects with interactions, and also socials for the sims to hang out!

I'd love to see food stands reappear. Also, sports items need to come back for the parks, such as the basketball hoop, skating ring, they made the parks more interesting.

And sigh, we really need more objects for bars, social venues as well, hope they won't wait till the 5th expansion to make these! I'd love to make a little cafe overlooking a park.

Good Ideas magic cookie! Due to those horrible loading times for TS2 I didn't really get to enjoy a lot of the stuff available. I am looking forward to some of that stuff making its way into TS3. With an open neighborhood most of those thing would be more fun!

Agreed, I hardly ever went out on dates in the S2 because of the loading times, never used the downtown, I'm really missing those options in the S3 I don't understand why EA didn't make some variation on hot date or nightlife the first EP?! I've pretty much done everything that can be done with the rabbit holes now. The novelty has worn off.

I agree

Ha! In my opinion, the gym is the dullest place in town. Even the museum is better than the gym.

You're feeling very much the same way I did after going from TS with all expansion packs except one to base TS2. TS2 had a lot of new features from TS but pretty much the only feature that came in TS expansion packs that carried over to TS2 was community lots and they were about as interesting as watching paint dry. I think TS3 is has way more to do than did base TS2 compared to TS. To start with, we don't only have community lots, but a wide-open town to explore with fishing and gardening, harvesting and collecting, visiting neighbors and driving or riding a bicycle all over it, plus a cemetery full of ghosts! I am not big on ghosts and don't want to play them, but they are fun to watch at night.

I agree that the parks are dull, though, and it's difficult to build a lot where Sims will gather with any frequency, and if you have a Sim that needs to get out and socialize it's a right pain in the rear when by the time he gets done what he needs to do at home and takes off everyone else is heading home to bed. The lack of interesting things to do on community lots is one of the reasons I play my Sims in TS3 the way I do. I don't follow traditional career paths unless they're warranted by their lifetime wish. If there is any way out of getting a real job, they will because it's a whole lot more interesting having them do things like gardening, fishing, painting, writing novels, collecting, or playing guitar for money. But yes, we need more interesting things for our Sims to do and I also would love hot dog stands or some such.

I actually did use the Downtown in TS2 and when it got too laborious I built Downtown-type community lots in my main neighborhood. I had a blast with that aspect of TS2, as well as OFB. I didn't care about load times, because there was too much fun to be had if I could just wait a couple of minutes.

Mmmm, while I love the gardening and fishing aspects of the game, I actually liked TS2's base game community lots better.

Remember, the grocery, magazine and video game stands, clothes shops... They could also play pinball, which EA has "forgotten" to put in the game this time around.

I actually didn't miss TS1 much when TS2 came around, as I was so excited about 3D, aging, genetics, aspirations and such. This time it's different, I love the traits but feel we've been taken backwards on many levels.

Community lots, as I said, feel more boring, mainly because of the lack of objects with the base game (pool table, pinball, non rabbit hole shops, hot tubs!).

And most of all for me, the genetics are a big failure this time. I'm on generation 6 of a family. All Sims from generations 2 to 6 have looked EXACTLY the same, except for the eye color.

That's a big disappointment for me, as in TS2 I loved making very different Sims, mixing them and enjoying the results of a multicultural neighborhood. Hard to do if they all have the same face now! (sorry for drifting from the original topic).

I agree with everything you said here. And yes, downtown is extremely boring, I hardly ever go there anymore (well, hardly went that is, as I haven't played the game for a month now, the novelity's worn off and I find it boring and frustrating)
I can't understand why EA chose to make an adventure expansion instead of adding more regular stuff and things to do in the town instead. A way to expand the neighbourhood with different shops, cafés/restaurants and clubs, apartments more things to do would have been the way to go imo. A sort of Nightlife/hobbies/apartments/seasons expansion combined; -a little of this and a little of that. I think one of the things that annoy people the most is the lack of (regular) content and things to do in this game.

"Downtown", if you can really call it that, is rather dull, with nothing much to do. Only places you can meet other sims is at the gym, the library or the silly art gallery or one of the many boring little parks.

I'd agree with opening up cafes, restaurants, clubs, bars, anything to make things more exciting and alive during the day and right through the night. How cool would it be to queue up outside a nightclub with your sim friends and make your way in, dance the night away.

Of course we'd need more service sims, like bartenders. Seriously, the bar in Riverview (juice bar or whatever it's called) is just, deserted if you bother to visit. I first threw a party there thinking it'd be lively, but besides the football table things, it was pointless. Not even somebody serving drinks!


Amen to that! I too can't understand the adventures EP. Surely the nighbourhood would need sprucing up before you'd bother going abroad?

I would LOVE clothing stores right now. I picked my legacy heir from a child,he grew into a YA and had overalls....Those stupid overalls that came with the game. Give us more things to do and someway to fix dumb outfits.

You just plan outfit at any dresser.

OH YES, some real action! Cafe's, bars, stands..!

Well, actually, you can make your own cafes and bars in the game. You just can't have workers to serve people, though. The sims will dance together if music is playing and they will drink at the bars (the objects themselves) that come in the game. I'm actually thinking of making a community lot that has a stereo, bars, the buffet table and other things that sims like to do and see what happens when I send one of my sims there. This is something that I thought about doing in the past and just never got around to trying out.

I created a club called the Bronze (based on the one from Buffy the Vampire Slayer). If anyone wants to download it you can visit Aeval99's blog:http://www.whedonsims.wordpress.com

Like what bluegenjutsu said, the sims do dance and serve themselves drinks so it really isn't that bad. Of course, it'd be neat if there were bartenders and everything. *misses Nightlife and Hot Date*

By the way, has anyone else tried playing around with the lights? Once your sim enters a community lot you can click on a lamp and change the color and intensity. Would be useful when you're trying to create that club/bar atmosphere.

Also, if your sim's a rockstar you can make him/her go there for concerts. I'm not sure if you can do autograph signings but I hear you'll have fans screaming and haters...hating. Lol.

Yep, you can have rock star sims perform at a club and you can also have your regular, guitar playing sims performing there, too. I'm sure that some of the game's pre-made sims will be pulling out guitars, also, since they do that everywhere anyway.

@CharmingFirewaller, your Bronze club looks great! I had a rock star sim once and I think that the only place where you can do autograph sessions is at the theater by using the pie menu for the theater. I only played one once, though, and I'm always learning something new about a career every time I play a new game.

Community lots weren't that fun in the TS2 base game either. But at least we had transparent food and clothing stores.

Seems like each and every feature that could sell an expansion pack, has been saved for the expansion packs. For my sake, they could have left out other things. We could do without the exotic skin colors, the collecting feature, and half of the car models, if we got transparent shopping.

I personally don't miss shopping. It wasn't fun. I only enjoyed having my sims talking to the other sims that were at those places, not shopping. What I miss are the night clubs where all kinds of things would happen. And I miss the hot tubs for the socialization, too. We can make night clubs ourselves, just not as much stuff that we can put in them, yet. I'm hoping that there are more items coming with the Adventures expansion pack, that we can use with getting sims to do more things together.

I also hope that we will be able to make a town full of mummies and ghosts. I miss vampires, though.

I thought it was just me

I find planning outfits annoying. In TS2 I used to take my sims shopping all the time and they got clothes that fit their style. Choosing a different outfit for them was easy then. Now I have to go through all the possible outfits in the catalogue AND recolour them. And I can't have more than 3 outfits for each category. And there's no more undies category, so now my sims go to bed in whatver they have set as pajamas. It looks really dumb when that happens to be bathrobe and bunny sleepers.

As for community lots, I've tried making a clothes shop, with the dressers, but the stupid sims started coming in and lookign at the posters on the walls and making stupid faces in the mirrors. I ended up demolishing it. Same thign happened with a cafe I made. Yes, they can use the coffee machins, but townie sims don't do it autonomoulsy, nor are they attracted to coffe makers. If you put paintings on the walls then you get a lot or art loving sims who act like they're in a art gallery. At the moment, the only custom community place I have is a hotel/town apartment and a fast food place. I put the barbecue grills inside and added some coffee machins, and the apartment is used by whatever sim happens to be around and needs it. On the whole, these community places lack that specific atmosphere. The cemetary, on the other hand, is the most awsome community lot, both during day and night time. And I'm not even a fan of ghosts and cemetaries.