I was wondering that. I remember when I had just installed Sims 3 I grew enormously bored after a couple of weeks of irregularly playing it and I fired up my old Sims 2 saved games. And after I FINALLY managed to load my neighborhood (ye gods, the loading screens!) I was so fed up with the loading screens that I quit the game and never looked back.

Though I am getting restless with the Sims 3, I just don't seem to get into it that much as I used to be able to. Yes I know it's only two expansions in, but still...

I remember thinking back when Apartment Life came around "all this needs now is an open neighborhood". So I was floored when The Sims 3 was announced. And we have a lot of improvements, but something's missing for me and I can't put my finger on it.
So do you still switch between the Sims 3 and 2? Or exclusively the Sims 3?

My fantasy is if we could have the Sims 2 with the open neighborhood and the new CAST.

After all of the "bring back the cool stuff from TS2" talk thats been going around since LN was announced, I actually reinstalled TS2+NL+AL last night. Ye Gods, I was so annoyed with it after just half an hour. EVERY time I want to go somewhere, Loading Screens.... people phoning you CONSTANTLY wanting to go out on Group Outings. LEAVE ME ALONE! The only thing I actually quite enjoyed about it was the Butler.... God I miss him in TS3....

I don't claim to be TS3's biggest fan, there are things I don't like about it, same as in any game/movie/book I read. (I have a habit of picking holes in everything, even if I generally like it) but I won't be playing TS2 again for a while.

No. I knew immediately that TS3 had a lot more to offer than TS2 and a lot more possibilities. TS2 had its limitations and I would grow bored quickly with it from those limitations. Whereas with TS3 there are a lot more things you can do not just from playing it, but also from a creative aspect too.

We're only 2 EP's in and the only thing that I wish we had right now were pets and weather. Mostly because with a perpetual world I would love to see how strays and how weather affects things. Particularly with firefighters as an active profession. Forest fires from a particularly hot summer, or a fall thunderstorm lightning strike.

But really, the sheer fact that you can visit pretty much any place in the Sims 3 world is probably one of the best things about the game and probably the most overlooked when comparing it to its predecessor.

I know, right?
I couldn't stand the loading screens anymore as well, not while I knew there was TS3 beckoning me with its open neighborhood. Aren't they bringing back the butlers in Late Night? That would be cool...
So I'm in limbo, I'm bored with TS3, but can't go back to TS2. Maybe I could ask my budding indie game developers to whip up our own version of the Sims, maybe call it "The Virties" (as in "virtual", get it, get it? ).

I played Sims3 for a while, but it is back in the closet and untouched atm. I'm totally playing Sims2 again (with an independant economic system alike Isle of Thyme). I really didn't like just basic sims3. So I'll wait until there are some more EPs and might try again in a year or so.

I play both pretty regularly, both are great in their own ways

I do play TS2 actually. Three weeks were enough to get bored of TS3. Open neighbourhood is wonderful as well as the landmark, but the fun of TS2 is irreplaceable. A few months back I built a new quad, so the game takes only 2-3 minutes to load (thanks to CC) and the loading screens between main neighbourhood and Downtown are really fast, so I have no problem with it.

Like appelsapgodin, I'll be waiting for future EPs to see how much they'll add to the game.


This pretty much sums up my *ideal* game.

Last edited by Nalia : 5th Aug 2010 at 05:50 PM. Reason: additional comment

When I first got TS3, I figured I'd keep playing TS2 for a while. I had all the EPs installed and had a long-term neighborhood that I had invested a lot of creative energy and time into with sims that I really enjoyed playing. I didn't have any interest in giving up apartments, night clubs, weather, hobbies, and everything else.

After playing TS3 for just a couple of hours, though, when I went back to TS2, I just found the lack of a seamless world and some of the other new features too confining.

With TS3, I also went back to my TS1 style of play, which was to play just a single household. In TS2, I rotated through multiple households so that the neighborhood would age evenly. But, since even with mods TS3 just isn't well suited for multiple household play, I've gone back to single household play which was always a better fit for me anyways.

Actually, I'm glad there is a thread on this over here now... there is a similar one on the TS2 discussion board, but its all "Nooo TS3 sucks i'm never ever gonna buy it or play it" So how are you going to make this decision if you don't play it? Annoys me so much when people base an opinion on something they have never actually seen/done for themselves....

At least here the majority of people would have at least played both so can make an informed decision.

I play TS3 more but I do still play TS2 for my supernatural sims and businesses.

Nalia's posted in that thread, I believe. As have I. So it's entirely possible for people to play TS3 extensively (I have both EPs and HELS) and still prefer 2. Annoys me so much when people generalize.

It's funny because for the first 7 months that I had The Sims 3 I was too intimidated by it to even play it (it seemed slow, the graphics were kind of weird, and I didn't like the way the Sims look). So The Sims 2 was still my most played. Recently I got into TS3 and played it for real. I really enjoyed it.

Just yesterday I loaded up The Sims 2 again, thinking that it might be weird to me now, but it isn't. The loading screens don't bother me at all. The Sims 2 is timeless and has not been outdated. I love it and I don't think I'll stop playing it. I can play them both side by side.

Funny I also just installed The Sims 1 and played it for the first time in six years, surprisingly it wasn't too intolerable. Just weird, and quite hard compared to The Sims 2 and 3.

I got bored with Sims 3 pretty quickly at first. and went back to Sims 2 for awhile. It was great to have real romantic dates again, the animations in 2 are so much better for romance socials. But the loading screens were a real drag, I missed the open neighborhood.
So, I stopped playing Sims entirely got obsessed with Dragon Age for awhile.
Just before Ambitions came out my husband got his hands on a new-used PC and start disassembling them and rebuilding all the PCs in the house. So, I got a new-used PC to play with, and installed Sims 3 & WA, and the addedAmbitions to that. Sometimes I miss TS2 and would like to play, but I just can't make myself install it and all the eps & sps and find default replacements and my favorite CC all over again. I am having more fun with Sims 3 now than I had at first, in part because of Ambitions, and in part because I'm involved in a challenge game, which helps keep me interested.

Come again?









...and these are only a small sample of the said thread.

In my opinion the players there have made a very informed decision.

I really don't know what to do... Maybe I should get a brand spanking new PC that's all pimped out so that the loading screens zip by (which is one of the main reasons I can't go back to TS2). It's just that after a while I run out of things to do in TS3, it doesn't grab my attention like it used to.

The biggest hurdle would be to find all of the CC again I used for TS2. Many of which the creators have left the community. So I'll just hope I get more interest again. Maybe when we get vampires I'll start to tell epic stories once more!

Ok I take it back, not EVERY post on that thread is like that.

I wasn't saying "How could anyone possibly prefer TS2" because that would be a stupid statement. Everyone is different, and I'm sure that plenty of people prefer TS2 as much as I prefer TS3.

My point was that people should actually try both before they make a decision about which is better.

Different Horses for Different Courses ya know?

I've found the glitches in Sims 3 to be more severe than those in TS2.

In TS2, I never downloaded a patch (because they were like 30 MB and I'm on dial up). But even then, I never had a glitch that forced me to start over.

I've had two separate glitches happen to me in TS3 to do that, and a variety of other glitches that suck the fun out of things. Like I'm doing the Klepto King challenge, but items disappear from my family inventory if I don't put them down within the same day (I was trying to collect a few lights before putting them all down).

And my post proves that most people there have actually tried both bloody games. How long are you going to pretend you don't get it?

Whoa...before a fight breaks out to take this thread off-topic, I think we can agree that there are some people who posted in the TS2 forum thread who declared they had never tried TS3 and didn't like the look of it so didn't plan to. severedsolo already admitted not every post in the thread was like that.

Of course responses in a TS2 v TS3 thread will tend to be biased based on the subforum where the thread is posted.

My apologies.

After experiencing the open world in TS3, there was no way I could go back to TS2

I have only loaded up Sims 2 once since the Sims 3 was released and don't even have it installed any longer. I do play the Sims 1 once in awhile, just to get my Makin' Magic fix; churning butter, bee-keeping and visiting the magic lots will never get old for me.

I think a lot of the choice comes down to play style. I spend more time decorating and landscaping than I do playing, so CAST is just the best thing ever in my books. I never really bothered much with dating and mating or storytelling, so omissions like scrapbooks, genetics, dates, baby crap, woohooing in cars, nightclubs and many of the socials don't faze me at all. OTOH, I love RPG's, so additions like Opportunities (quests) and the Seamless hood (open world) make me froth at the mouth. I could never go back to the 2 minute driveway shuffle (stop slamming that *%$#@! door) and 5 minute loading time to take my house of 8 to a community lot! I also could no longer live without the ability to match the appropriate shoes to an outfit. Death to Hookerwear!

That's not to say that I don't miss things because I do. I miss hearing the wind howl in winter, or the rain on the roof (although the ocean and the swamp have some awesome sound effects). I miss swimming in the ocean, male pregnancy, all the crafting items and their associated skills and of course, restaurants. And there are many items that I would love to have back, like the violin, half walls, community showers and 3 years worth of amazing work from the community...but most of these things will come in time. The ones that don't I will just have to learn to live without, just as I learned to live without many things I loved from Sims 1.

Nah I gave all my Sims 2 EP's and SP's to my sister so she plays those. It would be too difficult for me to go back to the Sims 2 without things like CAST, Open World, and *gasp* I actually prefer how the sims look in 3 as opposed to 2. You just have to work at it and it is actually possible to make decent looking sims :P

I'll always have many fond memories of 2, but people need to realize that the Sims 3 is still growing, and like 2, it will eventually have as many, if not more, features than the Sims 2 once all the EP's and SP's are released. I actually get kind of excited when I think of the possibilities that can still be unleashed with this game, so I'll just be patient as the Expansions come rolling out.

Well I'm currently pretty fascinated by the Create A World tool available for Sims 3, and have spent all my simming time just creating worlds in the past week or so. For me it's a great way to combine building houses alongside developing hoods, because you can make it look so personal and customised.

Having said that, I miss my Sims 2 families and will play them again soon. Actually I think from a building/creative point of view I've got ideas from building in Sims 3 that I want to transfer to Sims 2 anyway. And I worked hard developing my TS2 hoods, so am loathe to give them up now as still only on 3rd generation.

So for me I like both equally, although that may change with further TS3 expansion packs coming out. It's taken me ages to catch up with this simming thing as I only started playing last November, so I think I'll be playing more TS3 than TS2 for the moment.

I still think Sims 2 is a better game, even though I love some of Sims 3's gameplay elements. I find it much harder to get into Sims 3 and I don't feel attached to the Sims at all. It's not only the looks but they lack the charm of the Sims in 2. Also, I haven't been able to create even ONE Sims exactly like I want them to look, and yes I have CC, slider hacks and such. I just found it much easier with Sims 2. It's the bubbleness of the heads and some missing sliders or lack of precision...

But I'll see how it changes, when more expansions come out.