Ok, so I really enjoyed Sims 2, annoyed about a few things like the constant loading between households and whatnot, but overall i really did like it.

But three things irk me in Sims 3, specifically that there's no fancy cinematic video whenever a major event happens (First Kiss, WooHoo, etc...), the real lack of any effort to make the Grim Reaper do anything fun when someone dies, and the fact that even if you select a preferred vehicle, your sim always carpools to work instead of taking their own car.

Was there a different design team behind sims 3 over sims 2? I heard Wil Wright left EA recently, is that the reason for major changes and all the minor ones that seem to be mis-steps?

Sometimes teams just decide to make design changes. I think TS3 was intended to be more realistic and a bit less cartoony than previous incarnations. Will Wright hasn't been a part of the sims design team since TS1.

Lol I wondered what sort of people actually liked those irritating cutscene videos, now I know! :D

Indeed - they were cute the first time but after a few times they're just irritating and I turned 'em off.

Haha... I wasn't too fussed by the videos, It's just something that had changed which was glaringly obvious from sims 2...

You can turn them off????

If that's what they were trying to do, I'm going to have to say that they failed.

TS3 does not seem more realistic. There's just something about it that makes the sims look more cartoony. I can't quite put my finger on it...but it doesn't feel real.

What they did manage to do, though, was make the game more bland than TS2. It's like they sucked all the life and passion out and left us with an empty (albeit pretty) picture.

They were probably trying to appeal to the MTV crowd.

"That's hot!" - Paris Hilton

Unfortunately for EA, TS3 is not...

Yeah, pretty much. They basically took out most of the action choices and replaced them with visibly identical things that happen to have different names. This is most readily apparent in the social system: In TS2, you had a small number of different socials, each of which was visually distinctive. In TS3, you have a large number of very similar socials, each of which is, from the player's perspective, visibly indistinguishable. Whether you choose "Talk About Cooking" or "Talk About Computers", the end result is that your sim jabbers incomprehensibly in a manner that is visibly indistinguishable to YOU. You can't even grab another sim's ass anymore.

Is EA being dominated by a particular religious group or something?

No, I think this was simply a careless omission of something they thought wasn't important, to be replaced with...well, bland stuff.

If they keep this up, sims are going to be sexless by 2012.



-EA Developers

^ Do you have some kind of woohoo obsession?

You think?

^ Uh. Well. It's kinda creepy

What is?

^ The fact that *everything* you discuss is about woohoo. It's weird.

Everything? Are you sure?

Yes. You talk about Woohoo as much as I love your name.

Ban it, please.

What sort of people are we?

I don't know why they bother to call it woohoo when it's blah... I mean if you compare woohoo in Sims 2 to woohoo in Sims 3... Sims 3 is worse than bland.

Sims 3 woohoo = blahoo?

Yeah, the reusing of the same talking animations for slightly different purposes is one of my biggest grips with this game. Where's the kicky bag? The pillow fights? The water balloon fights? The gift giving? The bust a move? Punch u punch me? They're all MIA. I don't feel much of an incentive to drop by a neighbor's house when the interactions are so limited. It's kind of sad because visiting another sim's house was one of the things I was really looking forward to before the base game came out.

Just watch when EA shows off The Sims 4 in a few years and look even more realistic and dull than TS3. Maybe the grim reaper won't even exist at all and sims will forget about llamas. Well, unless they do something crazy such as making the whole game cel-shaded like The Legend of Zelda Wind Waker.

Maybe that's because real life tends to be rather bland. I mean, how often to you see real adults engaging in pillow fights and the like?



Well, some of us happen to like the game. If you don't like it, play something else. We really don't care.

What gets real tiring, however, is seeing constant posts from people who dislike change, pissing and moaning about Sims 3.

There are some things I really hated about Sims 2, like the loading times, the fact that each household was on its own timeline -- someone COULD date their great great great grandmother, and the trully confusing system of custom content with all of the meshes and recolors. I spent more time managing custom content than actually playing the game.

Maybe you do like Sims 2 better, but the simple truth is Sims 2 is an orphan. EA really is not going to support it any more. That means no more expansion packs and no more new stuff. The bugs that are in the game will remain. Eventually, you won't find it on store shelves and more and more people will be playing Sims 3, until you may be the only person playing Sims 2.

But that's fine. I thought Collosal Cave was pretty cool, but I have not played it for 30 years...

And watching your Sim's get run down by a car and rushed to hospital every 5 minutes, or waiting on the pavement for a car to go past tapping their foot the entire time... that wouldn't annoy you at all?



Sorry I don't see how changing the fireworks into rosepetals makes it "blah" (which is the only actual change in the Woohoo animation)

I think that people forget that TS3 is only a year old. Give it a couple more years and we will have mods that can pretty much make it whatever we want it to be just like TS2. By then we will have some more EP's and some more animations, and things should be looking rosy for those of us (and im not one of them) who miss features from TS2.

At the same time though, I agree with Tjstreak, im getting annoyed with all the posts from people wanting TS3 to be TS2 with better graphics. I appreciate its not everyone, but it seems to me that particular camp is quite vocal on these forums, so thats the posts I notice. If EA just gave us everything from TS2 then people would moan that there was nothing new. Something has to give. Already alot of players computer's can't handle what TS3 can ALREADY do (Error 12/13/16's aplenty even with the "greater than 2GB hack", lag etc.) I can't blame EA for cutting some stuff out to save their players having to go and buy a top of the range gaming rig to play it on. (although im sure that there is a marketing element there too, and the "make it more accessible" thing I just mentioned was an afterthought)

Probably to make the content available in expansion packs all over again.