It seems like there is a lot of negativity towards TS3 and so as a sort of spin-off of this thread I thought I would try to take things in a more positive direction by asking what you think EA did well or got right with TS3?

I know some people find it too complicated but I love Create-A-World. I think it's great to have such a comprehensive world building tool.

I honestly love the game. I don't understand why is everyone whining about it. Sure, it can't be like TS2 is now because TS3 is just on its third expansion pack but despite that I really do think the game is amazing. I love everything about it.

Bugs, I don't like bugs. But I don't experience them too much so it's fine. Although the fact that EA's patches need patches is and should negatively reflect on EA. Sure a company that successful and big can afford to hire someone who actually can make a game. And that is not just with TS3, it's every game they made in last couple of years.

Other than that, I LOVE THIS GAME!

Body sliders (specifically breast and muscle), CAST, square terrain paint brushes, quarter tile and diagonal placement of objects. There's a ton of little things and features in Sims 3 that I adore.

Breast sliders, diagonal placement of objects, The ability to garden and fish from base game, The pretty landscapes, Open community, The community aging with your sim, the personalities with the diffrent while somewhat stereotyped traites. FAT SIMS... god you have no idea. I'm a big girl and I like to have my big girls and boys. It's nice to have athletic but sims but It's nice to have the option of a overweight sim. I've always preferred my sims to be varried from average, to drop dead gorgeous. The ability to not have a million + recolors is nicetoo. I really do love my Sims 3, yeah there are draw backs.. but since I didn't get to pick what was going to be in the game there are going to be bits I don't like. Sims 3 is great <3 I don't think I'll be back to Sims 2 even though I keep it in case I get nostaligic.

I think for me the biggest things that make a difference are all the small details too. Like being able to easily place things on quarter tiles or off grid or at angles, being able to have boyfriends/girlfriends, being able to 'just be friends' when you don't want a sim to have romantic interest in someone, being able to easily see a sim's family relationship with someone, not needing family friends and skills for jobs but having it be a boost, dragging walls to make rooms bigger, CASt, more scales/sliders instead of set stages, etc.

Build mode, buy mode and CAS are all improved (the systems themselves, not the content). Moodlet system is nice, personality system is nice, Lifetime Wants are better... relationships were also improved...

List goes on... but for every good addition there's a bad one.

The two things that most stand out to me (and that I wish were available in TS2):

Body sliders and how moddable they turned out to be. The included ones are meh, but with the addition of jonha's sliders (and a mod to tweak their ranges)...magnificent.

Not only the ability to place things at all kinds of angles, but that Sims can continue to properly interact with them, too.

That drag tool is my most favorite thing about building. CASt and ease in placing things off the grid and sims can still use them is so cool. The fishing and gardening right out the base game made me happy, the open neighborhood keeps me with the game. My sims are able to visit other sim houses, have neighbors that are outside and my sim can wave as they pass them, love it!

I am not a fan of EA's story progression, but having it allowed the modders to make wonderful additions to the game is a big plus. Happy for the sliders and loving what the modders have done with the sliders. I am very appreciative that my whole neighborhood can have a variety of different sized sims and it's genetic. Also very cool that sims move in the n-hood may be heavy, but a couple of sim weeks later, they have slimmed cause of working out in the gym. Okay, I will stop here.

I think Sims look much better in TS3 than in TS2 and Create-A-Style also is nice. But I don't think there are things EA did completely right. Pretty much everything in TS3 doesn't satisfy me completely and should have been made better somehow.



I agree with "CAS improved" and "Moodlet system is nice", but I disagree with all the other things. While it is nice that we have for example quarter tile placement and the alt key in build/buy, we are missing Collections now, the height of buildings is stupidly limited to five stories, and so on. The relationship system hasn't been improves either, in TS2 we had bidirectional relationships, and turn on/offs, now we have a pretty limited and boring system.

i didn't mean to be negative about EA and the sims 3. i just wanted to know what people would've liked differently about it.

anyway, i LOVE the open neighborhoods and being able to recolor clothes.

Being able to CAST almost anything is my favorite part. No more having a thousand different recolors for the same item! Really helped ease up my download folder.
The ability to place things off the grid and Sims still recognizing and using it is pretty nice.
Like others said, having gardening and fishing in the base game was a smart move. I like how with almost every new EP, we get a couple of new fish/veggies/dishes

It's normal for people to have likes and dislikes and want to talk about them. That's why both this thread and yours have/will have lots of replies. You didn't do anything wrong or "negative" by starting your thread, recranger9.

It's not your thread that I find negative (sorry if that's what I implied!), it's that most threads about the game end up with everyone slagging it off so I thought it would be interesting to see what people do like, because they clearly find something enjoyable about it or they wouldn't keep playing it! Your thread is interesting because it's an actual discussion instead of blanket 'EA/TS3 sucks' comments and moaning that there's no [insert feature] in the game yet.

Lol why are you apologizing for EA? They are a bunch of corporate douchebags and everybody knows it.

For me, personally, I love the seamless neighborhood and the idea of Story Progression. So maybe their Story Progression wasn't perfect, but it can be fixed with mods and it's a great feature. Some people don't care for it, but I personally do. I had many neighborhoods in The Sims 2 where I played multiple houses, but in this game isn't been any kind of problem for me. I actually LOVE the idea of the other Sims growing up with the family I'm playing.

- Holding babies while on the phone/on the couch/other stuffz
- The drag-delete function, I never realized how annoying TS2 is having to delete every wall, floor tile, etc. one at a time.
- 45 degree and movement off grid without typing a cheat
- Better looking sims (I don't care if you disagree, TS2 sims look plastic dolls)
- Better face/body sliders
- Fat slider
- Playing guitar anywhere
- Open neighborhood
- Collecting
- The writing skill
- Skill books
- hair animations
- Cooking

Thank you! Thats another thing I forgot to add. People will praise the look of TS2 sims up and down when really they look rather flat. I like the lighting on TS3 sims because it makes them more 3D dimensional. Sims in TS2 with no CC look terrible compared to basegame Sims in TS3. With custom content and sliders, they blow TS2 sims out of the water.

CASt, Tomb building, the fog emitter, basements; basically anything that promotes creativity that wasn't in TS2. Nectar making turned out to be more enjoyable than I thought it would be, it's probably my favorite skill. Some of the towns look pretty good. Oh, and I think they finally realized that without mods, their game would be nearly unplayable, so I gotta give them credit for finally giving us a proper mods folder.

This. Just took the words out of my mouth.



Then why in God's name are you playing their games? Why are you playing Mass Effect, why are you playing THE GOD DAMN SIMS?!

EA did many things right in TS3. I like how instead of blindly copy-pasting features from TS2, they improved upon the features before putting them into TS3. Gardening, fishing and cooking. Instead of having x amount of things to garden and cook, I really appreciate (as it was already mentioned), that with every EP comes new things to plant or catch. I also like how you can choose what recipes your Sims know, instead of everybody always knowing the same dishes as long as you have the same amount of cooking skills. Now if you have somebody who loves cooking, you can make them special, and distinguish them from the common meal-maker by having them learn recipes.

I like how furniture have more slots to add items to them, being able to put stuff in a 45 degree angle without cheats, the wall dragging feature in build mode, CAST, open hood and many other tiny things that are improvements from TS2 to TS3, but these are all minor features, they are nice to have features, but they are not things that keep in playing this game.

The thing that I probably love the most about TS3, is how almost everything is it's own skill. I never liked how generic Sims were in TS2. For example how the creativity skill covered so many aspects of the Sims life, like painting and music. And in music, it covered all instruments that the game had, so basically if TS2 had a "one man rockband" LTW, you could fill it up by spending your days painting, and never even seeing a musical instrument. Also, the career rewards, they were really imaginative, until you used them. The object, and the skill it enhanced, didn't always make any sense, like the gardening object from uni, enhancing creativity, or the golf set, charisma.

I absolutely love how much more unique the sims now are, there are no more short-cuts when it comes to skilling. And what EA should get a special recommendation about, is how they split the athletic skill into strength and cardio, and when sims got martial arts, it was not put under the athletic skill but given as it's own skill.

Another thing, that might seem small to others but is huge to me, is fruit. I don't know why I love this so much but I just do.

I agree with the OP about how TS3 gets hit with a lot of slandering. Some are understandable criticism, like when people complain about bugs, or features that EA messed up, like forbidding kids to do many normal activities, like music skilling or gardening, but some seem quite far fetch with the only intent to pick up through the good to point out a small detail.

Like when people complain that their Sims eat onions instead of the apple in their inventory. Or, how opportunities ruin the game. The great thing about the Sims series, is how open ended it is, and how sandboxy (even TS3) is. If you the player don't like them munching on onions, then you can choose to fill their inventory with apples, because even if Sims can't distinguish between an apple or a onion, being able to eat raw food out of your inventory, still beats not being able to eat anything, without having to turn it into a meal first.

---edit---
Forgot to mention, I just love having people of different size in my game. I was really exited when I heard that in TS2 you can gain weight, and loose it, until I saw what EA meant by a fat sim. Those things in TS2 were not fat. They were normal weight. The boob/muscle sliders are a nice feature, but I could have lived without them, but it's the fat/skinny slider that I find to be the most important.

I like the games, more or less, and the people who make them are cool as well (Black Box, Bioware, Criterion... nah kidding Criterion sucks). But EA, the company, is killing them.

And if it makes you feel better, these days I hate Rockstar just as much although I used to be a huge fan.

I love 97% of what TS3 has brought to the table (and what was mentioned so far in the thread). It really changed the way I played the game, and for the better, in my opinion.

I'm not sure if a lot of people realize how much has been expanded play-wise in TS3 from tombs and exploring, to nectar making, to photography, to being a stylist and so much more. It really caters to a lot of different players to find a happy medium (for the most part).

Heck, I've had the game since day of release and there are STILL base-game features that I am discovering.

There are a few things that I think could be improved, but that has yet to deter me from being an avid player!

I am most appreciative of this! That is why I want children to play a instrument and know music, I would love having a child prodigy in the family. Come on with that in Generations EA!

I couldn't agree more. I love to check out the "What did you discover?" thread because I'm ALWAYS learning something new about the game. There's still a lot I haven't done.

What I love most are the tiny details they put into the base game but CAS and CASt are by far my favorite. I love that they grouped Buy mode by category and by room (now if only we could get COLLECTIONS back!) and I LOVE the open neighborhood. Even though I do love TS2 and think in some ways it's better than TS3, I just can't go back to playing one family in a vacuum by itself. Just the act of walking out of the house and going over to a neighbor's makes the game worthwhile.

I have waited for this thread. TS3 fixed so many flaws of TS2, that we might forget that they ever existed.

Seamless neighborhood: The defining feature of TS3. Do you remember the TS2 loading screens?

Wishes and lifetime happiness: In TS2, Wants were practically Needs; they had to be fulfilled to avoid nervous breakdowns. Aspiration rewards were totally out of place, as a gratuitous, unrealistic feature which was also more or less needed. TS3 wishes are optional; you can skip them altogether. Lifetime happiness awards are mostly about reducing micromanagement. That's great.

Story progression: Some people like it, I'm one of them. If you don't like it, turn it off.

Traits: Personality sliders in TS2 had limited gameplay effect, and were not always compatible to Aspiration. Traits can make Sims truly unique, though some implementations could have been better.