Insimenator.org

Hello all, I know I do not post very often but have been a member of the sims /1/2/3 community since about 2005. 

Anyway, I had a chance to speak to an actual project developer today who works on the sims 3 team at EA.  We basically shot the bull for a few and I told him about the "pudding heads" and we both got a laugh.  We also both admitted to playing sims games in our spare time, he admitted that EA is working on a significant way to address this issue.

 I prodded a bit and he finally confided that they are going to really upgrade CAS, get rid of the pure pudding and add around a dozen more sliders as well as more looks customization.  Me being a businessman myself began to think to myself that sales must be in the toilet.. at least for a mega company like EA and a mega brand game title like the Sims franchise.

Hope this little morsel of information gives some hope to fellow fans on the Sims.

Hmm... Really?
Makes me want to reinstall Sims 3.  ;D
Sounds like a nice little update.

Oh, that'd be nice. No more pudding wrath! Maybe next they can work on better in game cameras. I really wish Mr. GunMod was still making his fabulous camera mods.  ;D I uninstalled my Sims 3 after only playing it for a week. :-X

Uh huh. I will believe it when they overhaul the whole damn thing. Sorry, just paranoid like that, can't help it.

I confess if what you say becomes reality, DreadWizard, I might take another look at Sims 3. I haven't uninstalled it but I rarely play it. To me the Pudding people are way too inbred and need to have their gene pool enlarged. There you have it, my 2 pennies.

Personally, I lean towards adding chlorine to their gene pool, but that's just me and my mood right now.

They really should look into making a Sims 3 Version of Body Shop :)

I second that notion.

that could work, too.

To further DreamWizard's post as far as EA's fiscal earnings for 2009, seeing as I work in the gaming industry myself and generally like to stay on top of the business end of the industry, I can confirm that EA games took a heavy, HEAVY blow with the loses regarding TS3. They tried to trump it up with their failed PR campaign over the summer, but the fact of the matter is that TS3 and the subsequent EP World Adventures did abysmally as far as sales compared to the last TS2 Ep, Apartment Life. Add to that the fact that them initially stating the game being able to be run on older rigs being total horse poop, during a recession no less when NO ONE is trying to plunk out an extra $200+ for a new GFX card just to play one game...and that hurt the sales as well. And how many actual TS3 commercials or advertisement have you seen lately, if at all? Yes, they ran TV spots when the base game and WA came out, but have you seen the spots on networks since? Nope. Why is that? Because it costs them money, and it makes no sense to make an ad blitz for a product that's not selling.

Thankfully for EA they have tons more IPs (Intellectual Properties) that did do well over 2009, such as the EA Sports line up of games and Need For Speed: Shift that the hit they took for TS3 pretty much goes unnoticed to the untrained eye. I'm not one of those untrained eyes though. So from what DreamWizard says, it makes perfect sense that EA plans on doing damage control in house, and has plans to improve the game without the media explosion they tried when the base game came out. Cuz we see how well that worked for them. It's bad enough most of the stuff that actually makes TS3 playable (and enjoyable) is user generated content, modifications and add ons. In a nutshell, the community made EA look really...reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeally bad. Because the community took it upon themselves to fix what EA either didn't or couldn't fix. And rightly so seeing as the people who actually made TS3 weren't Maxis, but another development house that were handed the keys to one of EA's most lucrative IPs and damn near ran it into the ground. It wouldn't surprise me if they have former Maxis developers on the books now spearheading the potential re-up of TS3. But sadly I believe the damage is done. Much like the game Bayonetta for the PS3 and 360. The 360 version was flawless, the PS3 version was glitchy and buggy beyond playability. Sega has recently addressed the PS3 bugs with a patch, but people have already moved on. Same case with TS3 and EA. So many people got put off from it that they've returned back to TS2 or moved on to something else completely. Any chances of EA getting those people back are slim to nil. Best case scenario for them is to fix what they can and market to the people who stuck to TS3 even with it's short comings. Trying to attracted new users as they did initially is a recipe for disaster.

They have a chance to salvage the game in 2010 at the least to cover the 2009 losses. But EA needs to tread lightly, otherwise they may as well cancel any plans for a Sims 4. I've been a gamer long enough to know and see good game series die slow, agonizing deaths because the developers and publishers get greedy and lose sight of who really matters, the users. (Anyone remember Duke Nukem, Gex and Sly Cooper? Need I say more.)

I completely agree. When I noticed that the Maxis logos were slowing disappearing off TS2 EPs and SPs, I was just thinking what they were going to do with TS3.
It's not a bad game, not at all in my opinion, but it doesn't have that addictive appeal that TS2 has had since it was base game for me. I still liked it better than TS3 base game. Especially for 5 years ago. TS3 has potential though, it honestly does. I bought a new graphics card just a few months prior to getting TS3 (for TS2 ironically).
I just hope they try and attempt to keep the series going. There's no other series like it.

Does anyone from EA troll through the different Sim sites? Seems like it would pay them to see the feedback. (EA - hint! hint!)

I suppose new development takes several months. It doesn't pay in the long run to rush a new product out to market.

Oh, wait... It's too late. That ship has sailed.

EA would have to do a massive overhaul (not just CAS and body shapes) to make the Sims 3 appealing to more people.
They would have to fix all the bugs, all of the problems with memory and game lag. They would have to fix it so that it would play as it is intended to. They would also have to change the entire scenario of "rpg" play to eliminate things like that first EP they put out. They should have listened more to the players and less to their marketing people for input to the game's design.
They want more customers to buy it? Fix it first, then redesign it. That's the only way they will regain any credibility with the other Sims 2 fans who will not touch it with a ten-foot pole. I'm one, and I will remain one until they do all of those things-and then I might even consider thinking about purchasing it.
Oh, and one more thing-dump that Store, yesterday. Nickel and diming your customers is not the best way to impress them.

I totally agree with the points made following my post. I also believe like Carlwashere that TS3 does have potential. But as it's own game, not a follow up to TS2. That it isn't. It's only a sims game to me personally by name alone. And I'm also on the same boat as Nonni and MaryH in that I, even though I see potential with it, and am impressed by the mods such people as Pescado and Delphy have made to improve it, still am not convinced to add it to my library. When TS2 came out, I had to have it. When TS3 came out, It didn't even register on my "game to get radar". When you take a step back like that in a franchise, it hurts. And suffice to say, while Maxis weren't exactly patron saints, they at least had a beat on what the community at large wanted.

It's a classic scenario of "you never know what you have until it's gone." For as badly as we (especially myself over the years) trashed Maxis, they would have done a far better job making TS3 then Visceral Games, the developers responsible for it. But now that the hooplah over the game's basic failure has seemed to subside, it makes sense for them to go back and completely fix everything from the axles up. It benefits those who stuck with the game despite what it lacked, which is a whole lot when you compare it to it's predecessor. 

I know what I've got because it isn't gone. There's no way that Maxis can con me into buying that other tripe unless they do a total rebuild of those puddings and make them look as or even more attractive than the characters in Sims2.

 1rock

That's the thing, Maxis didn't make Sims 3. EA was in complete control over the whole thing.
I personally like Maxis a lot, Sim City, Spore, and obviously The Sims, are all made by them. But Maxis had no part in Sims 3.

If anyone's conning, It's EA. But what else is new?  ;D

Are you making fun of poor Mr. Humble? All he wants is to make people happy. Are we talking about the same person? I would not call Mr. Humble a genius.
(http://i622.photobucket.com/albums/tt301/debweb2222/Images/Emoticons/text_50.gif)

He made EA. happy. They're all on medication and recreational drugs now to help cheer them up after watching the Sims popularity graph go south.
"It's only the economic downturn" Screams Humble at the crisis meeting as the members swallow another handful of pills.

"It's only a game, people!" John Rottenchilli was quoted as saying at the last stockholders' meeting.

 :mad:
 :D
Yes, it is only a game. But you guys could at least make it a good one. Lol, isn't that why we pay them? I'm not a mindless sack of money. :rolleyes:

If EA can bring the look and feel of TS2 (faces mostly) to these Sims, then I will play more often. But until then, I play sparingly only when I'm testing my personal mods or checking out other people's mods and new EP/SPs.

The pudding look was cute for a while but not anymore because I can't get over that big gob of nose mass on the tip of their noses.

As I said, a pigs into poodles, that's why I still play Sims2 and there still many great custom creations out there.

Well, I was one of those way back in June who was not really impressed with Sims 3. But hey, I thought that I'd wait it out for at least a year and see if the bugs finally were squashed. I also wrote that I would wait until I could get the game used for about half-price, since my card was a "trouble card" initially (ATI 4800-series), and I wasn't sure what else I had on my computer that could cause even more problems.

I thought I would be chomping at the bit by now. But no, I can still wait perfectly well for another nine months or more. The price is right. Amazon sometimes offers the game new for $29.99, and you can get it for a little less on EBay.

But the game simply does not interest me. I wish I can say it does. However, even with many of the game's big selling points, such as the open neighborhood, there are down sides. Yes, you lose the loading screen, but you also lose the ability to download interesting terrains geared to what YOU want, not what EA thinks we want.

I played the Sims 1 on console, and was hooked. Sims 2 excited me. Even though our budget was really tight because my husband was laid off, I saved up a dollar here and a dollar there and bought the base game used. I did the same with some of the expansions up to Seasons, which was the last expansion before the Securom debacle. The others, I got new on sale at a local store.

I think that because of Securom, because of Sims 3 (which sorry ... didn't sound like such a rip-roaring success to me even then ... modest, perhaps ... but not rip-roaring), because of the obvious money-grubbing tactics concerning the store, EA has more problems on their hands than the lukewarm reception with Sims 3. As Kaoz wrote, a Sims 4 could be a huge mistake now, unless it truly knocks people's socks off like Sims 1 and 2 did. And Sims 3 did more than simply cool the fervor of many Sims players toward Sims 3. Some, like I, no longer play the Sims in general quite as much as we used to. The Sims we know and love are frozen in time. There are things now such as new FB and MySpace apps vying for our attention, and I admit, our money. So many Sims 2 sites dropped like flies, Sims 1 sites are like precious artifacts, and much of the Sims 3 content doesn't quite get the oohs and aaahs that the other two versions' sites got, though there has been some amazing work fixing the game's problems by the free sites. They should get far more accolades than they do.

EA bought Playfish. Interesting move. EA COULD pioneer a YoVille-like game that could blast YV, which is fun, but bug-ridden and greedy, out of the water. It could resurrect a "lite" version of Sims 1. Give it a retro spin. It could work IF EA isn't greedy and bides its time.

Yeah. I don't think EA would do that either. But one can dream.

And EA has ... or had ... an untapped market with the popularity of netbooks. Most netbooks have trouble with more complex games like Sims 2. But my netbook plays Sims 1 nicely up to Pets. It got wonky when I installed Superstar, unfortunately, but I have enough to work with for now with the five expansions. EA could explore that angle and make sure that all 7 expansions work on most netbooks. Once again, it can toss in a "retro" angle. Many older games, BTW, are enjoying new lives on netbooks, not just The Sims.

EA can also take Securom off BV and beyond. Come on now ... BV is what? About three years old this year? Give it a rest. If it does, I'll finally buy more expansions. But not until then. While the Securom-removing programs are nice, that's not the point. I will NOT reward EA for stupid behavior. And I don't like arrrring the game. So there we are.

And EA could even release a very occasional new "special-edition" Stuff Pack or Expansion for Sims 2, or even a once-in-a-blue moon  Sims 1 expansion if they iron out any netbook problems. Stop trying to pretend the other two don't exist, and they don't have fans!

Yes, EA can finally revamp Sims 3 and make it the game it could be. It can even resurrect the other two series and take them in other directions once in a while. It will take time and money. But it isn't impossible. I'm not holding my breath, though.

I think this thread can officially be called "The Sims 3: One Year Later", lol.

Gazania harks on some epic points in her post. The main one being EA's holding the keys to the castle, yet doing little to nothing with them when The Sims franchise is concerned. Let's bare in mind that TS3 doesn't even have the signature of The Sims creator Will Wright on it. It is in no way the true successor to TS2. It's EA vision, not the vision of the original folks behind the original game and it's sequel. I whole heartily think TS3 would be a completely different experience had Maxis been the developers of it. But they weren't, and what we have of the game now is what we have of the game, for better or worse.

Taking into another thing Ganzania said, the fact of the matter is that to the vast majority of TRUE sim players, that being those of us who have played the game from TS1, TS3 doesn't appeal to what we want. And even with whatever improvements they make to it, it probably still won't. I'm on the exact same boat. I see potential in the game, yes. But no where near enough for me to add it to my library. Even with the upcoming expansion pack in June for TS3, Ambitions...it's still lacks in the key areas that made most of us get into the series in the 1st place. Almost a year and soon to be 2 expansion packs later, and game still hasn't captured the core Sims audience yet. Whereas with the 1st two EPs of TS2 University and Night Life, they sold more copies of the base game then the following EPs up to Apartment Life did. Big difference between the 1st two EPs of each respective game. I'll say this much, if by the 3rd EPs release I still feel the same about TS3 as I do right now, I'm officially writing it off completely.

I think EA has missed the opportunity to capture the majority of the Sims 2 players by not making it the "true" prequel to the Sims 2. They've lost whatever thread and backstory the game had and tossed it out the door. All for the sake of shiny stuff, some of which doesn't even work.
They haven't fixed the bugs, they haven't improved on the gameplay and have the temerity (the substitute word for what I really want to say) to charge for content that they withheld or did not create for the game until afterwards. All when their customers are screaming for other things that they're used to, repeatedly-EA doesn't even have the politeness to even hear any of the suggestions. Only now are they even close to making an EP that has some careers in it.
The modders have been valiantly trying to make it playable, the independent creators have been dutifully working to make custom content to satisfy everyone, and still it is not a good game.
All because EA did not want to make it better, just their version of it-which is not what we wanted.
I'll say it again-this game is a dumbed down version of the Sims 2. It has lost all the charm and humor of the past two games in favor of rabbit holes and adventures that have no meaning. It is not a "people simulator"-it is a very limited RPG with lots of bugs. All creativity is gone, and so is the inspiration that made the past 2 games fun.
As you can see, I'm not sold on it, nor will I be.
The best thing they can do at this point is to scrap the entire game, and rework it to better reflect what the players want, not the damned stockholders, who have been disappointed so far with their returns from a game that was supposed to blow EA out of the water from the red ink to black.
It has proven a mediocre return on money that has been spent on little improvement and mass disappointment.
Of course when they release the Sims 2 "complete edition" I will be the first in line. Phooey on the Sims 3. It's not a game I want, and it's a waste of money from what I've read and heard for the past year.

Sims 3 is a disgrace isn't the whole point of of a game supposed to be them being semi  entertaining! Im sorry but EA and others need to make games not pretty bits of of scenery that gets dull quick and has bugs to the point of of not functioning! this is just annoying i mean i like games from 4 years ago better then the stuff now mostly because you can tell they really worked hard too make sure it works and is fun! ..... Sigh sorry about that. I need to get that off my chest!

Gosh, with all the work people like Pescado have done to try to improve the Sims 3, I was hoping it would be more fun by now.

How much time do you think Sims 3 needs to become an interesting and fun thing to do?

*looks at calendar* Got until the 12th of Forever??

Paden's always entertaining post pretty much answers your question, Nonni. Trying to make the game any bit as appealing (and in some cases playable) compared to it's predecessors would pretty much mean they'd have to strip it down so much to rebuild it, they may as well make a new game altogether. So I totally understand EA and Visceral Games decision to just fix what they can, and market the game to those who actually find joy in it rather then trying to mass advertise to the whole of the Sims community.

It's a tragic case of a major game developer focusing more on a brand name then the meaning of the brand itself. I personally think it was doomed from the start when they handed one of their most recognizable and profitable franchises to a development house that up until TS3 made nothing but shooters and action games. Seriously, this is all of the games that Visceral Games have made since it's inception:

007: Everything or Nothing - 2003/PlayStation 2, Xbox, Nintendo GameCube
The Godfather: The Game - 2006/PlayStation 2, Xbox, Xbox 360, Microsoft Windows
The Godfather: Mob Wars - 2006/PlayStation Portable
The Godfather: Blackhand Edition - 2006/Wii
The Godfather: The Don's Edition - 2006/PlayStation 3
The Simpsons Game - 2007/PlayStation 3, Xbox 360
Dead Space - 2008/PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Microsoft Windows
The Godfather II - 2009/PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Microsoft Windows
Dead Space: Extraction - 2009/Wii
Dante's Inferno -   2010/PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, PlayStation Portable

As you can clearly see, Visceral in no way should have been tasked with making a Sims Game, PERIOD. Hell, the only actual GOOD game they've made was Dante's Inferno, and that's only because it's a God Of War clone. It's like asking Pizza Hut to take over making Twinkies for Hostess. Pizza Hut does Pizza, Pasta and Wings, not Twinkies. All you're asking for is people to start hating something they've loved for years. Same scenario here. When you ask a development house that makes action based titles to make a life simulator, you take the risk of the game not exactly living up to expectations. It's taken EA close to a year to finally eat crow and realize this. Will it translate to TS3 being something the die hard sims player will actually get into? Not a chance. But it will serve as a lesson to EA about choosing developers for projects better. Hell, even if they have to suck it up and pull some of the original Maxis team back together into another development house SPECIFICALLY for the purpose of making a Sims game (The Sims 4 preferably), that'd be a better solution. But as far as innovation for TS3, baring they blow it up and start from the ground up, or open up the code so that modders and meshers and tear it apart themselves and turn it into something spectacular as they did with TS2, I wouldn't hold my breath about it. There's no questions asked that the concept of TS3 is awesome. The execution of the concept is where it falls flat.

So, we are basically waiting for Sims IV?

See, I am one of the rare few who think sims3 has potential and I really REALLY want to see it tapped into. I want to turn my game on, and it to work, and it to be fun, and then for it to SAVE (which has been a huge problem as of late and really realllllly pissing me off) The story progression is BS and the bugs suck. The rabbit holes are horrible, the babies and children are striaght up FUGLY, too.
I have stopped playing TS3 for the time being and gone back to TS2. IF they ever fix this game, I will play again. Until then, its a waste of my time. I play for 10 mins or two hours and it wont save, Im getting the damn error code 12 and 13 over and over and over and over and, well... you get the idea.   :mad:

You really want the truth? By the time EA fixes Sims 3, they will probably be so sick of the series that they will drop it in favor of the other porting games-they're tired of being begged to fix a game that can properly be played only on a PC, even when they boasted that "your grandma's computer" could run it.
Not that easy, when you realize the game takes a huge amount of memory to just start, and we won't even get into the frame rate fiasco that's happened.

No. We can wait all we want. EA will probably drop it after this. They'll milk this one to death and have done with it. Sorry.

BTW, on a side note-Dante's Inferno has had a less-than-stellar rollout, posting sales that are pathetic to any stockholder. EA is probably going to have a very bad year, financially.

It would be interesting to see some figures on how many sims3 players have reverted back to playing sims2. I for one will never purchase the thing. There are several reasons for that. Ist., it's not really the sims, I don't know what it is but it's not the sims. The heavy wording of the sims3 EULA. That bloody store thing. The but ugly figures.Finally the rumored association with those weasels at TSR.
As said long ago. They could have made a killing if they had of upgraded the sims2 into 3 instead of this abomination and to hell with the system requirements. Instead they allowed that egotistical idiot Humble have his way.
Going back to those figures on how many are reverting back to sims2, I use the number of new creations I see posted on the various sites. The sims2 exchange is just one such example. When the game was first released it died right down to a mere trickle, now there's a flood of new creations. Surely that hasn't gone unnoticed by EA.

I guess I'm amongst the unpopular minority that actually loves the Sims 3,oh well. :rolleyes: Recently I had to completely reinstall the Sims 2 and 3 due to an unfortunate unmountable boot volume disaster,I'd have to say that I've spent much more time playing the Sims 3 than the Sims 2(even though I own everything that was released for the Sims 2)The open neighbourhood is fantastic,it's great to actually see one of your sims walking by or going to work instead of some fugly townie,and in my opinion there is much more room for fug in the Sims 2 than the Sims 3,the only way you can make characters look good in the Sims 2 is to load them down with CC.I've made some truly beautiful,non "pudding face"characters once I actually started tinkering around CAS.So flame me if you will,but the Sims 3 is waaaaay better than the Sims 2,people just won't give it a chance,they read all of these threads about ugly characters,bugs and glitches and get scared off.

EA has lost it when it comes to games... They only think about one thing (and it's not giving the customers what they want...)

We had some from Visceral Games (creators of Dante's inferno) speaking at Animex, and compared to many other games, the graphics (in my eyes, anyway) and what I saw of the gameplay and effects s**ks. I've not played it, so I guess my opinion doesn't really count... But seriously - we're in 2010 now! Graphics could be tons better without too much computer trouble (most looked like it was horribly opacity-mapped), and we've seen games with nearly exact same gameplay hundreds of times... many of them were better versions.

And these guys made Sims 3?  Good work, EA... 2hammer

I myself started with Sims 1, but never got really into it. Too little to do (I only had some deluxe pack, with one or two expansions), and it grew boring after a while. I hadn't yet discovered downloads, which might have made the game funnier.
Then Sims 2 came along (together with a sparkling new laptop), and I loved it. So many new and fun features, much better graphics and even Bodyshop :eek:. I could sit until five in the morning on school nights, playing or creating, just because it was so fun I forgot the time (And yes, I still do that...)

I've not yet had the pleasure(?) of playing Sims 3, but after what I've seen on screenshots and videos I still don't like most of it. Most is copied directly from sims 2 (animation/furniture... you name it), and the interface looks horrible (sims 1 1/2, if that). It's not a new game. It's the same game, tweaked a bit, added in a slightly different gameplay with a couple of new features, and put in a box for sale. Maybe that new career EP will upgrade it a bit (If there is a big selection of careers), but I kind of doubt that. Like people say, Sims 3 is more a RPG than a simulator. I  admot I do like games where you are supposed to go around finding stuff and solve mysteries, but I want the Sims game to be more of a storytelling game.

I have to admit that gameplay in itself has become a bit boring in sims 2, but I've been playing the same game for several years now (I started just after nightlife came out, I think), and I can still enjoy it, so there has to be something about the game that makes me still want to play it.
Maybe the fact that it made me interested in learning 3D, and that I'm now on my second year at 3D film.
Maybe because I've got a story running (LFB has its 2 year anniversary around may/june, I think), and that I love the characters so much - Mostly because they look so good (I'll NEVER convert LFB to a Sims 3 story!!!)
And maybe because I can sit for hours at a day taking pictures, having photoshoots, coming up with new stories, or even creating new stuff. I know people are very into poseboxes, but I tend to use JD's boxes and Aikea's paintings - which are in fact ingame poses. Most are usable, and looks mostly natural if used right.

If Sims 3 ever lets me do that, this would've been great. But I don't think I every would come to like the pudding faces, unless someone came up with a drastic solution to it. I mean, Sims 3 pudding toddlers (with or without CC) looks nothing compared to Sims 2 Toddlers, who looks cute as-is, and amazingly cute with a bit of CC. And I like playing with toddlers...

Players would have loved Sims 3 if it really was an upgrade from sims2. But what is the point when moderators and creators can make stuff for sims 2 that often looks better than most of the stuff inside sims 3?
I'm not for a real-looking game. That's just a bit too creepy. But I want a game where the animations looks more natural, and where you aren't so limited. When you need mods to actually play the game without tearing off your hair in frustration, then it's not a good game. I can play sims 2 without mods. I did, for a long while.
So as I see it, Sims 3 isn't my game. Yet, anyway.

I can honestly say that I finally got my chance at playing vanilla Sims 3 once at one of my friends' house a few days ago.  Let's just say I'm still not impressed overall, except for the scenery, (Water effects on the lakes/beaches could've been a lot better, too, but other than that, nice background stuff) but it's not overly abysmal as a game... though it is as just a Sims successor.     

I had a somewhat frustrating time with the CAS... anyone who knows my style of simming knows that my sims have a "cartoonish" look to them, and I just couldn't achieve the effect I was looking for, even after an hour and twelve minutes of playing around with it.  I'm pretty sure if my friend had the modified facial sliders, then I may have gotten what I was looking for.  (That and if there was more room for having custom skins instead of just one type of skin overall.)  Plus, it wasn't long after I finished the family that my friend's PC just conked out for some reason.  I suggested he look for that frame rate mod just in case that was the issue, since that has been discovered that EA's bad habits of "fixing" bugs tends to work the heck out of a computer.   :rolleyes:

And surprisingly, create-a-style was sort of nice, seeing as it cuts back on having loads of junk files in the game.  The gameplay, however, just seemed like the same thing all over again, with added tweaks.  I'm better off just sticking it out with Sims 2, even though I know for a fact I can barely start that up without issues either.

With that, going back on topic:

If what the OP says is true, EA is going to have to do much more than just add on to the current Sims 3 to make it appealing to more simmers... if certain things about the game weren't so awkward and buggy without modding (in the vanilla state, the unwanted spawning/dying off of sims, lack of car animations, the frighteningly bad look of the offspring... not to mention their screwed-up patches), plus if they hadn't screwed themselves over in the past with the Securom fiasco and now with even more game patch issues, it would have been cool to have this particular game style as a stand-alone addition to the franchise.  The whole concept of the game seems more like what they would've put in console versions anyways, just not a proper successor to the Sims. 

I still say if they had a Sims 3 Bodyshop and the Create A World tool already available with the game they probably would've done better.  Wonder what the next EP will bring... although I'm sure the ad that's out now is definitely not showing what may not be included.  We all know how that works, as always.   ;)

There's a mod (http://nene.modthesims.info/download.php?t=389680) at MTS to change the UI and accept non-default skins. Two different flavors for the amount of skins you will be downloading. At Garden of Shadows, most default-replacements have been converted to non-default skins, and creators are making more skins.

Kudos to you for having the courage to speak your opinion. However, I feel the need to say that people such as myself, roerzman and other are not outright panning the game as being awful. We're panning it for being a paltry excuse for a Sims sequel. Had they had labeled it something else, or as Tenshii said made it a stand alone game, it would have done marginally better then it has. The mistake EA made was trying to pass it off as a Sims game, whereas it's a Sims game pretty much by name alone. TS2 was all about us, the community, being able to tailor the game to our individual tastes. Do we need a crap load of mods to do it? Yes. But at least with TS2 we have that option. With TS3, you have to play the game how EA wants you to play it, "nice". The lore and appeal of TS2 is being able to add CC and mods to make the game your own. The lore and appeal of TS3 is beautiful scenery and a traits system that they could have verrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrry easily translated into a new EP for TS2. In fact, all of the new features of TS3 could have been implemented into TS2 via an EP. And there in lies the main reason why the majority isn't buying in as you have. The game offers very, if any real innovation for it's price tag, and that price tag includes the game itself AND updating ones GFX and Sound cards to be able to run it if they have a PC older then 3 years. You're not wrong at all for enjoying the game. But for users like myself who don't at ALL enjoy the vanilla Sims experience, there's simply no appeal the game has for us.

Then there's the real problem of people wanting more than EA wants them to have in the game. For those who like the "naughty bits and pieces" there are mods to put in the game to give them that-but EA has decided that vanilla is the only way to play it, and they've locked it down to not accept outside mods very easily, if at all.
If you take into account that more than half of the active simmers who play it are adults of consenting age, that is a very unwise decision-and one that has hurt EA badly.
Sure, EA wants to appeal to everyone-but not everyone wants to play a "nice, clean, child-friendly" game. That's a sure sticking point for adults. They're just not built to accept the concept of EA's world, where nudity and envelope pushing interactions for adults are not permitted.
TS2 is famous for that, and believe me, the sites that offer the adult stuff are pretty popular. EA should get off it's damned high horse and acknowledge the simple fact that adults do not like to play children's games and that they do have a very active imagination when it comes to social actions.
Sure, I think that kids don't need to see that kind of stuff. It should be restricted to adults only-but for those of us who like that kind of playstyle, EA has simply ignored the entire concept of freedom of choice and locked out an entire segment of their fanbase.
And the adults have the money-always remember that. We've got far more income and for the company to just shut us out is a massive mistake. They shot themselves in the foot when they decided to make the game unmoddable for the most part by anyone except their "approved" creators.

Oh, really?   :eek:   I haven't been keeping up with the mods as much, just know of some that are mentioned in passing.  Probably going to tell my friend he might want to consider moddifying his game a bit if he's up to it.  (He's still not an active part of the online community, but I'm sure once he sees what's available and test the waters, he'll want to get into it more.)   Thanks, Niecy!  ;)

I do have the Sims 3, I do like it, I do feel that Sims 2 is still better, but I am sticking with the Sims 3 for now to see what happens, the biggest mistake they made in my opinion is adding their store, nickle and dimeing their loyal players, Big mistake. Also the animation for clothing and hair is awful, if this game does not improve I will not buy into a Sims 4 and I am all done updateing my PC for my Sims. Money is just not there any more. So please beware EA if you have not already blown it ( yes once again get rid of your Store and put the content back into the game where it belongs in the first place. )

Hi all--my first posting on a Sims 3 topic...ever   ;D  I've been holding back, hoping my negative opinion on the game would change, but alas...

I would honestly love to see the stats on people going back to playing Sims 2 as well.  I really tried to love Sims 3--even though I was deadset against the game before it even came out--I even tried creating for the game and after spending an hour to get nowhere with my efforts, just went back to creating for the Sims2.

I did buy the S3 basegame, but have yet to buy the EP because...I just don't see the point.  I was really shocked, also, that they put out such a boring-seeming EP as their first.  To go from basegame to travelling was just weird to me...

The puddingfaced thing is annoying to me, as well.  The children are just creepy, and the toddlers look like little ventriloquist dummies--the type that watch you sleep at night from the rockingchair across the room...it's unsettling.

After some issues with my computer, I finally got a new one and have gotten back into gameplay--and I tried to get into the Sims 3, I really did...but I failed.  I just lost interest, and was annoyed that I couldn't get the sims' faces to look like the people I was modeling them after in real life.  It was hard getting used to the controls again too, I have no clue why they changed the controls from S2 to S3.

I agree that lots of beautiful custom content exists for S3...but it doesn't hold the appeal the custom content for sims 2 had for me.  One thing I absolutely ADORE about the S3 though is the body slider, especially since I downloaded the slider adjuster from MTS2, and can assign a bigger chest to smaller waists, it's great.  If the Sims 2 had that, that game would be perfect.

I say that last line, because I went back to my Sims 2 game again this weekend, and the skinny sims are...realllly skinny.  Like, toothpick skinny.  The ankles on them are scary, it's like "how do they walk on those?!" and even the chubby sims are still too skinny...I really wish there was some slider hack for S2.

But yeah, the faces are SO much easier to customize.  I tried to make a self-sim in S3, and came up with this weird way-too-smooth and pudgy face

(http://i43.tinypic.com/169omkg.jpg)

Then I made myself in S2 (and I agree about them needing to make a bodyshop for S3, because I make ALL my sims in S2 using Bodyshop) I realize the definition in custom skintones really gave the face more shape (something I really haven't been able to find, even with all the custom content, for S3) and the different eye types...it really helps...

(http://i41.tinypic.com/2cz6elx.jpg)

So, yeah...Sims 2 for me.  And I don't see myself buying this WA expansion pack, nor the next.  Sad, really--I wanted to love this game.

I don't have much to add but these comments I liked:



There is still so many, many things I want to do, to make and to learn with my TS2. Another thing about my TS2 gaming I like is that I can save all the downloads and mods I don't use for current projects on an external drive so that I don't have to overload my game.

Then there is the TS2 community and all the treasures waiting for me to discover and commraderie to share that I don't want to lose to the evolution into TS3.

I feel kinda sad because I doubt EA would consider going backwards and actually create a new EP for TS2. Wouldn't it be a dream to have a TS2 EP that offered things we find a bit interesting about TS3 that would be easy on older computers? I would take bets on how popular that would be.

It would be quite nice if EA actually considered that-but because they changed studios when they started Sims 3, it would be impossible to recreate the same game from the same people who it the first time.

I think that not only are players going back to the Sims 2, so are creators. They're possibly frustrated with the limitations that EA put on them, and some have given up trying to create what they can't do.

So EA isn't just losing players, they're losing the modders and creators as well. There has been an uptick on creations for Sims 2 everywhere, and I think that's why.

Pretty sad when the modders and creators throw up their hands in frrustration. It says a lot about the game.

I'm very happy to hear that!

It's obvious that sims3 is a dud. Some similarities there with Microsoft and vista, that was also a dud so now we have win.7. Will we have a sims4?
To sell me, EA. will first have to get rid of those abominations that replaced the humans in sims1 and 2,secondly, make modding and installation of mods and cc. easier.In other words, throw the thing in the bin and have another go.
EA. are already admitting that the game could sell better, that's corporate talk stating that it's a flop. So there is a small glimmer of .light on the horizon for me, perhaps in a year or so I can finally move on to the next sims game.
So for the benefit of the EA. snoops. Write an attractive game, make it as easy to modify as in 1 and 2, and let us play the game as we want not how you want. Do that and you'll be seriously wealthy again. After all it wasn't the likes of that fool Humble that made the sims 1 and 2 the phenomenal success that they were, and as in sims2 still is,it was the unbelievable talent of a lot of modders who went about their creative work without having to worry about being dragged before a court for violating some dumb EULA.

The biggest problem is that EA, while admitting the "game could sell better", will not openly admit to their mistakes in the first place, and that they will flog the game to death with at least half a dozen pointless and bug-ridden EP's. The store will remain open, and no extra content will appear in the form of stuff packs.  They will destroy this franchise through mule-headed obstinacy and greed.

They do not care what their fans think. They've been deaf to their wishes for quite some time, and even if they do hear them, they come out with something so unrelated that everyone will stop playing the game.

They probably will not make a Sims 4. You can probably bet on that, and make money doing so. They're tired of supporting PC gaming, and it's obvious they're going to go for on-line gaming, and microtransactions.

So it's the end of the line for the Sims franchise with this game. Mark my words. In another 4 years the franchise will be but a distant and fond memory.

I've definitely noticed that within the last couple of months or so. For a long time, things were looking grim for Sims 2. Sites were closing left and right ... still are, unfortunately. And no, you're not seeing surges of new Sims 2 stuff. But for the sites that remain, there seems to be a new spirit among many of them. It's as if many creators have indeed decided that the Sims 2 is still worth creating for.

Of course it is!  ;D
It's not very long ago I learned SimPE well enough to put my own meshes ingame, and since creating for sims 3 is still very limited (and requires putting my nose into a bunch of tutorials again, plus installing the game, make everything work and blahblahblah), I keep to sims 2 creation.
People just had to understand how limited the new, shiny game was before going back to sims 2 again...

I seem to recall that I came across an active site that uncatagorically states that they are a Sims 2 site and only a Sims 2 site and that you would have to look elsewhere if you wanted Sims 3 anything.

'going to search for it...'

My site is a Sims 2 site. Granted it's only Sims and recolors. I do have one Sims 3 sim, but I uninstalled that piece of crap. Too many problems.

Sugah's Place is a Sims 2 only place and so is Basic for Sims. Suga's Place is Sims, clothing and object recolors. Basic For Sims is Sims and clothing recolors.

EA. online gaming? So far they have a not so good track record, after the securom debacle who knows just what they'll try to slip into your pc. So far I think Zynga has that market pretty well cornered. Who doesn't play Mafia Wars now?
I have disliked EA. for some time but after they shut down Backalley sims because some clot inadvertently uploaded some recolored piece of junk from their shop I absolutely despise them now and will certainly not be playing any of their games online.
Those fleas at EA. have a job ahead of them restoring mine and no doubt a lot of others confidence in them. A lot needs to be undone, securom, sims3 and their dammed EULA, and that insulting store just for starters.
Sims2 lives on for a long time yet.

I happen to know of a number of sites as well that are solely committed to Sims2 content. And indeed roerzman makes the most valid point of them all in the fact that EA has a LOT of damage control to do. But like MaryH said, the damage is most likely done. The only way I see a Sims4 even being a remote possibility is if EA pulls together the original Maxis team, including Will Wright, gives them a blank check and says "Fix the mess we made of the franchise". Sadly, that will most likely never happen. So the franchise will more then likely die a slow death following the last EP they churn our for Sims3.

Thankfully for the modding community of Sims2, the game will well outlive it's follow up. There's just to much content out there. Even with the number of sites that have disappeared over the years, there's STILL sites out there with quality CC, and creators, though not is as great a number as 3 years ago, who still put out stellar content themselves. Modders can keep a game going long after it's shelf life has ended. I used Counter Strike and WWF/E No Mercy as examples. Both are games that are nearing 10 years of existence. But with tools created by a multitude of modders, the games take on completely new identities. There are HUNDREDS of mods for No Mercy. You can practically (If you have the no how) build your own wrestling game from the ground up. A lot of the programmer friends I have in various developers got their basic knowledge from modding No Mercy. Sims2 poses the same possibilities. There will always be a demand, if even just a small scale one, for CC for the game. As such, there will always be creators willing to make it.

As far as the 3rd installment of the series, I wholly predict they will continue making new EPs and SPs for it, but market it to the few (and I do mean few) users that have not jumped ship from the game. Make whatever capitol they can from it, and when the demand finally and inevitably dies off, put the game (and most likely the series) to pasture. There's a lesson to be learned from this. Never entrust a franchise anyone aside from whoever had a hand in making it the success it was. The results are 90% never positive.

*sigh* The Sims 3, to me was a huge dissapointment. I agree withe everyone else's comments. They're better off just chucking the thing and cranking out new EPS for TS2 with the ORIGINAL Maxis team. Because the dude who was in charge of it this time, has royally borked Sims. It's really depressing. The Sims 2 had so much potential to keep going. I mean, so what if game play is a bit quicker? It's no good if it's not a good game. The people look like they've had their skin streched by a taffy machine.  :-\ Not to mention when I last checked in on the exchange, all the Maxoids have flown the coop. Pretty much anybody on the Sims 2's original site is on their own.  It's a shame really, EA, just when the Sims 2 was becoming massively epic. Now, they've gone from going through the roof, to head diving into the toilet.

Ienjoyhamsandwiches is right on the nail there. The thing is a flop and disappointment to many who wasted their money on it. It was said before they released the crap that they could have incorporated most of the game play, seamless neighbourhoods, personality traits etc. into the existing game had would have had something incredible, but alas they allowed that egotistical idiot Humble have his way trying to do a Will Wright and put his personal stamp on the sims. Well he'll certainly be remembered by the gaming community as the idiot who all but destroyed the sims. 

Amen!  1rock
You're right on the money there, roerzman! :D

EKozski says:

Oh, silly me. I go there all the time.
(http://i622.photobucket.com/albums/tt301/debweb2222/Images/Emoticons/hilarious286.gif)

Well, I don't, but I play Farmville, Cafe World and YoVille, though I don't play CW too often.

There have been a LOAD of complaints that Zynga is getting just too greedy with cash items (Gee ... sounds famliar?) And I notice that many of my "neighbors" have gone off to other games by other companies, several of which, unfortunately, are also getting greedy. I guess that the lure of easy money for pixels is just too strong. Hey, I realize that these companies need to make money but unfortunately, many of these companies just don't offer much for RL cash.

A sham Sims 1 page that kept promising a Facebook Sims 1 game got hundreds of thousands of fans ... I believe the number went over one million, though I'm not sure, since it appears that the page is gone now. This is a SHAM page, and it wasn't heavily promoted, and of course, wasn't endorsed by EA. So yes, the interest in a FB Sims 1 game is there.

I still feel that if EA played its cards right, it could put out a game that rivals Zynga. It might be a "traditional" Sims 1-ish game, or it could an Urbz-type game. The only thing is that EA MUST avoid appearing too greedy. The content must be fairly priced and the cash content not overdone. The game must run smoothly, without many glitches. And the quests must be interesting, with plenty of opportunity to interact with neighbors. It must also be secure ... Zynga gets many complaints about that.

Yup. I think I probably have a better chance of winning the top prize on a lottery. But it could theoretically happen. Too bad greed is too strong a lure.

Out of curiosity ... those who played Sims Online ... how was that game?

Anyway, my situation is that I don't hate the Sims 3. I don't write it off as a total failure. And I know that many people really like it, and I respect that. It's just that I thought that EA would examine free-site creations and take things further from there. And from that point, make the Sims 3 so amazing, so incredible, that Sims 2 players would remark, "Sims 2? What's Sims 2?"

Zynga and Playdom are two of the worst offenders when it comes to the social/browser-game market; Shady marketing practices, false promises, in-game spam imploring you to buy their virtual currency, etc. It's pretty bad. There's a multitude of interesting articles written about these shady practices, but this one in particular is one of the most interesting:

http://techcrunch.com/2009/10/31/scamville-the-social-gaming-ecosystem-of-hell/

(be sure to read all the follow up articles)


It was an utter failure. While it might have had promise, it got taken over by botters, 12s, and other varieties of asshats. That, and all the while it kept devolving further and further into nothing more than a massive cybersex emporium.

Unfortunately any social network site especially those that also host online games attract scammers like flies to cow dung.
Those who are silly enough to throw money at virtual pixels get what they deserve, I played Mafiawars for over a year now and Zynga hasn't got one red cent out of me.
If EA. were to make the next generation of sims into another sims online then the result would be the end of the sims.
The whole concept of the original sims was for the consumer to buy the bare bones game and then do as he or she pleases with it and also to share various mods or creations, not to make money out of them but to generate an interest and sites such as this to increase the popularity. And Maxis in turn made a whole lot of money selling the next installments or upgrades because the game became very addictive and grew in popularity.
This is something that was obviously lost to EA. because they decided to become control freaks and hoped that the players would flock to their store, throwing millions of dollars at them for virtual crap that someone at AE. land thinks that players want.
A rule in any business. Take your customers for granted, dictate to them then s--t on them as well means that you will go to the wall.

Oh, that would be absolutely HORRID if they only made Sims online. I like the fact that Sims 2 is a nice little soul PC Game with no real people actually playing with you. Somebody should call up Will Wright and beg him to take control of his Sims again- otherwise the future of Sims looks horribly bleak. I doubt there will actually be a "The Sims 4" because the way sells are going they might just not have any motivation. They have offically pooped on our heads and left us. I think The Sims 2 would've been a lot better if they had just added in the realistic birth like in TS3 and the faster traveling around town. I don't really like the fact that in TS3 the neighbours grow and change on their own. It's difficult for story writing. I'm actually glaring at my uninstalled copy of TS3 as I type this. PLEASE, Will, come back and save the Sims!! If only enough people made a big enough fuss, then maybe they would listen to us... :(
EDIT: And, not to mention, they've made making your own CC like pulling hen's teeth. That was one of the major highlights for TS2, the players could actually get even more involved in the game than all the other average video games. I know this might sound really extreme, but after I fully played around with TS3, I got so mad I didn't even touch my computer for three months. To me, TS3=EPIC FAILURE. You can't even go into shops anymore on TS3! What is up with that? It's like the Sims went premative!! *fumes*

Will can't come back and take control because he sold the whole ruddy thing to EA and they are going to take it where they want it. Sad to say, we is screwed, kids.

 :'( How could he?  The things people do for money.  :rolleyes:

The best thing the modders should have done, was just leave the blasted thing alone, abide 100% to their EULA.
Why try to fix the stupid thing? Let them iron out the bugs. Let them dress the thing up to make it presentable. Let them write the mods. Let them write the default replacement skins so they don't look like something out of Mario Bros.
Why help them? They just treat the whole community with contempt.
If all the modders had of abided to their blasted EULA totally the stupid thing would have died a natural death six months ago.

If the modders and CC makers hadn't done what they did, the game would've been a lot less unattractive, but still a fun game none the less. I still use all Maxis stuff, but I do use CC to enchance some of the Sims that I unhealthily worship. It makes them a lot more attractive and realistic. I think I might've died without the Sims2living hack, personally. I really don't think that's the reason they've decided to become such control freaks. Maxis really didn't care, and EA steps in with nothing but money lust. It's all about money, and making game play as miserable for the players as possible, it seems like. :-X

I think roerzman was referring to S3, not Sims 2. We all profited by EA's "blindness" to their EULA on Sims 2, whereas now, they've locked nearly everything down to the point where you have to have a PhD in computer writing to just do a simple recolor.
That doesn't make it very attractive at times for modders or creators. I know Pescado was of two minds about modding it at first-and he finally did it, but I think it was for the challenge of "can I do it, and how much do I have to break to get it to work?"
Of course we knew he could do it-it just took a lot of sweat and tears to do it.
If he had to work that hard to do mods (and you do have to admit, he is one of the best going), can you imagine what creators have to do? Breaking things until they fit, and that isn't the way it should be.

A whole 'nother story from Sims 2, definitely. Not that EA cares, though. They've got their own profit point-it's called "The Store" and that's where they want everyone to shop at. Not free or even good stuff. A lot of creators could do better, but EA's not listening to them, either.
Kind of like the Sims when they don't want to hear what the other one is saying-"Fingers in my ear!"

I can believe Pescado sweating, but didn't he lose his tear ducts in the war or something? Sorry, just finished watching Monsters vs Aliens...

I should have said, "someone else's tears"..we all know Pescado doesn't cry over anything. More than likely, he was swearing every single step of the way, mostly pirate curses. I would have hated to be Mrs. Pescado while he was doing the first step of modding. I bet he's not pleasant while he's in a bad mood-and that game is enough to make one very ugly indeed.
But then again, when is he in a good mood? :D

Pescado only gets mad, angry, and furious.

...although, I have heard stories of him cackling in homicidal glee at times. Whether that can be interpreted as a good mood, or just another variation of a bad mood, is anyone's guess. :P

Well, while looking through the Facebook apps, I came across a Sims-like game that, on first glance, would remind you of Sims 1 ... TirNua. I believe that someone who later worked on Sims Online started this app. I added it and started playing with it and ...

I deleted it after fifteen minutes. Figures. I theoretically got what I wanted, and realized I didn't want it. Not this version.

The game is clumsy to navigate, and I could see the massive "gimme" campaign looming ahead. Honestly, I don't mind if a developer pushes a little custom content. The game developer, by the way, not some third-party site. I know that some of you disagree with me on this, and hey, I fully respect your opinion.

But to me, there is a world of difference between dangling a few carrots to entice you to part with a bit of change, and dangling bunches of carrots, then jerking the reins back. EA and so many social-networking apps seem to be blurring the difference. Their greed blinds them thoroughly.

For me, with EA, its handling of Sims 2 was mostly "a few carrots" until EA started pushing The Sims Store. Sims 3 seems to be the latter approach. And no, as others wrote, it doesn't help that EA seems to tacitly approve certain greedy pay sites. What is that old saying about lying down with the dogs? ;)

You catch fleas of course. No matter I have nothing to do with with that trash or their store. As long as the creators/modders keep creating for the sims2 I will probably keep playing it for a few years yet.
That begs the question. How long will it take EA. to jump back on the sims2 bandwagon and try cash in on it's reborn popularity?

"Lie down with dogs, get up with fleas." And trust me, those suckers are so loaded with the ruddy things, that daily bathing isn't gonna help one damn bit...

EA has abandoned the Sims 2. That's a fact. The only reason they still support the game is that they are still selling it in various forms. They will never get back on that track, and have been attempting to make it die a natural death, only to be defeated by the legions of Sims 2 fans who have no use for Sims 3.

They disassembled the studio and team that did the Sims 2. That's done and over with. They won't rehire them and I'm sure they're not about to even entertain the thought of reworking the game. That would be admitting defeat from their efforts to put Sims 3 on the map to replace it.

So sad but I tend to agree with you on this. "Pride goeth before the fall."

So sad but I tend to agree with you on this. "Pride goeth before the fall."

I shall disagree. You can't survive on pride alone, in the end the mighty Dollar rules supreme, and so do the shareholders, let's wait and see shall we.

"Hope springs eternal"  3yay

I'd be interested to see, not only sales figures for TS3, but sales figures for the various TS2 collections that are still on the market.  I wouldn't be too surprised if TS2 is outselling TS3.  XD

Thank goodness!  1rock  That was my biggest problem with the sims 3.  I thought, how could the Sims 3 world look so realistic and the sims look so much like Shrek characters?  Also, Does anyone else have the problem that the sims look different in the lots than they do in the CAS screen?  I don't know if its just my computer or what, but it's very annoying.

I think this goes back to cutting down system demands. The fools at EA. are under the illusion that the vast majority of players are retirees or teens playing on ten year old Pentiums or some old hand me down.
If they ever did a proper survey they would find that the great majority of players have modern high to mid range computers that are more than capable of playing today's games at descent resolutions.

Some of us, before the recession really kicked us in the gut, actually had computers built specially to play their damn games, too.

Hmmph...I could care less if the game is a prequal to the Sims 2, a sequal, or a freaking threqual. Oblong, or square. It had alot of great potentiol in it, that was waisted. Waisted by incredible and unfathomable idiotic desicions.

All I ever wanted from the game was for it to look good, work well, and live up to its potentiol. And be fun, as well as allow me to create my own world. And aside from the rare crash's in MY own personal case's, its hardly done any of that.

And because of the absolutly *brilliant* measures taken by EA, unlike with Sims 2, I cant correct all their blunders and boggles with user generated content.

I'm dissapointed with it, and I havent even bothered to look at the game in at least 6 months. Which was the about the last time I tried to mod it to more suit my tastes and give it more freedom.

If they hope to save it, they need to bring the original Maxis team back. And fix the errors, and then overhaul the crap.

I'll give it this though, there was great potentiol with the game and open world. Theres no doubt about that. It was just ignored and waisted.

EA is good at wasting potential and disappointing their customers. In fact, that is about the only thing they ever have, or ever will, excel at. I'm just glad I found out about the borkedness before I wasted any time or money on what seems to be a complete and utter waste of my resources.

There is a point about this game that everyone overlooks-that most of the time, the player has the EADM installed and running on their computer. I wonder how much of that is causing so many problems? Does it add that extra edge of borkedness that causes games to crash? I think it is half of the problem. Because the EADM does have Securom, and it's been proven to mess computers up..(remember that, Paden? You should! :cool:)
But I will admit that I have not seen such a consistent failure rate on any game lately-this one is failing all across the board-gameplay, graphics, and technical use. It's just such a mess I doubt that the original Maxis team could or even would dare to touch it with a ten foot pole. It's just really beyond salvaging.
Every so often I go onto the Sims 3 board to see if the complaints have died off. No-and they're getting to the point now that if the next release of any patch does not correct some of the problems, there are going to be a lot of very angry and disappointed players who just might throw their game in the trash, and never buy another EA game in their lives.
It's that serious. EA had best make a damned good patch this time, or they're losing the entire shebang.
On a more personal note, I wrote an editorial at RYG just before the release of Sims 3, warning everyone that they might be very disappointed with the game and why.
I was right then, and I am right now. EA is betting the farm of the Sims franchise on this one EP, I think, and if it doesn't work, I think they're going to slow down the EP's they release and go to on-line play within the next year.
But that doesn't mean their players will. We'll see what happens on June 1st and afterwards. It'll be interesting to watch if EA can redeem themselves. I don't really hold out any hope for it, though.

They'd better have a butt-load of coupons if they want any kind of redemption... :D I know, bad reference, but it's Monday, what else do you expect from me?

Regardless of what EA decides to do, I'll never play Sims3 again. I bought it, installed it, played for a day, uninstalled it, melted the CD with a torch and mailed back to EA with a note attached to it. The note said something to the effect that if I wanted Fat Faced sims, I could make them myself in Sims2.  >:D

Didn't they ever make a king size stuff up with this one. A lot of us could see this coming so didn't waste our money on it, others pre ordered the thing even after Pescados "The awful truth" posts.
So where do they go from here? A sims4? They obviously can't do much more with this garbage, people just won't touch it if it's got 3 in the title.

Ah, but that's where you're wrong (as I am, and every Sims 2 player, according to all the Sims 3 fans)-EA can do no wrong, and everything they do is magic. Every release is perfect, and all patches are good.

You wanna bridge, slightly used? I got one for you.

*waves arms frantically* I've got some swamp land to put it into!!!

Sims 3 fan, hmm, I've yet to come across one of these rare creatures.
Are they on the endangered species list?

Did he give you a timeline on this?  Will this be happening with the ambitions expansion or will we have to wait until the next expansion pack at the end of the year?

It's an endangered species probably...

I finally got the chance to play - and the sims themselves... let's say none of them has ended on a photoshoot as of yet (which tends to happen with most of my sims 2 sims). There is also something weird with the idle posing. I can't really put my fingers on it, but it just looks wrong. And they all look so grumpy (and/or creepy the rest of the time).

The scenery got a round with the camera, though.

When that's said, there are a few things I like. Gameplay is fun again (which I doubt will last very long when the sims aren't exactly pretty), and despite my saving troubles, I like the new features of CAS (just the features, NOT the sims...). Bits and pieces like that. Solving the adventures at vacation is a bit fun too, but when everything starts to be the same (the tombs are too easy to solve, running around to find stuff takes ages and eats up half the vacation time, and the fact that you have to make the sims friends before they can be asked about something is just too boring and time consuming). The photography skill is a bit fun, but it was annoying to see that a (scenery) picture I hoped would end up really pretty got a thumb in front of it...

I might like some of it, but I'm not a fan. Far from it, in fact. Only reason I play as for the moment, is that it loads fast and gets my brain off my (%$@#/&¤%) school assignment...

I'm already planning my next photoshoot in Sims 2, and will continue to use Sims 2 for photoshoots for... who knows how long.

Another patch was released on May 28, 2010.

http://www.thesims3.com/game/patches/920859580

Will they ever get it right?!!?

That remains to see...  :rolleyes:

Speaking of the EADM and its perhaps interference with the game (not to mention Securom), I usually run offline, that is to say not connected wireless or (in the case of the desktop) without an Ethernet cable plugged in. When the welcome screen appears I right click the EADM button in the taskbar and exit it, closing it completely before I hit the arrow to start the game. The game seems to run just fine without it. I don't access the EA store from inside the game (buy mode) so it really doesn't matter. I know it's not reasonable, but I always get this really creepy feeling that EA is watching me play my game when I play with the online connected.
 
The new patch creates a mods folder for your CC (they finally woke up), I see that the framework tool (MTS) has also been changed for the monkey, maybe to handle this, I've not yet tried it, or applied the patch.

Even the positive comments that have been made in this thread have not enticed me to try ts3 again.

I have everything I want in Sims2.  I'm not usually negative but disappointment and frustration with ts3 really broke my heart.

I got ambitions a few days ago... and let's say EA hit on some spots, but failed miserably on others...

First, I had my first weird bug. Disappearing/invisible sim, and sims floating through the floor. No idea what caused it (I don't have any CC) and even if the sim disappeared from the panel, the game still thinks she's there.

The new jobs range from hilarious to boring. Some you have to constantly babysit the sims, while others they manage mostly on their own. Some are very easy to get through, while others again take forever to get through (like the last stage of the inventor).

After a lot of trial and error I finally managed to get a female robot (after several tries through the life point best friend thing, which only seemed to spawn males), who I paired up with a male robot (which was really hard to get through the "hard way"). Guess who did not get robot kiddies...  :'(
I don't mind if it's not logical (if not by woohooing, then maybe they could have been able to make their own kids on the workbench? You know - much the same way as plantsims spawn kids in TS2?). To me, it's less logical that robots can adopt "normal" sim kids.

At least ghosts are playable (and I love the fact that they can get ghost babies).

Though, I still miss the alien abductions...  :(

Still, TS3 is fun (for now) to play. The pudding faces takes some getting used to, but they're still not pretty enough for serious photoshoots...

I love how most of you guys talk like the Sims 2 never had any bugs and glitches in it,in fact the Sims 2 still has many problems,ones that will never get fixed.I could give a flying flip about what the sims themselves look like(even though I have made many very attractive ones in my game,none that resemble "Shrek")The Sims 2 seems too old fashioned and boring compared to the Sims 3,Bon Voyage was a bore compared to World Adventures.I'm not having any of the problems people describe in their games,and I have hacks and custom content.It's silly to not play a game based solely on what the characters look like,and I think it's even sillier to bash EA and then continue to use their product,if you don't like them or don't agree with their buisness practices then don't play the Sims 2 or 3.

To each their own, minkey, and everyone's experiences are different. They're allowed to state their opinions of the game, as long they don't carry it into a flame fest. What you love about something another person might hate. Some people prefer the game play in Sims 2 over Sims 3. You happen to enjoy Sims 3 more and that's your prerogative.

Personally, throughout my years of playing Sims 2, I have experienced only one glitch caused by something actually broken in the game and not some cc I downloaded. Just one and it was easily fixed by a patch. Any time I had to start over and reinstall (and I believe this current installation of my game is my third) was due to a mistake on my part. On the other hand, I haven't played Sims 3 for a few months because I have had nothing but problems, with or without custom content. The patches meant to fix the numerous glitches I had didn't fix anything and ended up breaking more. I have uninstalled and reinstalled the game over twice as much in the year it has been released than I ever did in the six years or so I've been playing Sims 2. It's a shame, because I do enjoy the Sims 3, I just have an issue with the problems it has. 

I would happily play both if I could just get both to work.

I've had one major bug in S3, but it went away by itself, and also one problem it's possible I just haven't found the solution to yet. The patches seems to bug the games more than they fix it, so I've not even dared patching my S3 games.

Not even my S2 games. I've not had many bugs there, either - and the ones I've had, I've found fixes for elsewhere, or they are so small I can live with them without even noticing they're there. And I don't dare messing around with the patches now, just in case they decide to mess up everything... I don't feel like installing the whole package again...

Yes,to each our own indeed,but I will agree that there is a problem with the patches,not the game itself.The only major problem I have ever encountered in my game is the trouble with installing store content and Riverview,I can live without most of the store stuff,but I am missing Riverview.I only installed the silly patch so I could install HELS and Ambitions,EA does seem to be twiddling their thumbs about the whole issue.

While I've always disliked the Sims 3, I used to be one of those people that thought expansion packs would fix it like it did for the sims 2(well to be honest, I loved the sims 2 even without the expansion packs and custom content) But now that we've had TWO expansion packs that have made the game worse, I've decided to just give up on Sims 3. It was bad enough that World Adventures stopped me from using my favorite core mod and the martial arts function totally doesnt work, but now I've heard Ambitions effs up the Create-a-world function. Does EA just not care anymore :( :p :-\?

... maybe people are getting too hung up in needing mods.

I've long ago learned that the mods takes much of the fun out of the playing, while pretending not to do so. I rarely actually play sims 2 anymore, because the mods makes things a bit more boring... but I don't want to take them out, because I know I'll miss them the instant I'm ingame.

I've so far played S3 mod-free to test it out, and (with motives maxed out through the mailbox, since the fun of seeing sims run to the toilet, or set fire on themselves trying to cook went out a few years ago) most things are not nearly as annoying as they were with a mod-free Sims2. True, things take too long, and there are annoying things happening, but even so - I do enjoy the fun of actually playing again. I've not done any serious playing yet, and I've not yet tested out all the features, so I can't say if it will be the same then.

If things don't work for others, most things works more orr less perfectly for me (without patches). EA are a pain in the you-know-where sometimes, and there are things that could have been a lot better in both games (including the patches), but for the moment I'm actually enjoying playing a game just for the fun of it.

I admit I was negative to S3 when it first came out, but after playing it, and realizing it's more different from S2 than I thought, I was positively surprised in many ways. Adventures is much more fun than Bon Voyage ever was, while Ambitions swept the floor from under OFB. Even the Basegame has more added to it than the S2 basegame. I never played much with either BV or OFB because of the too slow loading times (almost stopped using community lots a long time ago), but now there is much less loading overall, community lots don't even need loading. Even skilling is far more interesting, since you actually see the sims getting better at it (like painting).

There are things I still miss, and S2 is still my main game for storytelling and contests, but like I said, I enjoy the playing of S3(no matter how the puddings looks like...)

Meh to each his own. I still play the sims 3 (cuz my computer with the sims 2 on it is broke right now) I went years playing the sims 2 without expansion packs or mods and thouroughly enjoyed it. and I bet I could turn off all my mods and still have fun playing the game. So if I can't enjoy the sims 3 base game without any mods, I think we got a problem, Houtson. Especially when the EA tries to fix those problems by creating more problems


Oh we definetly know that lol

I just finished reading all 7 pages on this topic.  LOL at alot of the sarcastic banter, very funny stuff. I did not buy the S3 game.  I pirated S3 and all its EP's instead, and I won't complain about how hard that was considerring none of the installing instructions were up to par.  Also I do not encourage pirating, only as a means to preview playability before buying any hard copies.  I did this with expansions for S2 also, and yes I own all the S2 ep's now.  Lord knows I luv my sims2 bugs and all!

  My opinions of the S3 are as follows, the music is good if your trying to fall asleep while it loads your town.  It run's pretty smoothly without the DM.  No problems so far that I've seen, had one instance of an error during saving, so I did the 'save as option' and overwrote it and seemed to fix itself.  My version is 4.0.87.006001.  I've only ran the standard updates during the installation of both expansions, refusing the DM installer when it asks and am too terrified to try any patches or cc and/or mods.  Trying to make a slightly attractive female/male sim is unrewarding.  I've made 3 so far that I'm not overly proud of.  I spend most of my time using their create tool to change the color of EVERYTHING. Which I do like because now I can make everything pink.   
  If you are a younger teen playing this game (I am not) then I see why this game is the way it is.  Try looking at the game in that regard, I really don't think it was meant for us freethinkers.  Its directed more towards the 'flock' of bebops.  No insult meant, we were ALL bebops once, I'm not too old to remember that. ;D  The less realistic skin means less 'sexual' atmosphere yes?  Gotta keep that teen rating for easy sales and happy parents. 
  The free roaming aspect is nice, no waiting for seperate towns to load.  Changing the 3 voice pitches is a nice add, never understood why S2 never acquired any new voices during any of the ep's or stuff's.

  I was under the impression that the Ambitions expansion was going to enable cc and mod's to be easier installed tho? Is this not the case?  I have only let a day pass in the game, because I'm tiptoeing thru every interraction and allowing the game tutorial to walk me through the game play. The longest I've actually stayed seated playing is an 2hours. 

  In a nutshell I agree with alot of you, there isn't much in Sims3 that they couldn't have just added to Sims2.  Greed is no substition for Intelligence, S2 is still bringing in the bucks, and we would all happily pay for more Sims2 ep's anyday without a second thought.  So why abandon a gold mine like that?  It doesn't make sense.  I thought milking it till its dead was how the industry works?  Look at the final fantasies lately, they're the same game recycled over and over yet their making bookoo bucks.  You don't see them changing anything so drastically that you have to stop and think about buying it.  If ain't broke don't fix it EA DUH! 
  As for a Sims4, in a perfect world and a person wanting to make a fortune in money and fans, this would be the smartest move to make.  Let them try to recover their losses with 3, thats their business, but on the side they should be taking the time to review sites, fanbases, and all the stuff that DID work for Sims3+2 and show us what they 'really' meant by realistic!  I'll gladly wait for something that costs too much and is going to make me as giddy as the sims2 did back in '05.

Careful about talking about your pirated games. We don't condone it here, nor do we support illegal copies of any Sims game or any copyrighted material. Now that we know your games are not legal, you will not be able to get support here if they give you problems.

yes I read that in the blogs caffeinated.joy, which is why I elaborated on the why I do it and don't suggest others doing it without atleast contemplating a purchase of the genuine, I will post someday well that I'll leave you speechless.  My registry keys are always in the end my purchased versions.  I just really needed to make sure I wasn't misjudging the game by popular opinion, and wow did anyone else notice that all S2 + ep's and stuff pack's in total are 14gigs, while S3 +two ep's and loft stuff's pack are 12gigs.  Sad. 
  But in another week or month, I may find something I really like about the S3.  Who knows, atleast i've another way to kill time while thinking of how my new restaurant will be themed for S2. lol. Gotta look on the brighter side of playing it, or not. :rolleyes:  Cheers  2coffee

What urks me most about game developers in general, not just EA, is with the new era of internet connectivity in games, be they PC or console, and the invent of add-on content, developers have become lazy and inclined to release buggy, craptastic games with the notion of "we'll fix the glitches with a patch later on". What ever happen to releasing a complete, bug free, beta tested game that requires no patching? Don't answer that, I already know. The all mighty dollar. Back in the late 90's when the gaming industry was still growing, there wasn't the pressure of releasing big time, blockbuster games. Developers had the time to iron out the kinks in a game because there wasn't any pressure to bring it to market. But once gaming reached the level when it became a medium of entertainment on par with movies and TV, it all went to hell. In the case of The Sims series, it was a matter of progression. TS1 was a ground breaking piece of gaming history. A game about living a normal life through a virtual avatar. There were "God Games" before it like Sim City and Sim Earth long before it, but never something that emulated day to day life of a living "person". TS2 improved upon that formula tendfold, ramping things up 10 levels and adding to the experience even more. Granted, there were technical issues the game had. But those issues where fixed either by Maxis or the community itself. In this day and age, you can tailor make your TS2 experience to whatever you want using the various mods available (Some harder to find the others, but if you want it, you can find it). That's the core reason why now more then a year after TS3's release, and over 6 years after the TS2 base game was released, it still endures.

Now we take into account what TS3 brought to the table. Not much. In fact, for most long time Sims players (Those of us who have played the previous two versions, and even the console versions) it offers little if anything in the vein of innovation. As was stated by a number of people in this very thread, many of the new "game changing features" TS3 has could have easily been incorporated into TS2. By every account, and I say this being someone who actually works in the Video Gaming industry, TS3 is a failure. Once a publisher starts pitching ideas in any way for a sequel of a game, and the IP (Intellectual Property) is just barely in market for long, it either means it was a complete success, or an utter bust. TS3 was the later. And there's no denying it. EA will use their bottomless pockets and endless PR campaigns to deny that fact, but I'll use one prime example to prove my point. How many TS3 ads have you seen since Ambition's release?

Need I say more.

Rockstar Games is advertising the CRAP out of Red Dead Redemption, easily the best game they've ever released. It's even surpassing their franchise Grand Theft Auto. Hell, here in NYC, there's a billboard in Times Square advertising it. When a game is doing well, you market it until it hurts. I've flipped through channels like NatGeo and The Food Network and seen RDR commercials. Whereas for a game like TS3, I saw a few youtube adds the week the base game, World Adventures and Ambitions came out, and TV spots for the base game alone when it released. And nothing since. Why you ask? Because from a business stance, it makes no sense advertising something that ISN'T SELLING. But you'll never hear it on any of the so called "major" review sites like IGN, 1up.com or Gamespot, because they get revenue from advertising games as well as reviewing them, and there's a reason why EA is nicknamed "The Evil Empire".

It all came down to dollar signs. EA bought out Maxis. They bought the rights of The Sims franchise from Will Wright, and decided to hand it to a development house that to this day has only worked on RACING GAMES, and not even particularly good ones. End result? One of their most lucrative and storied franchises has fallen to the wayside, and most likely will never recover from it's pitfall. TS3 has the potential to still be a solid entry into the series, don't get me wrong. Problem is, by the time it is actually something a long time player of the series can stomach playing, no one will even care anymore. Add to that equation that the community continues to, and WILL continue to keep TS2 alive and well, and EA stands to take a huge shot to the chin, as if they haven't already. Biggest mistake I believe they made in all of this is entrusting The Sims IP to anyone aside from those who had a hand in it's creation. Was Maxis experts? Hell no. We all know what kind of complaints we had with how Maxis did things, or shall I say, how Maxis was made to do things because EA was in their ear. But at least Maxis had some insight on what the community at large wanted to see done. We used to pan Maxis back in the day, but in hindsight, they only did what EA told them to do. And in hindsight, they did pretty well by us in the long run. But once EA got their hands on The Sims IP all themselves, they opted to make it something other then what the community at large wanted, thinking we'd all flock to it and leave TS2 behind. And a lot of people did actually. But how many of them are now back to playing TS2 again? I'd have love to have been a fly on the wall at their annual marketing meetings. There was probably more chewing out then a Laffy Taffy convention. Hell, even at E3 this past week, the biggest gaming expo of the year, EA did more to promote EA MMA, their new Mixed Martial Arts game, Madden NFL 11, NCAA Football 11, Need For Speed: World and All Points Bulletin then they did TS3. The ship isn't just sinking, it's already capsized.

In addition, Sims 1 was a highly customizable game, compared to 2 and 3. I didn't play it much, and only discovered CC after sims 2 came out, which was after the sims 2 community had made great tools like SimPE and so on. But even Bodyshop was a plus, because you culd in fact customize things more or less exactly the way you wanted it. With meshing knowledge, you could get things the way you wanted it.

Now with Sims 3... granted - you do feel free at first, with all the patterns and recoloring actually inside the game. But having to re-learn everything, even re-learn new methods of recoloring... It's not very tempting, for me at least.
And strangely enough, I find myself missing Bodyshop when I play sims 3. There I could place all those tiny little details, and feel I was in total control over an outfit or a skin.

It's a bit like comparing Photoshop to Illustrator, as drawing programmes. I'm not the best with either of them, but I do feel PS gives me a lot more artistic freedom. Illustrator usually gives it all a stiff and illustrated look. Both can be nice, in their own way, but I'm more confortable with PS. Guess which of them is the ultimate pattern programme...

Honestly, I don't really miss patterns and color wheels and the like while playing my highly customized Sims 2 game. The clothes looks more real, and I get all those little details that sims 3 can't really provide. In fact, with only a default skin, default eyes and default eyebrows as the only bodyshop content, I'm perfectly happy with the way my sims look. My test sims look so cute that I can't bear to kill them off for real... Also, the clothes I've made don't disappear, like they do in Sims 3. They are in fact there (probably a bug in my game, but so far I've not figured out how to fix it). My sims can have hundreds of outfits to change between. And they actually keep them all. They don't just have three out of each outfit in their closets. They've got hundreds.

A skin made for sims 2 makes wonders out of the original skin. The result is a sim who isn't even recognizable as a sim sometimes. They look almost real. And that is easily done without even needing a custom tool (besides a drawing programme).
The problem with CC for sims3, is that no matter how good you make it, they still have the pudding faces. Nothing you can do about it... I've seen like ten sims 3 sims altogether which I thought could be classified as "pretty". So far I've seen maybe one or two toddlers who were "cute". Several of those wore a buttload of CC. Which didn't really help much... You can't make diamonds out of clay, no matter which tools you have...
When a lot of the sims 2 sims I've seen are promptly classified as "gorgeous", or even "perfect", and 90% of the toddlers gain an "awwwww", then that does say something... I've even "awwwww"-ed a few maxis only sims... Babies in sims 2 are so cute that I sometimes refuse to grow them up. You can even do more with them...

Dropping in CC in sim 2 is just a matter of a quick check if it is compatible with my EPs, while clothing or hair with custom meshes don't even need checking. It's just drop it in the Downloads folder, and try not to go too berserk...

I find myself smiling when I see sims go in and out of their cars, and if I do want to play with community lots, at least they are playable and interactive!

Animations... being an animation student, I've started to learn what is good and bad animation by now, and there are a lot of things bugging me about the animation in sims 3, compared to sims 2. When animations are a bit too out of the way in Sims 2, I just smile or even laugh. When animations go weird in S3, I just find it freaky. Maybe because most of the animation or morphing goes wrong with their faces, and it just looks strange. They look scary, and I think "I wouldn't like to meet you in an alleyway alone in the dark..."
Most of the animation is recycled from sims 2 anyway. The new animation they put in could have been made tons better.

They did manage to take away some annoyances, like the fact that my sims rarely stop up to wave their arms because they can't get past something, or the fact that you have more slots to play around with.  
Then again, they regained even more annoyances. Rabbit holes, anyone? Pudding faces? Toddlers looking like creepy midget adults with squashed faces? Babies looking like miniature squashed midget adults? Those are things that can't even be fixed. Not easily, anyway.

We thought we would gain more control with Sims 3 (ingame at least), but we really didn't. Maybe that's one of the main reasons why people end up going back to sims 2...

Money rules the world. Which isn't exactly a new thing... It's just clearer now when technology barely make it to production before it's supposed to be ready. Preferrably last month. People are screaming for new games, new toys all the time, and even if companies would want to test things properly, they wouldn't have the time to do so. The only games and new gadgets that gets some more testing than others, are the gadgets and games people haven't even heard of yet... When a "two" or "three" comes out, you can forget about testing.

Next to money, mobs rule the world.

I think that game was always doomed to flop.
It was launched when the securom scandal was at its peak and EA were badly on the nose.
That silly pre-release (pirate) and the overwhelming negative feedback it got plus the bad press their EULA and store got from the gaming community should have been enough to convince even the most mediocre executive that they had a potential lemon on their hands and to continue with it in its present form will only result in throwing good money after bad.
Allowing themselves to be convinced by Rod Humble that he was going to be the next Will Wright and lead EA to new heights of wealth and fame with that childish imitation of what once was a good game tells me that the senior executives of EA were either heavily involved in something else (probably that securom stroke of genius) or all on the booze for a few years.
So where now? EP after EP? Wash their hands of the thing and let it die a natural death? Or get a new design team in and start again?

unfortunately, this is looking more likely than hiring a new design team

Something to remember is that the sims 2 was created almost exclusively by EA, they had bought maxis lock stock and barrel before the sims2 was released.  The still kept the maxis logo though, google for EA buys maxis.  You will find a wiki with all the info. 

Back to the original topic, its been many months since that conversation I had and it looks like the guy I talked with was sort of on track, there is more CAS customization continually coming out.  Some of the things recently introduced have been CAW and tats and other stuff.  It is probably going to take at least another full year (Fall 2011) before we really start to see a "clean game".  What I mean by that is a game that works how its supposed to work, without a zillion bugs.  It was the same way with the sims1 and 2 .. with sims 2 it was not until around EP4 that we started to see the kinks ironing out.  I have not played in a while but might fire up a new game after the mods have been updated to work with the newest patch... just to see what sorts of game changes there have been.  Also I am quite surprised at how many replies this thread has received and that it is still a hot topic!

 1sw2

Well, it's going to take a lot longer than next year to fix all the bugs-for every patch they put out, a dozen new bugs pop up. There's a continual stream of complaints and comments on those from the official forum, plus the usual "I can't get my game to start, run or stay running" from players.
You'd think by now the bugs would be sort of dying down-instead, they're intensifying and players are really starting to get annoyed and angry at the amount of screwiness involved in even running the game.
Having to uninstall and reinstall the entire game with every EP and patch is pretty lame, if you ask me. Add the fact that the advice from EA on how to fix the patches is not even close to helpful-"list out your DxDiag, and we'll get back to you soonest." is not a good way to keep players coming back.

That's weird. If it was EA all along why did they change the good things about Sims 2 like the ability to play more than one family at a time and the camera? I know they're most likely lazy but if they made 2, they already knew how to do the camera and to make it so you can easily play more than one family so it wouldn't really require any effort. maybe I'm wrong..I'm not a computer guru but these are my thoughts.

What happened was that EA went through some (and actually is still going through) some financial downsizing, and laid off the studio that worked on the Sims 2.
They then hired a whole new studio to develop Sims 3. Different studio, different way of looking at the Sims series. They also replaced a few corporate suits at the top to head the production-Rod Humble was put in charge of the development team-he used to work for another company that made RPG games.
Enough said. You know now what happened to the franchise.

Yeah, it got flushed right down the crapper with the rest of the steaming fecal matter, where it belongs.

RPG games? That explains why the game is so restrictive. :D

It would actually be really nice if they did work on those pudding faces and actually make the game less restricted, but I wouldn't hold my breath.

Well they finally added breast sliders haha.  Thats a start!

I would say we are looking at early 2012 before we see a game that is "better" than the sims2. 
Suffice to say that the "T" for teen label is basically a death sentence for almost any PC game for the last few years.  The bulk of successful games are rated M.   1rock

Speaking total hearsay (ESL - "hearsay" first), did I imagine or is there a rumor going around about a Sims 4? Should I get my hopes up? Is this spam? Am I in the wrong thread? I haven't been around much lately. So I apologize in advance for any faux pas.

Sims4 right now? Are you all crazy? I was one that warned that it was too soon for Sims3, anyway who cares? I don't know how far the "future" is, I always lived at least 20 years ahead of my own time. Investing on whatever right now is a flop for both producers and consumers. We are (don't know how far) getting closer and closer to the new technology that will change the face of the electronic world. Soon, personal computers will be history, computers self will be museum object. I'm waiting for the technology I call "Transmission of Sensorial Impulses" (It's not invented yet, so probably it will be called differently) and this will place as "Dinossaur Age" all the present knowledgements. Companies are just slurving around because they probably know that no matter how they try to please their buyers, they are just investing on nothing, so nothing is important. Simmers are soooo worried about the puppets they got to play with. They are just that, liveless puppets struggling to mean something. No matter if you are a teen or 100 years old, use your brain to sniff a little the "future". Unfortunately human beings thing too slow (when they eventually Think!). Sorry, just venting out a bit.  ;D

If there if there is a Sims 4, it's at least 5 more EP's away from Sims 3 and it's going to take a lot more money to convince EA that they want to do it.
More like wishful thinking on the part of those who don't like their Sims 3 right now. I think EA will probably end up ending the series at 3 because they've just about worn out the entire premise.
They've done everything possible except fix the game.

I suspect the sim franchise's fate was sealed way back when Will Wright left.

Hi Nonni, I've not heard that particular rumor as yet. Another stuff pack comes out next week, but 4 might be too much to hope for at this point. Three still needs a lot of work from what we've seen so far.

At this point, anything you read about Sims 4 should be considered rumour, unless it comes directly from EA.

Yup, EAxis is pretty good about advance announcements (are they ever!, complete with sales pitch). I think Will Wright's departure is somewhagt like Sid Mieir's departure from developing at Fireaxis would be. However, the new programmers on the project will continue to gain experience and, hopefully, develop steady improvements to three. If so, it would be a good launching platform for a new version later.

Thanks for the input.

A friend of mine is a programmer and she says technology changes so fast there is no keeping up. My son is also a programmer but he doesn't develop for computers or PC and he absolutely and vehemently refuses to use any Microsoft product unless it is the only platform available for a project requested by his employer.

Sadly, I sometimes have to agree.

You are right, Joy. *sigh*

You always lift my spirits, James. (((hugs)))

Aww, why shucks, m'aam. Seriously, after 44 years of programming computers, I've learned to cut folks some slack. However, there is no excuse for releasing some of the code they do without adequate testing, particularly retro-testing to make sure the new stuff doesn't break the old. And yeah, I'm really, really old. I was there when they drew up the specs for dirt.

I think we may be from the same Triassic Period. lol

Actually, the long-awaited Sims Medieval (uses Sims 3 engine) is announced for release next month (I think). Try http://www.ea.com/the-sims-medieval and http://www.ea.com/news/get-medieval-with-new-series-from-the-sims-studio and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sims_Medieval . It has possibilities and appears to re-institute magic (wizards, witches, and such). Also knights and, apparently, combat. It bills itself as a whole new game, perhaps this is the source of the Sims 4 rumor?

I think the medieval theme is laughable.

So i should not install my Sims 3 Deluxe game??? Oh lord, i finally get it and it's crap...Or am i just in a daze? Oh well at least my new computer just installed my Sims 2 games, but geez...The Sims 3 Deluxe is looking mighty tempting beside me and i suck at fighting off temptation...She's evil...Oh well i'll do more investigating before installing said temptation and screaming then, at least i have my Sims 1 and 2 games running fine so i won't be bored....:P

Nah, go ahead and see if you can install it. If it installs, then have fun with it.