The Sims 3 buzz/gossip/rumours

[fatimatillah]

To Mr. Beos: Thanks for answering! I tried to read your blog though... And my older brother almost caught me... (I'm EXTREMELY green-minded, so, its okay for me to read something that could only be read by "adults"... ) Well, anyway, your answer just proved me right. EA was just expanding their collections, of compilations, of columns, of shelves, of warehouses of EPs. And the mods & CCs were illegal, right? Now I'm thinking "So, why didn't they ban all of the sites that had CCs/mods?" (not that I'm saying that they should ) Maybe, they have already figured out that the CCs and mods were the ones that were making them lots of money. And they're not gonna allow CCs and mods because (just an opinion) they're gonna steal the ideas of these past CCs put these ideas into their "going to be" EPs. Well, whatever I'm saying, its just my own opinion. Its not precise in the very least. I don't have supporting details... So, I need to contact EA and pretend that I'm EXTREMELY interested in TS3. How do I contact EA?

To YANFRForm: You can always answer without your answer being wrong because its just an opinion. (I'm not pressuring you to answer, just saying...)

[YANFRForm]

To YANFRForm: You can always answer without your answer being wrong because its just an opinion. (I'm not pressuring you to answer, just saying...)

I appreciate the thought!  However, I try to respond only with accurate information because I'm trying to be part of the solution, not part of the problem!  

[maniac19642003]

Spanish fansite Sims en sumolari.com posted an English translation from the official Spanish Sims magazine. The article has several little new details like leaves moving by the wind, avoiding the cars and enjoy beautiful sunsets.
Read the article here: Sims en sumolari.com

[SealJuice]

One thing I am waiting tio see is whther or not the clothing will be multi-layered instead of one layer. I am expecting it will be and it is not hard to do. I should be able to wear t shirt and then put a jacket on when I want to go outside.

[SealJuice]

BeosBoxBoy,

I worked at EA.com for a year on TSO and three years at EA on mostly unrelated projects. My sources will not talk either. I know that EA reads email and monitors even IM's like some Big Brother.

I tried to get on the Maxis team and they dangled a carrot to work on Societies if I would stick it out in customer service for 9 months, but I was a qualified producer and left for a real job. Theoretically, I might have wanted my hands on the animation tools, but that's just a theory.

My opinion of Maxis is that most real decisions are made by arrogant jackasses who have neve played the game at any length, never visited fan sites and read the boards, and they think they know everything. The Sims is no different than Pepsi to them. So whenever they do something right, I am pleasantly surprised, but I don't expect it. Even the lower level Maxis employees and producers are thought of as arrogant know-it-alls who never listen to anyone and EA definitely coddles them as their elite team. Most of the talent that gave us a good game in the first place is long long gone. Some of them have been on Spore for years.

Oh and TSO, remember that? EA expected a quick million subscribers back when that was a LOT of people. TSO was THE most anticipated project in 2001. It tanked hard. Why? Because they pulled the custom content features. (There are still 30,000 people playing TSO and a staff of 1 guy and I think he is part time. Suckers.) TSO was pretty much the final nail in the coffin for the EA.com business unit.

Well that's all I got. I think we have TS2 cc to a point where we can enjoy it for years to come, so let's be satisfied with that.

[summersong86]

Wow, thanks to everyone especially BeosBoxBoy who contributed information and links to this thread.  

My overall impression walking away from what I gleaned from this thread is that the Sims3 is quite a rehash of a lot of elements that already exist in the various Sims console games or via hacks and cheat codes.  Even the whole thing about making fat or thin body shapes--I had a console version of Sims2 for X-box and well, it's been a long time since I played it, as I recall you could do a fat or thin morph and choose to shape legs and arms separately via sliders.  Wa frickin hoo.  I found the actual gameplay itself to be so beastly tedious without cheats or hacks that I soon couldn't give a darn if my character could morph into a perfect miniature of a real person==I wasn't going to waste any more precious minutes of my life endlessly picking up after sloppy roommates when I had to do that in real life anyway.  

And frankly, I don't want my sim to sit there and try to figure out how to make a quiche.  I can't even bring myself to do that in real life.   We have a joke in our family...every time the doorbell rings we say "dinner is served."  Again, as I recall, my console based Simmie made meals in a way similar to what is being promoted in Sims3.  I remember (the sim) having to learn recipes and deciding what went into the meal.  Like choose two meat icons and one veg to make a stew or something like that.  Hardly groundbreaking or exciting.  

I play the game basically to try out different personality types and living lives I'd never want to live out in real life.  I enjoy sending the Sims out to meet people and have social interactions....but not water balloon fights or pillow fights--well, maybe once in a decade...but every five minutes?  Get real...literally!  

Fortunately, if I don't want to attend to tedious needs fulfillment, I can use the cheat code to max everything and make a night on the town last as long as I want.  So...again, Sims3 isn't bringing anything really groundbreaking to the table in that regard...instead--it sounds like more control over the sim is being taken away from, not added to, the user experience

The Sims3 built in "modding tools" don't sound like a boon to me...more like one of those retractable leashes some people put on dogs to make the dog think--oh boy oh boy oh boy I'm running free...when at any time at a click of the switch the dog can find out exactly how not free it really is.  

Sure on the surface it sounds cool that even the most novice of novices can at long last feel the happy surge of power that comes from making a sim look exactly like Paris Hilton, to be set out into a pool for the ladder to be mysteriously removed later.  But...the flipside... simplifying the tools so everyone can use them, while it sounds upbeat and all-inclusive, is going to hamstring the more able modders who are able to do so much more than any novice could hope to even envision.  I mean part of the fun of Sims is to look at what people have learned to do and think "Oh my gosh, I didn't think a Sim or item could turn out so cool!"  Or "wow..he hacked THAT to do WHAT"  Me personally...I can edit skintones and some alphas and that's about it.  So I'm not affected at all by Sims3 changes.  But I'm going to be really ticked if my favorite meshers and object makers and modders find all they can give us are slight variation on the Maxis stuff instead their own unique style & skill we've gotten spoiled on.  Drag and drop just sounds ominous to me.  

What I'd rather see is a far smoother way to integrate the creating tools--be it something akin to BodyShop or whatever 3-D tools the mesh/object creators use...into a testing or preview environment that better displays your content the way you would actually see it in the game.  I think anyone who has ever proudly imported what they thought was their final draft of a project into the game only to see some hideous problems reveal themselves will agree with me on that.  

Honestly, all I want out of Simming is to take the beauty we can have access to now in Sims2, iron out all the freakish bugs and have the option to bypass glaringly immature and unrealistic behavior out of the social interactions that currently require hacks and mods to remove...that would be so excellent.  

I guess what I'm saying is that what I want out of Simming, you all have already given me.  Now I just want EA to do their part and make it all work together consistently, reliably, and without making people knock themselves out to ensure everything works with every conceivable combination of base game and ep.

p.s....the Sims3 sims remind me a little bit of bobble-heads for some reason.

[Sam the T-man]

Before anyone else freaks out over lack of CC, I've been browsing one of the links posted on here, and found this:

The customization process is again the easiest of all Sims Games in the line. You can import your textures directly into the game and recolor your furniture or clothing. Of course for the professional creators re-meshing option is still open.

There's also this part of the FAQ:

Q: I was expecting better from The Sims 3. Sims look worser than The Sims 2.

A: Are you sure? Not actually. The Sims 2 is out for a long time and many talented people contributed to the game by their realistic and high quality custom content. Therefore The Sims 2 world is now very rich and colorful. If you compare the base games you will see The Sims 3 is superior. Considering many will create content for The Sims 3 too, it will be much better than The Sims 2 in a few years.

In fact they'd be immensely stupid to do away with the CC idea. That's what keeps the game popular, and even a guest lecturer from Rare said part of a certain game's success was the availability of CC. The Movies flunked after they banned any kind of modding for it.

I'm a little disappointed that they only allow three traits you can apply to a sim (personally, I could apply at least five to my self sim alone ), and am a little iffy about things like the integrated neighbourhood, but others - like moods, work, needing ingredients to cook with (just like IRL) - are looking very appealing. Of course, what I'm really looking forward to is re-creating the Strangetown families and my self sim, but that's by the by...

[kevida97]

Hmm sounds interesting! Of course I have said before that maybe we're getting ladders in our tights over nothing! I guess I am one of those rare people that see both sides of an argument so I am holding my judgement until TS3 comes out. I would, however, like to see another EP, after Apartment Life, come out. An April Fools joke from EA mentioned a "Country Life" EP. Yes it was a joke but it would be a good idea! A remake of Superstar and/or Makin' Magic would be good too! Oh well, I am just  a lunatic so what do I know?

[chaoticgood]

I think an excellent way to get back at EAxis for blocking out CC creators, that is if they do, would be to just continue playing the Sims 2 and creating CC for it. Why should all the creativity and talent just be squashed? Doesn't EA realize:

We've built an empire with this game. Why should we let something like this tear it down?

[maniac19642003]

Earthtimes.org posted a small article on Sims 3 containing a few quotes from Nancy Smith and Ben Bell. The article doesn't give much new info, but it's a nice read.
Check the article here: Earthtimes.org article

[Deeney]

I wasn't at first interested in sims 3, but the info that's just been put here has tweaked my interest, whether I would buy it depends on one important thing money, not for the game, for a new computer, my computer can't even handle sim societies and I have a decent computer. And computers here is Aussie land aren't cheap.

[kacidama]

I was told by a guy I know at EA UK that the custom meshes -- if they decide to allow them -- will be made entirely with EA provided software (like 2nd Life) and be hosted only on the Exchange (like 2nd Life) - with EA's hall-monitors of American morality deciding what is and is not acceptable -

I don't like the people who make decisions at EA, and frankly, I can see their hands all over TS3.  I have the utmost confidence in my friend at EA UK, and he said without a moment's hesitation, most of us will hate TS3. In their effort to make the game "fresh" they are moving farther from the core of play most of us long-time players like.  TS3 promises to be a game that some people will enjoy, but my mate said us long-time players will be sorely disappointed.

This is precisely why I won't be getting Sims3.  From what I have seen so far it looks like a sims2/2nd Life hybrid with the *appeal* of simstories
I made the mistake of getting simcity societies as we loved the SC series (and where would our custom 'hoods be without SC4?) and couldn't believe how *dumbed down* it was.  Sims3 seems to be in the same vein.

With the frequency the EPs and SPs have been issued, I don't feel I have got my money's worth of Sims2 yet - and there are certainly a lot of the last 4 or 5 that I haven't explored properly.


btw, beosboxboy, you say that

Thanks Maniac! I was pretty certain everyone knew that Free Time was the last EP, so I didn't mention that; but this seals it.

so what is AL?

[BeosBoxBoy]

kacidama - an expression of corporate prevarication and greed? but seriously, Rod Humble and other EA big-mouths said that Free Time was the last EP, but like kattenjin said in the AL discussion thread:

Heck, if you got a cow that's still giving milk, why kill it?

There are 10 EP slots in the base game - so it stands to reason that EA may have planned to use all 10 or equally likely the EA may have simply used 10 since it is a nice big number.  Only time will tell.

At the time of that post - the official statement from EA's mouth-pieces was Free Time was the last EP.  Rod Humble himself said:

Its not complicated, we are actually launching less skus (Stock Keeping Units) this year than last.

For the Sims 2 game there is no news apart from the wonderful Freetime (you can be a gamer in it for crying out loud, why do you hate gamers?). Thats it for the Sims 2 in terms of new stuff. For Sims 3 there will be new information soon.

This certainly gave everyone high and low the confirmation that FT was indeed the last EP.

[kevida97]

Anyone familiar with Wizards of the Coast (aka WotC) knows that even if something that's been said is "official", the next thing that happens is the opposite of the official news. For those of you who don't know who WotC is, they're the makers of the Dungeons and Dragons (D&D) Role-Playing Game. For the longest time WotC said that there would be no fourth edition of D&D. The very next month after the "official announcement" the WotC website announces "Fourth Edition Coming Soon". What's that got to do with the Sims franchise? It's just clarification that "official announcements" don't mean a thing!

[BeosBoxBoy]

lol ain't that the truth!  Kevida, I am familiar with Wizards of the Coast and their double speak, my house-mates groan constantly over them lol