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I returned to sims 3, I don't think I can ever return to sims 4.
rhalius
Posts: 453 Member
While creation of houses and the visual aspects of sims has greatly improved in 4, actually playing sims is not fun at all in sims 4. All sims act the same, they don't do anything interesting on their own.
They have less traits and they have no real impact on their behaviour. Far less trait options too.
I've really missed sims actually taking initiative, making friends and enemies on their own, choosing their own partner. Not taking hours to eat a simple meal. No load screens. Body hair for men. More and better supernaturals. Much more things to do still, despite both games pretty much having an equal amount of expansions by now.
Sadly all sims 3 content is still rediculously overpriced, otherwise I'd get some stuff I didn't have before but it's not worth what they're asking for an old game. There's flaws too but still, sims 4 offered only a graphical update and better pathfinding. Everything else went backwards.
Pretty much all problems that sims 3 has where carried over to sims 4. Like sims having a build in phone but they don't seem to obsess as much over it in sims 3, seems more to do with their traits. Or obsessing over the computer.
But still, main thing I take away from it is that I made a group of eight sims to put through college. I gave them all varied personalities. And they mostly actually act like intended. In sims 4 no matter how you create your sim, they can only be a vapid hipster. Nothing else.
They have less traits and they have no real impact on their behaviour. Far less trait options too.
I've really missed sims actually taking initiative, making friends and enemies on their own, choosing their own partner. Not taking hours to eat a simple meal. No load screens. Body hair for men. More and better supernaturals. Much more things to do still, despite both games pretty much having an equal amount of expansions by now.
Sadly all sims 3 content is still rediculously overpriced, otherwise I'd get some stuff I didn't have before but it's not worth what they're asking for an old game. There's flaws too but still, sims 4 offered only a graphical update and better pathfinding. Everything else went backwards.
Pretty much all problems that sims 3 has where carried over to sims 4. Like sims having a build in phone but they don't seem to obsess as much over it in sims 3, seems more to do with their traits. Or obsessing over the computer.
But still, main thing I take away from it is that I made a group of eight sims to put through college. I gave them all varied personalities. And they mostly actually act like intended. In sims 4 no matter how you create your sim, they can only be a vapid hipster. Nothing else.
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About 3 price, go to instant gaming. I bought a few packs there. It's legit and you can put the codes in ea site and they're immediately available in origin. Packs are 3 to 7 euros. I bought 3 eps and payed something like 11 euros.
I adored TS3 - you can still find many of my forum posts on the 3 boards here. With all I had invested, it took last May's free base game giveaway for me to migrate to TS4.
So maybe I am still under the blush of novelty, with only a thousand some hours played over the past twelve months. But personally, I am not at all disappointed.
The pacing is a bit different. Strategy is a little different. I miss Create a Style. I love the Toddlers. But all in all, it's The Sims.
And while I occasionally revisit my TS3 saves, my oldest Sims pair translated beautifully, even without their initial Occult lifestates, and have had the big, bohemian, happy family in TS4 that I was never moved to give them in 3.
TS3 was a good title. I am glad forums, the TS3 Store, and mod studios like NRaas are still here. I'm glad you can still enjoy it. But that doesn't mean that players happy with 4 don't know what they are missing.
We just don't miss it as much as we thought we would.
I've been playing Sims 4 exclusively lately, not because I like it more (since I like it less), but because Sims 3 no longer will play nicely on my system. I have a fairly high end system that I built myself, but it's getting older, and I can no longer afford to upgrade any of the parts in it. When I run Sims 3 with all expansions and store stuff (and since I BOUGHT it all, I'm certainly not going to only use part of it!), after about 15-30 minutes it crashes. Since it also takes about 15 minutes to load a game (once you include loading the save file itself), and about 5 minutes to save a game, the fact that the game crashes so often is abominable.
Sims 4, otoh, takes maybe a minute to load, if that. Zoning only takes seconds, and compared to the loading of an entire game for Sims 3, that's nothing; to me, that's worth the bother of no longer having open worlds. (Even though I really DO miss open worlds.) I think I've had the game crash ONCE on me in the entire time I've been playing; Sims 3 crashes every single time I have ever played it. Sims 4 also only takes seconds to save; a huge difference on Sims 3. So the game is optimized much better than Sims 3 was, that's something in their favor.
They also really improved the programming of the internal database to the game, making it so that having lots of stuff in your Sims' inventories no longer causes the game to seriously lag. (Even though it is a pita, since you absolutely cannot sort it in any manner.) Overall their programming has improved... but the loss of Sims' personalities is really a detriment to the game.
They go on about how Sims in Sims 4 have "emotions"; no they don't, they have mood swings. Call it what it is, it's no more than that. Their emotions are too easy to control, just like the moodlet buffs in Sims 3. But at least in Sims 3, if you put your Sims on free will, if they had different traits they'd actually BEHAVE differently from one another. Not so in Sims 4.
I really think that if they could ever change that - which I doubt, since I think it's core to their code - it could be a much better game than Sims 3. But it is, as I said, too core to the game, and is likely not ever going to be changed.
The only kind of garden I can grow is a virtual one.
Dragons - must haz dragons!
Sims 3 is more like a RPG, the skills have quests , wishes/whims are fun, expansion packs are huge (but store items are atrociously expensive).
Overall sims 4 is a downgrade in terms of gameplay. But sims 3 is a piece of software junk which will only run on a super computer !
I'm new to simming, and I started with sims 4. I always heard about how much better sims 3 was and how much I was missing, so I bought the base game and a few expansion packs that I thought I'd enjoy. And ultimately it was a waste of money because I can't get even the base game to run. I don't want to have to go through miles of troubleshooting after I've spent hours downloading the base game and expansion packs just to play the game.
Sims 3 may have been fun, but it's also notorious for being laggy, buggy, and just plain not working.
I'll always be happier playing a game that I can actually play. Plus, I really like the appearance of the sims, something apparently a lot of others were upset by. I enjoy the easy building, the CAS, the simple but fun challenges. I've been playing for a year now, and I still have plenty of things that I've yet to do. I do agree that compared to what people were able to do in Sims 3 (especially Pets and Supernatural), Sims 4 can be shallow. But I never have lag, I've never had the game crash on me, and I can change my gosh-darn hot keys to what I'd like.
I guess the moral of the story is: Let's take Sims 4 graphics and playability, mash it with the depth and creativity of Sims 3, and have an awesome Sims 5.
It still runs even after all the mods and cc I have loaded. Nothing more I can say.
Sims 4 has the sims 2 kinda charm, but unfortunely it's shallow in the long run.
I love all sims games. But in a very different and seperate ways.
I hope sims 5 will bring back more personality and depht.
As far as Sims 3 packs, I was able to get a bunch of them on sale for $5 each over a year ago, so if you hold out for sales, you can eventually get them on the cheap. I think I bought some on Amazon for that price as well as on Origin. But Origin sales seem rare for Sims 3, (as far as I can tell, but I honestly don't look it up much) so searching elsewhere might be more beneficial. For the cost of one full-priced EP I was able to get many, so that was nice. I don't really play it, though.
But I have a new computer now, which was optimised to be able to run Warhammer 2 on highest graphics at optimal capacity. So for me personally, sims 3 runs very good. The initial load time for the game is a bit longer than sims 4, but I get to play a game there that gives happiness points for the selected household.
I have a few accesoires packs, all big expansions save for pets and island paradise, and a few sets and stuff from the store. Pretty much what the free points could get me.
That's also some additional enjoyment for me I suppose, being able to run sims 3 perfectly now while I couldn't before.
But still, as great as sims 4 looks visually and as optimised as it is, without quirky sims to occupy it, it's just a beautiful empty shell. It's fun to build houses and sims with it, but whenever I actually play it, it becomes appearant straight away that all sims have the same personality.
And to me a lot of the fun in sims 3 is making quirky unique sims though interesting trait combinations.
I know sims 3 has some meaningless traits too, mainly those that just help improve a specific skill faster, but some really have a big impact and truly gave your sim character and a lot of extra conversation and interaction options.
And since they get five traits, you can mix and match it nicely, always ensuring they have at least one trait that truly has impact.
They made Sims 4 too "nice". I guess they're trying to appease some parents' groups or something. Although leaving WooHoo in the game is going to make those parents' groups still denounce them, so I don't know what they think they've accomplished. Seriously, they take away the things that give the game oomph, but they add in emotional deaths? Say what? I hated those from the get-go; the first time I had a Sim die from being Hysterical (seriously, who but a 13 year old thinks someone can actually die from laughter or from embarrassment? Really?), I immediately went out and found a mod that eliminated that. Because no. Just no.
Don't think this means I'm all down on Sims 4, because I'm not. But I really don't understand some of their decisions. They want to make Sims 4 so charming and nice that a three year old can play it without worry, but then they add stuff in that's going to make that same three year old cry, anyway. I use a lot of mods, because they also add in annoyances in some of their patches, like suddenly making it so every Sim runs to the sink to drink water, constantly. Like, really. Sure, we need to hydrate in real life, but this is the SIMS! This is fantasy; they shouldn't need to drink ALL THE TIME, especially since that's a hidden motive that we're not even allowed to see! Stuff like that irritates the heck out of me, so mods. Lots of them. Can't play without them.
Unfortunately, no mods are going to help with the lack of personality in the sims themselves. That's a core game programming problem, and would take so much work to be changed that they're not going to do it. Particularly since changing it would probably break pretty much everything else in the game, particularly in expansion packs. So I have to agree with @SadBlueRaincoat that I really hope that they learn from this when they work on Sims 5. (Which I'm guessing they've already been working on it for a while, so I hope they READ this kind of feedback while such things can still be implemented!)
The only kind of garden I can grow is a virtual one.
Dragons - must haz dragons!
While the game is made to be suited for 12 year olds, it often feels like it was targeted for that to be the main audience. Most people who play this are adults, so I think they should aim for that while not making it too unsuitable for teens, they could play it if they want but should not be catered to as the main audience.
Not having individualism would only hurt teens anyways, when all sims act the same and lack personal identity. Bad example.
But instead they removed lots of traits, made them affect less things and also gave sims less traits in total.
They could have really expanded on it by giving unique things to create or such with the various crafting things.
Like a genius sim should be able to craft at least one invention that no other sim can! Something useful.
But other traits could also allow a unique invention to be made, maybe less usefull but appropriate for the trait.
Like a couch potato inventing the ultimate lazy chair that comes with a build in cooling compartment to pull drinks from.
Or an evil sim building some sort of doomsday device.
And with painting and sculpting traits could affect what they create. Flirty sims might paint sexy people and create sexy statues, a fantasy geek could create paintings and statues of wizards, elves, dragons and such.
And if all paintings and sculptures in the game have multible relevant categories assigned to them like that, sims could actually get a specific taste and might dislike what you buy them.
Like a never nude sim might blush and act offended when seeing a scantily clad statue in a provocative pose, while a flirty sim could love it.
Also could affect careers a bit more.. like evil or mean spirited sims being able to do more corrupt stuff at any job, kleptomaniac sims swiping different things at work depending on their job, musically talented sims having a much easier time to pursue music careers, hydrophobic sims being unable to accept a lifeguard job and similary other jobs that would be hell for a specific trait could be unavailable or would make that sim feel extremely miserable if forced to do that.
Like making a couch potato an athlete or giving a cowardly sim the secret agent job.
My sims do mean and mischievous interactions autonomously with other sims to the point it ends up effecting their relationships. I actually find it a bit annoying sometimes when I've spent time and effort building their relationships. It's possible that the "Have some Personality Please" mod has an effect on this for me though. Do sims not do these things without the mod? I can't remember.
I just wish they would reopen the store again and release some new packs or items.
They should have kept going with sims 3 instead of rushing into sims 4.
the store is still working and there are daily deals.
i'll have to check that mod. Sounds cool. That's one of the things lacking in my game.