For me, The Sims 2 always feels more open-ended, because of the possibility to lock wants/fears and fulfill/realize those wants/fears. If you consistently realize those fears, then you can send your Sim to the Therapist pretty often, creating the illusion that your Sim has to combat aspiration failure / mental illness for a very long time. This is great for a sadistic type of player who likes to watch Sims go through life and watch them fail at their tasks.
The Sims 3 allows Sims to have fears, but those fears cannot be realized anymore. Instead, Sims may get negative moodlets, telling the player if he/she is afraid of something (i.e. the dark). Coward Sims are afraid of the dark and probably other things. The Sims 3 playstyle is more focused on fulfilling those promised wishes and earning LifeTime Happiness Points/Rewards.
I can see why a The Sims 2 player may not like The Sims 3. TS3 may feel less open-ended, because everything is all positive and towards some kind of goal. You get wishes, promise those wishes, earn LifeTime Happiness Points and buy Rewards with those points. Torturing Sims is harder, because Sims are smarter and can get out of the pool without a ladder, so Skip Broke in TS3 will probably not have that "pool ladder accident". There is no aspiration failure, so no need of a Therapist. And, Insane Sims will just be Sims with the Insane trait. With that said, I can also see why TS3 fans may not like TS2, because TS2's goals are too easy to fulfill. In The Sims 3, the LifeTime Wish and LifeTime Rewards are rather challenging and time-consuming, and the rewards are plentiful. Meanwhile in the Sims 2, the highest aspiration reward is the Elixir of Life, and even that can fail depending on the Sim's aspiration level upon use.
What kind of Simmer are you?
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Cindy @ PleasantSims is a big The Sims 2 player, though she mainly plays Pleasantview and her own custom neighborhoods and The Sims 3 Pleasantview, then loves to complain about The Sims 4 for not having TS2-like gameplay. She plays by the wants most of the time.
In my own gameplay, playing by wants feels too easy for me, because the wants are easy to fulfill and the aspiration rewards are relatively cheap compared to TS3's locked rewards. I usually make TS2 game more challenging/fun to play by focusing on wants (sometimes even fears) and LifeTime Wants and Careers, and while doing so, I take advantage of all the aspiration rewards and career rewards to help my Sims fulfill their goals. TS2 also adds the additional challenge of needs/motives maintenance. Sims have relatively low autonomy compared to TS3, so I really have to micromanage to make sure that everyone's needs are up so they can perform the activities.
Personally, I think TS2 and TS3 are both quite challenging games in their own unique ways, and TS4 misses the mark. However, I can definitely see why some TS4 fans really love TS4. They just want to do their own thing or play house.
In Sims 3, things aren't always positive - there are a lot of "negative" traits as well and such a diversity of positive and negative traits makes the population fun and interesting as they interact with each other! Also, sometimes I like playing a sim I created with randomized traits and characteristics and working towards changing some of them for that playthrough. So with that said, sims aren't necessarily stuck with that trait. For example, I had an evil demon sim (actually a fairy, but she had dragon wings instead of the standard fairy ones), but several things happened: she was an assassin for the mafia and one of her missions was to kill her best friend who betrayed The Family. She accomplished her mission, but she was actually quite devastated by her death - she cried so much, which surprised me! She also fell in love with an angel (fairy actually, with angel wings instead of the standard fairy ones) who worked as a doctor at the town hospital. Needless to say, she was tired of all the death and dealings of her trade and wanted to change her ways. She got married to the angel and they had a daughter who had her beautiful cyan eyes, but had her father's blond hair, angel wings, and good trait! And she retired from the mafia and set to work to save lifetime reward points to change her evil trait to good and her dragon wings to angel wings (Queen of the Fae lifetime reward).
There are also negative events that can occur - a sim could still die drowning whether there is a pool ladder or not, or catch fire somehow or get struck by lightning, etc. and the remaining sims have to deal with the emotional impact of that or not, choosing to revive them or not, etc. Right now, I'm testing out having one active sim with 7 room-mate NPCs. It's great because so much happens, but I've discovered that sometimes it will present the crisis of a room-mate dying in some way (part of story progression). And when that happens, an opportunity to fulfill a wish to revive that room-mate can occur of which there are several ways to do that. So that in itself will give you several choices in gameplay and the paths that you take in your sim's story to accomplish that.
I've played Sims 2 and I did love it at the time it was in production, but I honestly got annoyed with my sims having emotional and mental break-downs which got in the way of all the things I wanted for them to do. I think that's why the devs for Sims 3 didn't put that feature back in for Sims 3 because it just interrupted the flow of the gameplay too much. Having different negatives dealt in varied different ways as they are in Sims 3 instead of being all dealt with by a therapist such as in Sims 2 is a lot more interesting and fun and actually a lot more open-ended.
That is not what I meant by "negative" and "positive".
I meant the all-positive scoring system in The Sims 3.
In The Sims 3, Sims can only earn points towards their LifeTime Happiness. Everything is added up.
In The Sims 2, Sims can earn points towards their Aspiration or lose points from their Aspiration. Everything can be added or subtracted.
I would not call myself a sadistic player. Ultimately, I like giving my Sims fulfilling lives that are marked by some level of happiness, but I like that the game works against me in some ways as I work towards that goal. Without the pushback from the game, I get kind of bored with the ease of it all unless I start making up challenges myself.
Eh? Sims can lose skills if they don't work on the corresponding activity? I think this is actually a mod function.
In the Sims 2 game, my Sims only lose skills if they have gone through a job demotion or a random chance card or one of the aspiration rewards. I think if a Sim uses the Thinking Cap with less-than-ideal aspiration level, then that Sim will lose a Skill Point?
Anyway, I don't remember losing a skill based on time alone.
Hmmm maybe that’s what I’m thinking of then. I just remember there being Skill lose in my gameplay, but I also don’t play with mods.
ETA: I went looking this up because I don’t know why my brain would create this memory, and you’re right there is a mod for skill lose via time. But again I never played with mods but somehow it feels like a fever dream lol. Maybe I did watch someone with mods play this once or something.
Anyways there’s still like four other ways to lose skills rather than time which still makes Skill more dynamic.
As for the actual games I vastly prefer Sims 2 and 4 over Sims 3, because they are easier for rotational play. Travel times, the handling of inventories and careers even with story progression off, curfew and the erratic aging of currently unplayed households are red flags for me.
Haha... I am just the opposite. I much prefer Sims 3 over Sims 2, even though I have actually played the Sims 2 the longest. The Sims 3 just has a lot of things to explore and is focused on achievements and goals. I actually like the travel times and curfew hours, because they make the game realistic. I think if a kid is outside too late, and there is no grownup around him/her, then he/she will get into trouble with the curfew police. However, if the kid has a grownup nearby, then that's okay? I mean, that's what the notifications imply. They imply that the child/Teen Sim should either go home or get a chaperone. I usually play with one household per save file, but I make the Sunset Valley families and the Riverview families the exception to the rule, because I want to play with all the better-known families in the save file. When I make my Sunset Valley rotation, I may start with the Landgraabs, then move onto the Langeraks, then the Bachelors, then the Goths and finally the Crumplebottoms. In Riverview, I start with the Brokes, then move onto the Simovitches, then the Newbies and finally the Lotharios. I do what must be done to get the Sims ready for The Sims 1 world made for The Sims 3 and continue the storyline. Some families will directly move to The Sims 3 Pleasantview (created by PleasantSims).
In the end I feel I'm better off with setting my own boundaries, like letting the teens sneak out and only have them get into trouble if they walk into line of sight of an actual sim of whom I know that they are a cop. It's more relaxing this way.
Sims 3 with a single household of one or more adults is more enjoyable for me, but single household is just not my favored playstyle. Tired of waiting for horses to come to Sims 4 I got Pets during the 2019 Steam sale and absolutely loved playing my horse ranch. The birds are amazing and the little ice cream truck is such a nice touch, I wouldn't mind getting it back.
I also feel like S2 is a more family-oriented game while S3 is more about creativity with its major improvements in customization both in CAS and build mode but with a clear focus on YA life stage. It got more traits but I also like S2's personality points even though you we only had to choose 25. S3 gave us houseboats and swimming in the ocean/underwater, creating our own supernaturals (vampires in S2 are disappointing but at least the occult is easy to avoid in this game).
Overall, I'll say S3 was a major improvement in some areas with new gameplay features that I want in future Sims game. S2 has a lot of details that I love but I feel is more restrictive creatively and for children/toddler life stages. I still love both games but for different reasons.
I personally like the wants/fears and aspiration meter system, since they make my sims feel like little pets as opposed to dolls... which is creepy in retrospect but I have the most fun with it lmao
If I want a real challenge I will go back to sims one though because that game used to make me laugh so hard and pull my hair out at the same time. hahaha!