It took awhile, but the wait was worth it. This is a massive patch for the game :P I might just give my Fallout 3 a break and install the Sims 3 again.
I do NOT want the families I have created, or controlled, "protected"!! I want them to go about their lives, in the LIVING NEIGHBORHOOD the game promised me!!! Once I send a created sim into the neighborhood to live, I want them to behave as an NPC sim! To me, this was a FEATURE to the game, not a drawback.
Agreed.
I like to raise a large family, have most move out, and keep control of a main character, all the while, watching how the rest of the family evolves out on their own. Now impossible, no?
Also, it seems pretty straight forward that some people might like to create and populate every house in the neighborhood with created npc's, and also watch them evolve, which is now also impossible?
Really crushes story progression in the other direction.
You need a fast patch that gives individual control to mark the households to include/exclude, but the patch seems to have upset as many people as the correction pleased.
Wow. Did you even read what SimGuruLyndsay said?
"Fixes to Story Progression. Babies will no longer be born to single parents. Player created or controlled households are now "protected" and will no longer be removed through "Story Progression." Warning: Story Progression will no longer remove previously player controlled Sims. Users who take control of too many Sims in the same game may experience poor performance as the neighborhood can become over populated."
This doesn't mean the protected user created families are cut off from story progression, it means they just can't be moved out the neighbourhood and deleted on their own. This upsetted many players, so it is in fact an improvement. Personally, I wouldn't like my own Sims to disappear without me knowing or deciding. That's why I downloaded the awesomemod before this patch to stop them. (Then again, this patch caused my game to crash after start-up so I can't even play, so it doesn't even matter to me just now).
Actually, it's you that didn't read it and it was in your own post. "Warning: Story Progression will no longer remove previously player controlled Sims." IE they never grow old and never die!! From everything I've seen hardly anyone want to have any family they ever played becoming immortal. So no, this is in fact not an improvement at all.
Actually, it's you that didn't read it and it was in your own post. "Warning: Story Progression will no longer remove previously player controlled Sims." IE they never grow old and never die!! From everything I've seen hardly anyone want to have any family they ever played becoming immortal. So no, this is in fact not an improvement at all.
When I read "Warning: Story Progression will no longer remove previously player controlled Sims", I just assumed that meant they weren't gonna be kicked out of town, not that they weren't gonna die
First of all... why do you all thank EA for trying to fix what should have been right when we bought the game in the first palce?! I wonder!?
Secondly, the patch, at least I think so, fixed only some minor problems and didn't touch the main issues.
The main issue would be the fix for the controvesial SP, which could be just giving us an OPTION how we want the game played.
Some want this some want that.... Some want the SP on, some want it off.EA,give us a choice, for crying out loud! It seems so simple, but maybe it's too difficult to carry out in practice? For such a Giant as YOU,EA?
As I once said they bit off more than they can chew with this revolution in the sims concept! Hence, all those glitches, bugs and problems.
Like the disappearing inventory+fridge content! In this way we are forced to play the only way thought out by the creators.
As for me I play with aging and SP off! For fear of somthing happening to my sims, which is a colossal step backwards compared to TS2.
Besides, what about that height silde which was promised; is it possible that they will do something about it? What do you all think?
Arrgh.
I only play one family and yesterday I copied my town and switched through all households to get to know who lives there.
Almost every family had a child, toddler or baby that had only one parent. Wasn't the patch suppose to fix that?
And all those kids must have been spawned after I installed the patch.
Now, not only do I have a billion bugs and glitches that came with the patch, the supposed fixed/improved issues are not working, either.
I so hate this update!
And I agree that the "fix" of story progression ruins my game, too. I play just my one family and kick most of the kids out or marry them out when they are young adults. Now my town is flooded with my own sims and my family members have a hard time finding spouses, because they are related to almost anybody.
Not that it matters to the game. The do not recognize their cousins, nephews, nieces, uncles and aunts anymore. That worked until a few days ago, now those relatives are only "acquaintances".
Did I mention I hate this update?!
And now EA comes out with an expansion pack without having the current issues fixed... *no words for that*
Sorry for the rant, but this really p***es me off.
Actually, it's you that didn't read it and it was in your own post. "Warning: Story Progression will no longer remove previously player controlled Sims." IE they never grow old and never die!! From everything I've seen hardly anyone want to have any family they ever played becoming immortal. So no, this is in fact not an improvement at all.
When I read "Warning: Story Progression will no longer remove previously player controlled Sims", I just assumed that meant they weren't gonna be kicked out of town, not that they weren't gonna die
That is what it means. I moved out one of my legacy family pre-patch, and he died after the patch. It did stop his (or any other residents') grave appearing, but that's a different issue.
I haven't installed indiemod because I have the fear of having any problems with it whilst I'm part-way through challenges, but I get the impression it pretty much does what we expected story progression to do - so if fans can make a patch that does that in a short space of time, why on earth couldn't EA have implemented that in the game?
This is crazy! So many assumptions are flying around ... and I remember what my mother taught me about assuming things!
Anyway, if I go into a neighborhood house, Agnes Crumplebottom for example, make a few changes - finish the unfinished room, change her clothes, etc., she then becomes a "player controlled sim" - correct? Then, with this patch, she will be protected from being removed through story progression - correct? I don't understand how aging and story progression can be seperate anyway ... if she grows old and dies with no kids, she should be "removed" from the neighborhood, but if she is "protected" - just what does that mean!?
Everyone has an opinion on what it means, but so far, I haven't seen anyone from EA try to clarify for us. Helloooooooo! I hate to say this, but I won't be rushing out to buy the expansion like I did for TS2. Not until I see some effort on the part of EA to clarify, rectify and placate - players are going crazy and it doesn't seem like they care. They have spent so much time and effort on hype for this game, they've forgotten to make sure they put out a quality product. I am beyond disappointed in EA - and also very happy that my game runs perfectly with no patches. It sucks to invest a fairly significant amount of money (esp. for a 1-income household with kids!) in a game and then be abandoned by the ones who made it ... can you say "take the money and run"!? It sure feels like that's what EA has done - and then to announce an expansion, in the middle of this uproar ... I just don't get it, I truly don't.
I worked in development for a while for a teeny software company for a nongame consumer product. I'm not a programmer and didn't know anything about development. One thing that I experienced that is relevant to this discussion is how fixing 1 thing can break something else. The program I worked on had only 2 programmers and was about 1/100th as complex as TS3. It definitely is disappointing that people are having problems. I hope that EA is working hard behind the scenes to fix things and just have not told us what's going on. I was on vacation and haven't had a lot of time to play since I got back. I wasn't able to get the program to get past the intro stuff until I moved all my Indie Stone stuff out of my program files and deleted all the cache files in My Documents. I also had a Peggy Zone hairstyle that I removed just to be safe that I'm going to try putting back in today. I did get the game to start up fine this time, haven't had time to play for long, so my problem may have just been an incompatability with Indie Stone.
I do NOT want the families I have created, or controlled, "protected"!! I want them to go about their lives, in the LIVING NEIGHBORHOOD the game promised me!!! Once I send a created sim into the neighborhood to live, I want them to behave as an NPC sim! To me, this was a FEATURE to the game, not a drawback.
Agreed.
I like to raise a large family, have most move out, and keep control of a main character, all the while, watching how the rest of the family evolves out on their own. Now impossible, no?
Also, it seems pretty straight forward that some people might like to create and populate every house in the neighborhood with created npc's, and also watch them evolve, which is now also impossible?
Really crushes story progression in the other direction.
You need a fast patch that gives individual control to mark the households to include/exclude, but the patch seems to have upset as many people as the correction pleased.
Wow. Did you even read what SimGuruLyndsay said?
"Fixes to Story Progression. Babies will no longer be born to single parents. Player created or controlled households are now "protected" and will no longer be removed through "Story Progression." Warning: Story Progression will no longer remove previously player controlled Sims. Users who take control of too many Sims in the same game may experience poor performance as the neighborhood can become over populated."
This doesn't mean the protected user created families are cut off from story progression, it means they just can't be moved out the neighbourhood and deleted on their own. This upsetted many players, so it is in fact an improvement. Personally, I wouldn't like my own Sims to disappear without me knowing or deciding. That's why I downloaded the awesomemod before this patch to stop them. (Then again, this patch caused my game to crash after start-up so I can't even play, so it doesn't even matter to me just now).
Actually, it's you that didn't read it and it was in your own post. "Warning: Story Progression will no longer remove previously player controlled Sims." IE they never grow old and never die!! From everything I've seen hardly anyone want to have any family they ever played becoming immortal. So no, this is in fact not an improvement at all.
Ok, sorry, but this is crap. My sims are still aging. My sims are still dying. EVEN THE ONES I PLAYED. I just had a sims grandfather pass away.
I think that Simguru Lindsay or however it's spelled should reword the first post. Player controlled sims are not going to be removed as in MOVING AWAY.
I do NOT want the families I have created, or controlled, "protected"!! I want them to go about their lives, in the LIVING NEIGHBORHOOD the game promised me!!! Once I send a created sim into the neighborhood to live, I want them to behave as an NPC sim! To me, this was a FEATURE to the game, not a drawback.
Agreed.
I like to raise a large family, have most move out, and keep control of a main character, all the while, watching how the rest of the family evolves out on their own. Now impossible, no?
Also, it seems pretty straight forward that some people might like to create and populate every house in the neighborhood with created npc's, and also watch them evolve, which is now also impossible?
Really crushes story progression in the other direction.
You need a fast patch that gives individual control to mark the households to include/exclude, but the patch seems to have upset as many people as the correction pleased.
Wow. Did you even read what SimGuruLyndsay said?
"Fixes to Story Progression. Babies will no longer be born to single parents. Player created or controlled households are now "protected" and will no longer be removed through "Story Progression." Warning: Story Progression will no longer remove previously player controlled Sims. Users who take control of too many Sims in the same game may experience poor performance as the neighborhood can become over populated."
This doesn't mean the protected user created families are cut off from story progression, it means they just can't be moved out the neighbourhood and deleted on their own. This upsetted many players, so it is in fact an improvement. Personally, I wouldn't like my own Sims to disappear without me knowing or deciding. That's why I downloaded the awesomemod before this patch to stop them. (Then again, this patch caused my game to crash after start-up so I can't even play, so it doesn't even matter to me just now).
Actually, it's you that didn't read it and it was in your own post. "Warning: Story Progression will no longer remove previously player controlled Sims." IE they never grow old and never die!! From everything I've seen hardly anyone want to have any family they ever played becoming immortal. So no, this is in fact not an improvement at all.
Ok, sorry, but this is crap. My sims are still aging. My sims are still dying. EVEN THE ONES I PLAYED. I just had a sims grandfather pass away.
I think that Simguru Lindsay or however it's spelled should reword the first post. Player controlled sims are not going to be removed as in MOVING AWAY.
If that was the case EA would not have:
"Users who take control of too many Sims in the same game may experience poor performance as the neighborhood can become over populated"
Not moving out of their home would NOT cause the neighborhood to be overpopulated, only not dying off would cause that.
What is "crap" is either 1) EA messed up in their posting of what this does, 2) they got it right and they don't die, or 3) they posted it right and have a bug causing them to not behave as EA intended.
Ok, sorry, but this is crap. My sims are still aging. My sims are still dying. EVEN THE ONES I PLAYED. I just had a sims grandfather pass away.
I think that Simguru Lindsay or however it's spelled should reword the first post. Player controlled sims are not going to be removed as in MOVING AWAY.
What I think is crap is that I no longer have a choice in the matter at all. What if I WANT my sims to be able to move away? What if I really don't want a neighborhood filled with relations? We all play the Sims differently, which is one of the draws for this game. EA however, is trying to make us all play it the same way - and THAT is definitely crap. Don't take away my fun and enjoyment because someone else wanted a different feature. Where are our CHOICES??? I don't want to be forced to play this game the way someone else does! I want it MY way - just like everyone else. I understand compromise and am more than willing to give a bit to make the game meet more people's wishes. It just feels like EA is not compromising right now. It's all or nothing and that is unacceptable.
What I think is crap is that I no longer have a choice in the matter at all. What if I WANT my sims to be able to move away? What if I really don't want a neighborhood filled with relations? We all play the Sims differently, which is one of the draws for this game. EA however, is trying to make us all play it the same way - and THAT is definitely crap. Don't take away my fun and enjoyment because someone else wanted a different feature. Where are our CHOICES??? I don't want to be forced to play this game the way someone else does! I want it MY way - just like everyone else. I understand compromise and am more than willing to give a bit to make the game meet more people's wishes. It just feels like EA is not compromising right now. It's all or nothing and that is unacceptable.
The patch has not taken away your choice of Sims moving away. The only difference is that it won't happen automatically anymore. For any previously played, "protected" Sims, you can always remove them yourself manually. And the patch does not affect untouched townies. The game can still move them around or evict them at random.
If you don't want everyone in town to be blood related, it is easily remedied. From Edit Town, you can split up households, or merge them just as you like: to keep the ones you want, get rid of the rest, or evict entire households as you see fit. Simply remove all those excess kids your first family had, if you want, whenever you want. You are never "stuck" forever with anyone.
According to SimGurus, with story progression on, other households will marry, and kids will still be born/spawned to non-controlled families that have two parents, so the neighborhood will still be growing new members with which to mix. With SP off, new births won't happen (unless someone was already pregnant--then the baby will be born). So if you're playing only one family with SP off, but aging on, yes, eventually you could have a dwindling population as the elders die off with no new births to replace them.
If you have aging off, pregnant mothers will still give birth, but the babies will never grow up. They will stay infants forever, unless you turn aging back on, or unless you play that household to age the baby up.
So aging and SP are different and have different effects. To get the best dynamic, the game recommends having both ON. With aging on, all Sims will still grow old and die, including previously player-controlled Sims. Even Agnes Crumplebottom. Even if you only played her for one day and switch to another house. Eventually, she will get old, die, and be gone from the neighborhood forever, provided you have aging on. Her house is then vacant for anyone new to move into. Since the patch, I have already had two elders from different families die of old age in "protected" houses I had played, so it is working. If for some reason that's not working properly in your game, you can always go back and play them again until they die, kill them off, or simply evict them from Edit Town. It's all up to you.
The patch has not taken away your choice of Sims moving away. The only difference is that it won't happen automatically anymore. For any previously played, "protected" Sims, you can always remove them yourself manually. And the patch does not affect untouched townies. The game can still move them around or evict them at random.
Well, I liked it much better before, because I do not want to delete my sims. It was so nice and realistic with sims moving away.
I am not going through my town and tell people where to live, with whom to live or if they rather should move away. And I do not like to do that with my sims.
I love moving them out and meet them every now and then. Some stay friends, some don't.
I still think EA should give us an option to choose how far we want to go with SP in our neighborhood.
As much as I hate that "patched" version, I have to say that I am lucky and that the patch did not do anything to my story progression so far. Everything is just as before... just much harder to play because of all the path finding, rendering and random pauses bugs.
And I have to agree with Uroica69. The lack of communication and clarification from EA at this stage is a slap in the face. I will not buy the expansion before these bugs aren't fixed. :x
Two of my three triplets got their teddies stuck for the first time ever after I installed the patch. One teddy randomly became unstuck but the other still isn't usuable lol. I just bought him a new teddy.
I have a problem since I installed the patch. My game crashes to the desktop randomly without any error messages. The game closes itself fo no reason. No lag, no choppyness no everything! What's wrong?
What I think is crap is that I no longer have a choice in the matter at all. What if I WANT my sims to be able to move away? What if I really don't want a neighborhood filled with relations? We all play the Sims differently, which is one of the draws for this game. EA however, is trying to make us all play it the same way - and THAT is definitely crap. Don't take away my fun and enjoyment because someone else wanted a different feature. Where are our CHOICES??? I don't want to be forced to play this game the way someone else does! I want it MY way - just like everyone else. I understand compromise and am more than willing to give a bit to make the game meet more people's wishes. It just feels like EA is not compromising right now. It's all or nothing and that is unacceptable.
The patch has not taken away your choice of Sims moving away. The only difference is that it won't happen automatically anymore. For any previously played, "protected" Sims, you can always remove them yourself manually. And the patch does not affect untouched townies. The game can still move them around or evict them at random.
If you don't want everyone in town to be blood related, it is easily remedied. From Edit Town, you can split up households, or merge them just as you like: to keep the ones you want, get rid of the rest, or evict entire households as you see fit. Simply remove all those excess kids your first family had, if you want, whenever you want. You are never "stuck" forever with anyone.
According to SimGurus, with story progression on, other households will marry, and kids will still be born/spawned to non-controlled families that have two parents, so the neighborhood will still be growing new members with which to mix. With SP off, new births won't happen (unless someone was already pregnant--then the baby will be born). So if you're playing only one family with SP off, but aging on, yes, eventually you could have a dwindling population as the elders die off with no new births to replace them.
If you have aging off, pregnant mothers will still give birth, but the babies will never grow up. They will stay infants forever, unless you turn aging back on, or unless you play that household to age the baby up.
So aging and SP are different and have different effects. To get the best dynamic, the game recommends having both ON. With aging on, all Sims will still grow old and die, including previously player-controlled Sims. Even Agnes Crumplebottom. Even if you only played her for one day and switch to another house. Eventually, she will get old, die, and be gone from the neighborhood forever, provided you have aging on. Her house is then vacant for anyone new to move into. Since the patch, I have already had two elders from different families die of old age in "protected" houses I had played, so it is working. If for some reason that's not working properly in your game, you can always go back and play them again until they die, kill them off, or simply evict them from Edit Town. It's all up to you.
I understand your advice here, but to me, it sounds like a lot of work. This is a game, and I purchased it to play - not to spend hours in edit mode telling everyone where to go and when. I really do want my neighborhood sims, townies and others, to go about their lives without interference from me. I spend a lot of time at the beginning of a new game setting things up in the neighborhood. Once I start playing, I don't want to go back to doing work to keep things the way I want them. I LIKE the way my game runs without the new patch. I play with SP and aging ON and if one of my sims' children moves away, so be it. If I wanted to maintain control of that sim, I would not have moved it into the neighborhood to live in the first place.
I just think this change, and only this change, is extreme and could have been handled much differently. I don't really care about prepared foods affecting a baby's gender, jobs things, whatever ... none of those changes really affect the way I play. I don't get much time to play as it is, so when I do get to open the sims, I want to PLAY, not work to maintain my neighborhood. That might be okay for other players, but not for me.
I read a comment in these forums about a check box for each household - yes or no to protect a household seems like a more reasonable approach to this issue.
Okay, at first, I had no trouble, but now my sims will not use objects in different rooms. I'm doing a free will household, and this has made it impossible. Please, PLEASE fix this or I may have to stop playing the game. It's just so frustrating to play now.
The problem with it is that they patched too much at one time, thereby forcing you to accept the patches you didn't want with the patches you may have needed to get your game operating correctly. As for me, the patch completely disabled all 14 of my Mysterious Mr. Gnomes, and created a wierd, dwarf thing with broken legs and arms in my neighborhood. Great picture but freaky as all get out. They maybe should have made the big stuff seperate or perhaps held it off, but I have only played a single household my entire game due to the fact that inventory disappears, so I can't say if the game still operates correctly or not for me or not.
I have a problem with Story Progression. Although it's much better than it was before, my sims rarely form romatic relationships! And on the rare occasions that they do, they iether stay bf/gf forever, get engaged and never married or are married and live in different houses! I wanted to only play my legacy house in this neighbourhood but it's impossible because if I do this, everyone will get old and die and the population number will be secured by sims moving into the neighbourhood, not by babies!
Please try to improve this on the next patch/EP. It's a lot of work to manually keep your town alive! Other than that, good job
Just a bug note... my sim keeps getting stuck in the hospital after having a baby...but their needs continue to decline. I have to use the resetsim cheat to get them back to the house.
I do NOT want the families I have created, or controlled, "protected"!! I want them to go about their lives, in the LIVING NEIGHBORHOOD the game promised me!!! Once I send a created sim into the neighborhood to live, I want them to behave as an NPC sim! To me, this was a FEATURE to the game, not a drawback.
Agreed.
I like to raise a large family, have most move out, and keep control of a main character, all the while, watching how the rest of the family evolves out on their own. Now impossible, no?
Also, it seems pretty straight forward that some people might like to create and populate every house in the neighborhood with created npc's, and also watch them evolve, which is now also impossible?
Really crushes story progression in the other direction.
You need a fast patch that gives individual control to mark the households to include/exclude, but the patch seems to have upset as many people as the correction pleased.
Wow. Did you even read what SimGuruLyndsay said?
"Fixes to Story Progression. Babies will no longer be born to single parents. Player created or controlled households are now "protected" and will no longer be removed through "Story Progression." Warning: Story Progression will no longer remove previously player controlled Sims. Users who take control of too many Sims in the same game may experience poor performance as the neighborhood can become over populated."
This doesn't mean the protected user created families are cut off from story progression, it means they just can't be moved out the neighbourhood and deleted on their own. This upsetted many players, so it is in fact an improvement. Personally, I wouldn't like my own Sims to disappear without me knowing or deciding. That's why I downloaded the awesomemod before this patch to stop them. (Then again, this patch caused my game to crash after start-up so I can't even play, so it doesn't even matter to me just now).
Actually, it's you that didn't read it and it was in your own post. "Warning: Story Progression will no longer remove previously player controlled Sims." IE they never grow old and never die!! From everything I've seen hardly anyone want to have any family they ever played becoming immortal. So no, this is in fact not an improvement at all.
Ok, sorry, but this is crap. My sims are still aging. My sims are still dying. EVEN THE ONES I PLAYED. I just had a sims grandfather pass away.
I think that Simguru Lindsay or however it's spelled should reword the first post. Player controlled sims are not going to be removed as in MOVING AWAY.
Why do people still think story progression and aging are the same thing? Story progression not removing sims from the neighborhood is COMPLETELY DIFFERENT from sims aging! Sims will still age and they will still go about their lives they just won't move out of town. This is a huge improvement! How would you feel after spending hours creating a family and then 2 days later find out they moved away and are gone forever?
Aging - Story Progression... Two TOTALLY SEPARATE things! If you don't want sims dying of old age turn AGING OFF!
OK -- everything seems to be working just great with the patch -- so far -- so good -- I wanted to know if anyone has checked out whether or not that you lose the property deeds from your inventory when you change households in the Edit town mode... That was an issue earlier...
Comments
Actually, it's you that didn't read it and it was in your own post. "Warning: Story Progression will no longer remove previously player controlled Sims." IE they never grow old and never die!! From everything I've seen hardly anyone want to have any family they ever played becoming immortal. So no, this is in fact not an improvement at all.
When I read "Warning: Story Progression will no longer remove previously player controlled Sims", I just assumed that meant they weren't gonna be kicked out of town, not that they weren't gonna die
First of all... why do you all thank EA for trying to fix what should have been right when we bought the game in the first palce?! I wonder!?
Secondly, the patch, at least I think so, fixed only some minor problems and didn't touch the main issues.
The main issue would be the fix for the controvesial SP, which could be just giving us an OPTION how we want the game played.
Some want this some want that.... Some want the SP on, some want it off.EA,give us a choice, for crying out loud! It seems so simple, but maybe it's too difficult to carry out in practice? For such a Giant as YOU,EA?
As I once said they bit off more than they can chew with this revolution in the sims concept! Hence, all those glitches, bugs and problems.
Like the disappearing inventory+fridge content! In this way we are forced to play the only way thought out by the creators.
As for me I play with aging and SP off! For fear of somthing happening to my sims, which is a colossal step backwards compared to TS2.
Besides, what about that height silde which was promised; is it possible that they will do something about it? What do you all think?
I only play one family and yesterday I copied my town and switched through all households to get to know who lives there.
Almost every family had a child, toddler or baby that had only one parent. Wasn't the patch suppose to fix that?
And all those kids must have been spawned after I installed the patch.
Now, not only do I have a billion bugs and glitches that came with the patch, the supposed fixed/improved issues are not working, either.
I so hate this update!
And I agree that the "fix" of story progression ruins my game, too. I play just my one family and kick most of the kids out or marry them out when they are young adults. Now my town is flooded with my own sims and my family members have a hard time finding spouses, because they are related to almost anybody.
Not that it matters to the game. The do not recognize their cousins, nephews, nieces, uncles and aunts anymore. That worked until a few days ago, now those relatives are only "acquaintances".
Did I mention I hate this update?!
And now EA comes out with an expansion pack without having the current issues fixed... *no words for that*
Sorry for the rant, but this really p***es me off.
That is what it means. I moved out one of my legacy family pre-patch, and he died after the patch. It did stop his (or any other residents') grave appearing, but that's a different issue.
I haven't installed indiemod because I have the fear of having any problems with it whilst I'm part-way through challenges, but I get the impression it pretty much does what we expected story progression to do - so if fans can make a patch that does that in a short space of time, why on earth couldn't EA have implemented that in the game?
Anyway, if I go into a neighborhood house, Agnes Crumplebottom for example, make a few changes - finish the unfinished room, change her clothes, etc., she then becomes a "player controlled sim" - correct? Then, with this patch, she will be protected from being removed through story progression - correct? I don't understand how aging and story progression can be seperate anyway ... if she grows old and dies with no kids, she should be "removed" from the neighborhood, but if she is "protected" - just what does that mean!?
Everyone has an opinion on what it means, but so far, I haven't seen anyone from EA try to clarify for us. Helloooooooo! I hate to say this, but I won't be rushing out to buy the expansion like I did for TS2. Not until I see some effort on the part of EA to clarify, rectify and placate - players are going crazy and it doesn't seem like they care. They have spent so much time and effort on hype for this game, they've forgotten to make sure they put out a quality product. I am beyond disappointed in EA - and also very happy that my game runs perfectly with no patches. It sucks to invest a fairly significant amount of money (esp. for a 1-income household with kids!) in a game and then be abandoned by the ones who made it ... can you say "take the money and run"!? It sure feels like that's what EA has done - and then to announce an expansion, in the middle of this uproar ... I just don't get it, I truly don't.
I think that Simguru Lindsay or however it's spelled should reword the first post. Player controlled sims are not going to be removed as in MOVING AWAY.
If that was the case EA would not have:
"Users who take control of too many Sims in the same game may experience poor performance as the neighborhood can become over populated"
Not moving out of their home would NOT cause the neighborhood to be overpopulated, only not dying off would cause that.
What is "crap" is either 1) EA messed up in their posting of what this does, 2) they got it right and they don't die, or 3) they posted it right and have a bug causing them to not behave as EA intended.
At least I've already done it and can have more people who are fully black in the game.
What I think is crap is that I no longer have a choice in the matter at all. What if I WANT my sims to be able to move away? What if I really don't want a neighborhood filled with relations? We all play the Sims differently, which is one of the draws for this game. EA however, is trying to make us all play it the same way - and THAT is definitely crap. Don't take away my fun and enjoyment because someone else wanted a different feature. Where are our CHOICES??? I don't want to be forced to play this game the way someone else does! I want it MY way - just like everyone else. I understand compromise and am more than willing to give a bit to make the game meet more people's wishes. It just feels like EA is not compromising right now. It's all or nothing and that is unacceptable.
The patch has not taken away your choice of Sims moving away. The only difference is that it won't happen automatically anymore. For any previously played, "protected" Sims, you can always remove them yourself manually. And the patch does not affect untouched townies. The game can still move them around or evict them at random.
If you don't want everyone in town to be blood related, it is easily remedied. From Edit Town, you can split up households, or merge them just as you like: to keep the ones you want, get rid of the rest, or evict entire households as you see fit. Simply remove all those excess kids your first family had, if you want, whenever you want. You are never "stuck" forever with anyone.
According to SimGurus, with story progression on, other households will marry, and kids will still be born/spawned to non-controlled families that have two parents, so the neighborhood will still be growing new members with which to mix. With SP off, new births won't happen (unless someone was already pregnant--then the baby will be born). So if you're playing only one family with SP off, but aging on, yes, eventually you could have a dwindling population as the elders die off with no new births to replace them.
If you have aging off, pregnant mothers will still give birth, but the babies will never grow up. They will stay infants forever, unless you turn aging back on, or unless you play that household to age the baby up.
So aging and SP are different and have different effects. To get the best dynamic, the game recommends having both ON. With aging on, all Sims will still grow old and die, including previously player-controlled Sims. Even Agnes Crumplebottom. Even if you only played her for one day and switch to another house. Eventually, she will get old, die, and be gone from the neighborhood forever, provided you have aging on. Her house is then vacant for anyone new to move into. Since the patch, I have already had two elders from different families die of old age in "protected" houses I had played, so it is working. If for some reason that's not working properly in your game, you can always go back and play them again until they die, kill them off, or simply evict them from Edit Town. It's all up to you.
Well, I liked it much better before, because I do not want to delete my sims. It was so nice and realistic with sims moving away.
I am not going through my town and tell people where to live, with whom to live or if they rather should move away. And I do not like to do that with my sims.
I love moving them out and meet them every now and then. Some stay friends, some don't.
I still think EA should give us an option to choose how far we want to go with SP in our neighborhood.
As much as I hate that "patched" version, I have to say that I am lucky and that the patch did not do anything to my story progression so far. Everything is just as before... just much harder to play because of all the path finding, rendering and random pauses bugs.
And I have to agree with Uroica69. The lack of communication and clarification from EA at this stage is a slap in the face. I will not buy the expansion before these bugs aren't fixed. :x
I understand your advice here, but to me, it sounds like a lot of work. This is a game, and I purchased it to play - not to spend hours in edit mode telling everyone where to go and when. I really do want my neighborhood sims, townies and others, to go about their lives without interference from me. I spend a lot of time at the beginning of a new game setting things up in the neighborhood. Once I start playing, I don't want to go back to doing work to keep things the way I want them. I LIKE the way my game runs without the new patch. I play with SP and aging ON and if one of my sims' children moves away, so be it. If I wanted to maintain control of that sim, I would not have moved it into the neighborhood to live in the first place.
I just think this change, and only this change, is extreme and could have been handled much differently. I don't really care about prepared foods affecting a baby's gender, jobs things, whatever ... none of those changes really affect the way I play. I don't get much time to play as it is, so when I do get to open the sims, I want to PLAY, not work to maintain my neighborhood. That might be okay for other players, but not for me.
I read a comment in these forums about a check box for each household - yes or no to protect a household seems like a more reasonable approach to this issue.
Please try to improve this on the next patch/EP. It's a lot of work to manually keep your town alive! Other than that, good job
Why do people still think story progression and aging are the same thing? Story progression not removing sims from the neighborhood is COMPLETELY DIFFERENT from sims aging! Sims will still age and they will still go about their lives they just won't move out of town. This is a huge improvement! How would you feel after spending hours creating a family and then 2 days later find out they moved away and are gone forever?
Aging - Story Progression... Two TOTALLY SEPARATE things! If you don't want sims dying of old age turn AGING OFF!