f13.net

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2009/05/sims-3-leaked-to-torrent-sites-weeks-before-retail-release.ars

Not that I doubt it. Just sadf.

Good to see that EA's draconian DRM will be effective.  :awesome_for_real:

I think you're a little behind the times.

Its kinda sad, kinda not. Personally I just find it humorous -- except for the whiny calls from my sister and mother about how its available for download on torrents and they want to play it now instead of waiting for the retail date. Both are asking me to just download it and install it for them; much like I ended up doing for them both with the majority of the Sims 2 expansions (they both bacame loathe to install the legit versions due to Securom and reports on the Sims boards about it screwing up computers and the like) despite them both purchasing all the expansions. They are the Sims kind og gamer in a nutshell; the only other video games they play are those RealArcade kind of games.

Its a shame given EA's current stance on DRM as opposed to last year, but after NHL 08/09 on the PC (fuck you, EA. Just.. fuck you.) and other issues I've had with their games (that I purchased), I've stopped caring about EA's profit margin and can't help but hold a "they deserve it" grudge.

Your sister and Mom loathe securom? Or do you loathe securom and you told them that it could DESTROY THEIR PC and then they became dirty pirates because a $50 game is less than a $1000 computer?

Surprisingly, no. Essentially what happened was on the second or third expansion for the Sims 2 there was a fair bit of a public outcry on the Sims 2 boards from people who'd had severe issues with Securom after installing it; including a very vocal few who insisted it bricked/killed/something their DVD-roms. This terrified my mother because she has become petrified of installing risky things on her computer (namely because I get extremely tired of having to fix her computer every month (sometimes more often) due to viruses, trojans, dust and so on. So she called me up in a panic because she wanted to play with the expansion crap but was scared of screwing up her computer based on what she'd read on the forums.

My sister didn't read forums; installed the expansion and ran into a host of Securom related issues (nothing that serious, but she thought they were). From then on they didn't want to install anything with Securom on their computers, and I couldn't really blame them after I'd read up on that version. So I just ended up installing a pirated version of the Sims 2 and expansions from then on for both of them and told them to buy them as they came out if they wanted to/felt guilty, but just leave the box un-opened (which is what they did -- unlike me they had moral issues with pirating).

If it hadn't been for the hassle of it all it'd have been hilarious to see such casual/obtuse computer users freaking out over it and the risks of Securom.

To this day they both refuse to install anything with any kind of serious DRM; even when I don't give a shit about most kinds of DRM, personally.

Inc. piracy thread.

It's amusing (realized from an outside perspective) that DRM is ruffling feathers of non-techies to the point that they wouldn't buy a product except for the workarounds of a family member.

(http://img245.imageshack.us/img245/795/internettruth.jpg)

It's only when the DRM breaks the game.  There are plenty of reasons the game+expansions+user content break that have nothing to do with DRM.

True enough; but truth is fairly irrelevant with a crowd that isn't tech-savvy -- its all about perception. Just look at the case with Spore. Sure the sales didn't seem to be hurt badly (at all?) but there was a fairly vocal backlash largely due to perception rather than reality, especially among the casual who only heard doom and gloom bandied about regarding something they wanted.

The worry for EA has to be the introduction of such piracy to the casual masses. The majority of the users for the Sims isn't a group I'd wager on being overly tech-savvy or even overly aware of game piracy in terms of availability and usage. Spore and The Sims franchise are the likely conduit for such a group to experience it. With the early leak of the Sims 3 you've possibly given that group a serious glimpse into piracy as a valid means of acquiring a product they want, especially given the apparent level of anticipation that crowd was holding towards it.

The really amusing part is, from what little I read, it seems there may be a packed trojan with the release, as there've been several "clean" extractions put up of the setup file.

EA is right to worry.  The Sims is a gateway.  My wife started with the first one and before I knew it she was running DaemonTools and buying cracks of Photoshop from Russians.

It's a Sims thing. My Sims addicted SO became rabidly anti-securom last year, and I had never even told her about the program's existence.

I was so proud.   :heart:

While the vast majority of Sims players are, I have no doubt, not very tech savvy, there's the strong minority of the custom content crowd who probably are. And those people probably spread the word about DRM and other game issues while making nipples and penises for Sims.

A pre-emptive "Shame on you, you should know better" to anyone who plays Sims 3.

Not just the pirates.

Yeah, there's an amusing split in the Sims community. The custom content people, some of them, just work on another plane of existance from the rest of the world.

And I don't care if people think the Sims are stupid, I loved the first two versions and I bet you a dollar I will love this version too. YOUR JUDGEMENT BOTHERS ME NOT.

I'm sure it will be well-received even if it is a technical nightmare.  My wife still hasn't been able to get the Pets expansion to work on W7, which infuriates her, so we're being forced to upgrade.

I can't say shit since I know I'm buying this dumb ass game.  It's addicting!

It's so beautiful. I'm in heaven.

The style customiser is surprisingly addictive. Side note: not sure why they put different prices on the wallpapers, etc., now that I can put down any wallcovering or floor and then customise it to something completely different. Yeah, it takes a little extra work...but still.

Yes, of course, we're back to core game. So everyone who loves having a pet or magic or whatever...get ready to start waiting for the frooglepoopillion expansions to come.

Only complaint: The fastest speed setting isn't fast enough. Especially when I'm sleeping.

And I'll probably only be posting at work from now on. Free time is Sims time.

(http://i43.tinypic.com/xpsk6e.png)

Win.

Goddamn this looks awesome. Dunno if I can wait 2 more weeks.

Hell yeah! definitely playing this and doing the 'charm, move in and kill' to gain the moolah i need to upgrade my lifestyle.

I'm assuming there's a money-cheat, so none of that in my house.  The wife goes straight to building homes and she needs funds for that.

She has not noticed you can steal it yet.  This is fine with me.  I still haven't gotten her to upgrade from W7 beta to RC.

Are there seasons? ARE THERE SEASONS? For some reason that was my favorite expansion this last go around. I get enough non-weather in real life here in the Bay Area, I like that my Sims at least get to have a fall.

Are you kidding me?  Was there something in a Sims expansion that made it into base Sims 2?  I'm half expecting them to put second floors into an expansion.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sims_3

And I was not aware that a iPhone version is slated:
http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2009/05/4-screens-sims-3-iphone/

(http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/gamelife/2009/05/isims3-2.jpg)

I'll trade you places.

No seasons, no pets.

But there is gardening. And fishing. And collections.

My sim now gets a mood bonus from the well-decorated living room. Well-decorated because space rocks are expensive. I found the biggest space rock after watching a meteor on my telescope.

Also, if you don't take computer whiz, you're crazy. My sim loves hacking money into his bank account all night long.

EDIT: CTRL-SHIFT-C for panel as usual. "kaching" and "motherlode" are still the same for simoleon cheats. The boolprop code is now "testingCheatsEnabled true". That gives you the ability to drag your motive bars up, change your career (through the mailbox), etc.

I just wish they were going to release this shit on Steam, or that the boxed version would be compatible with the Steam version. Steaming expansions would be so much easier than having to go halfway across town to the computer store.

You could get the expansions through the EA downloader but it's not nearly as nice as Steam.

The EA downloader also has that thing where it yanks your purchases after 6 months. I don't rent games.

Oh yeah, I forgot about that. I knew there was a big reason I stopped using it, but blanked on what it was. Or more like, "Was it because the game eventually expired? Wait, that sounds insane, maybe it was something else."

EA's been slowly trickling their games out to Steam, so maybe they'll put this out once box sales start to fall off.  I'm interested in playing it but I don't think I'm interested in buying a box, much less a bunch of boxed expansions.  And I'm positive that if I buy it in a box now I won't be able to buy expansions on Steam later, so I might as well wait.

Or I guess I could torrent it now and buy it on Steam later, assuming I'm not completely sick of it by then.   :why_so_serious:

(https://dl.getdropbox.com/u/829607/golddigger.jpg)

Hell yes!  :drill:

I would do that but INGMAR WON'T LET ME.  :angryfist:

too wicked awesome. I made a bachelor with a manservant who just cooks and cleans the house. Decided to look for a partner in workplace. Discovered she's not that rich so I dumped her. A job opportunity gave me a chance to have dinner with a rich client. Went over to her house and it was huge, but she appears to be married. No problem, I hang out with her after work in the park and took her home for some woohooos after a plate of fish n chips.

I told her to divorce her man and move in, taking in her daughter too. She brought in 5k, a car and laptop. Score! Now my stepdaughter's learning how to cook pancakes for daddy while wearing bikinis while i plan to get her a new mom in 2 weeks.   :grin:

As a first time Sims-player, I'm really, really enjoying this. The UI is just so smooth that decorating and building is just pure fun. I haven't seen much of the actual game yet, I'm too busy cheating and building! :ye_gods:

I am so looking forward to this game.  :grin:

Argh! :uhrr: It doesn't auto-save, for fuck's sake! Worst cockstab ever.

Yeah I turned off the tutorials and was shocked to discover that the whole neighbourhood actually ages, get married, have kids, and get promotions as you progress with your active family.

Really? I haven't touched the Sims since, well, forever. But that's some fun sounding shit.

It's great. I haven't explored all the careers, but right now i'm working on my political career ladder and there's a Fund raising requirement to boost your job performance rating and quicken your promotion. You can either throw a fund raising party or solicit donations from door to door. And after that you can dip your hand into it and pocket 10% of the total donations.

Yes, you can step out of your office, walk to an occupied house and ring on the bell to chit chat and woohoo wives while their husbands are away. And you can intentionally get them pregnant too.  :why_so_serious:

I was working on my presidential bid when I died of old age. Fuck.  :uhrr: I was sure I was going to be promoted on my next work day too.

It's recommended by doctors. It crashes to desktop a bit and might do so while you're saving... so I'm making a LOT of saves. It's probably a crappy crack though and this is a guaranteed purchase for me.

It's an odd idea but it seems like EA has actually taken a milk cow and throughly changed/improved it. That's a gold star in my book.

Interesting.  I had a birthday party with cake, but I didn't touch the cake.  Aged once.

Went back to clean up the place, accidently touched the cake, and aged myself into old age by having another birthday.

Damn time-traveling cake.

I haven't had this problem. Ever. Even during a sleepless night and 5-6 hours of Sims 3.

Yeah it's pretty stable for me. I can alt tab smoothly and hasn't crashed once but they really should've included an auto save option just to save on tears and rage. The improvements they've made to the career ladder is fantastic. No longer are you forced to upgrade 5-7 skills and felt like grinding on books while on a sofa all day just to gain that promotion. Every job have some differences but most of the time you're required to do something outside your working hour to boost work performance rating like political fundraising or interrogating the locals as a cop.

My latest family of two got a free police cruiser from advancing to the vice squad while the stay at home wife just picked up a HUGE chunk of meteorite worth $3,8k from using the space telescope.  :drill:

Damn, you bastards are making me want to play this..  :ye_gods:

See Schild:

See schild watching Schild write a forum post so he can come on a forum and write a forum post. Dawg.

This shit is so meta I shit myself.

(http://www.penny-arcade.com/images/2004/20040927h.jpg)

Until the Divorce Court Expansion ruins it for everyone.

Pro-tip!

Remove your roof. Completely. It never rains it seems and it does miracles for the level of perceived decoration. :why_so_serious:

It's a skylight for the entire house.

I guess you could say that. :awesome_for_real:

I bet if you knew how, you could mod the computer so the screen showed a picture of F13 when e-Schild was using it.

Interesting; according to the official Sims 3 page registering your copy online grants free download of another whole pre-made town to play in, plus $10 worth of sim money for their online item shop. Makes one wonder just how accidental that torrent leak was.  :grin:

Gee, astronauts only have to work for one day in a week.  :awesome_for_real:

Holy shit!

Guess I'm not buying The Sims 3 just to futz around. Why, you ask?

http://fundrace.huffingtonpost.com/neighbors.php?type=name&lname=wright&fname=will&search=Search

(http://dl-client.getdropbox.com/u/39720/f13/willwright.png)

Because he obviously doesn't need any more money. Sure as hell wasn't going to get it to support EA.

I know that can be upsetting, but isn't it a foregone conclusion that any upper management of a large company is going to be a right winger?

No.

wat

Didn't he leave EA to join the Will Wright Is Awesome foundation, or something?

He left EA to join the "EA Didn't Want to Pay Me for 365 Days a Year Since I Only Come Up With Something New Every 7" Thinktank. EA still gets to pick and choose whether they make any of his....ideas before anyone else does.

So he loses his paycheck and they still retain right of first refusal? What a crappy deal.

Also, what's up with the lack of orders for this game from my affiliate link. I know for sure most of you folks are buying it for yourselves secretly or for someone else (but secretly). So, what gives?

Yeah ya pricks, Schild even dropped a subtle hint in his sim's screenshot. You'll notice his sim's bank account mirrors his own and you heartless fuckers SHOULD have picked up on this as his way of reaching out to us for help.

Goddamn games is addicting.  I wanted to try it out since I haven't played since the first week of 2.  This game has fixed almost all of my complaints about the first two.  Now if only I could turn off aging as my Romantic partner has suddenly become old and I don't want to marry her anymore since she'll die in a few days and I'm just barely halfway there.   All that relationship work for naught.


My Rock Star only has to work 3, but he's on the 8th step of the music path.

When I order it, Schild, I'll do it through the Aff link. I'm waiting until the first paycheck comes through.

I probably will, since I don't need to recieve it right on release day now.

Made myself - Slob, Couch Potato, Computer Whiz, Book Lover, and something else... I gain Fun points for sleeping!
About 8:30 last night it occured to me that I should make dinner at some point.

I will say though, I am not happy that 90% of the sims in the game look like Jay Leno.

Then it wouldn't be a secret?

For the aging, have you looked in the options (or was a mod to the ini made to enable it showing in the options)?

There's almost certainly an aging-off cheat in the game, there was one in Sims 2.

You can also bring her back as a ghost you can control for $5000 or sometimes they will offer you an opportunity to resurrect your loved ones for free at the Science Lab.  :awesome_for_real:

I made a lich king basically with all his undead servants and wife. Eventually he'll live on as a ghost too in a dark, gloomy mansion near the cemetery.

I thought the funny part was that he lived on Uranus.

There's an adjuster under options to set the total lifespan for all sims in game. You can change it anytime. 

Clickthrough ads are ass. I'm getting my copy at Fred Meyer. I shall bear my copy openly and proudly out the door. Possibly cheering in simlish on the way out.

When the football team beats you up, do you cry out in simlish also?

Clickthrough ads? I don't even know what you're talking about.

Personally I'm going to cosplay a Sim.

Yeah, I found it today after writing that.  I figured I should check the options before bitching too much.  :awesome_for_real:   I don't recall the first sims game having a lifespan other than "Dying horribly to fires, drowning or starving."  All of which was way more fun than the game itself because the sims were so damn stupid.

This one's a ton of fun and the little lifetime goal minigame + the wishes minigame is a blast and a half.  I think what helps it greatly is having a lot of the expansion stuff like pools, different job tasks, parks and 'walk around' neighborhoods rolled into the base game.

So all they have is a global aging dial? I liked the way they had it in Sims 2 where you could buy a Fountain of Youth water dispenser and let you Sims be immortal or not using that.

create a cardboard cutout of that 'green gem' and attach a stick to it. Stick it on your collar so that green gem will be over your head. That'll do it.  :drill:

Huh? I don't see the problem. You can extend their life, turn off aging or let them age normally. You shouldn't have to grind out a way to stay young if you don't want your sim to die.

But can I do it on a sim-by-sim basis or does the dial affect all of them? I want to control who gets old and who doesn't.

There's 2 toggles. One that affects the neighborhood and one that affects only your sims.  You can have immortals that continue on as all their friends and family die off around them, or short-lived creatures that live in a static, unchanging neighborhood.

There's also toggles for average life age of a sim. 90 sim days is the default, then 2-300 and the max is 640. 

From the cheats my wife looked up the Ambrosia is in the game as well, so you can work towards discovering immortality food while your sim ages naturally.

There's apparently a slider in gameplay options for that. You can either adjust the length of lifespan up to some hundreds of days, or plain turn off the aging whatsoever.

edit: feck, missed it's already covered on last page. nvm.

You're talking about that "Buy Stuff!" link in the top right corner of the screen right? I just call them all clickthrough ads, because they all look the same to me.
I don't think I'll lose any sleep if I got the terminology wrong.

It's an affiliate link to the frontpage of regular old amazon.com...

I just throw them wine coolers and issues of Cosmo. Calms 'em right down.

Found the Ambrosia last night. It's a recipe book you purchase for cooking: $10,000.

I might stop reading this thread soon, because it's about a Sims game and yet it manages to sound awesome.  Damn you people.

Sims is like Guitar Hero. (Or a lot of other junk, GH is a good example though.) People hate on it without playing it. Really bash it, and then if they give it a chance, they might actually like it.

I really played Sims 1 and 2 and I can really tell you that it's really nothing like Guitar Hero.

Cyrrex, It's easy to make pockets of the Sims sound awesome, but nothing can describe some of the monotony. There's just no comparison in gaming. I generally spend 5-10 hours with each one and never play them again.

Okay, that's what I needed to hear.  You should consider a job in gaming journalism.

It's not a horrible set of games, really, but there is just a bit too much frustration in there for me.  Some dumbass manages to set himself on fire while making dinner and leaves a tombstone in the kitchen?  There goes a few hours of my life.  But really, if I have any disdain for The Sims, it's actually disdain for EA's programming staff and for the modding skills of the community.

This is my fear.

That's not fear you're smelling. It's reality.

The Sims' lows are as low as real life lows. They're drab and invoke total apathy from the user. The highs are nowhere near as high as real life highs. It takes a certain brain to truly enjoy the Sims and play it as much as some people do. And I'm not sure any heterosexual guy who loves games in general is going to get much out of it. They'll have fun torturing the Sims for a bit and seeing how much they can fuck with them, but mostly it's just a digital ant farm. The AI makes the game annoying, the art design is fairly uninspired, and the actual characterizations of the characters remain funny for about 5 minutes.

Women and gay dudes love it. I can't tell you why because I'm not a woman or gay dude. But, I'd wager, they can't tell you why either. They can most certainly try to explain it, but in the last decade I've never seen a good explanation - and I've looked.

I'd love to like the Sims, but it's just not for me.

You can't really play the game expecting longevity, that much is true. The first 12 hours of the game is probably the strongest part where you had so many options to pursue and you are unsure which path to take. But after more and more paths become known, much like Princess Maker 2, all that's left is number crunching and monotonous grind. I'm burning through careers at rapid rate and I can't see myself playing much beyond that until they add some new content in the game.

Case in point: I was absolutely hating the gardening. I just want to make the Ambrosia for the heck of it, it requires a deathfish, which needs max level of fishing (no problem) and a life fruit, which you have to grow by yourself. That's nice, but there's just no goddamn shops or ways to harvest seeds in this game. You just have to manually LOOK on the ground when swooping your camera on outdoor sites for little seeds that says 'Special' type. And it would be unknown, sometimes you grow money tree out of it, or a GREAT watermelon vine, how very unhelpful.

The explanation is dead-simple in my mind: it's playing with dolls.  Now, what's the difference between playing with Barbie in her Dream House and He-Man in Castle Greyskull?  Mostly that Barbie never punches the fuck out of Skeletor; by which I mean it's mostly how you play with things and somewhat how they are designed to accommodate you.  As a toy, Barbie and your Sims are better suited to go shopping with tiny dogs in their purses.  You can play with them in other ways, but that would be sub-optimal.


rk47, I submit that you are doing it wrong.  The people who play The Sims for years do so in spite of the game elements, at least in my experience.  I really don't know why they design in all that bullshit, to be honest.  The long game is house-building, dress-up and dating drama.  Maybe also running a store or being a super-spy.  Not something that I really get into.

Also remember that people like me will make fun of you.

Caveat: The Sims are often stupider than dolls.

Man, you got that right.  I never had He-Man accidentally drown in a pool because he was too stupid to climb out.

I think my main interest is all about seeing what every objects and features of the game would 'do' rather than 'having a life' in simtowns, so when i'm out of new things to do or explore in Sims games that's probably when I put it down and eventually uninstall.

Well, maybe you'll be pulled back in with each expansion.

Maybe YOUR Barbies never punched Skeletor. Mine lived quite the life of mystery and danger. There actually isn't a difference between playing with Barbie in her dream house and He-man in Castle Greyskull, except the sex-role baggage attached to it. Both are taking a tiny little proxy and making believe with them. That one is expected to shop and the other to fight isn't a real difference, because you're making believe. You can CERTAINLY go shopping with He-man (I am sure he has, in fact), there's nothing sub-optimal about it. The Sims IS playing with dolls, but it's playing with dolls in a more constrained manner than real-life dolls. It expects you to want to play with your dolls in a mostly social way instead of swashbuckling, fightin' way. And that's fine for me, if I want to play with dolls that way instead, I have any number of RPGs.

Anyway, I think the thing here is actually revealed in your last sentence in this quote. "Sub-optimal." I don't subscribe to schild's weird ONLY THESE KINDS OF GAMES ARE REAL GAMES philosophy, but playing the Sims like a game you can win, rather than an open ended thing where you do whatever, is setting yourself up to burn yourself out right quick because you're trying to win rather than just play. If you approach the game with a mindset of "I have to grind up my skills to max my career as fast as possible raar," yeah, the game is going to suck, because you spend all that time staring at your Sim reading a book or whatever.

Also, I don't know why you people have idiotic Sims. Mine never die by accident.

What are you talking about?

I reserve shit like that for Wii Fit. Things that are very obviously not games.

There's a reason I brought up the Natsume games.

Well sure, if you kill them off too quickly they don't have a chance for accidents. Walling up the children in a room was always my favorite in Sims 1. Or having a party, and walling up the bathroom on the first person to enter. Even better when the creepy clown showed up AND NEVER LEFT.

That said, I'm one of those 4-5 hours and I'm done with it forever people. So not really worth buying or acquiring for me.

I KNOW I have seen you say the Sims is Not A Game.

Sjofn made my exact point, except she used girl-talk instead of boy-talk. :oh_i_see:

Sure, I can take He-Man shoppping, but he doesn't have a purse or Ken for holding packages.


I'll say that I am talking about the original The Sims.  I did not play the second one at all because it acts ALL FUCKED UP if you install it somewhere other than on C: (how about that for "not a real game", not that I'm not making that argument myself).  I've seen my fair share of household deaths, mostly kitchen fires, that may not exist in #2.  By contrast, locking one in a one-square room (with glass walls for guest viewing) did not cause them to die quickly at all.

He has Man-at-Arms instead.  :oh_i_see:

You know, I'm pretty sure I haven't. But feel free to dig through 35,000 posts to find it. Perhaps I did, perhaps I didn't, the fact still stands that you're a woman and you didn't explain why you like it. You merely explained how the Sims are like playing with dolls (or rather, were specific in that comparison).

It allows for social gameplay without the real world intruding and reminding you that sometimes it's preferable to play by yourself.

Isn't that what masturbation is for?

Yeah, I ain't digging through your post history. If you say you didn't, that's fine, I definitely had the impression that you felt Sim games in general were not "real" games, though.

I can't explain why I like playing any of the games I like, which is why I didn't bother to try to explain why I like the Sims. I don't really know why I like leveling up characters in WoW, I don't know why I like city builders, and I don't really know why I like playing the Sims. I can tell you what parts of the game I enjoy (I really like building buildings, for example), but not why, or at least not in a way that's going to satisfy, say, you.

I like to build buildings. I like making little people and guiding them through their little lives. I can lose hours to that, just like I can lose hours to making my little person in D&D go through their little adventuring life or making little shapes line up in such a way to get tetris after tetris after tetris.

In Sims 1 I accidentally killed a Sim by building a diving board on a pool before I was able to afford a ladder.  Sim dove in, swam around for an hour, then drowned while I watched helplessly.

This is why Sims Online baffled me. Half the point is NOT having to deal with real people, yeesh!


EDIT: I think I had a person die changing a light bulb in Sims 1 and that's the only accidental death I had the entire time I played that one. I'm not saying the no-ladder-the-Sim-is-doomed thing makes perfect sense or whatever, but I do have a hard time believing people's sims died by accident regularly enough to create such angst.  :oh_i_see:

Saying that they are exactly the same other than the way they are entirely different seems kind of like cheating to make a point.  A boy won't play with a Barbie the way you do, he'll most likely run around with her judo chopping Ken and then driving her in her car into a lit barbecue grill while doused in gasoline.

Kind of the whole point of why the Sims doesn't appeal that much to 'straight' men is exactly because boys don't play with dolls the way girls do, the sex-role baggage as you put it.

It doesn't make the Sims gameplay wrong in general, it just makes it wrong for boys (and most of the readers of this website).

No you're missing the point. The boy will play with the Barbie the same way the girl does, more or less, if he's never had any pressure to 'act like a boy should act because that's how we say they should act'. The role baggage is mostly not inherent. Also hi2u Politics forum!

The question was "Why don't boys like The Sims"?  The answer is, "Because, for what ever reason, they are different."

The question was never "Why are boys different than girls?"

This forum is made up of majority males. This thread is on page 4. Your point has become moot.

On what presumptions do you base your facts?

Naturally, it's more subtle than that.  Plenty of "more or less" in there, but we all know this.  My son has a playhouse and often has made me dinner in it using his rather-pink kitchen set.  Currently he plays Tea Shop with his Gran, which he tells me is entirely different from Tea Party because he's selling tea to his stuffed animals.  It is indeed subtle with lots of crossover.  Also, I can tell you that the biases exist internally to a degree.  The boy just isn't interested in traditional doll-play, and he does like destroying things such as block-forts and sofa-cushion-forts.  Apparently boys like to see things explode.

Or at least, that one.

To get more back on topic, I think the fundamental divide in whether or not the Sims appeals to you as a game is actually less about what the trappings of the game are (relationships, houses, things instead of exploding space robots) and more about where you are going with it. The reason the game doesn't appeal to me isn't tied up in that stuff; it is mostly about the fact that there's no objective at all, you just kind of 'go'. It is one of the same reasons I prefer WoW to Eve, and I don't think anyone would describe Eve as a traditionally girly game. I just can't get very into a game that gives you no direction at *all*.

My guess is (and it is just a guess), for people who really hate the Sims, probably the root cause for many if not most of them is that they need more structure/direction in their games to hold their attention.

I thought Sims 2 and 3 had lifelong aspiration to prod you further and reward you for it. If that's not enough I don't know what is. Creating your own objective has always been part of the Sims game mechanics, much like the time I spent in Simcity 2000 just figuring how to please my citizens and officials (YOU CANNOT CUT DOWN FUNDING ON ROADWORKS U WILL REGRET THIS!!!)  then after all that hard work I click on Save Game, then Disaster for fun. And then start over again.

What will probably draw me back in is yes, more expansions and objects. Btw, how is the modding in this game done? I haven't seen any objects for download outside of EA store.

Well my point is not intended to say that there's something wrong with a game being essentially objective-less. I had a bit of the same problem with SimCity; city builders with scenarios a la the various Tilted Mill games held my interest a lot longer.

They do, but Ingmar never tried Sims 2 and won't let me download Sims 3 for him to not bother trying.

I sucked at SimCity 2000 so bad. I loved it, I don't know why, but maaaaan was I terrible.

I don't know if you're intentionally being obtuse, so I'll just throw up a smiley.  :awesome_for_real:

I haven't looked into it much yet, but I imagine they've got to get ahold of the game and reverse engineer the assets like the past games.
Now that you mention it, I haven't seen much on the main Sims 3 site about it, besides the in-game customizability.

No, obtuse is calling a link to Amazon so f13 gets kickbacks an interstitial ad.

The Guitar Hero comparison was just the suck.

I'm going to postulate that the S3 modding community won't get into full swing until after release. :oh_i_see:

Also, not that I know much about it, but modding the previous two was barely supported.  I mean that it was possible but there are not too many tools available from EA to make the process easy.  In particular, Sims 1 was mostly a hackjob and it was apparently very difficult to get your perspective right so your chair did not look like a deflated marshmallow.  S2 used 3D models, which had another host of problems if you did not have a 3D rendering app, but they added much better support for community content.  I'm hoping EA provides even more support for the mod community in S3, if only for my own sanity and that of my wife, but I am also very sure we will not have full enlightenment on how to mod properly for a few months.

There's a big bug in the game and I think it's one of the office chairs or the home computer.  Both my sims are completly buggered and gone invis/ unable to move now and the game takes 5 mins to unload information so I can get to an older save.  It happened after they both sat in the task chair and played around on the computer.  Bah!

 :sad:

So, your sims log onto the internet, start messing around and never move again? Just seem to sit there forever fading away? Seems reasonable.

Since they are going to be selling in game items for real money, I doubt they are going to encourage 3rd party modding.

Heh, funny, but yeah they sit in the chair and lock-up.  I had to trash that save entirely, which irritates me because I'd finally hit career level 10, "work whenever the fuck you want to."

*laughs* mine booted up this morning and bitched at me for running an unauthorized copy. Still runs though--I think it's just a browser link in the launcher.

Overall, it seems to run slower. It seems like I spend a load of time fast forwarding as compared to Sims 2.I'm guessing I'm supposed to be managing a bunch of sims and not just my one family.

No, that's a bug with the speed controls. Level 4 speed is slower than 3 sometimes and the most it'll ever do is go as fast as 3. As for the unauthorized copy, just block Sims with a firewall. I just disconnect from the internet.

Boy / Girl Debate / Gay Man:

Boys would love the Sims if you could build your own shopping centres to gun down.  Alternatively, they would enjoy it if the AI easily took care of everything and they could just sit back and watch Lord of the Flies unfold dynamically in a way that was a little more intense than watching a man piss himself and then pass out in the puddle in a bathroom after he's done weeping.

Case in point: my sister had fun managing her little family.  I had fun seducing her daughter in my Quagmire-styled basement room with a camera prop set up in a closet with a window adjoining the room/secret closet.  I think I even ran a screen recorder so I could hear (my sister's) indignant reaction.  Building stuff was pretty cool as well, to be entirely honest I think that's one of the main attractions of the series, is that it lets you build shit without being as obtuse as a level editor and while maintaining a sort of dialogue as you progress through building shit.

I'm actually sort of curious as to why they don't have a bunch of different character-specific AI types ("Strong" vs. "Weak" with variants and objectives for different flavours of behaviour modifiable per character) because you could probably make a passable Meta-game out of letting a strong AI manage the characters and play it like an actual simulator rather than a glorified dolls.

I think I would play that.

What puts me off from the sims is the excessive (to me) levels of micromanagement. If there was a setting so that the little fuckers would, say, go to the toilet when they needed to. Or you could give them bladder control for a period of time when doing something else (hey, just like I have to manage when I go to work). Similar if you could just select "dinner" and have the little bastards then cook, eat (at a table) then clean up their crap without micromanagent.

Or even another toggle to make them do it all independantly, so then I have the choice of watching my ant farm run about by itself and then just reach down with the hand of god when I want to intervene, then sit back again.

There's a fail-safe now in Sims 3. They will automatically take appropriate action when certain bars hit dangerous levels.There are less cases of floor wetting and fainting from exhaustion since Sims with critical energy levels would definitely head for bed and restricted from doing any work activities. When most bars are at safe levels they would automatically have their own fun according to their own personalities i.e, athletic sims would work out, some flick on TV, artistic ones paint a picture, social types would chat online or dial their pals for a chat. Despite this improvement, I have not noticed them going out of their homes to other venues except when heading to work, but it is generally safe to leave them on their own devices when outside. They will automatically queue a trip home when their energy bar is down to 3 hours left and will eat, have a drink at appropirate lots when they like it.

Perhaps I should observe a house of 2 sims who are polar opposites of each other. Find them a job and just let them go by themselves.

So basically the lack of good new MMORPGs is turning straight nerds gay. We're playing Sims 3 and Free Realms. Soon we'll be fawning over Bruno. We're fabulous.

Not one of my Sims have ever wet themselves, starved to death, passed out or gone around being smelly for hours. -I- have made sure all those things have happened, of course, but it doesn't happen spontaneously.

Also, you can click the debuff icons to command them to do it earlier than they would do it automatically. Saves you having to find the exact item they need to interact with.

I would like to be able to set a weekly allowance for my Sims, so they would hit town a bit more. Would make raising Charisma even with a Charismatic sim less of a grind.

That's how the character traits are supposed to work in Sims 3 if i get it right. It's also how i played the Sims actually -- the AI was competent enough (in Sims 2 at least) to take care of their basic needs most of the time as long as you didn't interfere with your own instructions. So just left them to their things and only made them carry out actions if that'd lead to granting them specific wishes/goals they "desired" in the wish panel. It's like handling a role-playing session with completely retarded group, and the resulting stories and twists are often much funnier than anything you'd come up with actively on your own.

Even for EA the price points in Sims 3 store are shocking.

75 cents for one shirt? Nineteen dollars for a room of furniture?

I'll be surprised is those prices stay at that level. But then again. There are people stupid enough to pay those prices. 

Let's suppress our disgust of EA and share some designs instead! My latest tasteless attempt. Work-in-progress. :awesome_for_real:

That is garish, son.

Yep! It started out as a test of just how much the builder can take so, well, sorta everything went in there. :awesome_for_real: I hate multi-level buildings, so I doubt I'll ever come to use it.

This was her actual house, prior to me running with mortar;

Yeah, my favorite kinds of houses with little rooms and multistories are just a total pain in Sims.

Title of this thread should be changed to "Nude patch and store products torrent up already?"

My only real gripe with the sims is that each iteration have been bug ridden pieces of shit that run like dogs on the best machine in the universe.  Even worse than normal EA shit.  How does this one run on your machine.

Also.

I think that thinking only gay people and women like this game is a sign of Tom Cruise in the Closet.

Fine. In fact, better than the previous 2.

It crashes from time to time, but that seems to be isolated to me.

As for gameplay, I haven't found a single bug. Not one.

They had the nude patch out before the game officially launched. Couple days after the leak hit the street, i think.

So my only complaint so far is how the Sims themselves look. A LOT of the clothes manage to look uncomfortable and ill-fitting (how is that possible?!) and I hate their hair and they look all playdough-y in a way I don't like. I vastly prefered the way the Sims looked in Sims 2. I mean, you know the hair options are shitty when your second favorite hairstyle for the males is the mullet. The mullet. It's a glorious mullet, sure, but still. The facial hair options look horrible too except for the sideburns. The ladies have much better hair, but they all have the Renée Zellweger "I just caught a whiff of something disgusting" face.

Good thing I usually play zoomed out far enough that it's not something I can't eventually tune out, but I still think it's a big ass step backwards visually. Otherwise I *heart* it.

You liked the look of the sims in Sims 2? They looked TERRIBLE. Like everyone had downs.

I like how they look. Mostly.

I've actually not yet figured out how to cook fish you catch. Any ideas?

You need to know a recipe that uses fish.  So, my sim knows the recipe for sushi, which will use any two fish you have.

Ooooooh. It all makes sense now. I hadn't seen a sushi recipe. Thanks!

Also;
The Shallows in Riverview are the most dysfunctional Sims-family I've seen I think. Christ.

So far in my EQ2 guild it's only been the two dykes playing. The gay guys and fundies seem disinterested.

(I think our officer corps is about as diverse as it can get.)

They'd most certainly fulfill a requirement at UMD for graduation.

I prefer sims2 over sims3 (appearance of the sims themselves) so far. There's a lot of moon faces and Jay Leno chins, and the customizability only helps so much.
That and the skin textures are awful.

It's like, in order to make things so modular and customizable, they wound up paying for it in actual asthetics. YMMV of course. And some people are managing to make some decent looking sims on the exchange already.

I think there are at least 3x as many options clothes-wise for women.

Ever been to a department store?

I've got a moocher/klepto/seducer-type who ran into them purely by chance ("Hey, what's in this house?")
The mother is now pregnant with his child while he survives off their food and money. And it couldn't happen to a nicer bunch of people.  :awesome_for_real:

Wait, so now there's families with backstory, and it's laid out for you? I'm wondering how it's evident that a specific family sucks.

Last time I played this franchise was the original Sims game. Maybe that's part of the problem.

I guess that's what I get for ignoring and entire franchise for a huge chunk of its lifespan. This is probably for the best, because I bet it'd be fun to find inventive ways to murder an entire neighborhood.

Well at the start they usually just 'seed' the default neighbours and households with backstories. Then as time advances if you check the paper it'll tell you as new households move into the neighbourhood.

I'm enjoying the criminal career now, ripping off 12k worth of painting per night work is awesome.

Good point.

So, aside from fiddling around with the original (I think it was) and a brief demo of the second version, I don't play this game.  I've never really had that much of an interest but since I've not been able to get into MMORPGs at the moment, I though I'd give it a go and I bought the game. 
Oh dear.  I've had to delete three characters so far and it took me HOURS and HOURS to make them and fix up a house!  I got smelly, my house came down with buggies, I offended the neighbours, etc.  I just now figured out that I can have five outfits from the start.  Before, my hair kept changing in unpossible ways and all but the one outfit I made, my clothes were horrible!  I've had to buy the strategy guide to sort myself out. 

This game makes me scared of everything.  I'M SO STRESSED.  (http://smiley.onegreatguy.net/shocker.gif)

Has anyone figured out how to get the second neighbourhood that is supposed to be in the retail (non-torrent) version? My box seems to have come without it. :sad: In fact, I don't see anything different about the two...

It's not supposed to come with it. You have to register your game and download it.

Ah, found it. It's hidden in the Exchange.

I need more time!  MORE TIME!   :ye_gods:

What you need are higher end fittings and no job. I built an absurdly small house, packed it with great bed, shower, cooker, fridge and computer and my sim spends the night hacking to get income. Occasionally he has to leave the house or he goes stir crazy. I probably should have given him the loner trait.

It seems much...easier then the sims 2.

And jay leno joke was great.

I'm waiting for the Sims/Spore crossover where I can raise a civilization of retards then nuke it from orbit.

Hi, honey.  This is what you do irl.  You've made a sim of yourself.  Or did I say that backwards?  At least your hacking is legal.  Giving yourself the Loner trait wouldn't have fit, though.

My fat little cutie, Bubbles Hitler, is a snitch.  I may have to kill her off too, though.  She's made a right mess of everything. 

I had bad dreams last night about this game.   :uhrr:  I'm not sure it suits me.

You can turn the aging off in the options from the main menu (the option is greyed out in game).

Advice: don't sleep with your boss and get caught by you partner.

I was about to ask if there was any difference between his sim life and his real one. ;D

Exactly! I'm getting used to it though, and I'm getting better at making outfits that look fine when I'm actually playing, even if they look kinda blah in Create-a-Sim.

It seems like making friends is way easier than it was in Sims 2, but I am terrible at getting my sims to fall in love with anyone! I had one sim make it through her entire young adulthood without ever being kissed.  :ye_gods:

oh god the humanity

It looks unless you have "great kisser" trait which allows to try and jump anyone right off the bat, you need to work on the mood of the target sim for kiss option to even appear -- there's something like three stages to it, the target sim can think you're "flirty", then something else and then finally "simply irresistible" or smth. The kiss option appears once you move their mood past "flirty" stage, which from what i read can take a while of some dedicated flirting.

Even with loner on, if you have charisma up pretty high, it only takes 5 or 6 romance section interactions (amorous hug etc) to get someone to woohoo. You can pretty much just meet someone and be woohooing 10 minutes later.

Which is far more realistic  :grin:

If you go relax on the bed, you get the WooHoo-interaction immediately, without any foreplay. :why_so_serious:

my sims have needs man

The game has a lot of nice features which aren't immediately obvious. You can become a novelist by getting your writing skil up and writing enough books to gain a good repuation, and unlike in the old ggame where you just sold wrote a novel and sold it for a few simoleons, it seems like it might be a realistic alternative to having a job.

You can also invest in the various businesses around town and pick up a share of the profits on a regular basis. My aim is to own enough of the community that I never have to go to work again.

With three Sims with full Writing, I can say living off it is extremely viable. My best writer gets §15K a week from royalties, working a single day a week (a super-crunch to write a book in one sitting.) However, you need a couple of traits (Bookworm helps, Hopeless romantic helps too if you're writing romance novels et cetera) if you are to get the big profits. Perfectionist helps too, but it's not as notable.

Sim Stephen King?  ;D

Yeah, mine was a journalist while I ranked up his writing skill, then he quit and and bought out the whole town.

Would explain why all the romance novels end with tentacle orgies, yes.

 :pedobear: nice shurt

The neckbeard is also a nice touch.

It's not the aging, which I have turned off anyway.  It's the fact that I can't get anything completed.  I never have time (or forget) to tidy up and half the time I run out of the house when my ride come in the morning, without peeing or showering.  No one likes me because I mostly smell bad and there are flies in my house.   :uhrr:

The ride shows up an hour in advance, so you can usually ignore it for a while and do the shower and stuff first, then point your sim manually to use it. Or you can try to become a rock star, they work evening shifts  :grin:

The moment you have $3500, buy the most expensive bed in the game. It will cut the amount of time you waste sleeping down by a couple of hours. Also, you don't need to cook full meals all the time, they give you a mood boost but otherwise a snack is just as effective. Even better, if you garden, you can just eat fruit straight out of your inventory.

For those trying to seduce the neighbour's wife - fixing yourself up in the mirror before they come over gives a helpful "attractiveness" boost.

Bed is always priority upgrade for me. And the easiest way to boost mood is probably to eat at the fancy restaurant for dinner. Sometimes a chance card will be played saying you were served food that you didn't order, will you eat it? Choose yes, and that'll boost your mood by +75 for a week.

I'm having a heck of a time keeping my astronaunt happy at work. 16 hour days are a bitch.

That is quite easily counter-acted by taking up that Lifetime perk of no penalty when having fun at work. So take it easy during work and your fun bar would still increase with no performance hit.

Sounds more interesting than Sims 1, would you guys say that the core game play (doll management) is more fun?

Another way to save time is by cooking group meals and putting the leftovers back in the fridge. You can eat them for days and days before they run out or go bad.

You can pretty safely skip peeing in the morning too, they'll just go at work. If you don't care about the little "I am so clean" moodlet, maybe shower at night before bed, it should carry you through work alright.

Speaking of the moodlets, it cracks me up that there is one for taking a bath with a rubber ducky. <3

This thread is making my head explode with the RL/Ingame comparisons. :(

Also:

http://www.cracked.com/blog/exploring-the-mysteries-of-the-mind-with-the-sims-3/

90% unfunny. I hate him.

Has anyone managed to cook ambrosia without cheating? If I decipher the requirements right, you need to be expert in cooking, fishing and gardening plus you need to find some rare seed drops from the world. Seems a tad difficult.

Apparently eating it grants you eternal life, or at least adds a significant amount of time to your lifespan. I can't imagine they'd make it easy.

It also revives ghosts. Even ones that aren't part of your family. Try putting some in the graveyard at night. :wink:

Your opinions are bad, and you should feel bad.

My first sim couple actually managed to make ambrosia about 2 days before they hit old age.  One of them was a writer so she had plenty of time to cook and garden and the other one fished so between them they had what they needed. You definitely need 10 in cooking but only 7 or 8 in fishing and gardening.

Eating the ambrosia doesn't make you permanently immortal it just resets your age to the beginning of whatever life stage you're at - so they were lucky that they got it before they hit the elder stage.

Coming from you?

I managed to cook it. Fishing is easy, Cooking is easy too. You just need at least 2 sims to make it easier.
The hard part is the gardening. You need to explore a small patch of trees outside the graveyard for special seeds (purple) to plant at your house. Hopefully one of those seeds will grow into a Life tree. Once you get one tree going, then just keep it alive and harvest it. Put the ingredient in the fridge with the Death Fish, and have your Cook sim make the Ambrosia ($10k recipe book). Eat, Live Long and Prosper.

I recently picked a death flower at the graveyard. No idea what it does.

I was also sneaking around a rich sims house trying to steal things, when I witnessed the old lady of the house die of old age at midnight. Now I have the Grim Reaper listed on my friends list. Unfotunately, I can't call him on the cell.

I managed to find a life fruit and I have no idea where or how. So I planted that instead of finding a seed, lucky me!

Eat it!   :drill:

Was tempted... Researched a little more, apparently as long as the flower is in my inventory, I can trade it to the Grim Reaper to leave me alone.

Hmmm that is what i assume as well when an opportunity card asks me to deliver a Death Flower to another sim in the neighbourhood to 'prolong his life'. I never tried it out though. Oh, any plant you fertilize with Death Fish will die.

My guy became a professional blogger last night. It was pretty :oh_i_see:.

I'll post a screenie later.

I'm considering starting a new thread for my The Sims 3 stuff, however none of it involves actually playing the game.  Currently we (but mostly my wife) are trying to make textures.  The current scheme involves making a vector graphic in Adobe Illustrator (Satan's Anus Version) which is then imported into Photoshop (Adobe is Run by Cocks Version) and assigned a color channel.  From there it has to be converted to ".dds" format, but the converter plug in does not work on Vista. :uhrr: :ye_gods: :uhrr:

I hope Will Wright's robots go on a rampage in EA HQ.

DDS is pretty standard whenever you're dealing with Direct3D. It's basically a raw Direct3D-readable texture, so the game can just read it in without dicking around with compressed codecs. No idea why they didn't write a BMP importer though.

Because they are cockgobblers.  Also, welcome to my world, in which we learn to despise EA/Sims designers and programmers.

However you gave me an idea.  I'm going to see if I can get my wife to use GIMP, I bet it can export to DDS.

I assume you are using the texture import tool on Modthesims?

The original Sims was fun only as a screensaver made of pure malevolence, a window into a deep, ghastly hell of a house full of unemployed people sobbing amongst empty pizza boxes and their own urine.  The fact that you named them all after your friends did nothing to change the hideous fates awaiting them all.

Later versions of the game actually seemed to channel the sims towards happiness and accomplishment, which proves that the point was well and truly missed.

I am not sure about that.  I don't recall where she got her guide but I'm assuming it was modthesims.  Is it a "import DDS into The Sims" tool?

I try very hard to not work on that.  Knowledge of "rasterizing" and "RGB color channels" tends to push out knowledge that I need.

What converter are you using? nVidia has Photoshop plugin (http://developer.nvidia.com/object/photoshop_dds_plugins.html) which allows to save in .dds format and works fine with Vista to my knowledge.

That's the one.  If you have had success with that, I'd like the pertinent details.  I'm actually using Win7, but that's basically Vista.  She has it working on her office machine (WinXP) but at home it doesn't show up in PS.

Hmm well it seems to work rather straightforward for me, i do "Save As', pick the "D3D/DDS" as output format, hit save, set the details in plugin window that shows up and that's it. This is "current version" (8.23) of the plugin, on 32-bit Vista and with Adobe CS3 ... but had it working with earlier versions of both Pshop and Windows. Maybe it's some difference between 32 and 64-bit system but couldn't find anything about it with quick google search. From what i did find though it sounds GIMP also has option to export DDS files so maybe that's acceptable alternative.

Ah, yea, I'm using 64-bit W7 and that is likely the blockage.  The installation runs fine but there is no DDS option under Save As....

I am hoping GIMP solves this, that would be swell.

So.  Really.  What do you do in The Sims?

I just don't get it.

You have fun in a non-linear way with various scripted prods to keep it from being too far into "omgwtfdoIdonow" land.

Make houses full of lesbians who get into catfights when they get caught cheating with each other.

If you've mastered the cooking skill and read the Ambrosia recipe from the bookstore, you can cook it up with Deathfish to make a dish that resets your age meter.

My 9-year old daughter used to make whole neighborhoods of apparently parthenogenic lesbian families who have nothing but girl children in Sims 2. It was getting a bit creepy. Now she's making a wider variety of families in Sims 3 but has taken a sharp new interest in getting them to actually *have* children in the course of their lives. She has not quite figured out the sequence of prompts in the Romance menu to produce this result, and I have said, "Oh, yeah, that's really frustrating, I, uh, can't really explain it easily, it's just like crafting in World of Warcraft, remember, we agreed that was also a bit too complicated for you? So, um, if I have time later tonight, I'll see if I can't get your Sim families to have some babies. But, uh, I'm really busy now, probably can't do it until after you go to bed."

I'm going to pay for this later in life, I just know it.

Heh, my daughter is the same age and has also really enjoyed the Sims since 2. Of course now that we have 3 that's all she wants to do. She makes fairly normal families but seems to have no problem making babies ... though I don't know that this is a good thing...


I guess you could think of it as a complicated virtual pet, along with a decorating and architecture simulator. It is one of those games that is more toy than game, and thus takes some imagination on the player's part to really come alive.

Nah, I think of it more as "The Cask of Amontillado": The Game.  I'll get sick of controlling too many Sims, and one of their asses is getting bricked up in a tiny little room until they piss themselves and die.  The constant wailing until death is always fun.

I did the same thing, but not with my own Sims, oh no.  I'd have my Sims throw parties and then wait for a guest to snoop around the wine cellar.   :grin:

Heh, I hear it is a popular pasttime but I've always been entirely uninterested in killing/torturing sims.

FYI, they can now climb out of a pool anywhere, not just at a ladder.

HOLY SHIT.

Okay I'm sold.  Now they just need to get this thing on Steam so I don't have to deal with the EA Downloader.

I've rarely tormented Sims myself, it's just not something that rings my bell. Hell, I barely ever make Sims cheat on each other. I'm so boring. :(

Yeah, the only time I made my sim cheat on his wife, I had to go back to the previous save. :P

The only way I torture my sims in this game so far is to make a bunch of hateful assholes move in, surrounding their house.

See, I'd do that and then contrive ways for my sims to kill off the hateful assholes.

Is "serial killer" a job in Sims 3?  It seems like it would be the logical progression from "professional blogger".

If you pick the evil trait, it just might be.

I know I can Hack and troll forums instead of blogging.  I also get to be Emperor of the World at R10 Criminal instead of just "Master Thief"

My original father and adult daughter household, I had her fall in love with an evil sim. He was so annoying that I build a pool just to kill him. Then I found out the ladder trick doesn't work any more. So I build a fence around it. Took a long time to die. Then I made her put the moves on a local cop and steal him from his wife. He's a good husband.

They need to make a neighborhood-making tool soon so I can recreate my Sims 2 neighborhood, "Red State, Blue State".

You can just edit the town from inside the game, unless there was something less tedious.

I made an evil female Sim go around town and try to steal everyone's wives away. Eventually got one to move in. Then I had the wife go back to her husbands house, seduced him until she got pregnant, and then broke up with him.

Alice and Kev: The story of being homeless in Sims 3 (http://aliceandkev.wordpress.com/2009/06/09/test/)

This. The ant farm can be much more fun when one manages to let go of the Old Testament hands-on approach and just guide the ants towards their personality-based wishes when required but leave them free otherwise.

Anyone have any idea if/how one could move all the Sims 2 music to the Sims 3? I'm tired of hearing the same three songs on the various stations.

I think you can only put it on Custom folder radio under my documents\sims 3 folder

Not a Sims fan but that was a good read, thanks.

/necro

Started playing World Adventures, after having played just the Sims 3 (my daughter has all of the Sims 3 expacs except Medieval), and now I remember why I hate EA.  Buggy games.  You'd think with all the money they have made, they'd be able to make games that don't fuck up so badly.

I was having a great time, visiting tombs in China and Egypt, until my sim came back from Egypt only to find herself cloned - now I have two sims that are almost the same but with slight differences - one has stats from before my Egyptian trip but inventory from after, and the other vice versa.  Picked one at random to go back to Egypt with, and she has disappeared.  

The EA forums are no help - people have been complaining about this bug for 2 years.  I just installed this game yesterday, and updated it, etc.

Shitty shitty shitty EA fuckers.  Is it really that hard to fix this kind of stupid with all that money from their cash cow franchise?

So, after perusing the official EA Sims3 forums, it seems that the most recent patch for the newest expansion royally fucked up everything else.  This patch came out in early June.  There has been no patch since, nor even an official acknowledgment from EA that they are even aware of any problems or are working on solutions.

The technical forum has pages and pages and pages of threads from people complaining that they can't play for one reason or another.

How can long can a company shit on its customers in such a way that they break the game that customers have bought, and continue to sell the games that cannot be played due to the patches that the company has come out with?  I'm surprised that there isn't a bigger shitstorm over this.

Huh, I haven't had any problems with the latest patch. Not that I don't believe you, as this is certainly not a new problem, it's just funny to me how I manage to usually avoid the "THIS PATCH BROKED IT" shit with regards to the Sims and all its runty children.

I didn't have problems until I had played my world traveler about 16-20 hours.  Now I don't see a point in playing, or at least playing a sim that I want to attempt to fulfill a lifetime wish for - playing more like a game than a sandbox - since the sim can be "broke" such that I can no longer play that sim.

Seems like a showstopper bug to me, and judging from the 120 or so threads on the technical problems forum that people have just posted in today, there is no lack of other serious showstopping bugs (some from this, and other similar things).

It surprises me that EA's customer service is no better (and probably far worse) than it ever was, yet people continue to buy their products.  I had sworn not to after the buggy shit that Sims 2 was, but then I caved to my daughter and bought the sims 3 stuff (never played it much until now).  Even in their regular forums, the complaints far outnumber normal posts.  Any sane company might be concerned, but EA has it's own special brand of crazy.

/necro

This is really a question about The Sims 4  - is it worth getting for $9.99?

That's not a bad deal especially if it includes some expansions. If it's just a loss leader to get you to buy their over priced expansions I'd wait another year or two.

I found it really limited and couldn't really enjoy it past 2 hours demo.
After the open sprawling city where I could mod it to have sexual predators at night in Sims 3, I just can't go back to it.
But at $9.99 - I'm thinking it's fine.
Why not just pick up that EA Access sub thing so you got other games to go along for one month?

Thanks - I think I'll wait until the next sale, when some expansion will go on sale too.

Generally, my wife is disappointed in the state of the add-ons in that they don't seem to be generating them in quantity, plus she really liked Seasons and they didn't make one of those for the last two versions.  But it is still a fine dollhouse.

Sims 4 was basically what was going to be Sims Online 2, then they decided to scrap all the Online stuff and just use it for the next single player. No open world - just a small navigable area between houses in a "neighbourhood" of about five lots. Multiple Neighbourhoods make up your city. Worlds are 95% not modifiable, there's no height maps on lots, they did away with the color pallet system of 3...

And as with all Sim games, 80% of the content comes in the expansions.

For $10 its probably a fun waste of time to try out a few of the new systems they did put in, but honestly, its one of the saddest excuses for a AAA sequel ever produced.  About the only thing they improved over 3 was making the actual sims look, well, less hideous (though very cartoonish).