As a builder I'd like to say that if you have an imagination the limitations of Sims 4 build mode are more of a challenge than a set-back.

Furthermore, the lot sizes are not prohibitive to building - for me anything much over 30 x 30 (in Sims 3) produced a house which wasted time in negotiating, taking several sim minutes to get from one end of the house to the other. The 64 x 64 lots in Sims 3, to me at any rate, were unrealistic and boring to build - anyone can build a house on a lot that size, but it takes a certain amount of planning and skill to build on a lot half that size. Just look at the amazing small houses people did for Sims 3? Armiel is one person who made tiny lots and made them beautifully.

Also, nothing is set in stone, you can level the park, gym, museum and bar to create you own downtown area - With imagination, the park alone would become a small park, a gym, a bar and a museum, leaving the downtown area free for you to create other lots.

For the record I'm not a Sims 4 fangirl, but I appreciate what it has to offer and it's potential. The same goes for Sims 3. As a builder, I find they both offer different challenges, and for me that's a good thing.

Plasticbox does a fine job on small lots as well - for both Sims 3 and Sims 4.

*pokes agree button hard*

Disagree.

Sims 2 was one of the worst expansion packs. It added cats, dogs, and the crappiest, unusable furniture set in the generation. An uninspired selection, considering Unleashed was probably the most content-heavy expansion pack in the previous generation. Sims 3 gave the player a lot more: Cats, dogs, and for the first time ever horses, plus the return of all the small pets. Appaloosa Plains was one of the best worlds and the furniture/build mode themes could be used for anything.

Yeah, well, this shows that you haven't really played with the Pets EP, because others do ride their horses, horses do visit the training grounds as well as dogs go to dog parks and cats to cat jungles, either with or without their owners. And as regards the behaviour of Sims on training ground lots, I think they are more encouraged there to interact and grill hot dogs, so they act a bit different from normal parks. The only thing that is true is that you can't leave horses on other lots and, and this would have been wonderful, you cannot rent a horse to just go for a ride.

Edit: So, I guess you can stop triple posting off-topic stuff and go back to discussing the original topic at hand

Thanks for reminding me. I wish more AAA devs would release 64 bit versions of their games.
Really makes me think of The Sims 3. Imagine how many issues would be insta-gone if it were 64 bit. So much RAM for the program to use! Oh the goodness!

But no. They decide to stay cheap and old-fashioned. Come on guys, even amateur indie teams pull it off!

I didn't give up the Sims 3. I only took a break from it for a while. Now I am playing it again. I probably would have played it sooner, but I've been playing Farming Simulator 2015...which is also open world, but with lots of tractors.

i miss TS3, i haven't played sims 3 for 4 months, i just don't want to load it. i''ll take like 40 min just to start the game

MarcyRoars, what kind of issues would be insta-gone if TS3 were 64Bit? Also 32 vs 64 Bit has nothing to do with being cheap. It's basically just a matter of how you compile the code. It doesn't require any special effort or knowledge. If you want to appeal to the largest possible user base, though, going 64 Bit is still a risky step.

I don't know either. I only have two games where several households have pets - one in Appaloosa Plains and one in Rinn Fada. These pets are pre-made. I don't allow Story progression pets and have the adoption system disabled. In worlds where Sims don't own pets or lack the pet loving traits all three lot types are rather useless indeed, because it attracts mostly Sims with the respective pet loving trait. I have one Equestrian inactive in Lunar Lakes and she's the only one who visits the training grounds either with or without her horse, but she also regularly rides one of her two horses, more than I'd like her to, btw, because this seems to take preference over going to work, for example.
So, my observation is mostly from Appaloosa Plains where the population is set up in accordance with the EP and there pet life is rather active. The cat lady can usually be found in the cat jungle and her cats visit it on their own, too, and the dog park is just as busy as the regular park. And I usually find Honey Darnell riding happily into the sunset instead of going to work.
Maybe you use NRaas Story Progression and have the individual pushes for inactives to visit lots disabled or set up such that it prevents this. Because in my games this happens autonomously, i.e. these Sims choose to do that on their own.

(...)


This was more directed at your habit of triple-posting, which is actually against the forum rules.

I found it EXTREMELY difficult to give up TS3 for TS4. I have played TS3 longer than any game, and that includes a few Pokemon and Final Fantasy installments on various platforms. I have a range of different sims with different personalities I've spent hours and hours tweaking saved in my sim bin, and literally GBs of carefully arranged and sorted CCs. I've grown attached to the life and love of a lot of my sims.

But alas last month I had to make the very sad decision of uninstalling TS3, not to make space for TS4, but because the game has grown to be very taxing on my computer, to the point that it's a big hassle just to open the game. I have an old laptop that runs pretty much everything else decently except TS3, so I don't intend to change it just for a game (also destitute college student), and also I've gotten to the part of my studies where I don't really have time to dedicate an entire evening for TS3.

However I did make a backup of all my saves and CCs in a HDD to one day continue with TS3 (hopefully with a stronger compt this time) in the future

I've found TS4 to be enjoyable so far, despite missing CASt a lot, and it loads/saves fast, which suits my new situation perfectly, and heck, I could maintain pretty good graphics without much lag now. But to me TS4 doesn't replace TS3, just like TS3 didn't TS2, they're just different games.

Replace Sims 3 with Sims 2 and you've got my position in the argument.

I'd love to see these builds - why not upload them here?

Well, for one thing, no more CTDs/Error 12's because you exceeded the ~3.3 GB memory footprint because you chose to play a large, fully populated world with lots of custom sims wearing lots of custom clothes with high poly hairs and whatnot to make them attractive to your individual taste and sense of style. And you could have had room for caching stuff like CAST patterns for better performance when loading swatches, as well as in Stylist/CAS, where categories could also be cached on game load and not rendered fresh every freaking time you chose Accessories for the next clothing class. Never mind the demands of a "working" SP resulting in all the sims in town actually simulating, well, existence (although that is probably more CPU cycle limited, and a larger memory footprint probably wouldn't have helped there much, although you still have to keep all that background data in memory somewhere).

So a fresh compile, along with some optimization of existing code, could have been a nice gesture to the community by EA. Other companies have offered 64 bit patches of their game engines to allow folks with systems capable of running them (both OS and more than 4 GB of RAM) an opportunity for a "better", or at least better executing, gaming experience. Hell, Valve offered that for HL 2 over a decade ago, and there were a LOT fewer folks who could have benefited from that back then, but they still did it. Same for Far Cry (the original) and the sequels.

To clarify: I'm not suggesting going to 64 bit only. Rather, offering the option of a 32 bit or 64 bit install to the user, based of course on the available specs for hardware and OS. Which is how other games are offered. Sure, it means compiling twice, and probably some effort to optimize versions on the part of the developer, but when you're looking at the sales volume of AAA titles, especially a franchise like the Sims, with lots of DLC and EPs over the several year life cycle for a release, it's not an unreasonable expectation. Other companies pull it off. Then again, those other companies also usually like to take some pride in the capabilities of the software they write, and this is still EA we're talking about, where "good enough" is the fundamental foundation of their corporate ethos.

I was already done with The Sims 4 when I heard there was no toddlers, CASt, or open world. I was even more done when I downloaded the CAS demo and attempted to use the awful "sculpting" controls. I'll take the sliders any day. But yeah, I'm really emotionally invested in my Sims 3 families, and I have spent far too much money on all the expansion packs, so I see no point in spending even more money on a sub-par game. Now, I'm not completely ruling out the possibility of playing TS4 -- if they add something substantial in a patch/EP that really gets me excited, I would probably buy it, but I certainly wouldn't at the moment.

I haven't played TS4. I like TS3 and I've actually gone back to TS2 for the time being. TS4 is way too cartoony, and someone posted a screenshot on the Simbology site. "Take an angry poop"? What...? *facepalm* I also didn't care for the UI.

I'll just stick with 2 and 3.

I'm not surprised to see others in this boat -- I bought Sims 4, then used the Origins return policy which allowed me to get a refund within 24 hours of purchase.

Sims 4 just... wasn't fun. I don't even play Sims 3 with CC and I still like it. Story Progression and open worlds are an absolute must for me. I can never go back.

I cannot believe Sims 4 actually took a step backward and brought back loading screens... do they intend to make the open world a feature in an expansion pack? It makes no sense otherwise.

The only thing I actually like about Sims 4 is the CAS features (kind of) and building features, but thats it. I like Sims 3 sims better...Sims 4 seems like a cartoon to me, and Sims 3 sims can be made so realistic. I heard there is no open world or toddlers, to...Nope!

I kinda have, but I think it will be like Sims 2 that i still play all the time even though its old. I feel I can never give up Sims 3, its my favorite Sims game of all time. I don't like how all the people that I get custom content from are moving on and are starting to stop making Sims 3 custom content. I feel like I'm not ready for the transition yet...