So I thought to share my thoughts, but decided to do it on a TS2 board, since on a TS3 board there are fans of TS3 and my thoughts would come as offensive to them. And I keep comparing TS3 to TS2 all the time, so it's just as much a TS2 topic.

According to my observation, there are less creators for TS3 than TS2. Even at MTS it's obvious that, say, career creators were aplenty for TS2, yet for TS3 there's just a handful of careers, and some of them are just conversions of TS2 default or custom careers. There's plenty of stuff like hair for TS3, but that's to be expected from hair creators. I'm talking about creativity overall, though. Careers, food, even sims recreated from celebrities or anime characters... Am I wrong or TS3 isn't nearly as much liked by most creators as TS2?

I almost wish to move back to TS2, but I think I overplayed it. Even so, I just might. E.g. when I'm searching for certain characters, for TS3 I find almost nothing. For TS2 I find all characters, and not only characters, but their houses, specific careers for them, etc. It's such a big difference. TS4 is already out, so I think the situation with TS3 and CC is now up to scrutiny.

My guesses are that these things turned creators off:
- bad CAS (not enough sliders, pudding faces)
- bad possibilities to use lots (you can't just put down lots anywhere in TS3 world, unlike in TS2)
- more difficult to create worlds and careers (I'm only guessing here...)
- one-household styled gameplay (although this matters more to players than creators, but usually they're players, too)

Maybe I'm completely wrong, though, not only about these guesses, but about how TS3 is less popular among creators. I'd like to clear things up for myself, that's why I hope you gals can explain it to me.

I don't have a clue from a creator's standpoint but I know as a player TS3 and CC have never mixed for me. The game just doesn't seem to like CC and I know many other simmers where it's been the same. My TS2 game? Over 6 GB of CC, just fine ^_^ I mean it affects loading time but once it's loaded it's good lol. TS3 is just like "Nope, not doing it" not really sure why.

From what I have heard TS3 is harder to make things for, hence less people willing to create. I think it's as simple as that. As a game its actually more popular than Ts2.

I THOUGHT I read .... and I might have misread this ... that meshing is more difficult in Sims 3; at least with clothing. I notice that most clothes I see in Sims 3 are variations of Maxis clothing. One thing that Sims 3 does have. however, is the ability to incorporate patterns, so you will not usually have twenty separate, distinct colors of the same outfit. Because meshes are easier in Sims 2, they provide all sorts of possibilities when it comes to clothes.

Though, I do wish TS2 had more gameplay-feature alike converstions from TS3. Thinking off a quick example, TS2 witchcraft could have incorperated TS3 alchemy. Or like change butler behaviour into TS3 one's.

TS3 has also lost a lot more creators to TS4 than TS2 has.

Hmmm - well, I think there are going to be a lot of factors and some of the points upthread are correct but it could also be just as simple as the fact that TS2 has been around for 13 years now while TS3 has been round for 9 years. As both games age that difference will become less important but at this stage we have 13 years of solid CC creation for TS2. What is remarkable about the TS2 creator base is that it's still going strong. I guess we'll see in the next few years whether this remains true for TS3. Certainly, atm, there seems to be less new CC around for TS3 - only a little less - than there is for TS2 but that might just be a statistical wrinkle and not be significant.

One thing I would say about creativity and TS3 is that the introduction of the colour wheel - something that is very popular without a doubt - is that textures got less interesting. It's less possible to have detailed intricate textures when they have to look good whatever colour is chosen for that area of the object/skin. CAS sounds like a attractive proposition when you have access to any colour you want but there is a price to pay for that. TS2 has some CC with very detailed work which can look amazing in game. TS3, on the whole tends, to be blander when it comes to textures.

You're too careful, it's not an official EA-paid-zealots' site, shouldn't be a bloodbath in result



For some extend I'd agree. But (see below)



1. nope, quite opposite -the way you can manipulate body and face in TS3 (with proper sliders ofc) and also create animations is far beyond TS2 for obvious reasons - models are more complicated, which for strange reasons does not works for TS4 ( ) where, putting aside this questionable interface design "take and slide" clearly created for smartphone generation, there're "sliders" too, obviously, to be honest also - in completely vanilla TS2 there're also a tons of "puddings", we cannot see that because, well, who use the standard face patterns anymore?;

2. it's deliberable, really; but for me one of the most TS3 advantages are free lot rotation (well, almost) and these "1.5" size lots (not mentioning almost free lot size setting), so many times I missed 15x20 or 10x15 lot size in TS2 (1.5x2, 1x1.5 in TS2 standards); on the other side - in TS2 you can edit the road/sidewalk to your pleasure while it's not possible in TS3;

3. the worlds - yes, they're more complicated, so there is much more skill demanded to create/edit them, while TS2 ones, as long as there's a SC4 terrain it's just "plop and play", but these are as openly customisable as sketchy; but according to careers (these standard ones, not active like "detective") it's very simple and straightforward, and there're plenty of them for TS3;

4. It's possible to play TS2 style within TS3 but it's complicated and sometimes becomes frustrating, but it's a "style" decision - I've dreamed of possibility to melting these styles and hoped to TS4 will be such thing but... well.


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tl;td;
It's technology and generation change as first, and also the position in the time difference. When TS2 has risen everything (almost) was anew and possible, every creation was *the* creation most of the times just because before there was nothing. TS3 entered a land already conquered and highly contested, no surprise many creations were just reproductions. Well - the whole game in design was an one big reproduction (very clumsy one in some areas like OFB or apartaments).

Still waiting for the production which takes the best of two...

I tried to dab into TS3 creating - but I hardly understood anything, and gave it up. Then my game decided it didn't want any more EPs installed, and stopped working. I didn't have much CC for TS3 because it did offer a better selection of clothes and patterns, and my TS2 playstyle didn't carry over to the game less screenshots), so I didn't feel I needed a lot of CC to make the game pretty. I do have a lot of TS3 CC, but most of it just sits there, waiting to be converted into TS2...

I did find it a little easier to make CC for TS4 (bit of a roundabout process, since my brain doesn't go well with Blender for the time being), but with TS2 it's almost second nature for me to make CC.

I think the main diference between CC creators for TS2/3/4 is that most of the TS3/4 creators are on Tumblr and various obscure blogs, so you have to go looking if you want to find any CC. TS2 creators have also largely gone over to Tumblr, mostly because a lot of the community sites and other large sites either went down or saw less uploads and updates (BPS, Simsoasis, Insim, SimsCommunity, Sims2Supernova, the download pages here on MTS, to name a few). The community feeling was much greater before TS3 came into the picture.

This site has a lot of updates from all over the web, plus themed lists of uploads, and they do TS2/3/4 updates: http://sssvitlans.tumblr.com/

Right now on this site the biggest upload is consistently forTS4. Surprising but true.

Probably because of toddlers, which did a lot to redeem some of TS4's bad reputation. The SSvitlans site had 40-50 pages of new downloads each day the first week or so, mostly related to TS4 toddlers.

For TS2 and TS3, I like to create entire neighbourhoods. And that takes a long time. So people creating that sort of content aren't likely to upload every week. Whereas for Sims 4 there is no equivalent- so the creators who were world building in 3 and 2 can only upload single aspects of a world for Sims 4, instead of the entire thing.

I don't want to go offtopic myself, but I didn't even buy TS4. I checked it out at a friend's house and shut it down as soon as I saw there was no open world. After TS3 I can't play like this anymore. And too many features are missing, so I will only buy TS4 if\after they release all expansion packs for it and if they're innovative enough. So far the only thing that interests me are active careers (and there are only three, not enough), running businesses, and vampires. That's too little content to buy the game... TS4 feels like going back to TS2, while throwing away all good features that TS3 intoduced, expect that TS4 is lacking features that TS2 had with all its expansions.

With TS3 I too was disappointed for a long time, mostly with bad CAS and one-household style gameplay. But afterwards people created many sliders and NRAAS SP mod came into being, so I only started playing it seriously after all expansions were out and such mods were created. With TS3 my only buff now is that it's so slow in CAS. It loads clothes many times slower than TS2 did. It's pretty much a horror when you need to create a few sims in a row, so much time is wasted for that. I basically just play in a window and read a book while waiting for clothes to load. *facepalm*

I'm honestly surprised if the sales are good for TS3\TS4. For a long time after each game was released, there was no reason to switch to it. In the beginning they're certainly worse than their previous counterpart with all expansions. I think most dedicated players feel like me, but perhaps people who buy it are very casual and don't play much.

But creators are a different beast. Although I'm a creator myself, I didn't create much, so I'm not talking about casual creators like myself. The psychology of dedicated creators is beyond me, do they even play the games they create for? I think that in their case they might be playing very little and creating a lot, so maybe they do buy a new game in the series the very moment it gets released.

There have been a few toddler items coming to the queue but far more other things including vampire related things.

That is true to some extent, I remember that during TS2 years the photoskinning technique was very popular, and it almost disappeared in TS3. Now in TS2 it’s less popular too, I think the Maxis-Match style is dominant these days. To me both styles can look good in any game as long as they’re made by a skilled creator.
As for CASt itself, its presence in TS3 causes that no-one creates recolours for that game (there are patterns instead), whereas in TS2 recolours are a large part of CC. I can put up with the lack of CASt, but I miss it. Sometimes I find myself getting annoyed that I can’t find a colour I need, shutting down the game and making a recolour. Yesterday I made about 100 walls (200 if you consider that each one comes in a version with and without moulding), and that wouldn’t happen if I were building in TS3 – I’d just use CASt.

That's true but I also dislike the tendency that TS3 encourages to matchy-matchy in decor. I like the challenge of matching, contrasting and blending different textures and colours when I decorate. Just like I do in RL. One of the reasons I tend not to DL these colour sets that seem so popular atm.

As for TS4, you'd expect that the volume of CC would increase after a significant upgrade to the game, especially when that game is the currently supported version. Doesn't surprise me there's a lot of volume right now. Ask again in 6 months when everyone's got over it.

It changes with the updates. After the toddler update, 80-90% was toddler related, for perhaps 2-4 weeks. Now it's more like 1-3 updates in ten. After vampires, a lot (but not that much) was vampire related.

I like the challenge of matching too, especially with no CC buildings, but sometimes I want the same pattern for several things, and I like the convenience of changing colour at any point – for example, I really dislike that the dark grey used for black things is way too light. In TS3 I can change that in a few seconds, but in TS2 I have to shut down the game, run SimPE and photoshop and change the colour there. Or when I want a shiny thing, I need to edit the material file instead of just choosing a shiny pattern. CASt was my favourite tool in TS3 and it’s the thing I miss the most in TS2. The other things are skills (7 is way too few), collecting, and tombs. Open world is nice, but I don’t miss it as much as I miss CASt. And being able to easily match things doesn’t mean that the results must be boring (Examples: 1, 2, 3, 4.) TS2 with CASt and open areas like in TS4 (but fully editable) would be a perfect sims game But even without them it’s still the best for me and makes me want to create for it.

And yes, TS4 as the ‘new shiny one’ is expected to have the most active creating community, however it gets nowhere as much attention as it would if it were actually good. Some people say that TS4 is similar to TS2, probably mostly because of closed world and no CASt, but if were actually similar, it’d have incomparably more players in my opinion, because TS2 is a pretty good and immersing game.

I played sims 3 off and on up until the last EP, I could only ever place a lot down where there was a shape designed for it on the map. In sims 2 you can place in anywhere along a road, this is what they mean. I thought I had all the updates, it would do it regardless if I wanted it to or not.

For me it's much easier to create TS3 build/buy object meshes (I tried it) as you don't have to work manually on textures, but the program (blender) bakes you all the cast channels and you just change textures in game using cast. But I have no ime for meshing... so I quit.

TS3 has the lot placement system... it was added in the update, and the world building is extremely detailed, wich is a +

But nothing beats the district system of TS2.

I don't know for mods, as it seems that ts3 is fundamentally borked game (even more than TS2) so it needded a lot of mods to be fixed first, and then come the enhancment mods... which the game cannot really take as it is not well optimised for 32 bit systems and let alone 64 bit that does not exist.

Speaking as somebody who's played and "created" (lots- and worlds-wise) all three versions, here are my thoughts:

Sims 2 was my favourite for world-building. The ability to customize how many lots were in the world, how big they were, etc. The building was trickier, but far more individualized. I still putter around in it from time to time, but I'm one of those people who has largely moved on.

I won't belabour the point in Sims 3 (definitely wasn't my favourite - severe lag issues made it largely unplayable for me and CASt drove me bonkers) - the building still was reminiscent of TS2 for me, although I actually DIDN'T like the CASt system: it was almost too in-depth for my liking.

Sims 4, I've found, is the best of both worlds for me personally. Although I'm still internally screaming for the ability to make split-level foundations and customize lot placements, the actual ability to build is far smoother and more developed without resorting to cheats. I also find that I'm enjoying the actual gameplay aspect of it far more in Sims 4 than I ever did in 2 or 3.

You don’t need to manually put textures like wood or fabric or whatever, but what about shading? (Which would go to the multiplier layer in TS3.) You need to work on that, and that kind of counts as working on texture to me (probably because in TS2 the base texture and shading is one file). It always annoys me (in any game) when an object or clothing part or anything doesn’t have proper shading, it looks unfinished. I always care about shading while creating something and it annoys me to no end when a piece of CC has a nice mesh and base texture, but isn’t shaded.

Edit: I actually have a good example of how noticeable the difference is – my very own fence lamp. Here is its very first version without shading (it also had messed up normals and slightly different alpha but that’s not the point), and here is the final version, with shading and bump mapping (actually it has a normal map, not a grey scale bump map).

The result of the texture baking in Blender is a bit meh. I've seen a lot of TS3 textures, and some might look alright on the mesh, but are absolutely horrible as textures. Might have something to do with the UV maps, too. A lot of people make the mapped areas much too small, or map them in such a way that textures get distorted. Or perhaps it's because most of the TS3 meshes very often are high poly and have bad mesh flows, so the UVmaps suffer.

Personally, I find Blender works a bit backward from the meshing programs I'm used to. Shortcuts are very different, and absolutely nothing is in a logical place, not even the move/rotate/scale functions - I'm used to them being buttons to click in an easy to find menu, but I think I had to look it up in a tutorial before I found it in Blender. SimPE also doesn't like Blender meshes very much.

I did spend some time getting used to SimPE, but I've learned the program gradually. Every time I've learned something new, it's something I can use for several projects from then on. Making objects is quite simple most of the time, and unless you're adding or removing functions, it's basically the same process every time. The process for making accessories and clothes is also fairly easy. There are a couple of things I just can't get the hang of (but wish I managed), and that's meshing hairs and clothes from scratch. I know the basics, but can't seem to get the hang of morphs and such, and the meshing process on hairs is something I'll probably never master (I've only made conversions and simple edits). Bizarrely enough, the only clothing meshes I feel somewhat comfortable making are infant clothes. I'm comfy with making accessories, though.

In my personal experience with modding my TS3 game. (I have like 1000 hours on steam I still can't believe I had that much free time once) Its a lot more... glitchy when it comes to CC. TS3 is not nearly as stable as TS2 and poorly made cc CAN ruin your save file WAAAAY easier then accidentally corrupting your neighborhood. I cannot tell you how many good legacys I had ruined by glitches like that.

For example! When I had to completely clean out my cc folder for TS2, I had arooound 55,000 files? It still wasn't enough for me though,
But with TS3? I had it down to a system. I would only have NRAS mods (the bare essentials) A few files from MTS and that was it. The cc I could add was very sparing because it would just slow down the game sooo muccch. I remember on my old Toaster computer, Banshee (one of those school computers, thing's fan was so loud you could hear it from the kitchen) I would have up to a HOUR in loading times with just NRAS mods. Trying to place down houses was basically impossible because of how long it took to load.. I read so many gosh darn books in those loading screens. When I got my new computer and the loading screens where only 5 minutes I almost broke down CRYING I was so happy I could finally play the game again.

Then it glitched out and no matter what I do to try and fix it, its not gonna work again unless I wipe my computer.

:D

Older things are more dependable than new things.