the problem is comparing TS2 to TS3 to begin with. They're different games. Personally I don't miss TS2 at all. I never played with hacks and mods and very little CC.

Meh, I can't be bothered to argue the points as to why the sims 2 is better then the sims 3, at the end of the day we got this sims 3 we have to deal with that move on wait for the cc and expansions and be merry with what we've got. If the expansions turn out rubbish we've all still got our trusted sims 2 to go back to.

To be honest when sims 2 came up it was like xmas day for me, i played for hrs and hrs and after cc and eps started to be come out i kinda hated maxis stuff, i cant imagine playing sims w/o cc/ and sims 3 is like rehab to me lol, caus ei i have like probable 10 cc installed, compared to 8000 in sims 2, although maybe that will change in a few months ^^/ i think both are good, and i do hope the features that r missing in sims 3 are added later on, i do admit i thought sims 3 was gonna be amazing, it isnt that much but its playable....

This is what I do if I want my sims to walk somewhere instead of running or taking the car. I click the sidewalk just before the building or place I want them to go to and select "WALK" from the drop down menu at the top of the screen.

I think TS3 is a a great game and the more I play it, the more I enjoy it. I think if EAxis had just added one or two more big nice features, it would have really improved people's outlook on the game. I'm thinking weather and seasons would have been something just spectacular to have in the base game. A fully interactive beach would be high on my list of big wants in the base game. Or maybe more open community lots (restaurants especially). I love the game, but it seems like just a bit more would have really wowed more people. On the plus side though, gardening, fishing and collecting were all added to the base game (from being in TS2 EPs) and all have been expanded upon and improved.

As for the way the sims look in TS3, sometimes I feel like a freak for this, but I have always loved the way they looked from the pre-release screenshots to now owning the game and making my own. I agree that they can look a little weird in the bright sunshine at times, but other than that I find them very attractive (both the males and females).

You're probably right. *edit* I'm sure that Mr. Wright could have come up with something stellar had he kept at it. The only reason for a lack of development by leaps and bounds is the inability to imagine or create at the present time of production (removing technology from the equation because, in my opinion, its advancement is not an issue). The old adage of "If you are not getting something you want, you must not want it bad enough" is something I firmly believe in and if EA wanted to release a revolutionary title comparable to TS2 I am most certain that they could have. The seamless neighborhood is nice, the trait system is great, but this is not the Sims they said they were building. The point is that they delievered an unfinished product with a lot of flaws while focusing on a couple things that have not been done with the franchise before; I applaud them for the new, yet I know they could have made the title better. Period.

Well sure they built a minimum amount on top of the old stuff, added some additional gameplay and then took most of the old stuff out. Not very smart I'd say.

Thanks. I shouldn't be up that late.

I'm fine with the Sims 3 gameplay as it is, and I did not expect the game to include everything in TS2 + expansions. But I still think there should have been more furniture and objects and hair styles (meshes) in the game right from the start. CASt does not make up to the lack of different meshes! EA has been able to use things like animations and object styles from TS2 (meaning they did not have to design everything right from scratch, even if they had to re-make/convert them for TS3), it should not have been that much work to add a few more items. And of course I WAS expecting them to improve some flaws and annoyances that were in TS2, but that did not happen...

The leap could have been much bigger if they had started building the game from the ground up instead of just copy-pasting lots of stuff from TS2. Starting off with a more advanced animation system using physics, inverse kinematics and all that. Just yesterday I was watching my sim dance near the pool, sidestepping all over the place and whatnot. I thought, how cool would it be if she got too close to the pool and accidentally slipped right in there? You could make sims of different sizes and the animations would adapt so sims dont start kissing air. There are lots of leaps that could still be made. I can see why they didn't though, as that would have taken way longer to develop and sold way fewer copies due to higher system reqs. But there's lots of ground left to explore.

I'm not saying TS3 sucks though. I like the direction they've taken with the seemless neighbourhood and sim personalities. It's just, I would have liked it if they had put some more work into making the towns come to life because currently, it's not that different from TS2. There's barely any reason to leave your home lot. Also the personalities don't add much for me atm because as a control freak, I always have all my sims action queues filled up. Townies don't seem to do much with their personality yet except when you talk to them. I hope that gets fixed. Then the devs don't have to hide sims memories from us anymore to keep us from seeing how random they behave.

I think we'll see procedural animations for Sims 4, but for Sims 3, it would've been a little too much to hope for. It's only now that we're even starting to see games with those capabilities surface. Spore was EA's big venture into that arena; why would they attempt the same technology in a game that would arguably do less with it? An even bigger factor is that it's still cheaper just to hire a farm of artists than it is to write and apply a realistic procedure. We may see TS4 make use of the euphoria engine, but for now it's mostly contained to games that all but require that level of complexity, namely shooters and action titles.

And you're right, it would've taken way longer to develop and would've sold fewer copies due to the higher system reqs. GTA IV is the first game to utilize the euphoria engine and its minimum specs would probably make the average Sims 3 player's computer cry for mercy. TS3 is built entirely around reaching the broadest audience available, and since it's exclusively a PC game, it was all but necessary for them to make the game available to the segment of the population that hasn't upgraded their computers since 2005. The Sims franchise is their cash cow, and EA knows that games only a top of the line rig can run simply do not sell well.

Also, my sims falling into the pool would be awesome...once. It would be hard to balance something obnoxious like that between never seeing it happen and having it happen way too often. And it wouldn't even require a physics system to accomplish, just another set of seamless animations.

Disclaimer: I'm not saying the TS3 team couldn't have done more.

Now that the disclaimer is out there, piggy backing off of what you posted a lot of people don't realize everything that goes into producing a game. The coding is difficult enough, but when you add in deadlines, profit margins, etc it's easy to see how a game wouldn't match up to everyone's expectations and include everything they think it should include. there so much more involved in producing a game than writing code

Not to dismiss what goes into making a game but are we to excuse EA for the the shortcomings and missing objects in the game because it is HARD to make a game. EA made at least 65 million dollars approximately so far according to the numbers they had on their front page of the launcher. 65 Million! and that is just the beginning. The game should of been hard to make and for 65 million we should of gotten a lot more than we did.

Not to dismiss the bugs the game shipped with (when has an EA product shipped without them), but sometimes you have to break something to fix it. IMO Sims 2 had become an unmanageable beast. There were just too many features in the game (many of them redundant or pointless) and too much junk that was unusable because it was just plain ugly or a one time only feature. For example, why do I need pages and pages of chicken suits, diving suits, gladiators and other such rot.

Sims 3 had to be taken back to its' roots and pared down. A lot of things had to go and it would have been impossible to please everyone. Personally, I'm OK with most of the changes. Call me crazy, but I think the game is more like Sims 1, but in a good way. Sims 2 had tons of bells and whistles, but for me it never captured the atmosphere that I loved so much about Sims 1. I'm happy to have that back, and if it costs a few features here and there, I'm fine with that.

I tend to think of Sim3 as being a re-imagining, not a sequel.

I agree that there were just too many non-essential features in the TS2 expansions. Not to talk about the enormous self-interaction menu, with all the expansions.

And some of the really convenient ones - such as fast food stands, walking between lots, and renting a home - came too late.

May be it's a complete different reasons from many people but I'm pretty thankful for TS3. I'm a Mac user. I used to have PC and I have The Sims and The Sims 2 with every expansion they offered back then but when I switched to Mac, I couldn't afford to buy all the expansions so I stuck with a base game and only few chosen expansions. Since I used to rich-expansion experience too much, I couldn't enjoyed TS2 as much anymore. And I couldn't even play Apartment expansion because it takes Aspyr forever to ship it to Mac (which I don't think they ever will now with the Sims 3 already out and all.) Generally, Mac users have to wait, wait and wait for the same game and same expansion that PC users already have or they can choose expensive choice, buy a new PC (but I would never go back to Windows unless I really really have to). Or if they switch like me, they have to buy all anew for different OS. And no, I don't support piracy.

But now wonderful thing happened, I can play TS3 at the same time as the rest of the world without having to wait months/years! Of course, there is several inconveniences for Mac users but since I'm a Mac user, I'm used to this type of inconveniences and have learned how to deal with them. So with only this level of compatibility for Mac, I have no complaint to TS3. Able to play it is better than nothing at all.

There's really not a lot of difference in the amount of items between the base versions. The TS2 base game was pretty "empty" too. It's just that you're comparing a base TS3 to a TS2 with loads of custom stuff. Look at what's in TS3 that wasn't in the base game of TS2.

1. Just my opinion no loading screens by itself beats the TS2 base game
2. There were no cars in the TS2 base game, nor bicycles
3. You couldn't walk around the neighborhood
4. You couldn't visit neighbors
5. You couldn't interact with sims at work
6. You couldn't watch your sims in different places
in the neighborhood at the click of a button
7. You couldn't colorize your objects with the release of the TS2 base game without a tool
8. There was no gardening
9. Your friends didn't age with you

As I said in my post, I'm not saying the team couldn't have done more, but there really is no comparison between the two base games. To be honest I'm not sure what some of you were expecting

This! After I had all of the EPs for Sims2 installed, it got to be actually too much to do. I mean I appreciated all of the nice extras that EAxis gave to us with the EPs, but my average sim families rarely took advantage of much beyond what the base game offered. College got tedious after awhile, but I sent all my sims anyway because I played by their wants so that they would stay happy and platinum. I enjoyed owning businesses, but I rarely did because it was impractical once the family was big unless every single family member participated. Vacations were fun, but again became something that detracted from everyday life. The EPs I used the most were ones that added to the life at home such as Pets, Seasons, and Freetime. I have to admit that for me, going back to a base game was something of a relief. I can again focus on making familes, without feeling that I need to take advantage of all that the EPs gave to the game.

Now don't get me wrong, I love EPs and can't wait to see what we get for the Sims3. I actually think that some EPs such as Nightlife would actually work a lot better in the Sims3 because of the open neighborhood. I just like and use the EPs that add to the base game more than the ones that are seperate little mini game such as Uni, BV, and OFB (though the concept of OFB is great and again would work better in TS3's open neighborhood).

The Sims 3 does definitely not suck! The gameplay in itself if really good and has lots of promise. CASt is love! By now, there are several ways to fix the bugs the game originally shipped with. You can even choose to play it TS2 style, so that should not be an issue anymore.

The only issue I have, and I know I have whined about this before, is that I find it impossible to create Sims the way I want them to look. However, that is probably just because I suck. It's just bit of a dampener to be back to imagening that the Sims have different face then they actually do. That was how I played Sims 1.

To begin with original poster, your don't install things to RAM, you install them to your harddrive...so deleting The Sims 2 expansion packs wont make The Sims 3 run any different. RAM would only come into effect if you were playing The Sims and running lots of stuff in the background too (like another game, a photo editing program etc etc).

You're confusing RAM with your harddrive space. I have all 3 Sims games on my computer and it doesn't matter one jot.

I prefer playing TS2, but I wouldn't say that TS3 sucks in comparison with it. Certain aspects of TS3 leave much to be desired: the lighting, the appearance of the Sims, the poorly implemented concept of neighborhood story progression, and the repetitiveness of climbing skill ladders/unlocking collectibles and opportunities. But the traits and moodlets are a nice change, the variety of things for Sims to do is impressive, and the scenery in the open neighborhood is amazing. The neighborhoods themselves are a little dull, now that I've seen it all, but --until a true neighborhood development tool is released -- I am looking forward to seeing builders tear down Sunset Valley and Riverview and re-construct everything to look as original as possible.

I didn't even see the OP said RAM. I hope you have all your disks and codes to reinstall everything. It took me forever but was well worth it.

I feel quite the same. I think both of the games a great in their own right, but this third rendition seems to be lacking in areas of smooth animation or even smooth hidden loop cycles as well as other things that should be pretty basic for a franchise that has come this far. Degree of difficulty or not, that is what these people are paid to produce. When my company comes to a problem we've never encountered or something even starts to look like it is going to come out below our quality standards, we take note and strive to make the product far superior to what it might have appeared it was going to be in the end. What results is a product that leaves no question in our mind that it is the best produced. To say that the TS3 base release is the "best they could do" would be very limiting I would think. Business meets art. Profits to deadlines while releasing a beautifully working product and feeding the families of the company. This is the responsibility of a business and if they have problems doing this, they need to rethink their priorities or take steps to improve whatever areas are lacking.

I just bought my game yesterday an I love it people told me it would not run on my computer but it works great its on low setting but hey I just need a new graphics card until then it good I have no lag either and its loads. Faster than I expected so I'm happy with it. Give it more time with expansions comming I know its going to be even better

... my preordered special edition Sims 3 costed $85 with S+H, close enough.

Base game of TS2 here: $60.

TS4: $125?

Is it just me or have I seen like 10 threads like this, all making the same statements?