Which features that, if included, would be a big turnoff for you and possibly stop you from getting the game?
Here are some of mine:

• Not enough age groups. I really hope that for TS3, they can make more age groups such as Preschooler, Preteen, Middle Age, etc. if gradual aging is possible. If they don't add any age groups, I will be disappointed.
• Same crappy sim AI. If they're really going to have unified time in the new game, I hope that they'll make the sims smart enough to not set a fire while you're gone, or starve to death.
• A 'bare' game, one that has features deliberately left out for future EPs. They need to pack in as much as possible into the base game, and then add features they forgot in EPs so dedicated simmers like us won't have to blow all our money on expansion packs.

I guess there are going to be some features left out of the basegame, either because they don't want them back in, or because they don't have enough resources to put them in basegame and would be able to properly expand them in a future EP. Personally, I hope that nothing major gets left out. And this includes the possibility to have useable clothing shops and shops in general. I don't like much the rabbit hole concept they've developed. We play dollhouse not quest games here; it's supposed to be as visually appealing as possible not minimal.

I do not want the game to have to load one your sim(s) go to a Community Lot. I also want you to be able to bring only a few members to a Community Lot. I mean to say that I don't want the entire family to come. No offense to the rest of the Sim's family. LL

features i do not want are no need bars.I suspect, from the small bits and pieces I've read so far, that EAxis have completely and totally missed the point of sims gaming. I wonder if they imagine we just watch our sims going through the amazing animations they created, going 'wow'. To me, the entire point is the control. I like management, I like micromanagement, I do not want to share my sims with an EAxis AI.
Reducing the bars to three seems so simplistic; like others here it reminds me of the dumbing down of Sim City Societies. Man that game sucks. I think I managed a couple of hours each on two consecutive evenings and have never bothered with it since. It's just a mindless clicking exercise, no balancing or loading possible in any meaningful way. No tough decisions. No panicky moments. They've killed Sim City. Sim City 3000 used to be my favourite game.I hope EAxis are not approaching sims 3 with that sort of outlook, macro's cool but the sims' focus is micro.

I don't want limited skin tones, clothing, makeup, hair, etc. I want a color palette this time.

I think a colour palette would be great Lots of variation.

Ditto ...I even read that you can make things ingame...without another program to do so. This might make it easier for those of us who can't make squat :ROFL:....

Frankie, I think I read that TS3 will have a slider for skin tone selection and to slant the eyes to make Asian sims :D...

I am glad that we aren't having to have a load screen just to go to another lot...I read that too .....

I also don't want Sims to be required to share the last name when creating them in CAS. There needs to be a household name and a chosen last name for each Sim.

true. but you can move one sim into a house and then move another in with a different last name. it means you can't have them pre-married or related, but I did it recently with a couple room mates so I felt the need to comment... lol

Actually in Uni when creating young adults in college, you can choose their household name and last name separately, which was why I thought it would be cool to make this feature a main feature in TS3.

- I dont want crazy sims playing around with water balloons and pillows when i leave it on free will.

-I dont want ugly clothing that normal people would never wear

true, but to do that, you have to create each unrelated person seperately and then move each one into the house. It would be much easier if you could create a household of roommates at the same time without having to make them have the same last name.

WHAT!?

I didn't know that they were reducing Sims need bars!
Well, it is true that The Sims 2 need bars were much harder to control than The Sims 1,
but i'd rather they make The Sims 3 need bars as easy and it was in The Sims 1, rather than getting rid of them.

I prolly don't make ANY sense right now, but ah well.

The major turn off for me would be if they went too real with Sims 3. I like the comic quirkiness of my sims and the unusual things they do when not controlled. I personally don't mind the pillow and waterballon fights, but I think it's stupid that they do it so much. Every once in a while is fine, but geeze, they seem to do it all the time if you aren't watching them.

Oh and another thing that would turn me off is if the AI sucked. I mean, TS2 sims are pretty dense, I want smarter sims, so if the AI wasn't up to par, I'd refuse to buy the game.

I know, I am sick and tired of autonomous interactions that are annoying like pillow fight ad water balloons. Frankly, that should only be for children or teens and older who are childish. I don't step out of my real life home and see people doing those things, that's absurd! At least make the game more realistic this time.

My impression was that rather than completely getting rid of them, they just simplified them a ton. They said they have a stress vs. fun bar now. Sims still need to do things such as pee, sleep, and eat. However, now instead of 43% needing to pee, they just need to pee. Of course, they'll do a better job explaining it than I in the coming months.

I guess fun is like the fun bar and stress would be the rest of the needs. Maybe?

I will not buy the game if there isn't an options as to whether or not you can chose to play a family or let them age them selfs. It be nice if, say, you were only playing a family tile the kid grew up and could move out on their own and then let the parents just live out the rest of there lives...but I'd want the choice where or not they do.
and i want cars and pet with the base game... :umm:

They stop hitting each other when they are walking...

Yich, I hope sims don't have those ugly eyes like in the sims 2. Honestly... Nor do I not want realistic eyes either. And the skintones, erm, they could improve on. I want nothing porous, and nothing flat either.

For building... no boundaries, PLEASE! I mean what's with the two tile boundaries. Whaddya mean I can't connect my apartments? PSH. Also walls that turn at more than 45 degrees. I wouldn't mind having 30, 45, 60 degree diagonals for my homes/apartments, either. I also do not want roofs that go through homes. Seriously, how come I can't have a shed roof without the pitch sticking into the room?

Objects... erm useless ones?

I also don't want silly autonomous actions. I always have to turn free will off for this. And still some actions are autonomous. WTF? So I do not also want a false free will either.

Fway - Definitely the no boundries. I hate that 2-tile space around the edge of my plots and i'd love a greater choice on diagonal wall & furniture placing too

Zzapp16 yeah, banish all ugly clothing and ugly hair!!!

I hope whatever they come up with isn't going to be easier to play than the Sims 2 :err: I will get bored very quickly if they take the challenge out of it.

Agreed with I.nfectious and Fway, and I'd like to extend it to gridless positioning of all objects. Also, please don't force us to go to the trouble of 20,000 OMSPs just to be able to place more than one item per tile. Honestly, what kind of a surface hosts only a paper or only a cellphone? Messed up. But anyway, I guess that's getting more into the features you WANT than those I don't want.

So. I'm a realist player, and I don't want magic crap in my game so I hope S3 will keep away from that realm entirely.

Also, extending what someone said earlier about sims with different last names in a family, I also wish that you don't HAVE to relate a child or teen to an adult. Forcing us to do this is pretty weird, and a huge obstacle if you're going to create an orphanage, daycare, or even just a modern family with step children and/or moved in children who lost their parents or whatever.

On top of that, i hope we can relate say, a teenager and elder, without putting the adult it. Its silly you can't now .

Omg, yes, you're right, that should be a given. I made a granny and her grandchild not long ago and had to make an ugly maxis adult to kill off when I entered the lot just to establish the relation. Insane.