I vaguely remember that too, as well as one of the patches allegedly making the way for three more EP slots for packs to be considered for release beyond ITF. But apparently none of that was to happen as the announcement of the Gondola lot being the final store release in Sept 2014 was made loudly, with much fanfare, and with a small free collection of clothing items released just prior to it that August for all of EA's "loyal TS3 customers."

Typical of them. Wish I didn't know that. But what's that free collection of clothing items? Anything interesting? Probably not or I'd have heard of it.

Also, the stuff packs were mostly absolute trash. Basically no new interactive objects, and tons of remeshed and overdesigned objects that you can find for free online (think Town Life).

Would have preferred if they either didn’t do stuff packs, or if premium objects were bundled into the stuff packs instead of the store, IMO.

Ts3 Sims do talk during meals, but they don't have a conversation. One sim will say something, in between shoveling food into their mouth like a front end loader, and the other sim will get a + or a - above their heads. They don't stop eating, and have a proper conversation like TS2 sims do at the table, which I find is a very endearing thing about TS2 sims & families.

I also vaguely remember something about the store continuing to make stuff, but I didn't know about the extra EP slot thing. That's interesting.. though redundant now. When one of TS3's developers bad mouth it on social media ( to make TS4 seems better I suppose ) its of no doubt that they're not ever going to bother with TS3 again.
Though said developers "contributions" to Ts3 and 4 leave a lot to be desired and their opinion isn't of much worth if you ask me. Which no one did

Personally, I'm more inclined to think that if anything has contributed to the downfall of the Sims, it has been TS4 and its appallingly shallow offerings.

This one.

It's actually a very nice (but small) set. It has a couple of hidden features though. One is that it completely eradicates Error12s and the other is that it instantly transports your game to a mid-1980s urban world all set up very realistically and ready to play. We just never told you about it because it seemed more fun to watch you find it on your own.

(Honestly, why do I post these things... ) But seriously, I do find myself using the athletic clothing quite often, even before I realize that I am reaching for it.

I do not know where all of you were reading/posting at the release of 3, but the reception was very good overall from what I saw. There were a few I will never leave 2 people, but most were eager to jump into the open world and CASt and so on. I bought 3 at release as I have every version except 1, which I discovered a month or so after it came out. And as I recall 3 sold very well. Or maybe you are talking more about the reputation/perception of the game now?

I totally enjoyed 2 when I played it, and yes it had the best animations and the most charm IMO, but once 3 was out I switched immediately and only loaded up 2 again about 6 months later, played maybe a half hour at most, and then uninstalled it.

Some folks spend a huge amount of time cruising to see what everyone else thinks of these games and pick them apart to the rafters. I do not do that. It really does not matter to me who likes or dislikes what, and I think that should be the case for everyone. IMO we all should just play and enjoy what we want to play.

Agreed. No matter what, at the end of the day this is simply discussion about a series we all love. As critical as I can be of TS4, that lies with EA themselves. Not those who enjoy playing it. Even though I've gotten the "Ewww. You like TS3?" statement quite a few times before, doesn't bother me a bit. I love it, and like you said that's all that matters.

I always was of opinion that sims 3 is a way less polished of a product than sims 2 is, but I still loved it. Base game is indeed less exciting than what sims 2 offered, and the graphics definitely didn't age as well, but expansions of TS3 are by far most feature filled expansions that I can count after sims 2 nightlife. Almost every expansion actually expands the whole game with basically a completely new game in itself. I can't say the same with sims 2, but sims 2 had benefit of being polished due to expansions being highly focused.

What was inevitable downfall of the sims started at the end of sims 2 era, when EA saw that custom content and store were profitable and that fans would still buy expansions if they weren't fully completed just because the sims is the only one of it's kind on the market. Since then EA has been pushing boundaries with sims 3 store and some of the packs, and that carried over in great measures to sims 4.

There was a very small portion of TS2 players who were very critical of The Sims 3, but they were mostly rotational players who played the game as if it was a virtual dollhouse. The Sims 3 sold EXTREMELY well upon release. It sold 10 million copies in 6 months, which took more than 2 years for TS4 to sell a similar amount.

The Sims 3 had more mass appeal than any other game of the series, and I have several gamer friends who have only played this entry and don't enjoy 2 or 4. I believe the open world, story progression, more goals / goal-oriented gameplay, help this game feel more like a "proper" game rather than a toy like the rest of the games of the franchise.

I was initially critical of some missing features like open stores that were part of TS2 base game, but then World Adventures came out with registers to make my own stores and amazing gameplay with a lot of depth, and my criticism died. Even though the game was still missing some past features, I started to fall in love with the freedom of the open world and the new Sims, which I find better in terms of behavior than Sims in 2 (and 4).

The Sims 4 is the downfall of the franchise. Not only it alienated a massive amount of the original fanbase, but also didn't manage to gain many new fans compared to The Sims 3. I know it's just anecdotal evidence, but everyone in my family and many friends played The Sims 3 for years. The only person who plays The Sims 4 is my 18-year-old niece (I don't play it anymore).

I agree TS3's technical problems are blown way out of proportion. I have yet to find a gaming PC in which it doesn't run fairly well. Maybe that's the problem. People are still trying to play it on an consumer laptop with integrated graphics and 5400 RPM hard drive, and that's never going to work. My mom plays it on an old 2009 gaming PC with a Core 2 Duo CPU, 4 GB of RAM, a 9400 GT GPU and an SSD (the only newer component) and it runs fine with every EP and lots of CC (which I test and merge for her).

As much as I appreciate the quality and attention to detail of The Sims 2, I can't go back to it for more than a couple of hours. CAS is criminally limited, time isn't consistent between lots (breaks immersion), the neighborhood is extremely static, build mode is very limited (and requires lots of cheats to even be usable) and I find all Sims kinda samey compared to Sims in 3. Not to mention the graphics, which haven't aged all that well. With some CC, I can make Sims in 3 look amazing (for example: THIS SIM and THIS ONE). I haven't find a way to make Sims in TS2 look presentable, no matter how much CC I use (and CAS CC in TS2 is pretty awful TBH).

People do forget all the issues The Sims 2 had. I still remember when I couldn't call a repair technician because 100 of them would spawn on my lot and make my game crash. Not to mention the headaches that SecuROM caused when I first tried Bon Voyage. It literally killed my hard drive 1 month after installing it. And corruption was inevitable if you played long enough with a single save, especially back then when I didn't know exactly what caused and what didn't. And there were (and still are) so many tiny bugs. From the memory of "roaches" appearing 6 time in a row, to an endless loop of aspiration fail caused by the game rolling the "roaches" fear over and over (and the Sim having that fear come true over and over).

The Sims 4 is a mess. There's nothing I hate more than having idle Sims who refuse to obey my commands. And this is a MASSIVE issue in The Sims 4 I haven't been able to get rid of completely. And when it comes to actual bugs, The Sims 4 is littered with them to the point certain core / EP features don't even work, like the retail and restaurant systems.

Whether The Sims 3 is the odd one out depends on the direction they choose for The Sims 5. I believe TS3 is the natural progression of the franchise. From a dollhouse simulator, to a game that simulates a whole community. The Sims 4 made a terrible mistake by going back to such a tiny focus, and it's not even as good as TS2, which also have a limited focus.

Oh yeah I know that one. Not bad actually. I quite like the baseball shirt, letterman jacket, and the female hairstyle. All pretty usable. You can use it in some sort of high school/university context if you're into the whole American "school and sports are somehow related" deal.

Genuinely curious, is there anything people are referring to in particular when they state this? TS3 can often be stylistically inconsistent, and has a few graphical oddities like vanilla sims, bloom (which thankfully can be turned off), and the shadow distance. Otherwise, the game tends to hold up pretty well IMO for a ten year old game. The worlds in particular still look gorgeous. Object meshes still hold up nicely as well.

I think it still looks gorgeous for a 2009 game:

I love the graphics in 3. I have seen some screenshots by folks such as Nilxis where I have almost had to look twice to see if real or Sims. Looking across a world especially at night or in the rain is something I especially like. I also have done some Sims I think are very attractive. The graphics are not perfect, but it is a game and not real life. I have tens of thousands of screenshots taken in 3, so I clearly like the graphics.

I also like the graphics in 4. 3 to me is more real and 4 is like watching a movie such as Tangled. I have some absolutely beautiful screenshots from 4 IMO. And I think the Sims are the best looking and most diverse. 4 is a totally different look and I like it as well. We can like Rembrandt and Monet and Picasso.

The build still looks good to me in 2 but I no longer like the look of the Sims in 2. And I remember the fish faces! They are very cartoon looking to me now which was fine then but not to my taste now. They look very dated to me.

edit: great examples Naus, and I totally agree those screenshots look darn good!

edit 2: this is the Sim I created for play in Pancake's Halloween world. I think she looks good. Overall I like the Sims in 4 a bit better, but I still like them in 3 quite often.

@Naus Allien You always take great screenshots. I really need to catch up on taking some myself.

@daisylee It's actually the opposite for me. I find TS2 sims can look acceptable with CC, same with individual builds, but the landscape beyond your active lot is so barebones that it just completely destroys the immersion. I've noticed elsewhere that there is CC now to make it more up-to-date, but a completely vanilla game makes it pretty obvious the game is from 2004. Even with CC, there are certain things I have a hard time going back to anyway, such as no ability to visit residential lots without mods.

I had some Sims that looked good to me at the time in 2, but they did thanks to a lot of CC. And I totally agree that individual lots can look good, but the empty beyond that destroys the look for me also.

No love for TS1? I love the sims voices in 1 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mm8BiDID3o8 /nostalgia

TS3 worlds and landscapes can be very pretty and have certainly been absolutely gorgeous. I've been salty about it ever since it happened, but since my game is bugged I no longer have the benefit of a bunch of those effects that really finished it off. My game is decidedly less good-looking without the depth of field, HDR effects, smarter reflections, but I still manage to capture something nice every now and then. But it's so frustrating to see how much better the stuff I'm doing in-game now would've looked two years ago.

I totally loved 1 when I played it. I have liked each version at the time as each offered something additional and new. I think each game has improved on some things. Yes, there are many issues with 4 but even 4 offers some things I like very much and miss when I am building in 3 for example. Dang, if I could just move that house over 4 tiles.......... or move that window up........

Just to come back to TS3 worlds a little bit and how they look: I've never played much in any of the EA worlds. But I have a custom world here made up of several large lots along with landscaping, decoration, and backdrops. None of it is supposed to be seen together. It's a movie studio, only with more floating walls. So I've just taken a few pictures from angles it's not meant to be seen from.....is it just me or does the dead, lifeless, decorative pointlessness of it all still look really damn good? This game can make both mundane and crazy things look really good.






Also it looks like the world's most expensive drug deal is going down in that parking lot, but I'm not going to judge.

Here are some images from my TS3 game. No special effects. Just a little cc. To me, it seems realistic and alive. Well, not a hundred percent realistic











(the tree is going right through the roof of that apartment, oh oh - more changes

LOVE those photos. Excellent examples of why I love 3.

Speaking of lot loading, I am redoing my Greek Island world after many requests and as I wanted to work on it again. I have added more islands and another village area that is pretty darn compact. So with 2 very tight areas who knows how it will load and play? Will have to see. Fingers crossed.

Yeah those are seriously pretty. I really need to spend some time in one of those worlds again, there's a few I'm eying and they're all gorgeous. I've found that worlds clutter very easily though, Daisylee, and that even just the existance of a number of highly detailed lots will slow down the simulation significantly. What those lots do to slow the game down, I don't know, but it's pretty annoying that you can't even have it sitting idly off-screen without getting a performance hit.

Or maybe that's just me. Something's lagging my locations world and I wouldn't be surprised if the lots were doing it.

It’s mostly the lighting, which frustratingly could have been fixed if they put some effort into it for a patch or two.

- Objects inconsistently use 2009-era shaders or maps- things like in-game hair shine and bump mapping are actually present but settings are all out of wack so they barely make an impact. As a result, objects look flat and detail-less.
- Fences don’t catch properly lighting, as do other objects like plants.
- Broken multi-floor lighting from World Adventures onwards.
- Short shadow distance, despite map view showing all shadows.
- Non-smooth sky gradients and bad default lighting.
- Object-based lighting that makes it impossible for actual lighting gradients to occur- Essentially creating a staggered appearance. It’s a problem still not fixed in TS4.
- The sim meshes are actually as detailed, if not more than TS4’s meshes. Lack of proper shaders and super-flat skins flatten them though!
- Again, sims themselves could have benefited from a softer lighting and more skin glow- don’t know why there’s essentially three (CaS, Outdoor, Indoor) segregated lighting models.