I can understand why a lot of the things which seem to be absent would be better if they were in - the more animations the better, the more content the better, yadda yadda yadda, but I do take exception to calling the creators, i.e the developers "lazy". Anyone who has done any sort of work involving project managers, producers, publishers, whatever know that the limiting factors will be simply time and budget - neither of which are the responsibility of the people who actually worked on the game. I would imagine that many of the staff feel as frustrated as you do but the last thing they'd want to see is people implying that it is their fault specifically, and not simply the result of the corporate machine.

Er, so my personal short answer would be "no".

AMEN! I love that PSA as well. I was thinking the exact same thing when I saw that. "When you say 'that's so gay', do you realize what you say? KNOCK IT OFF."

My biggest gripe are the CAS sliders. You have to have a hack to increase their movement so you can produce a half-way decent sim. There are some vital sliders missing, body part sliders, eye elongation slider, face elongation slider,.

I hate the fact that if you want different skins, you have to download a DEFAULT which means then you have to take out the previous skins or eyes or whatever you had. In Sims 2, you could have so many variations which were not default.

Shipping it with the highest speed not working was really, really slapdash.
And then when they do patch it, you have to have threads and tutorials just to get the patch to work in your game. Really bad.

So, in a word YES, they are effing lazy and lack attention to detail.

In the sims 2 they had a piece of driveway you could place anywhere, and a piece you connect to the road, so saying that the reason they haven't got an animation is because they have a driveway you can place anywhere is dumb. It's because they are lazy and couldn't be bothered to add the animation, which so far throughout playing it I think is more likely.

I'm not bother by the rabbit holes, because as someone said earlier, it gives you time to tend to your other sims needs and wishes.

I'm fairly dissapointed by the baby animations, I used to quite enjoy the detail they put in on the sims 2, I'm not a big lover of kids in real life and don't plan to have any but I liked having them in game and little things like the baby changing table were nice.

I love playing the sims 3, don't get me wrong, but the more I play the more I notice little things and I think "Hmm, that was better in the sims 2."

And I agree with anyone that says the game is too easy, in some ways thats nice, like, I don't always want to play a game in which I have to use a lot of brain power, sometimes I just want to go with it, but I think a difficulty option would have been nice, opposed to having to download mods that make the game harder and then only being able to play one way or another. Even the simplist of games have difficulty options.

I honestly enjoy playing the sims, all of them, one two and three, and I must say I have played the sims 3 quite a lot these last couple of days (I got it when it came out but I was kind of dissapointed and didn't want to play it.) and I hate it when people say "The sims 2 is better than the sims 3" implying that the whole of the sims 2 is better than the sims 3, which I entirely disagree with, sure the sims 2 might be better than the sims 3 at the moment but as I read somewhere on these forums, the sims 2 has years worth of CC, Expansion Packs, Stuff Packs and Mods. The sim 3 base game is much better than the sims 2 base game, however they could have done MUCH better on animations in the sims 3.

Essay over xD

Yeah, kids were way too cute. Those baby todlers now all have scary serious grown up faces, it's so odd.

I wonder why they also changed the way radio works. I loved how it worked on TS2, if you went to other room you would still hear the audio being played, but a little far away. Now, step 2 inches away from the stereo and it just vanishes completly?

I certainly hope that all of you complainers get what you want, I know that my computer can handle the extra load. Just look at one of the animations (like getting in and out of the car), that happens all over the 'hood. Not just on the lot that you're playing, but the whole 'hood. Most of the store bought computers would crash 5 minutes into the game if they had to process all that extra stuff. So, yah, bring it on EA, load up the game. I'll be playing, while all of the folks with little computers ask why they can't play. Think about it. The specs go up with each EP.

So, at dinner tonight, whine about your computer not the game.

The path finding in the game is terrible. Not only Sims complain about things in their way, when there is absolutely nothing, they even complain in some totally ridiculous situations. A sim can't leave the table because there is an empty plate on the table. "Jeez, how did that happen, sweetie? A plate on the table, how shocking! It's never supposed to be that way, I can see why you can't move, darling!"

Or another brilliant moment, a Sim goes to wash dishes. He goes through the kitchen, ignores the kitchen sink, the dishwasher and goes straight to the bathroom to wash the dishes in the bath sink. Silly me for expecting this would be better than in Sims 2.

And finally, my favorite so far. My Sim wanted to give massage to his friend. The problem was that they were in different rooms. You would probably expect that the Sim A would simply go to the other room and give his friend the massage. Wrong! They were just standing there without making a move, facing each other through the wall for good 30 seconds. Then I cancelled the action and tried it again. This time, it was the Sim B who decided to go to the other room because somehow miraculously he knew that somewhere behind the wall is someone who is willing to give him a massage. This was a true wtf moment for me

I agree that the movement is bad. it probably wouldn't be so noticeable if it weren't for the fact that I played the Sims2 for so long and that it's no longer possible to build and decorate like in Sims2. And the footprints of objects are a lot bigger now too and don't fit in the room in the same way it used to be possible in Sims2.

Well I've already said in another discussion that they've been a bit lazy (got alot of stick for it as well) my main problem is the rabbit holes and the loss of the cool cut scenes we got, like the first kiss cut scene the first woohoo cut scene (which was sooo funny) all these were scrapped and I felt they gave the sims 2 a little bit of charm and humour that sims 3 lacks. Whats more they've re used soo much from the sims 2 it really seems the only thing they did on their own was open up the neighbourhood and make the sims look ugly. Also my sims react incredibly slowly to any order I give them like the post above me they just stand there, in my case it can turn into a good 5 minutes. Furthermore although there is a lack of loading screens, for my computer saving and placing lots can take from five minutes up to half an hour, sure thats my computer not being top notch, but in the sims 2 the loading times for me were much shorter even though there was more of them and so sims 3 now has less loading times but the ones they do have take far to long to make any real effect. I agree with what some one else pointed out, I too never touched modding in my sims 2 but my sims 3 I have actually modded for the first time ever, this was to make the game more interesting and such which is a bit sad when you think about it ):
So I do think they have been lazy, but I'd say lazy with ideas but overall more wrong in what they kept and what they got rid of.

If this was true and if EA didn't consistently force the cheapest way out of any issue in 85-90% of their releases, the solution would be to allow animations to scale back on these crappy computers.

Here's a lazy one that really can't be blamed on trying to require lower specs - you don't get little one-line summaries when you hover over "friend" or "acquaintance" or whatnot? You know, you used to get those "I don't know this sim very well, but . . ." and the like in TS2. I've checked several times and not seen this in TS3. So either I'm hovering the wrong place (quite possible) or they are gone.

I think they had more important stuff to focus on than a car animation, like the seamless neighborhood with no loading screens

I have gotten used to the lack of car animations, so I can live without that that, but I miss the animations with the babies. The bathing of the babies in the sink and the toddlers inthe bathtub was not only cute but a good way to build relationships between the caregiver and the baby.

I also miss the changing table and would rather see the babies in pink and blue sleepers instead of the mostly motionless blankets

I miss the baby animations, too. The car ones don't bug me so much, but I really miss the cute babies. I thought they were adorable in TS2, and they do nothing for me in TS3. I hate the blankets. Sleepers would have been much cuter.

I also really, really despise the lack of recessive genetics in TS3. And mirror-changed hair being inherited. That (along with the absolute and complete lack of "story" in story progression - I never thought that would be how it'd work) is what annoys me most about the game.

Yes, and that was the reason why they sucked the babie's souls out of their bodies and left them as little petrified dolls. I understand what you are saying, but that can't be the reason to everything.

Like the sound effects of the stereo system when you leave the room the song was playing. It added great ambience on Sims 2, the way it was done, and in Sims 3 if you stap away a bit from the stereo you just can't hear it. Of course that only happens when it actually plays the music.



My God. It's happening the exact same thing in my home ever since I put a door on the kitchen. They totally ignore the dishwasher and line up on the bathroom to do the dishes!

The game does seem bland compared to the other ones, but your all forgetting one thing. The game is built in an open world. You can't have all these animations for going to work, driving your car and etc without your computer blowing to pieces. I'm running on a 7600 GeForce grafics card, which is slightly outdated and when I ran on medium setting my computer had a heart attack.

I think the baby animations was just a lack of work; they were lazy. Same thing with the public diners and movies. Why can't I watch my sim watch a movie? Or eat at a restaurant with his/her girlfriend/boyfriend. It's ridiculous.

Of course this will probably be included in a expansion pack that will cost another 50 dollars. What a wad of shit, and EA wonders why their games are the most pirated in the world.

Yes it is an open world, but it doesn't load the animation or houses/community lots unless your camera is near them. There's an option for that, the default is to load the 3 closest lots to the area your camera is at. I'm pretty sure that's what it means.

Anyways you can't see inside neighbors houses and even some community lots so I really doubt that they didn't add some animations because our computers couldn't take it.

But I agree that the rabbit holes are ridiculous! EPs are usually $30, but if the next one is $50 I will be pissed beyond belief. I'm sure they'll try to justify the price by saying U GUYS GET 3 MORE NEW HAIRS!!!

I don't have that problem in my game. It works the same way it did in TS2

I do find it amazing that with my sim as an international super spy.If my young adult daughter gets in law enforcement instead of current politics.She can arrest sims because her dad,an adult,in his early adult life is a cop and has can apprehend burgalar trait.

Careful with the talks of piracy. I think that I might be going back to TS2 and all of the expansions for a little while as we wait for the first EP and EA's, hopeful, movement towards pleasing their user base. Also, if I read any more gloating about "my computer can handle this and any extra load at 100% settings blablabla" I think I am going to puke from the self-ego stroking.

Really? It sounds a bit "echoed" on the rooms that are near or above/under the one that is playing music? That's odd, mine just vanishes if I get too far from the stereo and I'm playing it on the "loud" option.

I wonder if anything is wrong with my game. I also thought the patch would fix the problem of music not working completly sometimes but it still doesn't work for me.

Anybody who is calling the dev team lazy has clearly never worked for a game company, and probably has never done any modding or animation work in their lives. Any person who's made even just custom content for TS2/3 knows that it's not a quick, simple process. It's time-consuming. Even basic, easy stuff can take hours. The more complicated things take much longer.

Now imagine making that CC, and then having to make a lot more of it in the face of deadlines. The hours get longer and more grueling the closer it is to release, and you can put tons of work into something only to be told to scrap it and redo it. EA picks up programmers straight out of college--you know, the ones who haven't had any experience in the field yet--and works them to the bone, and this is the game that reflects that. Yes, it's unpolished. Yes, I would call it unfinished. But I would never, ever call the team lazy, because that would be blatantly ignorant.

It's like you people sit there playing this game with the idea that every single person who worked on Sims 3 did so with the intent to screw you on a personal level. If you want to have a beef with someone, have one with the higher-ups. They're the ones that push unreasonable deadlines, they're the ones who are fine with releasing an unfinished product purely for bottom line reasons. They're the ones who honestly have no idea the time and effort required for a truly polished, finished game. They're the reason why you guys are unhappy with TS3, not the team that actually worked on it.

I thought thats who we were talking about when the topic said creators? I have a problem with the higher ups who decided whats in the game what isn't the people who've stripped the sims down to what it is, I don't have a real big problem with the overall look and would say again that would be down to the design team NOT the 3d artists. My sister's dream was to be a 3D animator but she couldn't get any work despite various free lance jobs and hours of rendering and practising so I know that those who have worked on the game animation wise are not lazy people, but I believe those that have come up with this sims 3 story wise are to blame.

I remember an interview for some TS2 EP and the developers said that they had to work really hard and the deadlines were really crazy and short.

Saravasti, I don't think anyone in this thread means to dis the actual plebes who do the actual work on the game. They're just the helpless "tools" of their employer, EA. I think most of us think of the people who did the actual grunt work creating the games are "our people," i.e., fellow nerds/geeks/techhies, etc. EA and it's decision-makers and controllers are who we all blame for the various problems we have with their products. Even if we don't say it that specific way, that's what I think everyone always means!!!