It's been well over 10 years since I actually played Sims 2 and at the time I only had like 3 EPs, but after watching a video highlighting the little things that make it great I opened origin and started my download. I know that there are going to be a lot of things that I like in 3&4 that I will find missing in the game. I know that build mode is going to be less than ideal and most of the clothes will be out of date (although 2000's style is making a comeback).

My question is what are the best mods to make the customization aspect of the game better?

ACR, Sort of joking here.

This is such a broad and individual question. There are 15 years worth of mods available. Creators have truly posted new things every single day since the game came out, and the modding community is smaller, but still strong. What sort of things do you think you'll miss in 3 and 4? Because there might be mods that offer something similar. Start with the list of essential mods, which is stickied at the top of this forum. Go through the TS2 Updates archive here. A ton of Sims 3 and Sims 4 clothing and objects have been converted. http://simscave.mustbedestroyed.org...php?board=172.0
A lot of nice CC has been linked here too.
http://modthesims.info/showthread.p...25#startcomment

A couple of major mods that have come out:
https://criquette-was-here.tumblr.c...ustom-hood-deco
https://lowedeus.tumblr.com/post/15...ism-redux-redux
http://modthesims.info/d/587597/pon...r-overhaul.html
https://greatcheesecakepersona.tumblr.com/page/3
https://greatcheesecakepersona.tumb...4042017-see-the

Clothes out of fashon? The TS2 community has been alive and perhaps even more vibrant the past 10 years, so I think you'll find there's plenty of stuff to download. Exactly what to download is personal taste, though.

As for missing items in TS3/4, quite a lot of it has probably already been converted to TS2 (clothes/furniture - functions may be more difficult).

I'm not sure how to even reply to that as it's such an incredible individual choice. Patches are a must and starting with a clean hood even if you want to play the pre-mades would be a must just to keep your game from being corrupted. I have more than 550 game mods and I just play a regular hood, I would tell you that each and every one of them was a must. LOL
I, for example, am a big fan of ACR and would not play without it but many other simmers feel very differently.
The reason this particular version of the game still have a widespread and devoted fan base is due to just how individual we can all make our hoods.
The default database has a lot of must-haves as well. https://sims2defaults.dreamwidth.org/

One thing to remember is if you download custom skins or eyes that are geneticized or townified you have to keep them for the life of the hood. Removing them will cause major problems.

Well a lot has changed in 15-16 years. One is the CC, two is what we have to do to get this game to run. Modern hardware +Old game = fanangaling. Before looking at mods you have to get the game working.

I would suggest looking over the help sticky because if this is a newish PC you will need to at the very least download and set up the graphic rules to be sure your game us using your graphics card. Without doing this you might find your game stuck in some tiny resolution with 2004 block water.
Then you also need the 4GB patch to be able to use more memory and stop crashing. Most important if you have gigs of CC, especially the large textured modern cc like moving clouds, horizons or lots of defaults. The game may be dated but the CC is not. Some hair is 20K polys or more.

The black rectangle under sims inside is a new thing too, there is a mod on MTS to take that away or for some of us just turning shadows off.
Pink flashing is also huge, most of us have had or or do have it to a less or greater degree. Also lots of help around for that.

Once your game is optimised then start chucking cc at it, but I certainly would not be without the water mod, horizons, moving clouds. There is also the new UI in white and green that some people like, bit too white for me, but it is clean. There are also widescreen mods for CAS etc since you might find on a new monitor that things sit over your sim.

Most things that can be modded have been modded. So if you dislike something jot it down, 9 times out of 10 there is a mod to fix it.

When it comes to build mode I think I will really miss the ability to place items diagonally, adjust the height of wall decorations, and the smaller grid system. I haven't really looked yet but I doubt there will be mods for that. After playing for a bit the clothes and furniture aren't too bad, and the wall selection looks amazing compared to sims 4. Most of the things I find lacking are only building I guess.

It would be awesome to find a masterpost of hair recolors/retextures for the hair that came in the game.

Not even mods, there's in-game cheats for that - boolProp allow45DegreeAngleOfRotation [true/false], setQuarterTilePlacement [on/off], and shiftable wall deco was introduced with Apartment Life

Funny you should mention that... but ingame cheats pertinent to this include "boolProp allow45degreeAngleOfRotation true" to allow diagonally placed items,
"boolProp snapObjectsToGrid false" to place items in more than just grid placement,
and with Mansion and Garden expansion pack, "setquartertileplacement on" followed by Ctrl + F ingame, will allow placement on smaller grid squares.
And with Apartment Life expansion pack, pressing [ and ] will move wall hangings up and down.
And these are all capabilities with unmodded game engine.

Did you check out the default website I listed for you cause there are several posts under hair that do exactly this.

@ericapoe You can place things diagonally and to 1/2 and 1/4 tile and free tile. These are cheats and you can grab a cheat file so something like diagonal are set to on always and others have shortcuts to type. if you google or search MTS for 'Sims 2 cheat file' you will probably find dozens. They are made in notepad and are always called userStartup.cheat

You can also adjust the height of most wall deco.

For building, we also have CFE so walls can be shaped for things like split level stairs and curved bridges.

I've had to load tons of Mods into my own games and use ones like a lot visitor controller and one to disable the apartments generating NPC townie neighbors which means I have to move more families in manually to get neighbors in apartment lots.I've got way too many Mods to list here because that's at a very high count and my CC load is at least as bad if not worse.

Nobody mentioned facial sliders yet? Or kitten/puppy furs/puppy fur accessories? Those are two my favorite recent-ish discoveries.

Just a FYI (since you only had a few EPs the last time)

You need AL for shiftable items (often needs to be set for individual items if they don't already have it - it's a relatively simple modification, though), and M&G for quartertile placement (can be set as an alias in the userStartup, but NOT as always on. Is activated with Ctrl+F).

Placing on diagonals can be enabled through the UserStartup so it's always on. Much easier that way (you turn items with the , and . buttons). It works for furniture and such, but doors and windows still need to have diagonal meshes included to work.

There's also the Snapobjects cheat, which lets you place items off grid - handy for decoration, not so much for windows/doors, tables/chairs, or other items meant to interact with another item through correct placement (best used as an alias in the UserStartup, because you often need to be able to turn it on and off in a play session).

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As for build mode, I kind of prefer TS2 in many ways. I occasionally miss CASt from TS3, or the function where chairs follow tables once they're connected (from TS3/4), and little things like that, but it's things I've managed without for quite some time so I don't think they are extremely important for my enjoyment (TS4 has a few useful tools but also several building issues I don't like, so there's that side too).

And CC-making for TS2 is great, so that's absolutely something to look into.

I recently got back into it to practice modding. I doubt I'll actually release anything for The Sims 2. But it's fun to see how The Sims has changed over the years and how much more you can do with it.

Note that some stuff will become unusable at 45 degrees and not everything can be shifted with AL. Here's a mod that lets you shift the height of TVs as a regular wall deco. There's also a mod somewhere I cannot recall that extends this feature to pretty much every item that can be placed on walls, like mirrors and some paintings. I'll try to look for it.

EDIT: As a plus of the TV mod, you can change the height of every TV, including those that don't hang in the wall. Combine that with moveobjects to create some interesting TV sets!

(Obligatory "Game Guide:Avoiding corruption" wiki article link: https://sims.fandom.com/wiki/Game_g...ding_corruption )(seriously this is pretty important to read up on if you plan to play long-term)

Customization Stuff:
https://sims2defaults.dreamwidth.org/ - Default database to get rid of ugly, maxis clothes/hair/eyes/skintones/face templates/make-up (if you can't find a default you want then just google around and something not listed on there should show up)
ModTheSims (don't think I need to link the site here...) - Good place to Maxis-match CC and some mods
https://greatcheesecakepersona.tumb...ad-clean-ui-v13 - New Clean UI to make the UI more "clean" (aka make it look like Sims 4 if you're into that style)(BTW if you do like the original UI you should still check this page out since there are download links to mods that fix certain UI issues like a proper CAS UI fix to make it compatible with most modern resolutions, higher resolution thought/speech bubbles, etc...just check it out)
https://sims-2-sliders.tumblr.com/ - CC SLIDERS YES (at least that was my reaction to finding out about these)
https://modthesims.info/m/2668015 - Check here for recolours if you want furniture to match better
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6R9cfTsFgE - Watch this video if you want to find out how to make your neighbourhood look better all around
http://modthesims.info/d/587597/pon...r-overhaul.html - Pond/sea water overhaul mod to make the water more "realistic" (I forget if this was mentioned in the video above but I'm linking it here anyways just in case since the OG water is UGLY imo)
http://modthesims.info/t/479610 - Just in case you haven't found this already, link to thread that explains how to get rid of the ugly, simple terrain the game usually forces upon people with unrecognized graphic cards

Some useful cheats:
boolProp testingcheatsenabled true/false - You may need to have this turned on for some of the other cheats to work
boolProp allow45degreeAngleOfRotation true/false - Lets you put furniture on a diagonal (although some furniture won't work on a diagonal so I really only use this for decor items)
boolProp snapObjectsToGrid false/true - Basically alt-placing in newer games
setQuarterTilePlacement on/off - Makes placing furniture on the grid less restrictive than normal (similar to how Sims 3/4 handle placing things on the grid...if that makes sense at all) NOTE: you need to press control+f AFTER putting the cheat in to allow for this to work
moveobjects on - Lets you place objects wherever you want, useful in conjunction with the 3rd/4th cheats I listed

If typing in all those cheats every time you want to play sounds annoying (which it is) then look at this link - https://sims.fandom.com/wiki/Game_g...erstartup.cheat

I think this is what you were taking about? http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/s...p?topic=12998.0
This is actually one of the first things I downloaded after re-installing the game


I don't use many mods, but in terms of build/buy mode CC, some good add-ons and recolors of Maxis objects go a long way if that is your thing. OMSPs are also a must-have if you like clutter, while sometimes a bit fiddly to use they allow you to change the height (and even angle) of about anything

Some items can't like table and chairs and games can't be used. Easels and the TV both have a mod to enable them. What else, bathroom fixtures? Not sure. I doubt they are things we generally think to make diagonal.

I've never heard of these! Are these sliders separate from what's already contained in BodyShop?

Yes, most of completely new areas and they are for CAS. I use the nose ones a lot.

Thanks! I will have to try these out! Do they pass down a lineage genetically?

The changed face shape like sticking out ears or close eyes, yes they do. Same way that default face templates do.

Please tell me more about the 4GB patch... not familiar with this! I upgraded my RAM on a new laptop just for the sake of maxing out graphics and adding CC, and I think this issue may be why I have to roll back the graphics on some of my larger homes with more than 6 playable sims [to prevent crashes].

Check out this video and the sims 2 help board: https://modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=610641