Pathfinding has ALWAYS been terrible in the Sims games, but what exactly was crap about Sims 3? Aside from the lack of mod tools and over-reliance on the Sims Store bullshit? The game improved on the predecessors in every other way - including performance. Oh wait, sorry, one huge stepback; terraforming in Sims 3 was cut down.
Not sure if serious. The game engine was and is a terrible piece of shit. Were Sims & Sims 2 really that bad performance-wise?
I'm completely serious. Did I miss something...? Sims 3 is another hated game or something? Hell, even Leo has fun with it Sims 3 is a great game, modding restrictions and DLC raep notwithstanding, and - in my experience at least - the engine is leaps and bounds above Sims 2, which bogged down like trying to run Metro 2033 on a 486. I remember Sims 2 kicking the ever-loving shit out my last machine, which was an E7200 (3.6Ghz) and a 4870. I haven't tried it on my current rig because (again, mods aside) S3 is a far better game overall. AA still cripples performance though, just like it has in the whole series.
~edit~
Just to state, I never said Sims 3 ran flawlessly - it had some initial load stuttering when panning the camera in heavily-packed houses, but performance wise it really is night and day compared to Sims 2 which was just plain horrible at times.
Last edited by sabin1981 on Tue, 7th May 2013 01:36; edited 1 time in total
I never really got into S2, I was sincerely wondering because of that. Sims 3 got worse and worse as more exp. packs were released; granted last time I stuffed the game full of expansion packs and the store crap, but 'smooth' wasn't the word I would use to describe the result ( tho when it's officially released content, it should ALL run together smoothly).
But modders seem to despise it, and the devs have had to do a lot of workarounds (or just plain skipping things because of the general crappiness of the engine) when making the game and the exp. packs:
I put hundreds of hours in Sims 2, believe me when I say; it was terrible. Pretty much unforgivable to be honest, as the only way to play it "smoothly" was to run with almost lowest settings. I haven't had the same experience with Sims 3, my old E7200 and 4870 ran it great (sans AA) after an initial load. As for the engine? Egh... I doubt they'll do much more, it's the Blizzard scenario; they know that so many people with laptops and weak systems play their games - so they'll just make sure it can run fine on as scalable settings as possible.
Players of The Sims 4 will be able to "effortlessly share their creativity with friends and fans" using the game's new tools, which will invite players to personalize and mod their world.
Such features were previously unavailable to fans of the series, who were forced to resort to third-party tools to make the effort of modifying the game.
for me the perfect sims experience was SIMS 2 and then theirs SPIN OFFS !!! my favorites are Castaway Stories - a adventure RPG on a island , wonderful game
MySims Agents
and
MySims SkyHeroes
could say i also liked they RPG
The Sims Medieval: Pirates and Nobles its part 2 of The Sims Medieval but it lagged like crazy dunno if it was a bug it the drm or some kinda glitch in streaming ... so dunno maybe i will start it again , re-download the prophet full deluxe version
I'm completely serious. Did I miss something...? Sims 3 is another hated game or something? Hell, even Leo has fun with it Sims 3 is a great game, modding restrictions and DLC raep notwithstanding, and - in my experience at least - the engine is leaps and bounds above Sims 2, which bogged down like trying to run Metro 2033 on a 486. I remember Sims 2 kicking the ever-loving shit out my last machine, which was an E7200 (3.6Ghz) and a 4870. I haven't tried it on my current rig because (again, mods aside) S3 is a far better game overall. AA still cripples performance though, just like it has in the whole series.
~edit~
Just to state, I never said Sims 3 ran flawlessly - it had some initial load stuttering when panning the camera in heavily-packed houses, but performance wise it really is night and day compared to Sims 2 which was just plain horrible at times.
I don't hate Sims 3, I put many, many hours into that game, but it doesn't stop me from getting frustrated at it. I was joking when I say Sims 3 was crap, but I do mean it when I say "crap on top of crap".
Lets talk vanilla (since they don't fix jack shit in expansions).
The pathfinding has always been abysmal, and that's a huge problem, doesn't matter if they improved it from 2-3 if it is still bad.
Then when you add on new expansions, it gets more frustrating. Late Night for example, now with apartments and lifts, Sims get stuck in queues, plus the absurdly fast normal speed, you'll get stuck in it for 5-10mins and the night already is almost over, and most AI are going back home. Come back another night.
Building Mode is still limited by design. The implications of stairs and floor heights is terrible, lighting is not dynamic. Which is weird, I thought building your own house is a huge part of the charm of the series, you would think the system is more advanced than it really is. But maybe that's just my own delusion here.
Overall I just didn't think Sims 3 was well designed at its core, in terms of mechanics and technically side of things.
Sims 3 is a great game, modding restrictions and DLC raep notwithstanding,
I completely agree with you. I had so much fun with Sims 3 but I stopped playing after a few DLCs. The reason was that with every new version EA tried to break the mods. After every version more and more mods stopped working and some of them never got updated since their makers moved on to some other game. Its too much hassle and most of the times its not worth it. I just decided to wait for Sims 4 lol. I will play it until the first bunch of DLCs come out and they I will stop playing I guess.. just like I did with Sims 3. Just because EA will try to destroy the modding community once again. Damn bastards..
I put hundreds of hours in Sims 2, believe me when I say; it was terrible. Pretty much unforgivable to be honest, as the only way to play it "smoothly" was to run with almost lowest settings. I haven't had the same experience with Sims 3, my old E7200 and 4870 ran it great (sans AA) after an initial load. As for the engine? Egh... I doubt they'll do much more, it's the Blizzard scenario; they know that so many people with laptops and weak systems play their games - so they'll just make sure it can run fine on as scalable settings as possible.
Sabin, i've played Sims2 on an Nvidia 7600GT/ 8600GTS and everything was fine. Sims i was on my old GeForce 2 MX 400 / Ti4800.
The only problems i've had with Sims3 were the rehash of the old Sims 2 expansions, the store and the removal of some features from Sims/Sims2 ( creating your own shops, the ability to see your Sims entering in the shops and do whatever voodoo they do). But they've added some new concepts too (provided that those were used in the PSP Sims2 version first, expanded in the Sims 2 Stories series) like questing.
As for pathfinding, i kind of agree. It was always a problem in the series.
And i'm glad that some people here can remember the Sims2 Stories series (Life, Pets, Castaway). Those three installments were actually well made.
Last edited by blackdochia on Fri, 10th May 2013 07:07; edited 1 time in total
I *loved* the Life Stories spin offs and, surprisingly, I even had a blast with the PS2 versions of Sims too. I was actually rather disappointed that the console versions had story/RPG modes, whereas the PC ones - until Stories - were strictly sandbox. I never played Sky Heroes but watching the video it looks almost identical to an awesome PC shooter "SkyDrift"
@dannofdawn
l completely agree, like I said; the pathfinding has always been dodgy in The Sims. Every title from Sims 1 on PC to Sims 3 on 360, they're all bad.
@warriormax
That's the downside to modding in general... inevitably a patch or game/content update will break existing mods and, like you said, some never get updated due to the creators moving onto other things.
@blackdochia
I've "played" the Sims 2 on weaker hardware too, doesn't mean it was an enjoyable experience - at least not on anything but low settings and even that wasn't perfect. My point is, in my experience Sims 3 has a far better engine in terms of graphical quality and performance.
Yes you can add pirated content and like any other Sims game; it will start to bog down the more items you have in each area, it all depends on the grunt of your system and which settings you're running at. As for HDD space strangling? That will be immense, a fully installed and updated Sims 3 - with all the addons - will run you 50GB+
Interinactive wrote:
I haven't played a Sims game since the first, but I played it to death. What turned me off was advancing so far in a career to a point where the game would always decide you should do something new and switch jobs for you :/
Both #2 and #3 radically altered gameplay, bringing a lot of additions to the mix and don't worry - you're never forced out of/into jobs. You could be a master burglar and stay like that until your Sim dies
I used to just crank up aging to maximum (some ridiculous number of days per age cycle). They still age, but barely get to 15% of their current age group before I get bored.
Looks like EA's marketing and PR machines are trying hard to point the fact that Sims4 will remain a SP affair. They should try harder. What i expect is not the same things we want:
a. we want a base game that would have all the previous innovations included, they want a bare base game and add the previous innovations in new expansions (they did that in Sims 2 and 3)
b. we want to see less of that abominable store, they want to see more
c. we want easier modding, they want no modding at all
I could go on and on, but i think i've touched the major issues there.
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Sims 3 is a great game, modding restrictions and DLC raep notwithstanding, and - in my experience at least - the engine is leaps and bounds above Sims 2, which bogged down like trying to run Metro 2033 on a 486. I remember Sims 2 kicking the ever-loving shit out my last machine, which was an E7200 (3.6Ghz) and a 4870. I haven't tried it on my current rig because (again, mods aside) S3 is a far better game overall. AA still cripples performance though, just like it has in the whole series.
Yup! 
