The Sims

So I am totally digging playing as pets. So far, I've only played as a dog, but it is fantastic! I love that they have pet social workers who will take pets away if they aren't being taken care of properly.

HOORAY, PETS! I just bought it at Target, and got a $10 gift card with it, for some reason. Woot! Haven't played it yet. But I'm excited.

I'm glad they will take your pets away if you neglect them. As it should be!

I can't wait to play as an animal and just wander around town.

I'm reluctant to get this EP. On my old computer, Sims 2 Pets killed performance. I knew a dog was about to walk on the lot because the game froze up for a few seconds. (Granted, I had a very crappy computer.)

For those who have played it, have you noticed any performance issues? Is it super buggy? I've never thought the other EPs were as buggy as people on the Sim forums complained they were, but I don't use custom content. I'm sure I'll end up buying it sometime either way. :)

I installed it this weekend. I did have some bugs -- but it's hard for me to sort out which bugs were related to the game's last meltdown, which was pre-Pets. (In case you don't recall every single detail of my Sims exploits, I lost my Legacy family when one morning they all stalled in whatever task they were doing. I moved out the only non-corrupted family member and started the next generation. It seemed to be related to their traveling to China, and in fact I've read that travel NOW, in later versions of the game, causes bugs.)

This weekend I was playing a different family, which also had looked ominously crashy last time I played them (they'd had similar issues of not being able to do anything -- and had also just come back from traveling -- but instead of trying to fix it I just quit and left them alone). This time, after the Pets install, they seemed to be working all right. But then they went to bed and couldn't get up. BUT THEN I managed to evict them, put them in a new house, and they seemed OK. BUT ALSO the game clock kept stopping at 7:59 am and not catching up til late afternoon. I moved them back into their original house (or a fresh copy of it), and replaced their bed (which seemed to be causing its own bugs -- it was a CC bed), and they seem OK, except for the clock issue.

So I assume most of that was due to pre-Pets corruption. The clock thing was the only new one, but in googling for that problem I found numerous mentions of it long before Pets. So who knows.

Building a pet was fun though. I made a dog named Leo that I've had in every version of the game so far. He is very cute. :)

I've been reading through this very detailed run down of the game (if you like to be unspoiled, definitely stay away). And yes, I will definitely be getting this EP. Haystack woohoo! Criminal dive bars! And finally being able to invite a household over, instead of just one person. I haven't played Sims 3 for a while, so I haven't kept it up to date. I'm hoping at least some of this stuff is in the patch.

Howl, Yowl & tap your Hooves! Pets will interact with Sims when playing instruments. Decided your one man band is no longer good enough? Take your pet to the Park or hang out outside your home and jam to the beats! If you head out to a public place, you can even play for tips! Maybe that Howl, Yowl or tap will give you some extra simoleons.

Hee! That looks fun. Except really it would be best if you could have a monkey.

Confession: I've had Pets for a month now -- since I got it for my birthday in October -- but I still haven't installed it. I've read so much about it being full of bugs, and I'm already having problems with my game as it is. So I'm waiting to make sure all of my non-official content is updated before I add another expansion pack with even more issues.

But it sits there on my desk, waiting...tempting me with its siren call...

Does anyone still play TS2?

I have TS3 and all packs except Pets (I'm waiting for that to be unbugged before I even try) but I don't play it too often for some reason. I think my interest in it is less because of the genetics of the game not working the same as TS2 so I don't feel as excited to breed everyone to see what I get. Plus it takes so. damn. long. to install. It took about three weeks or so before I could actually play it while I installed each EP/SP... installed patches.... and by the time it was all done I didn't even feel like playing anymore!

Of course a lot of that time was due to havbing to redownload custom content and make sure it works heh. Just with TS2, I still cnanot play this game unless I have ooddles of cntent (though I've been been good in trying to limit myself this time and not just download everything I come across like I did in the early days of TS2 ahem).

I started a new job a few months ago so I haven't played any sims for some time now, which is sad because I'd been playing a prosperity challenge with my selfsim (and posting it on lj). I have an urge to play though so mightpick it up again, though I'm having to read through old posts to just remember who the sims were and try and remember which household I was up to!

skittlebox, I still play Sims 2 (though I haven't done so in months) and I'm totally with you about the breeding. That's what interests me most about playing The Sims, seeing what I come up with when breeding combinations of skins. While there are at least some new custom skins people have created for Sims 3, because the genetics don't work the same, the resulting spawn aren't as unique as those in Sims 2. So even though I do like a lot of things about Sims 3, it will somehow never take the place of Sims 2 for me.

Now if I could only stop downloading everything I see, maybe my games would actually work the way they're supposed to!

I'm so frustrated with this game right now, even though the situation is of my own making. What are the things that make the game slow down the most? City worlds and lots of people. So, missing University (the sim version, not the RL version), I finally came up with a way to approximate the same entertainingly chaotic, hookup-y dynamic, and made eight young adults to live together in a shared house and have various soap-operatic shenanigans happen to them. Then I figure I'll pick a couple of them and eventually move them to their own place. And I wanted them to live in the city and go clubbing, and I was sick of Bridgeport, so I decided to do Los Aniegos, the giant awesome custom city world that I downloaded a while back.

Yeah, it's not going well. The world is SO slow. But it's so AWESOME! Even opening CAS in my saved Los Aniegos world was too crashy so I finally had to start a game in a smaller world just to make them, then I placed them in the Los Aniegos house that I prepped for them with extra bedrooms and a hot tub and a foosball table and a shitload of bathrooms. First try, they just got that frozen thing where they all stood there and would tap their feet, etc. but not do anything. Finally the game crashed. I tried again the next day, and they all moved, but it was just very very slow. I was worried that the "can't get out of bed" bug would appear, so I saved just before they went to bed, had them go to sleep and successfully woke them all up the next day and was psyched. So then the game seemed relatively stable, and it takes SOOOOOO long to save in this game, and I think you can see where this is going. I got a ton of stuff done, SLOWLY -- two sets of people hooking up (setup for later jealousy entertainment), two people got jobs (mostly just to get them out of the damn house for a while), I gave up on trying to get them all to pee and just turned on the cheat where you can erase negative moodlets, and then of course, the game crashed. And I went to bed irritated.

Sometimes in the morning I play before work, but I didn't really have time (if I want to play in the morning I literally start booting the game up as soon as I get out of bed), so I decided I was going to turn down some of the graphics and other settings, in hopes of squeezing a little more performance out of it (it always freaks out and tells you to restart when you change the settings), and that would be my goal for the morning. So I open the launcher and go make my breakfast while it opens. Wander back over and THE LAUNCHER HAS CRASHED. Before even opening the game. I force quit and managed to open it again and get the game to load, miraculously didn't get the "your disc can't be authenticated" error that fills me with DRM-related rage, and adjusted the options and quit. Now, with any luck when I get home tonight, provided I'm willing to dedicate the ENTIRE EVENING to it (I have no class this week which is the only reason I'm even attempting Sims time), I will be able to actually play and make some progress. It's one of those times when I start to feel like the game is my job. And, it's all my fault for insisting on using Los Aniegos and having a zillion people in the house, and having ridiculous amounts of custom content. Right now I'm in the "What organ should I sell to get a new computer" phase. Stupid Sims.

Oh, my favorite new thing is that the latest patch incorporates some bullshit "social" function where they want you to have a "profile" (they keep trying to get me to make one despite the fact that I clicked "don't show me this again") and you get rewards that you post on the community board or some shit. WHOOOOOOO CAAAAAAAAAARES. Let me play with my dollhouse in peace. Also, you know what this game is absolutely barking for? MORE SHIT THAT RUNS IN THE BACKGROUND AND SLOWS IT DOWN. Jesus tapdancing Christ.

This unfocused rant brought to you by coffee.

I have stopped playing Sims 3, because of its performance issues and bugs. I finally bought pets and uninstalled it the same day. I think the social stuff if for the next EP. It sounds just like nightlife, but it's not? You can send your sims to other people's games to make them famous or something.

I wish EA would keep developing EPs and stuff packs for Sims 2. It's such a different game than Sims 3.

I can't even get my Sims 3 to load, so I haven't played in forever. I got Pets for my birthday back in October, and feel as though it's no sense even trying to install it. If I can't get the stupid game to play without it, there's no way it would handle the extra load.

Part of it's my fault because I have so much third-party stuff installed, but I also think the game is buggy as hell. I can still play my Sims 2, but even that takes forever to load and then crashes when I try to add something like make-up and hair to a sim who's grown up. So that's frustrating as well.

I'm sure there's SO much stuff I could dump that I never use, except trying to find it in the thousands of files in my Downloads is just too overwhelming to even think about.

I miss my Sims. SO much!

Instant Monkeys wrote:
Oh, my favorite new thing is that the latest patch incorporates some bullshit "social" function where they want you to have a "profile" (they keep trying to get me to make one despite the fact that I clicked "don't show me this again") and you get rewards that you post on the community board or some shit. WHOOOOOOO CAAAAAAAAAARES. Let me play with my dollhouse in peace. Also, you know what this game is absolutely barking for? MORE SHIT THAT RUNS IN THE BACKGROUND AND SLOWS IT DOWN. Jesus tapdancing Christ.

Yeah, you know, my game is still running okay, with the occasional freeze up when the clock is running too fast. (I don't have anything in the game not created by EA, so it's probably just my computer) But I HATE HATE HATE the new profile thing, especially the "comment" box they added to the upper-right hand corner. I'm not going to fucking comment about my Sim gardening and going fishing. If I wanted to play with other people, I'd be playing an MMO.

Rhilin wrote:But I HATE HATE HATE the new profile thing, especially the "comment" box they added to the upper-right hand corner. I'm not going to fucking comment about my Sim gardening and going fishing.

Oh lawd, is that what it does? I didn't see it because I went in and turned off anything that looked like it was accessing the outside world. Which it keeps berating me for, but whatever. They want The Sims to be Farmville soooooooo badly. IT'S NOT FARMVILLE. You have like the bestselling game in the history of the planet earth, LET IT BE.

The "memories" thing is bad enough. Every time a sim creates a memory and the little photo icon goes on over his head, the game stalls. (I long ago turned off the part that puts them in an album or what have you. Which sucks because ALL I WANTED IN SIMS 3 WAS A PHOTO ALBUM. But my game can't handle any more spontaneously launching processes.)

I would love to go in and clean out some of my downloads, but I don't think any of the download-managing apps work for Mac. So I can sort of manage my .sims3pack files, but not my .package files, unless the title is kind enough to be super descriptive. I should attempt to go in and do it regardless. It doesn't help that I keep downloading more stuff that I HAVE to have, and I have a hard time giving up what I already have in case I neeeeeed it. I am a CC hoarder. :/

I've started trying to get back into TS3 this week because all the SPs were on sale for 1/3 of the price (and I've been refusing to pay full price for them). I want to get Showtime but I've heard of so many issues with it so I'll wait until that comes down in price (probably with the next EP). I've been getting the Store stuff via MATY but I'm behind a bunch of months and they're such a pain to install. I just don't feel like having to troubleshoot this game as much as I did with TS2 and being anal about clothing (OMG WHY IS THERE FORMAL WEAR IN THE SWIMWEAR?!?!) because I feel like I'm wasting precious playing time and I'm already losing out on so much of it because of how slow this game seems to be at time. Especially in CAS.

*click on an outfit tab*
*wait five minutes for all the clothes to load in the window*
*click on something that looks cool*
*wait five minutes for it to appear on the sim*
*decide I don't like it and scroll down*
*wait five minutes for the scroll to register and for the window to scroll*
*click on something else cool but then end up cjhoosing something else because the window was still scrolling so I clicked on the wrong thing*
*scroll back up to find the other thing*
*wait five minutes for it to appear on the sim*

Repeat for every tab.

And then later "huh I feel like putting some body hair on this sim"

*game decides that my sim can get around in underwear to show of his new hairyness so I have to RE-DO all of the clothes*

Than I feel like giving up.

What I really hate hate hate are the stupid ads at the top of all the clothing options HEY BUY THIS FOR 100 SIM POINTS and it's already stuff I even have! Advertise in the launcher, fine, but keep it out of my game! It's probably this that's making CAS run so slowly when it tries to access th einternet (as well that little shopper icon in the bottom corner). I've blocked some of the .exes from accessing the internet but I should go through and find out how many more I need to block ...

ETA: If anyone needs more cc, I co-mod a comm on LJ for people to share it: wella_creations (it's mostly TS2 stuff but there is the odd TS3 post). The name is just from a little in-joke in the LJ sims community of someone using "wella" instead of "voilà".

skittlebox wrote:What I really hate hate hate are the stupid ads at the top of all the clothing options HEY BUY THIS FOR 100 SIM POINTS and it's already stuff I even have! Advertise in the launcher, fine, but keep it out of my game! It's probably this that's making CAS run so slowly when it tries to access th einternet (as well that little shopper icon in the bottom corner). I've blocked some of the .exes from accessing the internet but I should go through and find out how many more I need to block ...

Holy shit, REALLY? That is SO EVIL. No wonder they are dying for me to make a "profile." Or maybe it's some other community thing I already turned off. I have never seen that. Is that since the new patch? Or maybe some store stuff doesn't work on Macs, I feel like I remember something about that. We can't build worlds but at least we don't have ads resource-hoggingly running inside our fucking game that we already paid money to purchase FUCK YOU ELECTRONIC ARTS.

If that started happening in my game I would literally and without hesitation unplug the internet while I was playing. BECAUSE NO.

And yeah, I have no doubt that that is slowing things way down for you. My game is slow, and CAS is slow (I am so grateful for whoever a few patches ago decided that when you click on a clothing category, it doesn't have to auto-scroll to the item your sim is wearing anymore), but not as slow as that. The slowest part is female hair, because I have so much of it.

Argh I have that "can't-get-out-of-bed" bug. And of course it's on my successful Sim family [level 9 in Education, level 10 in Writing/9 in painting]. Am I screwed or is there a way to fix this?
[I do have other Sim families thankfully.]

So I finally bit the bullet and uninstalled and reinstalled my Sims 3 game and all my expansion packs, including Pets, which I'd never gotten around to trying even though I've had it since October. I got rid of most of my custom content -- and I had a LOT! -- except for some hair and skins, but even that I scaled down. And YAY! It works! Well, the hacks I tried updating and using don't, and neither do any of my .package files, it seems, and I can't figure out why. I've updated everything, and had to manually patch the game to its latest incarnation, since "automatic updating" apparently doesn't work (in the launcher it says "Your game is up to date" when it clearly is NOT). Here's what I don't get: EA spends years and years working on this thing, yet it still operates as though it's put together with rubber bands and chewing gum. You have to jump through hoops to get the damned thing to work correctly, and even then you're holding your breath every time the game lags (which is OFTEN) or every time you try to save.

But the upshot is that Pets? IS FANTASTIC! I'm serious -- what a step up from the Pets expansion of Sims 2! I've had cats practically all my life, and the cats in this game ACT LIKE REAL CATS. It's amazing, it really is. I'm even impressed with the horses and with the dogs as well, though right now the family I've created has the two cats, so that's what I know so far.

What I don't love is that stupid bar up in the right corner, which, when it isn't asking me if I want to save some lame memory ("Your sim has just vomited! Do you want to remember that disgusting moment forever??" Umm. No.), is pushing at me to make a post. I hide it, and then two seconds later (after my sim has done yet another amazing thing like, oh, I don't know, watered a plant) it's back up there again, annoying the hell out of me. HATE THAT. I wish I could disable it entirely, but I'm not sure that's possible. Probably not, knowing EA.

I've decided that I want to start a new game with sims I don't care about and just set them loose doing whatever. I want to give them all negative or conflicting traits and see what they do. It just seems as though this game is like Microsoft Excel, in that I know it's capable of a whole lot more than what I do with it, but I'm so busy trying to do what I always do that I don't have time to find out what it can REALLY do. So...that's my project for this weekend.

The new expansion pack coming out in the fall, Supernatural, looks great, but I don't know that I can push my luck adding yet another expansion. My computer isn't new, and I don't want to kill it by overloading it. And running the Sims games, both 2 and 3, seem to be really hard on a computer. At least on mine.

So...does anyone play this game anymore besides me?

Not anymore. There's too much I don't like about Sims 3. Mostly the delay in just moving around. I'm so sick of watching my sim tap their foot and not do anything for an hour. I'd really love to have Sims 3 gameplay with Sims 2 graphics and performance.

I set up a "Big Brother" house once, with a bunch of sims with conflicting traits. My favorite was sim with the childish trait. She spent all of her time either talking to herself in the mirror or playing tag with one of the other sims. Give someone the neat trait, and the house will stay clean. Did you ever play the Asylum challenge in sims 2? I set my Big Brother house up kind of like that, to keep people on edge. Radio in the bedroom, only one bathroom, not enough beds. I also couldn't help myself and occasionally controlled "my" sim. It did help things move along sometimes.

I'm still playing! I just haven't in a long while, because I've been busy, and I can't just jump on and play a little bit; it's an ordeal that takes prep (seeing if it's going to start up properly takes a good ten minutes at least, assuming I don't get the disc authorization error and have to start over) and a proper sit-down and patience (since it goes so slow). I still love it though. Last time I played I decided I missed University, and so I created a house full of young whippersnappers (I think I mentioned that). Lots of love affairs, failed bands, cheating, fashion design, heartbreak subsumed into sculpting mania, accidental fame (seriously, the ONE GUY I want to get famous is having a super hard time, while this random other lady who's a TEACHER is somehow at four stars), and public woo-hooing in the hot tub has occurred. I'm getting sick of all the roommates, though, and I think I'm going to pull out one couple and graduate them to their own place. I've already married one other couple and may move them out soon to lessen the load on the house. No more tragic crashing has happened, thankfully. And I have resigned myself to the fact that, in this particular game, there's no point in trying NOT to have testing-cheats-enabled on so I can erase negative moodlets/not have to get people to the bathroom or dive into the seven-hour ordeal of making and eating a meal. That makes things go a lot smoother, and with eight people, it is still an interesting challenge.

Jude, that's what I kind of wanted to do -- I find it oddly liberating when I have a bunch of sims I don't care that much about in a house. They can just do whatever the hell they want and I don't worry about it, so I'm more likely to let them have crazy adventures and do stuff I haven't done before just to do it. I hadn't done the fashion career, and it's really fun. I also REALLY haven't explored Pets. I made Leo, my dog I always make, but I haven't even played the people who have him. I want to do some cats and some horses. Also, I bought Showtime (? the most recent one), but haven't installed it, because seriously, my game canna take any more.

You should be able to turn off that memory bar bullshit. It causes HUGE lags. I have it turned off as much as I think it will go, and now all it does when a "memory" happens is it flashes a photo icon over the sim's head. My game still pauses when it's doing that, but it doesn't pop up the "would you like to talk about this in a scrapbook or on facebook or somewhere else" thing anymore. It's in the options somewhere.

I did finally identify that there's a scrapbook where you can put pictures. But I can't even work the in-game camera. Like, whenever my fashion-designer sim does a makeover on someone, the game prompts her to take a picture for her portfolio. (This of course takes forever.) The camera mode pops up, and it's like, two inches square and I can only get a tiny bit of the person I'm supposed to be taking a picture of. I haven't actually been to her portfolio, but I'm sure it's a hilarious and Rain Man-esque collection of shots of people's shoulders (if I'm feeling industrious I try to get at least a fraction of the made-over sim in the picture), the sidewalk, the corner of a house, a completely different location because the camera mode finally popped up long after I had switched to a different sim, etc. Anyway, that's the only place now where it actually makes me take a picture.

Ah, Sims. I have to say, I haven't played Sims Medieval in a long time and I'm starting to hanker a bit. I don't think I finished all the quests in my last kingdom.

Instant Monkeys wrote:You should be able to turn off that memory bar bullshit. It causes HUGE lags. I have it turned off as much as I think it will go, and now all it does when a "memory" happens is it flashes a photo icon over the sim's head. My game still pauses when it's doing that, but it doesn't pop up the "would you like to talk about this in a scrapbook or on facebook or somewhere else" thing anymore. It's in the options somewhere.

Sorry it's taken me a week to get back to this thread, but thanks so much for that suggestion, Instant Monkeys! I found it in Options and shut it off --- at least I think I did -- but I still wish I could get rid of that tab with the "Post" thing, because that annoys me. I've read there's a hack that gets rid of it, but I haven't had the chance to look it up yet. I will, though. To me, that whole thing is the stupidest idea ever. I liked the Sims 2 memories because it was non-disruptive. I know there were issues with the memories possibly screwing up the game, but I'd still rather have it run in the background than be in your face asking every two seconds if you want to remember something completely inane.

I did set up my family with all the traits I'd never tried before, and some of them are pretty hilarious. I especially like "Insane" because I love when they talk to themselves or "Talk nonsense" to another sim who then gets "creeped out." It makes me laugh, and reminds me of when I first got University for Sims 2, and I'd make my sims use the hand-buzzer on very serious-type sims and I would laugh so much I'd practically cry. (What can I say? I have no life and am easily amused!)

So far I've tried the Stylist profession, which is fun even though the sim I'm using is apparently a complete failure at it. It also takes FOREVER to load up the options when it goes into the CAS/Stylist mode, so that's a bit discouraging. I want to try some of the others, but haven't gotten around to it yet.

Oh, and now my .packages files finally work, thank goodness. I think it was a conflict with some of the files I had in there...possibly some sliders. So I yanked them, and now the hacks that stop my sims from tapping their feet, making stupid faces while idle, and coughing when eating are working perfectly. Again, THANK GOODNESS. I also love my speedy-learning books, so that my sims learn things in no time from reading books. I don't have a lot of hacks, but the ones I have make the game so much better!

Can't wait to play this weekend. My game crashed unexpectedly after playing for an hour, so I lost a lot of progress. So obviously, the game still has kinks. Thanks, EA.

The new Supernatural expansion pack.

Shiny.

I'm so behind. I really want Showtime and Pets, but I just haven't got around to it.

I wish I was better at editing neighborhoods. I love the high-rise/apartment/star neighborhood, but you're either stuck in a tiny apartment or have to save a bajillion dollars for a giant ass house. And I can't seem to figure out how to either add movie lots to "normal" neighborhoods or more reasonable priced lots to the high-rise neighborhood. Fail.

Is anyone actually playing this stupid game anymore? I can't do anything on it without it crashing. Especially going into CAS; it will die within like, 30 seconds. It makes me so sad. I miss it. :(

Part of it seems to be OS 10.7/Cider (the "wrapper" put around a PC game so it can run on a Mac). Doesn't seem like they are all that concerned about fixing it though. There have been like a zillion new expansion packs over the last several months. I didn't even buy whatever the supernatural one is (Supernatural? that would make sense), I bought Showtime and I installed it finally and it was just crashy, and I got Seasons at Target recently because it was half off. So I'm basically three behind (since I've played Showtime for a total of about five minutes, until it crashed). I used to follow the progress of all the EPs, preorder them or make a ritual of going out to buy it soon after it came out, install, go investigate all the new hairstyles, etc. every time one was released. It was like a mini-Christmas. Now it's like I just give up. (Don't even get me started on the stuff packs/store items. I don't even have any idea of how many of those there are. I cannot keep up and even if I had like a NASA-level computer I assume installing all of them at once would make the game explode.)

I was vainly hoping maybe Seasons would fix some of the ridiculous crashing problems. Instead, the Sims forum people (I checked before installing) are saying it's made it even worse. No response from EA at all. The last patch (the notorious 1.42 that started causing a lot of the problems, which apparently Seasons exacerbates) came out in October. I literally cannot understand how they stay in business. The Sims forums are full of people who got Seasons for Christmas, installed it, and now they can't play.

12 years I've been playing this fucking game. The money and loyalty I have given these people.

Anyway. :/

The last Sims 3 I installed was Pets, and I uninstalled it pretty quickly. Even when it didn't crash, the graphics were crappy. The Sims looked like stretched out blobs of gum, tapping their feet for half an hour not ever doing anything. I think all of the expansion packs stand better as separate games. Even as far back as Pets, it felt like there was too much in each EP. The new features didn't build up and improve core gameplay. Like the fame concept in Nightlife. It's fun if you are playing the big city world, but in the other worlds your Sim gets famous waaaay too fast and has to deal a pretty hefty negative moodlet for three days if she has a baby out of wedlock or woohoos in the movie theater. Or with Ambitions, you can't have one family member be a fire fighter and then expect to be able to spend time with any other Sim in the household. Fun overall game concepts, but they don't really fit together in the same game.

I still play Sims 2 quite a bit, but rarely start up Sims 3.