What do you think of the difficulty level in The Sims 3?

[kiwi_tea]

I've been having a twitter conversation with Sarah Holding (@SimGuruSarah) which I think has been interesting. She's a very frank SimGuru, and so I hope people don't mistake her frankness for contempt, she clearly cares about her job and has to phrase herself carefully. We were talking about the difficulty curve in The Sims 3, which I find just too easy. Here's the convo, interested in your thoughts:

Kiwi_tea: The gambling objects seem quite a bit too generous. An issue with the game more generally. There is no challenge getting $$$$.

Sarah: That was a design decision made early on in BG...people felt in TS2 that making money was too difficult.

Kiwi_tea: Fair enough. It must be tough to balance. I would've thought scaling levels of difficulty a good compromise. I understand a massive number of players play for wish fulfillment, I just find it breaks the immersion. $$$ is hard in RL. :P

Sarah: But it's a fantasy world! :) The number cheats used are still motherlode and kaching, so Sims still need more money ;-)

Kiwi_tea: Oh, absolutely fantastical fantasy! My fantasies are just usually marginally difficult (like the one where I am suddenly a straight man married to Emma Thompson, with a never-ending supply of tea. Those are difficult win conditions for life.) ;-) Going from TS3 to TS2 for the first time in 2010 I had a Sim die accidentally! It was a shock, and quite poignant, a single mother who left behind a teen son. I'd have to go quite out of my way for that to happen in TS3, which, oddly enough, is one of the reasons I build a lot more than I play.

Sarah: TS2 was definitely...harder. (I dunno, that doesn't quite feel like the right word...) I'm still traumatized form the time my favorite Sim - who was home alone - made Baked Alaska and lit herself on fire and there was no one to help her...I just had to sit there and watch her burn ;_; Thank goodness you can exit without saving!

Kiwi_tea: It can feel like TS3 gives the player a safety buffer at every turn, so it ends up with as few "fail" conditions as possible. Everything can be undone with just a little time, even death, and negative moodlets become meaningless the moment a family has the moodlet manager reward. If not for the build tools and the fact that gameplay must already sit right with TS3's casual audience, I would say the gameplay was severely broken by overpowered buffs and objects. As it stands, I know Simmers can still build legacy meta games that are quite challenging. I just love sandbox titles that really push back at the player in a natural way, like SimCity's boom and bust rhythms, or Minecraft's creepers. Sims titles would benefit from some scaling difficulty settings. Little things would do for a Hard Mode, like removing the "singed" buff that inevitably guarantees a Sim will never die except voluntarily, scaling up bills, putting a one day cool down on the moodlet manager, etc. Too late in dev now for TS3, no doubt, but I think it would have increased the game's audience a bit, drawing a few builders back into the actual game too.

Sarah: TS3 is definitely less challenging than TS2. TS3 is purposefully overpowered in the positive realm. The Sims historically has a really big learning curve for new players and we wanted to try to make the game more engaging for people who had never played a Sims game before. My favorite TS2 EP was OFB because if I was playing without cheats the game felt truly challenging...unfortunately it felt too hard to many players. I wish we could have multiple difficulty levels or something, but it would be a pain to tune and test properly, especially as we went forward with layers of expansion packs. I find the most challenging thing in TS3 is to try to play with a HUGE family and not cheat money. All those kids x.x

I don't know quite how to feel about learning all of this, it really isn't surprising, but it is a frustrating reminder that I'm not the target audience for this game. Thoughts? Do you find the game lacks challenging gameplay?

[lisfyre]

Not really surprising. I had a hard time with Sims 2 in the beginning until I stumbled onto the fan sites and read that there were cheats for the game and ~~gasp~~ 3rd party CC!!!! I was actually getting bored and was ready to quit play by the time I stumbled into sites like MTS, TSR and all those lovely sites we love to visit and shop at daily. Before I found out about the cheats, I had gotten to the point where making money was getting easier in the game. I experienced the same thing in Sims 3 then it got easier to earn money.. a lot easier than in Sims 2. Most of the time, I try and keep my sims poor. I only ever had 1 family that got filthy rich and I tried hard to spend all that money by donating all over the place and buying everything up to and including a luxury vacation home in every WA world.

In Sims 2, the one thing I found challenging after I got the hang of it, was managing a household of 8 sims. In Sims 3, the non-RH careers really challenge me and to this day, any family that has a want to work in a non-RH job, I make sure that they're the only one that does that. The rest of the family has RH jobs or self-employed.

[jenieusa]

I have a hard enough time getting even close to 50,000 in 1 family.....if you guys find it easy to make money i would like to know how...
and please dont tell me to go rock collecting....lmao!

[lisfyre]

I have a hard enough time getting even close to 50,000 in 1 family.....if you guys find it easy to make money i would like to know how...
and please dont tell me to go rock collecting....lmao!

I have everyone, and I mean everyone take up hobbies that pay well eventually. No not rock collecting. To be honest, I haven't done any of the collecting in the game. I play with epic lifespan maxed on all ages except baby/infant and toddler.

I get my sims to do painting/writing/sculpting as a sideline to their regular jobs. I get their children to take up painting/writing to bring in extra money, I get teens to work part time. At one point, my teen daughter working in the spa was earning more than her doctor mom!! I thought that was really funny. In the end, my simmies don't have a lot of spare time on their hands but after the family has enough money to relax and live comfortably, they get some spare time. Just like RL... and isn't this what this game is all about anyway?

[jenieusa]

I have everyone, and I mean everyone take up hobbies that pay well eventually. No not rock collecting. To be honest, I haven't done any of the collecting in the game. I play with epic lifespan maxed on all ages except baby/infant and toddler.

I get my sims to do painting/writing/sculpting as a sideline to their regular jobs. I get their children to take up painting/writing to bring in extra money, I get teens to work part time. At one point, my teen daughter working in the spa was earning more than her doctor mom!! I thought that was really funny. In the end, my simmies don't have a lot of spare time on their hands but after the family has enough money to relax and live comfortably, they get some spare time. Just like RL... and isn't this what this game is all about anyway?


And i bet this is where we differ...i play with normal aging and sp on.....and i guess my sims dont live long enough to gain and ungodly amount of money...lmao

[Tempscire]

I've long been of the opinion that the games have gotten progressively easier over the years, TS1 being the most challenging (limited cheats, day in and day out job grind with no breaks, no multitasking) and TS3 being the easiest (cheats, 20 gajillion different in-game ways of also achieving the purpose of cheats).

[piggypeach]

Well, as soon as I got Sims 3, I immediately made a family of 5. I didn't even know cheats existed. It was like.. uugh! It was a miracle if nobody's little plumbob was red! I was under more stress than my sims, and my teenage boy sim was really, really stressed in school. The dad was always really tired, and he would never be romantic to his new girlfriend! He hated her! And to top it off, there was a burglar the second night, and it was literally my first time playing, and the music and the creepy guy scared the crap out of me and I was like "Scary music, uh oh that sounds bad! This is scary, what's happening! Omg! Someone is robbing us! What do I do! Ahh! Call the police! No! Don't take that!"

Then, I found out that cheats existed, and I went a little crazy. I revisited the old family, (which I named St. John), and I made them absolutely wealthy pigs. Then I made every family rich. But after a while all the cheats got really, really boring. So then I began creating :)

So... if you want my opinion? No way! Sims 3 was HARD, man! Well, it really has been a while since I've played without cheats, but when I do, it's really stressful. I don't like stressful games or games where you have a lot of responsibility. I like the ones where you just be creative, so basically, cheating in the sims 3 and just making stuff that looks pretty... and putting it on this site :).

[ButchSims]

Once my single-household sim used two Genie Wishes for wealth, his money issues were over. I think, though, it really depends on how many are in your household. $200,000 simolians goes quite a long way for one sim, but a family of five has a lot more beds, dressers, and whatever to buy. But I will say I agree that it has gotten progressively easier to make gobs of cash. So, when I want my poor, grungy starving artist to STAY a poor, grungy starving artist, I use familyfunds, and REDUCE his available cash. I chalk it up to expensive art supplies, a crazy nectar bender, and an art instalation that didn't go well.

[PunkyBreester]

It does really bother me that its almost impossible for a sim to die of anything other than old age or a freak meteor strike.

Also, my sims are never "poor" past the first generation.. And it does take a lot of the challenge away. I'm not even sure how it happens, tbh.. It's not very frequently that my sims have "profitable hobbies".

[Miuki]

I believe this is a common, though frustrating trend in gaming these days, maybe it's due to shortened attention span of younger generation or a way to make player play through the game faster and buy a new one sooner. I feel really sad after reading this conversation, I secretly hoped for several years that this is just a lack of testing and balancing, now there's no hope left, my favourite game will remain ridiculously easy and safe. No wonder I build much more then play.
The impossibility to lose really takes half of fun away, I wish we had more ways for a sim to fail - more chance for disaster, chance cards with negative outcome, fears, easier death. As previous posters I noticed from the very beginning that it's very hard to stay poor for my sims, everything brings more money but there are limited possibilities to lose/spend it, even when playing with normal aging.
P.S. And forgot to add I use cheats only to unstuck a sim.

[~MadameButterfly~]

I recently made my very first tuning mod, just because they make too much money. I upped the price of incense to 500, rather than 10, and then put all 3 incense holders at the local church. So now I send them to church when they have too much money on their hands. It seems about right.

[katya_stevens]

I've noticed this not only between the different versions, but also new EPs for each game. TS1 went from difficult with the base game (only able to greet passers-by to attempt to make friends) to moderate (Hot Date brought community lots you could trawl for new friends) to comparatively easy (Makin' Magic and its spells/charms to auto-boost relationship, make happy, or rain down money). TS2 added in some supernatural life states which could almost be game-breaking (ever run a business with a Plantsim or a witch with the magic throne?), not to mention each EP adding in more and more ways to earn money -- by SSN/FT they were quite literally throwing it at us (thanks to the wishing well and genie lamp).

Compare to TS3: no waiting around for a job when you can just go to the relevant rabbit hole; seeds, rocks and gems are lying around waiting to be picked up, and with a bit of time you can (if you have WA) pick up some raw Tiberium, cut it and net yourself ~$30k a pop; reaching the top of a career no longer means that's the maximum you can earn as you still get raises. Lifetime rewards accumulate so long as your sim is in a decent mood, and some of those rewards are game-breaking (Young Again potion and Motive Mobile from GEN, anyone?). Money in TS3 is no longer an issue as all a sim really needs at home is a bed, and with funds saved from eating at the diner, using public bathrooms, and skilling up at the library (plus no seasons/weather as yet) you can buy the best there is.

[analect]

Reiterating everything above - I'm not surprised to hear this, and I agree it does seem to be a trend in gaming.

I definitely think TS3 is noticeably easier than TS2, and as a player I go out of my way to increase the difficulty. I play on pretty much epic lifespan, with skilling and job difficulty scaled up, mods for higher bills, more expensive bouncer bribes/repairmen/babysitters etc., and the "painful" tuning of Buzzler's Mood Hotfix (http://modthesims.info/download.php?t=432449). Masochism? Maybe. Still, it makes it seem mildly meaningful when my pixel puddings actually do manage to achieve something like a skill increase, promotion, or saving enough for a vacation.

If only I could work out a non-core way to make it harder for them to build relationships, I'd be happy. The thing I find most frustrating is "instant friend syndrome".

[Srikandi]

To me the real issue is that it gets progressively easier with every EP, since they all give new rewards, and nowadays even faster with all those cheaty store items. To me the worst EP of all is still WA... since it gives you time off the clock for skilling, AND an endless supply of cash from relics and collectibles (not to MENTION transmogrification). And really, IMO, the valuable commodity in all the sims games is not money, but time.

Of course you don't have to get the EPs, and you certainly don't have to get the store items, but if you want the new gameplay, your sims are going to become more and more powerful as well. TS2 had the same problem... genie, wishing well, permaplat, etc etc, every EP had content that could trivialize some aspect of the game.

Only solution is to make your own challenge, by setting challenging goals for your sims, restricting what your sim does, and/or using mods (to make it harder, not easier), and of course using shorter lifespans (and avoiding life extenders) so the time resource remains at a premium.

When I play TS3... it is my rules, not the game's rules, that make it challenging. But I kinda like that, since SOME of the game's challenges aren't interesting to me, so I can bypass those and focus on the ones I find entertaining.

BTW, I'd agree that this is a general trend in gaming. See for instance the debate on the Diablo 3 forums about the effect of the new Auction House on the game series ;) I choose to make THAT game more challenging by not using the auction house, which works great.

[Elphiron]

Argh, I knew it wouldn't be long before someone blamed the younger generation for everything going bad! :) Seriously the amount of time I hear the 'attention span' thing these days ... ._.
Personally, I did notice that it was easier to get rich than it was in previous games. Trying to make friends too, for example, on the original sims was such a bore.
However most of my families are a involved in complex story lines and people coming and going and babies popping out left right and centre, so I don't really notice the difficulty so much. Because I don't really play in that way, I suppose. I don't get my sims to go out and get jobs, find a partner and settle down and build their lives up, I create some dysfunctional set up for them, then play them from there. Because 90% of my enjoyment of the game comes from my head, I don't really notice how streamlined and stripped out the series has become. Same goes for the mediocre animations - I just don't notice them. But reading this thread has opened my eyes to the inherent flaws of this game... It's quite sad really isn't it?

[Artimis]

To me the real issue is that it gets progressively easier with every EP, since they all give new rewards, and nowadays even faster with all those cheaty store items. To me the worst EP of all is still WA... since it gives you time off the clock for skilling, AND an endless supply of cash from relics and collectibles (not to MENTION transmogrification). And really, IMO, the valuable commodity in all the sims games is not money, but time.

If this so then the gameplay for the orignal must be hard as it is. World adventures was a massive let down for me anyway although I liked the indiana jones things they tried to do in the tombs in simgypt.

[matrix54]

Well, I married a stranger in a day, and money was never an issue. Simply buy a home, sell everything, move, sell everything - rinse and repeat. I don't know why they removed the added expense to the game, like clothes shopping.

I know the learning curve of the game was steep (especially in the Sims 1), but the goal should have been to dumb it down a bit, not have it set to perma-easy.

[Makai447]

I also definitely only find challenge from the game from rules I set myself. The only reason I like money cheats at all was because I wanted to money to build an actual decent house, which is impossible when you start the game, really. My biggest problem with the sims 3 now is, I can't think of any real good ways to spend my sims money once they do have it. New games are somewhat challenging because you're kinda broke at the start but all you can really do with money once you stop being dead broke is accumulate it. So even if it wasn't necessarily significantly easier to make money in the sims 3, which I definitely think is true, any family that you play long enough is pretty much guaranteed to succeed. And with moods/needs now so much easier to handle, it's SO much easier to get sims skill building, and then get promotions.

Having additions that might make the game easier would be fine, but it's pretty hard to fail. I don't mind so much that say, I don't have to wait for unknown periods of time for the newspaper to get the job I wanna get, because I can properly start the game faster, but if you're going to make the basic things easier, I personally would like it if the extra things were more meaningful to achieve.

I also prefer the kinda rewards you'd get from jobs and lifetime reward type things in the sims 2. They were quirky, fun, and made it more of a landmark of achievement when you got to higher job levels/got more aspiration points. The Elixer of Life, and that zappy mood machine which would (usually) max out your needs (if it didn't kill them all) were, you could say, pretty easy fixes to things like a bad mood too, but they were, IMO, more fun and more of an accomplishment. I'm not terribly excited by most rewards you can get from doing well in your job in the sims 3, or the lifetime rewards. Some are fun and useful, but most of them seem fairly lackluster, and don't seem to work right in my game, for some reason (and it's not mods, I have tried without them). My point is, even if the game itself wasn't easier, it would still seem easier because there's not as much to be excited about by succeeding. Even failure was kind of fun in the sims 2, and there seemed to be a lot more randomness involved with I liked a LOT--and that's not to say you couldn't undo bad things there either. You could potentially die much more often, but you could also plead with the grim reaper not to die once he came--which is lots more fun! My opinion is the sims 2 was better balanced--or at least more fun. It's been so long since I've played the sims 1 I'm not sure I could give an honest appraisal of it's difficulty. Often bit off more than I could chew with that one, though.

I will agree with whoever said that WA seemed to have been the worst at making TS3 easier: I rarely even take my sims on vacation because most of the tomb exploring, ect, gets monotonous, but I still will go if I wanna learn martial arts, or nectar making or photography, I'll still usually come back with more money than I left with--always finding gems and things, literally just finding bags of money in tombs, the plants you find too. And as broke as I started with the game I JUST started--literally couldn't afford more than a bed and a few walls JUST big enough to fit the bed inside, not even floors or wall coverings--and my sims were STILL all in a fabulous mood ALL the time, and it's only been a week and they're exponentially better off.

And I don't think I've ever been cursed by a mummy! Does that mean the game's easier or harder? It's something I want to have happen, but it's also probably not a good thing. =p

[Sgloomi]

When I play TS3... it is my rules, not the game's rules, that make it challenging. But I kinda like that, since SOME of the game's challenges aren't interesting to me, so I can bypass those and focus on the ones I find entertaining.

This is the telling point for me, when some people complain about the game being Too Easy. The Happiness Rewards, etc, give you the option of using em or not. It's not like they're mandatory.

A certain sort of mindset, it seems to me, delights not so much in the making their own choices - but in attempting to restrict the choices of others.

[eskie227]

I can understand the temptation to "dumb down" the game for EA. After all, the lower the learning curve, the more casual players you can attract. Given the sales model is to draw you in with the base game, then "upsell" you every additional add on with EPs, SPs, and the Store, broadening the player base by making it seem more approachable makes sense. It also makes sense that as you can master each new EP relatively quickly, running through the new careers, locations, and whatnot quickly, they know you'll be primed for that next new EP in 6 months, with an SP sprinkled in to satisfy your sweet tooth (damn, forgot KP for a moment, bad analogy).

Still, just as you can use mods to make life easier, you can also use them to make it harder. As MadameButterfly pointed out, there are ways to make things a bit more challenging. I use Twallan's SP, and just one of the things I do is increase the tax rate on rich sims, along with harder child support payments, and elder support. I also reprice objects in S3PE. If I have a Chagall painting as a piece of cc, I don't think it should be priced at $295. I rely on Fresh Prince's top end cars to soak up money (I also love his cars). A nice advantage to wasting money on expensive objects is that it raises your tax/bill payments (more expensive/valuable lots).

I also try to create my own running stories within a game to keep me engaged. I've never really followed a point by point legacy challenge, but I've done my own versions. It actually gets pretty tough maintaining a balance not only in the family tree (I play one family for the most part, never got into switching households with TS3) and keeping the town alive and not too inbred.

I do have one question about the twitter exchange. I'm not a Facebook person, let alone a twitterer (?right term), but is it just me, or aren't those posts kind of long for tweets?

[Issie]

I fired up my Sims 1 game not long ago and I honestly forgot how hard that game was starting from scratch! I thought I'd go back and do a few things that I never got to do in the game and seriously, how hard was it to just make a friend even? 10 days had gone by and my sim still wasn't 100/100 with a guy I was trying to hook her up with. You can't reuse too many interactions either as they get negative if you try and use it more than once! Not much is left in the day after you go to work/eat/sleep etc so I'd say the difficulty difference between Sims 1 and 2 is fairly huge.

Sims 2 was moderate in terms of difficulty at the start but got a lot easier over time.

Sims 3 has always been very easy for me, unless I make my own rules the game doesn't provide much of a challenge. WA is a joke, my six year old nephew can do those tombs by himself!

[ani_]

I agree with Srikandi, the game is basically as hard as you like. TS2 was not difficult at all, and perma plat, completely destroyed the game for me. What's the fun in a Sim if you can't see them have a break-down?

Making money in TS2 was also super easy. Starting from the 20k you got when moving in, over payed jobs, bills that were ridiculously small, genie lamp, wishing well, chance cards, the business reward in OFB, inheritance, and the list goes on.

To make TS2 challenging I had my own rules, I used mods to make bills higher and wages smaller, I didn't let everybody max their jobs.

With TS3 it's the same things, I have my own rules of taxation, harder bills, and not maxing the job if it doesn't fit the Sims personality.

TS1 was hard ,but in the wrong way. Hard, came from the fact that their stats dropped so fast. You fed your Sim, took him to the toilet, walked accross the room and he's hungry again. When I tried TS1 again some years ago I felt I didn't have much time to socialize, but all my time went keeping the Sim alive.

I actually like WA. I have still only had 1 explorer woman, but I have been doing user made tombs with my detective and criminal. It's quite fun. I use traveller so I've not even travelled to an EA world for ages, they travel to user made worlds. I have one guy who makes movies, with casting and backgrounds and he shoots them with the GEN camera. With a pregnant wife at home, the next time I play him I'll have him travel and do the movies in Gray Meadow. Then I can concentrate on him alone and when he comes home I can concentrate on the home life.

I think that those people who collect every rock, loot every tomb should stop complaining because they choose to do so. Just because the rock is in the ground doesn't mean you have to pick it up. Just because there are rabbit holes don't mean you have to walk in to get the job. My sims still have to wait for a job opening through the newspaper. And now that I'm using the uni major careers, some times it takes very much time before the right job comes out because the uni careers also show up in the paper.

[kiwi_tea]

A certain sort of mindset, it seems to me, delights not so much in the making their own choices - but in attempting to restrict the choices of others.

Balance in gameplay has always been about carefully chosen constraints. I've no problem with almost any of the rewards in the game, but I do think nearly all of them are drastically overpowered and need some reigning back.

I love sandbox games, so I've nothing against choices - ie, more sand. I just prefer those choices not to blow the game apart in terms of challenge. I do play with heavy constraints - metagames - but I do wish there was some game mode where I didn't have to.

[joandsarah77]

As someone that plays both TS2 and TS3 and has even thought about reinstalling TS1 :D I think some aspects of TS3 are harder and some from TS2 are harder.
I love TS2 toddlers but quite dislike them in TS3 as I have no smart milk/thinking cap combo so skills take ages. I can usually do all 3 skills + the nursery rhyme in one day in TS2. Unless I am missing something I see nothing to help TS3 toddlers and no toddler blanket, my parents have to get out of bed and fence dividers don't work to keep in their crying.
I see money earning about as easy in each, but having a sim live on a bare block of land is a bit too easy in TS3 with handy free apples, toilets and showers at a free gym. I don't know why anyone would say earning money in TS2 is hard. If it was hard I wouldn't have on mods that halve wages and reduce moving out funds.

I think new players will always think it is hard to start with as they don't know all the tricks and then as you get better at playing you realize it's really quite easy. This is where playing challenges come in. If it gets too easy put restrictions on your sims and make it challenging again. I don't really get why people cheat for money or motives all the time either as it's boring.

Dh just bought me WA and I am finding it quite good as I was hoping for something a bit challenging. Of course I've only done two tombs in Egypt so far and the only thing that bugs me is having to talk so much to other sims to get the info needed. I sent my sim there to tomb raid not talk and talk and talk so some shop keeper will give me a book.

[Tempscire]

A certain sort of mindset, it seems to me, delights not so much in the making their own choices - but in attempting to restrict the choices of others.
Maybe I'm reading too much into this, but it very much bothers me that, in this context, this sentence basically suggests that those who vocalize annoyance with the multitude of Easy Ways Out and wish for more challenge innate to the game are tinpot dictators.

You know what? It's nice to not have to make extra effort in the course of normal gameplay to do something basic. It's nice to not have to make believe the game is doing something it's actually not (just ask anyone who wants official aliens in the game instead of making Sims with green skin in CAS). If there were sliders for bill amounts and prices and salaries built into the game and people were demanding they be taken out and everything defaulted to the max rates, that might be a good point. (Except even then, not so much, since the other part of your implication seems to be that people really just want to feel in control of every other player's game more than they want a particular point of control for their own.)

On this forum, on this subject, for this game in which everyone is always discussing what they wish the game had or lacked or did or didn't do...? No. Just no.

[heaven]

I started my first (and only) legacy last year and thought that I'd have a hard time eventually building a family home. Sure, the first generation wasn't easy but I picked a crap career (author) so my sim had no skills at the outset and it took forever to write a book. When she married, the guy had practically no money to help out. This was how I liked it. Then, she disappeared (thank you generations free vacation glitch), her teen son was left in charge and I was like "oh man, tough times ahead" and was pretty excited. I like a challenge.

Or not. His wife, (who, because of said generations glitch, had to be manually added to the family, not through the wedding function) brought NO money in. She was knocked up a lot and in the stylist career which I still haven't figured out. By the time their kids were teens though, the house was pretty much done. 2 story, attached 2 car garage, 5 bedrooms, 3 baths, with a car...they could afford it all. I was shocked and amazed at the amount of money he made. And he didn't go collecting or selling things art or skill made items off.

I actually miss the chance cards from jobs in TS2. You might pick wrong and get fired, demoted, etc. Unless I am mistaken, this does not happen with TS3. Next legacy I do will be a random legacy because it adds certain challenges and rules for each generation, making it a lot harder to accomplish. So yes, each player can make it as hard as they like. But I do agree that TS3, overall, seems easier than I remember TS2 being.

[lisfyre]

It does really bother me that its almost impossible for a sim to die of anything other than old age or a freak meteor strike.

I've had that and dying of electrocution - make them repair the stove or the computer when they have zero Handiness... happens all the time in my game. Also, I've had 1 sim die of starvation. She just wouldn't sit down and eat. She finally got around to making her dinner then died before she could put it on the table and eat it. My back was turned so I did the exit to main menu and not save. Silly sim. :wtf:

To me the real issue is that it gets progressively easier with every EP, since they all give new rewards, and nowadays even faster with all those cheaty store items. To me the worst EP of all is still WA... since it gives you time off the clock for skilling, AND an endless supply of cash from relics and collectibles (not to MENTION transmogrification). And really, IMO, the valuable commodity in all the sims games is not money, but time.

Of course you don't have to get the EPs, and you certainly don't have to get the store items, but if you want the new gameplay, your sims are going to become more and more powerful as well. TS2 had the same problem... genie, wishing well, permaplat, etc etc, every EP had content that could trivialize some aspect of the game.

Only solution is to make your own challenge, by setting challenging goals for your sims, restricting what your sim does, and/or using mods (to make it harder, not easier), and of course using shorter lifespans (and avoiding life extenders) so the time resource remains at a premium.

When I play TS3... it is my rules, not the game's rules, that make it challenging. But I kinda like that, since SOME of the game's challenges aren't interesting to me, so I can bypass those and focus on the ones I find entertaining.

Srikandi, in Sims 2 I never used the reward things. My husband did but never told me about them. In Sims 3, I still didn't know about them until hubby said "use your rewards" and I'm like.. "what rewards?!?!" So he showed me and I'm like :blink: why didn't I know before now? Anyway, at first I went nuts with those rewards, then I started paring it down to just the cleanliness and the bladder thingy. Now I'm back to not using them at all.

I always go back to starting them out poor and making them struggle to make ends meet and depending on the family, I keep them poor or have them earn loads of money. All my artists are starving artists, my actors are poor at the outset and naturally get progressively richer... just depends on the career.

Another thing I'm not doing anymore is skilling up ALL my sims with ALL the skills to master. I'm just having them do skills for their job these days. I don't use mods so my game is just a touch challenging than people that use them.

[SuicidiaParasidia]

i like it.
i can spend less time worrying about them having the money to feed themselves (and thusly quit their b****ing when i tell them to go do something) and more time actually doing things, going places, etc. its really annoying to me to have a sim stuck in an endless loop of eat, sleep, eat, work, shower, pee, eat, sleep, study, eat, sleep, etc...if i wanted to play for repetition, id just stay on my online RPGs.

but then, i also really dont like for my sims to have formal jobs. i prefer for them to be self-employed or have professions that i can do based on what i want for them to do, without having to worry about them losing performance over not being viable right now right now right now.

my favorite thing is just to get a dog and have them hunt all day every day while my sim does their simmy stuff.

[iheartcowcapoos]

i don't know, i think some things are hard. like the klepto lifetime wish. i can only steal 3 things a night?! and i have to get §50,000?! all my stupid sim steals is crappy §20 drapes... and what about that terrible racehorse lifetime wish? i played my sim and her dumb horse FOREVER and only got §20,000 out of the 40,000 before her daughter aged up to YA and i got tired of taking care of the stupid horse so i sold the dumb horse and gave up on that. my sim had been riding since she was a teen and was an adult by the time i got tired of the stupid thing. the horse had level 10 riding skill, or exercise skill whatever, and my sim had 10 riding skill and won first place all the time and only got maybe 1,000 from a race. and there's only 2 dumb races you can go to a day. total 3, but if you race in the first 2 you can't finish in time to do the 3rd one. ridiculous. some things are still kind of hard in my opinion.
and i don't know what you guys are talking about, my sims never died in TS2. i always killed them with the tombstone of life and death.

[lisfyre]

and i don't know what you guys are talking about, my sims never died in TS2. i always killed them with the tombstone of life and death.

I hated them dying in Sims 2. In the legacy game I never interfered. In my play game, I let them age and when they were halfway in the elder stage, I moved them out to my "retirement village" where I had aging off and usually made them adult life stage again. I never had Uni so I couldn't bring them to YA life stage. I once tried killing off an elderly couple in the game. They were living in Strangetown and I had then sit in the hot tub 24/7 and they didn't die!! It was so freaking frustrating. Finally I just starved them to death.

[aeval99]

i like it.
i can spend less time worrying about them having the money to feed themselves (and thusly quit their b****ing when i tell them to go do something) and more time actually doing things, going places, etc. its really annoying to me to have a sim stuck in an endless loop of eat, sleep, eat, work, shower, pee, eat, sleep, study, eat, sleep, etc...if i wanted to play for repetition, id just stay on my online RPGs.

but then, i also really dont like for my sims to have formal jobs. i prefer for them to be self-employed or have professions that i can do based on what i want for them to do, without having to worry about them losing performance over not being viable right now right now right now.

my favorite thing is just to get a dog and have them hunt all day every day while my sim does their simmy stuff.

Damn! And I thought I had just gotten much better at playing the game. ;)

I think a lot of it comes down to playing style. I don't find that much of a difference in difficulty between Sims 2 and 3, but I always give my Sims a fully-stocked house right off the bat, stay-at-home jobs and use cheats, and mods etc. Sims 3 simmies do seem to be much better at looking after themselves when you are doing something else. I usually play households of 6-8 sims, so that is a bonus.

Sims 1, on the other hand, was a nightmare! Between the awful pathing and the lack of mods (until later on in the series) it was a challenge just to keep your Sims from passing out in a puddle of their own pee. I had to build all my bathrooms with 3 doors in them to prevent 4 hour pile-ups. My poor Sims spent many a night sleeping on the side-walk after trying to make friends with that awful bitch, Bella Goth, and her miserable, dreary husband. It's been over 10 years and I still hate that Sim with a passion! LOL.

[VerDeTerre]

Sims 1, on the other hand, was a nightmare! Between the awful pathing and the lack of mods (until later on in the series) it was a challenge just to keep your Sims from passing out in a puddle of their own pee. I had to build all my bathrooms with 3 doors in them to prevent 4 hour pile-ups. My poor Sims spent many a night sleeping on the side-walk after trying to make friends with that awful bitch, Bella Goth, and her miserable, dreary husband. It's been over 10 years and I still hate that Sim with a passion! LOL.

That's a large part of what made Sims 1 so much fun. It was challenging and totally silly.

[pico22]

This thread is making me nostalgic. Was TS1 really so hard? I remember that the first thing I made was a Sim-me. I put him in that small house, Bella and Morty paid a visit and my Sim immediately started seducing Bella, right to the happy end. I remember no pee puddles or starvation or anything really bad, and that was in the base game, there were no mods available and I knew nothing about cheats.

I am certain about one thing, however: I have to find that game and reinstall it. I want to meet the *real* Bella once more.

[Tempscire]

Was TS1 really so hard?
I think it's more that it's difficult in comparison to TS2 and TS3, with some of that attributable to differences in game mechanics that have to be (re)adjusted to. I don't recall thinking it was especially difficult (once I got the hang of it in the very beginning) at the time it was current, but when I go back to play it these days, I'm struck by things like how taxing it is that Sims never have official days off or how much constant work it takes to get above 2.5 stars in the Superstar celebrity career path. The cool perk items were just as likely, it seemed, to do something awful as something beneficial (drink potion, become monster, ruin all plumbing...then get fined for your toxic fumes poisoning children; wish on the genie, get bills or snakes or fire everywhere, etc). And then there little additional expenses that disappeared in TS2+, like having to pay for taxi rides.

Compare to TS3 where transport is free, Sims don't really care about walking all over anyway, and even if there weren't precious metals and gems literally lying on the ground for easy income, they can easily just steal from their neighbors' gardens, no sweat. No such options in TS1. And of course TS1 didn't have the little rewards like "steel bladder," nor did TS2, except by way of cheats (motive perks slowed decay but never arrested it). In TS3 you can steadily ignore wants to no consequence, but in TS2 you had to constantly tend to their desires lest the Sims got depressed. Of course, TS1 lacked wants/fears entirely, so there's that, but it compensated in other ways. :p

So not so much that TS1 was extraordinarily difficult, but TS2 and TS3 have piled on methods of easing gameplay, including in ways that aren't so obvious to avoid, like the outright lack of fears in TS3 to balance wants and the distinction in disappointment for promised wants or not. Or they're "correctable" but only with an outside mod to charge for taxis and cat litter and cell phone calls, i.e. in TS2.

[DigitalSympathies]

To me, TS2 is easier on me because I grew up playing it, but as far as difficulty levels go, TS2 for me is also harder on me than TS3 to use, in a vanilla game. Sure, the UI on TS3 is clunky and needs to be stretched this-a-way => . . . it's just that TS2 unmodded is a hell of a lot harder for me to advance with than TS3 unmodded. There's less "cheaty" things to do in TS2 (without using actual cheats, of course) compared to TS3, and with the required mods, TS3 is about par with TS2 when modded - both present me no difficulty whatsoever. To me, all in all, TS1 takes the cake for simming difficulty here. Gah. D:

[FlidgetJerome]

In TS3 you can steadily ignore wants to no consequence, but in TS2 you had to constantly tend to their desires lest the Sims got depressed. Of course, TS1 lacked wants/fears entirely, so there's that, but it compensated in other ways. :p

TS3 is genuinely my favourite of the franchise but I have to say, I miss the hell out of Sims having fears. It gave them much more of a personality.

[wolfsbayne]

I didnt really play TS1 or TS2 very much but I do find sims 3 ridiculously easy which is why I get so bored of it and have to stop playing for a few weeks or until a new expansion comes out. Some of the ltw's are hard due to my playing style probably but making money is so easy, once you've gotten all the luxury items the green bar stays maxxed all the time so lifetime points are like free candy and there is just no challenge. Even the challenges on here aren't altogether challenging!

I wish they could have difficulty levels but I don't know how they could introduce them really. It's the whole lifetime wish/points thing which messes things up for me

[morphius1]

I have a hard enough time getting even close to 50,000 in 1 family.....if you guys find it easy to make money i would like to know how...
and please dont tell me to go rock collecting....lmao!

Easy to me:
One of my sims is a proffessional author and lives alone and has made over 100,000 [and is still a young adult]...but she is writing ALL THE TIME, too.

[wolfsbayne]

It would be better if they enhanced the bills system

Electric, water, gas, car fuel, insurance, phone, internet, etc, etc.

Once you've purchased the skill books you need and furniture there is pretty much nothing to spend money on and so you end up with loads.

[ViolettaVie]

I completely agree. I really dislike that cell phones and taxis are free and that there are no gas stations. I also don't like that once you own real estate it doesn't cost anything to maintain your properties. Doesn't make any sense.

[Rushifell]

I haven't read the whole thread, so sorry if I'm saying something that have already been said.

I thought that TS1 was really difficult in a tycoon type of way. If someone have played other tycoon games, such as maybe the oh so popular Roller Coaster Tycoon that came out around the same time as TS1, you probably know what I mean. You just want to build stuff and have fun, but then you quickly run out of cash and soon the shit hits the fan.

The same thing was the case in TS1. You want all the cool looking furniture, you want to play around with your sim families and what not. Which soon turns into a catastrophe as your sims run out of cash and all their motives turns red. And then, when you've gotten good at the game, everything feels a bit robotic and stiff instead. You're like a baby sitter that just push buttons to make your sims survive, without really enjoying the game itself.

I remember when TS2 came out, that they stated that they wanted the game to be about what you want, and not your sims. So they made the game easier. Their mood got a lot easier to satisfy and you had more time over to do other stuff. I guess they went the same way with TS3, as it's easier now than ever in comparison to the forerunners.

I don't think it's bad that the game is easy, quite the opposite. In my opinion, the problem rather lies with what the challenge actually is. Cause baby sitting virtual people to keep them from starvation or peeing their pants just isn't fun. It's not challenging either, to be honest. It's just boring! It's about clicking stuff, to make your sims to do stuff, to keep them alive.

It's okay with me that it's gotten so easy to keep the motives up. Instead, I'd like some change to what type of challenges you stand before. Especially with the quest types of activities that they have put into the game. Add some puzzles or any type of challenge into the mix, and there'd be both more interactivity, and a tad higher difficulty level in the game. That's my two cents, at least!

[shaaaii]

I didnt really play TS1 or TS2 very much but I do find sims 3 ridiculously easy which is why I get so bored of it and have to stop playing for a few weeks or until a new expansion comes out. Some of the ltw's are hard due to my playing style probably but making money is so easy, once you've gotten all the luxury items the green bar stays maxxed all the time so lifetime points are like free candy and there is just no challenge. Even the challenges on here aren't altogether challenging!

I wish they could have difficulty levels but I don't know how they could introduce them really.
Yes, difficulty levels would have been so good. I read that someone posted about something along the lines of the EA team purposely made TS3 so easy because some players complained that the difficulty was too much in TS2.
So I think that for Sims 3, they should have made say two or three different difficulty levels, the easiest being similar to how the game is right now, and a higher difficulty level where you have to actually pay bills, for things like internet, phone use, taxi services, etc. Alot of the ideas people have mentioned in this thread.
Just an idea that would suit my playing style more :)

[vhanster]

Actually, I remember that in Sims 2, if a fortune-aspiration Sim rolled an LTW to earn $100 000, he/she would really have to work and earn money to achieve that LTW.

In the Sims 3, I had one Sim have a similar LTW (have a household funds of $50 000), and I used motherlode once, and the lifetime wish is fulfilled. That was no fun, btw. :wtf:

[Anniversary]

Sims 1 was extremely hard. The better stuff you had, the faster your sims got happy. So you had to work really hard and it very gradually got easier. VERY gradually. Like, REALLY very gradually. 50 days into a sim's life and you might be halfway to having the best of each type of furniture.

Sims 2 made it a mix. It was hard, but not so hard you didn't have time to do things like parties and play with cool objects.

But Sims 3 seems to focus more on "playful" playing and less on "Game" playing. So it's more like playing with dolls than playing a video game. Thats not very fun to me. It's not fun to make your sim do karaoke and then make them go to a party and then make them go swimming and then make them go play guitar. But it IS fun to work hard to be able to do those things, or do those things out of necessity (like for Fun or Social or for fulfilling wishes). I have some mods that make the game harder, and I like to play active careers because they eat up a lot of your time and you're not as happy at the end of the work day as with rabbit hole careers. :)

[Anniversary]

Actually, I remember that in Sims 2, if a fortune-aspiration Sim rolled an LTW to earn $100 000, he/she would really have to work and earn money to achieve that LTW.

In the Sims 3, I had one Sim have a similar LTW (have a household funds of $50 000), and I used motherlode once, and the lifetime wish is fulfilled. That was no fun, btw. :wtf:

That LTW was to literally earn the money. The game didn't count funds just coming into the family, the sim had to personally get +XXXX$ added to the money himself. It was cumulative, and if you spent money, it didn't get deduced from the LTW (I think).

In Sims 3 the wish is basically "be in the presence of this much money" and it doesn't mean a thing how you get it. It's not a mistake, or even a change, really, just different versions of a similar goal. :O I do prefer the earning one, though.

[BloodyScholastic]

You know the kind of difficulty the Sims 3 is like...

http://img821.imageshack.us/img821/7086/ts3w2012070300512040.jpg

Dig up the trash pile on junkyard, get a scrap in your sim's inventory. Sell that scrap for $2.

Repeat this for infinite money.

[Havisham]

I play my Sims 3 game very vanilla; only a few weak rewards (like the legendary host one, or observant) and no cheats. In fact, the only time I've used cheats was to give a filler family in my Berry Sweet neighborhood some money so they could afford a decent house that my Berry sims could visit them in.

Also, I tend not to focus on skill building or reaching the top of careers. I like storytelling, building families, creating personalities and seeing kids get their parents features. This tends to make money earning and other things harder than it would for other players

I'm going to stick with "it's all about how you play." Some people focus more on accomplishments, others on just being silly, and some create mini- soap operas. The different styles lead to a different experience.

But yeah, earning money is faster in the Sims 3, if you allow your Sims to build it up so much! :)

[olomaya]

So I think that for Sims 3, they should have made say two or three different difficulty levels, the easiest being similar to how the game is right now, and a higher difficulty level where you have to actually pay bills, for things like internet, phone use, taxi services, etc.

I hate, hate HATE the free taxi in the game. I think if they just removed that, it would add a dramatic change to gameplay if you had to pay every time you took the taxi. Sims would be more likely to need/want a car or bicycle which are more expensive items or you would have to walk everywhere and manage your time much more carefully which would affect things like needs fulfillment and just general work/life balance.

[lisfyre]

I hate that you can still buy ingredients in the fridge to cook your meals if you're out of everything. I make my sims go to the grocery store all the time because I never want to "BUY" from my fridges. WIsh EA would take that out too.

[MiniMimi]

Lisfyre, I too hate that, that's why I use Ani's No shopping from fridge mod: http://modthesims.info/download.php?t=466990. It also entices you to have a garden with a few veggies path!

[lewisb40]

I think it's all in the game play and how you choose to make rules. I am just recently taking advantage of the game play that the new EPs offer. After WA and my lots with CC were destroyed in that world (I had played my family to 4 generations) I haven't played a family beyond getting them married and start in a family. Move to another single sim. Until Showtime was installed in my game.

I have been opened to a variety of interactions and new ways of my sim gaining wealth. From being an author with a hobby of gardening or fishing there is ways to make a nice living. Like sometimes I will place a 20x15 lot in the world, and place a street light and chair on it, have my sim work to buy it. Use it to make a perfect garden while learning the gardening skill. Sell the items from the garden to the grocery store and soon make my own farm stand, with mods of course. Buy up as many businesses as possible and buy up venues. That has been hard cause the returns are low sometimes, the repo man visit quite often and the stupid wild animals keep eating the produce. Learned having a gate and the wild life gnome set for no animals worked. Usually don't have my sim LTW set for the top level of any job, use Reinassance Sim to learn 3 skills to level 10. With Twallan's career mod, I can have my sim work part-time so he can follow their passion or hobby. I am having a blast playing this way, but it does require mods and giving custom settings for my Sims age in each category.

[KGirl]

I think what is best simply varies a lot with what challenges a given player wants. The good thing is that, with mods, any aspect of the game can be as easy or as hard as you want (pretty much).

For example, I don't want money to be much of a concern in the game-- I want to make nice houses off the bat-- so I have cheats that make money even more plentiful than it would otherwise be. However, it seemed way too easy to stay in an "elated" mood, so I have a mod that makes mood scoring much harder.

I'm glad it's much less common for sims to die, as I spend a lot of time creating them that goes to waste if they die before old age (and I play on Epic, so that takes a long time). But on the other hand, it's too easy to make "best friends" quickly.

Neither of those are influenced by Mods. I'd use a mod that made it impossible to die of anything but old age (the closest I can come is that I can avoid saving the game and just reload the previous save, although I've only had that happen once and have been playing, with some interruptions, since it came out), and I'd use one that kept it as easy to get to "friend" level as it already is, but made it significantly harder to get above that-- also one that made one be a Romantic Interest for a while before one could Go Steady, and hold that status for a while before one could propose. As far as I know, neither such mod exists....

Lifetime Wants vary tremendously in their difficulty. The "Have 20 Friends" one should be "Have 50 Friends" or something so as not to be ridiculously easy, whereas most of them are reasonably challenging.

A key thing is that in the desires I expressed for what I'd like easier or harder, other people would have the opposite preferences. EA has a lot of flaws, but this one I categorize under "can't please everybody."