Hi there! You are currently browsing as a guest. Why not create an account? Then you get less ads, can thank creators, post feedback, keep a list of your favourites, and more!
Test Subject
Original Poster
#1 Old 20th Sep 2018 at 10:31 PM Last edited by darlarosa : 21st Sep 2018 at 5:44 AM.
Default Help me enjoy Sims 3!? [Advice plz]
So it's been year since I was able to play Sims 2 and I did a trial of Sims 4 on ORigins, and recently got access to Sims 3 Starter Pack. However, I am struggling to get into it. It's hard to explain, but I feel like I'm struggling to connect to it in the way I did sims 2 where I would build whole stories in neighborhoods. I'm not sure if its because I'm not able to micro manage with the open world or my general dislike for the open world in general (especially since the icons glitched and I can no longer travel by car), but right now...it's just something to do. Sometimes I feel myself almost enjoying it until I think about how little control of the world I have.

So what I'm asking is what perspective should I continue playing with? What is the heart of what makes Sims 3 work? Are there any mods you recommend I downloaded the base NRASS mod(am still learning how it works)

At this point I'm rather sad because I'm wondering the series is just not for me anymore with what it has become, because I find myself thinking "Sims 2 was way easier to story tell with". Also the objects are...limited. Create a Style is sorta vapid in terms of actual objects though my kitchens look amazing, which is just tops. The world is beautiful and feels realistic with potential to be really cool if I enjoy it. I'm just not sure the way I'm thinking about this game, as a dollhouse, is really appropriate to this new system.
Advertisement
Mad Poster
#2 Old 21st Sep 2018 at 3:26 AM Last edited by daisylee : 21st Sep 2018 at 9:30 AM.
Sims is a sandbox game. We cannot teach you to have an imagination. Every player plays his or her own way and style. You have to find your own. Find what inspires you. What stories and themes interest you.
Scholar
#3 Old 21st Sep 2018 at 4:46 AM
How involved/invested are you willing to get? It depends on your playstyle. I personally cant play big worlds because I get overwhelmed. I like small worlds and because I like small worlds I often have to build my own lots. Building my own lots means nearly any building that inspires me is fair game (if I can shrink it enough). At the moment I'm currently recreating houses for LOZ: Wind Waker.

Honestly, sims 2 may also just be your niche. I've played 2 and 4 and found 3 to be my favorite. Since these three installments are vastly different it really may be that you just wont enjoy the other two in the series.
Test Subject
Original Poster
#5 Old 21st Sep 2018 at 5:40 AM
Quote: Originally posted by daisylee
Sims is a sandbox game. We cannot teach you to have an imagination. Every player plays has his or her own way and style. You have to find your own. Find what inspires you. What stories and themes interest you.
I'm a writer, an artist, an actor, and love to cook Iron Chef style. Something tells me I have an imagination. Just a guess. What I obviously do not have is a way of looking at this game differently than Sims 2 or 4, and highlighting its strongest features as a new player and as someone whose experience may be colored by both potentially incorrect nostalgia and returning to a more clunky(in some ways) system from the trial of 4. I'm not used to the open world system and don't care for it yet, but my post was made in the hope of getting some good thoughtful feedback into how other people, particularly people who struggled to enjoy the game at first, came to enjoy it. Yes its a sandbox game, but if I'm struggling to see how to best make a sandcastle it can be helpful to get feedback so that it doesn't just collapse. Anyone can have a sandbox and imagination doesn't make a damn bit of difference if you can't sure how to approach the sand. Do I play pirates? Do I build castles? Plenty of little kids see their half-falling cylinders as Camelot, and that's cool. But some kids want to build a real castle, or really bury some treasure somewhere. You need more than just a sandbox for that especially when every artist(or player in this case) has a unique approach . As an amateur it can be more than helpful to see the unique approaches of a variety of people to better inform your head space. I posted asking for how to approach this game to best enjoy it due to its unique differences as a game, and your response quite frankly ticks me off to put it politely. It's patronizing, but I'm hoping coming across as fundamentally disrespectful wasn't your intention.

Quote: Originally posted by nitromon
If you can write a sim story about a sim who disappears into the computer during a 5 min loading screen and magically popped up in a cafe, you can write a sim story about a sim who actually walked through your town to a cafe.

See my comment above with a slightly less angry and more generally irritated tone. Implementing stories in a world of one active households where metrics decides 24/7 sim time neighborhood progression is just feeling very unwieldy considering how I play Sims games traditionally, which is narrative driven with a ton of controlled events and elements. You best believe honey I can write dang near any kind of story when I have control of the page or most of the system as in 2. Sims 3 feels more manic, and I'm trying to find ways to get past that feeling to enjoy this game like everyone else.


____________________________________________________________Welp....
If you have any ladvice on how to look at it differently or so that the stories I used to be able to micro manage don't feel unwieldy in a new system I'd love to hear it.


Maybe you two think I'm asking for ya'll to play this game for me, but I'm not. I'm asking what the community thinks is a best approach to the Sims 3. What's the mindset to play this game in? Maybe that means I need to treat it like the Sims 2 and just not focus on a neighborhood or generational story. I don't know. That's why I am asking for what other people have done and advice. I don't jump into Dragon Age with an FPS approach. I don't write a fiction the way I write non-fiction. Maybe you guys jump in with not clue what the heck will happen and just play. That's cool. I legit hope that's something that brings you intense joy in your hobbies. But that's not how everyone is.
Test Subject
Original Poster
#6 Old 21st Sep 2018 at 5:42 AM
Quote: Originally posted by pretenshus
How involved/invested are you willing to get? It depends on your playstyle. I personally cant play big worlds because I get overwhelmed. I like small worlds and because I like small worlds I often have to build my own lots. Building my own lots means nearly any building that inspires me is fair game (if I can shrink it enough). At the moment I'm currently recreating houses for LOZ: Wind Waker.

Honestly, sims 2 may also just be your niche. I've played 2 and 4 and found 3 to be my favorite. Since these three installments are vastly different it really may be that you just wont enjoy the other two in the series.
Thank you for the thoughtful respectful response to my posts. Hearing how you play and about your experience is vastly helpful. Perhaps the big worlds might just be too much to start with especially with a totally new form of game play. Do you feel like you have more control over what the worlds are like with the small ones?
Mad Poster
#7 Old 21st Sep 2018 at 5:53 AM Last edited by jje1000 : 21st Sep 2018 at 6:54 AM.
I personally enjoy the Sims 3 as a simulation tool- I enjoy being a sort of 'conscience' guiding my sims, but not directly controlling them in their lives as if they were robots.

To me, the Sims 3 is ultimately a story about the world itself, less so about your individual sims. The Sims are uglier and the animations clunkier compared to the Sims 2/4, but the real joy is being able to see your sim around different parts of town without everything feeling episodic and disconnected. It is after all, the only 3D open world third-person life simulator on the market at the moment. However, to truly unlock the potential of the Sims 3, you need to dive into the world of modding and CC.

This mod is tremendously useful for gaining a 'God-like' overview of the world, since it tags all sims so you can track where everyone is.
http://nraas.wikispaces.com/Tagger

Arsil's Leaving Home Aint Easy Mod is useful for getting your active sims out and about (default active sims stay at home), though it does so at random (it's a very rough mod). NRaas StoryProgression can also do this, but does so mostly to inactive sims, creating a more lively world with its storylines.
http://www.modthesims.info/showthre...068#post4755068
http://nraas.wikispaces.com/StoryProgression

@igazor - do you think any future versions of StoryProgression can extend the 'push' factor to active sims? I don't remember if it only does so to inactive sims or not.

SimSarahSarah is great in terms of how they go into the way their game is set up and they way they play rotationally- I highly suggest using their NRaas settings as a starting point, and also checking under the Page tab for more details:
https://simsarahsarah.tumblr.com/howiplay
https://simsarahsarah.tumblr.com/nraassettings

I would also highly suggest getting started with a smaller world that allows you to more closely follow your sims. Hylewood is a good instance, and there are some filled out versions of it out there:
http://nilxis.tumblr.com/post/10328...wers-gift-empty
http://girlmeetspixelsccfinds.tumbl...-sleepy-edition
http://utopiasims.tumblr.com/post/1...file-so-here-it

All of these mods don't necessarily give you more control, but allow you to monitor the world more clearly, and create more situations for sims to get themselves into. The fact that the Sims 3 comes with a world editor also basically allows you to play nearly any sort of scenario you want (i.e. coastal, rural, urban, historical, sci-fi), and mods (like ani's mods) allow you to fill out gaps in gameplay and improve immersion.
Mad Poster
#8 Old 21st Sep 2018 at 6:30 AM Last edited by igazor : 22nd Sep 2018 at 12:30 AM.
My advice would be to start out playing modless or at least without the ones that truly change gameplay in significant ways, to get a feel for the game first and concentrate on that one household. EA never really intended for us to care about or try to play more of the town than that. Inactive households, homeless NPCs, and the open world exist almost strictly for the comfort, convenience, and amusement of our actives. Or rather, if EA did intend some form of rotational play in TS3, they did a really poor job of implementing it.

If you require mods to improve the game's performance along the way, NRaas Overwatch, ErrorTrap, Register, Traffic, to an extent GoHere, and certainly Traveler if any world travel is be involved, will do so without impacting the storyline. So will AwesomeMod to an extent if you prefer that approach.

Then we have the gameplay changing mods to introduce a more logical and structured form of story progression when the player is ready to begin managing and caring about the population around them. In my case that would be when my first grown child and his partner were ready to leave the nest but I wasn't willing to let go of them myself, so suddenly I had two households to play. Soon enough there were three and then four, etc., and with the Traveler mod things eventually branched out into other worlds all within the same ongoing game. There's the AwesomeMod StoryMode way -- some but not many user controlled options, just trust the developer, his way is better because he says so (and he's correct, up to a point). And then there's the NRaas StoryProgression way that comes with more of a learning curve but is almost infinitely customizable and can be leveraged so that the player really does control the meaningful progression of more than one household, or the entire town if they have that much patience, by playing each of them in turns and restricting exactly what they are allowed to do when the player is off controlling a different household.

I came to TS3 myself after an eight year break from simming and never played TS2. In my case, it was much more important to learn how to build a house and teach my sims to cook, clean, take care of themselves, make friends, advance in their careers and hobbies, and have relationships all over again than it was to worry about the career progress of the sims living down the street or whether their co-workers and mere acquaintances were happy or had stable, productive home lives. That didn't take too long and then I was ready to take on more, a bit of the world at a time, but if I had started out trying to maneuver entire worlds with networks of marionette strings they all would have just gotten tangled up around each other (and me) and the game would have been far too overwhelming to have any fun with. There's no need to rush into these things, the more intense creativity can come later after you decide if you really like the game or not.

@jje1000
NRaas SP does concern itself with inactives more as that is its purview, to push them around and control their behavior. But there is a push for actives available for those who want it. I never use it myself, if I send one of my own sims into the next room to paint, read a book, or take care of the baby, I don't expect to find them across town dancing at the club a short while later.

On City Hall or an in-game computer, NRaas > SP > General Options > Options:Sims > Push Actives to Visit Lots > (default is 0, this is a percentage chance of it happening each SP cycle so set it higher up to 100 for more of this kind of thing; or, if that doesn't work try a value between 0 and 1 -- I forget how some of the ranges go at times on settings I've never used)
(SP Extra add-on module required)
Needs Coffee
retired moderator
#9 Old 21st Sep 2018 at 6:41 AM
Quote: Originally posted by darlarosa
So it's been year since I was able to play Sims 2.


You might also want to post on the Sims 2 board about what issues you have to see if we can help you get your game back.


Quote: Originally posted by daisylee
We cannot teach you to have an imagination.


Not needed, nor is any other snark, they came here for advice. OP, hopefully you can find a way to enjoy one of the Sims games.

"I dream of a better tomorrow, where chickens can cross the road and not be questioned about their motives." - Unknown
~Call me Jo~
Lab Assistant
#13 Old 21st Sep 2018 at 11:15 AM
I will be a little too harsh to the OP, but I feel like Sims 3 is not a game for you. If you are the kind of control freak who needs to control every aspect of your neighbourhood, then stay with Sims 2 or move to Sims 4.
I personally never was big on the rotational gameplay. On the contrary. Even back in Sims 1 and 2 times, I always concentrated on just one, two at max, family and ignored the others, other then them being possible family friends or love interests for my Sims. However, that wasn't easy to do in Sims 2, since there I had to play other households in the neighbourhoods in order for them to age up along with my Sims. That frustrated me to the point where I actually ended to cheat to age anyone in my neighbourhood I didn't want to play for, just so they age along with my playable Sims. Eventually, In Sims 2, I ended creating my own neighbourhoods, where there were only a few families, for which I actually cared. Needles to say such a neighbourhoods felt very empty eventually and there were not enough Sims for my families to interact with.
No more of that in Sims 3. Sims 3 was blessing for my gameplay style. I could finally ignore anyone else in the world except my own family and they will eventually progress and age up. True, sometimes they will do something you don't want them to do, but that's actually also part of the fun with Sims 3. On the other hand, Sims 3 gave me almost unlimited ways to control my own family. No more of that stalled time when I took part of my family out to the restaurant. Now I could leave one Sim home to take care of the toddler, another one to the park with child and yet another to the bar to enjoy their date and I could control all of them in the process. This is more in tune with my own control freak mind. I don't want to control every single Sims in my game, but I want to have full control over my own Sims wherever they go and still see the other Sims progress and age up. And that's what Sims 3 offered me and why it is perfect for my game style.
I am afraid, however, that's not how you want to play The Sims games and in that case, Sims 3 may not be The Sims game for you and you may eventually end up regretting the money you invested in it, just like I ended up to regret the money I invested in Sims 4. That's my advice for you, like it or not.
Scholar
#14 Old 21st Sep 2018 at 2:27 PM Last edited by ElaineNualla : 21st Sep 2018 at 4:09 PM.
it may be silly but I'd dare to reiterate: it's a different game, it needs to be played differently, and maybe it'll show and the end of the day it is not your kind of the Sims. Which is perfectly OK.

Maybe - if you still wish to experience the game - just for begining, try to play as "single-sim-play" game. Set aging to manual/none and just wander around the world, make mess, drama, fun, and get bored and nostalgic at the same time starring at the sunset. Particular set of possibilites vary - it depends of expansions you have installed. Well, kinda like Bethesda style gameplay Maybe you
ll get hooked, maybe not.

And you know - it's possible to enjoy both: TS2 &3, each in its own specific way.

//edit
and.. I don't think there's a "wrong way" of playing this game.


favorite quote: "When ElaineNualla is posting..I always read..Nutella. I am sorry" by Rosebine
self-claimed "lower-spec simmer"
Scholar
#15 Old 21st Sep 2018 at 3:30 PM
Quote: Originally posted by Gargoyle Cat
I don't know what your issue is today, but if you want to talk, my PM box is open.

Yes, Don Babilon is a member, but he also has his sim for download.... http://www.modthesims.info/download.php?t=553838 . And yes, the human Don Babilon knows all about his sim in my game.

I've just now noticed that you had changed your avatar picture again. It looks nice.
One Minute Ninja'd
#17 Old 21st Sep 2018 at 4:34 PM
I've been gone a while from the TS3 community. It's interesting how many of the discussions today are just like those when TS3 (and 4) came out. For me the open world and story progression were ideal. I enjoyed not having to switch households to make the world evolve, and found playing a legacy style (well, my own preferred style) of staying with one household, selecting the heir, moving the non-heirs out, and have a diverse new population in the world each generation. For those preferring to play an entire neighborhood, story progression, unless heavily modded, makes it difficult as the household you switch back to is quite different than the one you left.

There was something nice about going to visit a relative who moved out a while ago and seeing what's become of their lives.Sometimes good things, others not so good. The feeling of a connection with a world that was open along with the progression of the population made it more engaging and in a sense' "realistic". Of course the price for all that realism and open world construction was the need for serious hardware to keep things humming along without a long load screen and lagging. But I played with a very different set of "goals", and was relieved not to have to switch households which I found was a chore in a closed world.

I've recently returned and decided to give TS4 another look. I figured it had enough time to mature that the feature set should feel fairly complete, and the more difficult mods would have been developed and debugged. For casual play it's been fine. I don't feel the same sense of connection to the world/neighborhood itself, and for now am just messing around with a single household, so if this game does get extended a generation I'll have to deal with the dreaded same faces and the same teens the previous generation dated. All of which leads back to my probably going back to 3 if I pick it up on a regular basis again (never mind building, that was so advanced in 3 and 4 is just too simplified and the lack of CAST makes decorating a real chore). But that's because it suits my individual style and preference. It's not for everyone.

One thing I will give to 4 is that the hardware demands are incredibly low. I can play on a decent but hardly a gaming laptop with no issues, quick loads and high graphics detail (not that there's all that much detail to render). So deciding which iteration suits your expectations is a personal choice, and there's no single "right" answer. There are folks still getting a lot of enjoyment out of TS2. Before TS4 was initially released, EA offered a complete set of TS2 for free to anyone who owned at least the base game, or evidence they once owned the base game.I loaded it up and will admit that after several years of TS3 felt constrained. Does that make it "bad"? Only for my particular interest. Will I be able to get th same level of enjoyment out of TS4 that I did from 3? I don't know. I am trying to judge it on its own merits, but I am already seeing the same problems of a static world that existed in 2.

If I were to make a single suggestion it would be don't try to play 3 like the others. Stick with a household, create all sorts of drama go on in the house and with the rest of the town, and observe what happens when the others are left to their own devices (with a proper story progression mod in place). It's less micromanagement on a world scale and more time to develop one family you can become invested in.
Scholar
#18 Old 21st Sep 2018 at 6:40 PM Last edited by PuddingFace : 21st Sep 2018 at 6:51 PM.
If you want micro management without mods, You can turn off aging and Story progression and play each household in a rotation like in Sims 2 and use birthday cakes or cheats to cause them to age and die. And then make your own storylines. But unlike Sims 2, Sims 3 has waay too many households so completing even one rotation cycle this way will take a long time and lots of planning. There's also the fact that Sims 3 wasn't designed to be played this way so there may be problems, I'm not sure.

If you are willing to use mods, get the Nraas Master controller and Nraas Story Progression. With Master controller you can control who marries who and who's doing what job without even having to play them. You can control the relationships, occult status, moodlets, traits etc. of your inactive sims without having to play them. Become a God. I find this type of micro management even better because you don't have to play every single household like in Sims 2, you can simply control them with a menu. You can also control the homeless/townies with this so that's even cooler.
Also check out the other Nraas mods, especially Error trap, Overwatch, Register and Selector, they remove a lot of errors. Making the game much more stable.

There is also the Awesome Mod(that's the name of the mod), this mod can make your Sims 3 Sims age like Sims 2 Sims. So only your active family will age. Your Sims 3 will feel like a Sims 2 with Open world with this mod. But I suggest you try out the master controller + Story Progression mod before jumping to this one. Because Sims 3 wasn't designed to be played this way, so you should try it out the way it was meant to be played at first and see where to go from there.

Hope I helped. Happy Simming

Quote: Originally posted by eskie227

I've recently returned and decided to give TS4 another look. I figured it had enough time to mature that the feature set should feel fairly complete, and the more difficult mods would have been developed and debugged. For casual play it's been fine. I don't feel the same sense of connection to the world/neighborhood itself, and for now am just messing around with a single household, so if this game does get extended a generation I'll have to deal with the dreaded same faces and the same teens the previous generation dated. All of which leads back to my probably going back to 3 if I pick it up on a regular basis again (never mind building, that was so advanced in 3 and 4 is just too simplified and the lack of CAST makes decorating a real chore). But that's because it suits my individual style and preference. It's not for everyone.


Did you change the age settings in 4? Because inactive Sims do continue to age in Sims 4, they don't marry or have babies without mods but they do age. So you won't have that problem where your Grandkids have the same friends as you.

If you like my mods. Consider supporting me on Patreon
Check out my website for updates on my mods and other work PuddingFace.wixsite.com
Check out my Youtube channel for tutorials(modding tutorials) and other content Youtube

Follow me on Twitter Instagram Pinterest Tumblr
Top Secret Researcher
#19 Old 21st Sep 2018 at 6:58 PM
My advice is to cheat like you never cheated before to learn what you can do by going down certain paths of behavior.
here's some cheat codes: http://www.cheatcc.com/pc/sims3cheatscodes.html
Also, use cheat mods. My training wheels was this mod: http://www.modthesims.info/download.php?t=353768 It increases the lifetime wish points so you can learn about lifetime wishes.
Read up on the Carl's guide. Yes, it's fun to discover these things yourself, but it's better to read spoilers about them than to give up on the game all together. It's a bit like reading the last chapter of the book first.
You could try reading the "What did you discover today while playing TS3?" thread for lots of little interesting facts about the game.

Sims are better than us.
Lab Assistant
#20 Old 21st Sep 2018 at 9:11 PM
@darlarosa I have no advice for you, I just wanted to say that I was in the same boat. Got TS3 base game not long after it was released, hated it, came back many years later, enjoying it. In TS2 I loved to continue the premade neighborhood stories, in TS3 - after finally accepting that the game wasn't really made for this playstyle - I focus on a single (CAS created) family like in my current Random Legacy. Actually, maybe that could be a thing for you (sorry if it was mentioned before, didn't read the entire thread), I personally feel more inspired if I have to meet certain parameters (the rolls in the random legacy challenge) rather than going into it 100% free. If you want to give it a try, here are the rules/rolls and this is our thread with many friendly people.
Forum Resident
#21 Old 21st Sep 2018 at 9:18 PM
What I like to do is set up the world first. Using nraas, you can give sims backstories and preexisting positions. For instance, you can make uncles, aunts, cousins, grandparents. You can give them certain jobs (CEO? Mayor?) You can make them rich or poor. You can set up lovers and enemies. Using nraas traveler you can set up connections across different worlds.

Then I figure out my main Sim heir and my plans for them. Will they have a rabbit hole career? Self employed? What traits? I set up their future spouse, usually giving them their lesson families and back story. And, then, you can focus on this one family while seeing what happens in the town around you. Some of my best games came from when nraas story progression threw a wrench into my plans and I decided to just go with it.
Scholar
#22 Old 22nd Sep 2018 at 2:45 AM
Quote: Originally posted by nitromon
*whew* that is a relief, b/c I'm still culling all my elder sims to reduce population.


you should try to give them a honorable exit; with a boom maybe


favorite quote: "When ElaineNualla is posting..I always read..Nutella. I am sorry" by Rosebine
self-claimed "lower-spec simmer"
Mad Poster
#24 Old 22nd Sep 2018 at 3:43 AM
Quote: Originally posted by nitromon
*whew* that is a relief, b/c I'm still culling all my elder sims to reduce population.

Still with this? For heaven's sake, gather them all up, bring them to Uni World, and drop them on the frat/sorority houses (make more if you need to or also use off campus housing) so they can show those young whippersnappers how to party like only a more evolved life stage can.
Page 1 of 2
Back to top