It would be pretty nice IMO. It is rather odd that you can only have one household in TS3, and using mods to have more lags the game. Maybe that's why...
But anyway, I would love a multi-household ability without mods that does not lag the game. TS3 is the only game in the series (not counting TSO and TSS) that only allows one house. It is, in my opinion, odd to only be able to control one household without making a WHOLE new neighborhood.

I might be missing something but I can switch between households in Sims3.

Or do you mean controlling at the same time? That's not possible in Sims2 either, unless again, I'm missing something. I never quite got all the features in Sims2. Lots of crashes, so I could never play for very long. If you mean you can you can controll controll them at the same time, that's because the neighborhood IS the game, right?

If I remember correctly, a Sims2 neighborhood is ONE game where you can play/add different families that do not advance unless you play them. The save is the neighborhood, right?
In Sims3, a neighborhood is ONE game where you can play different families that advance even when you don't play them if you have Story progression enabled. The Save is the family you played last before you exit the game.

Was there a neighborhood in Sims1? I barely played it.

Would you mind clarifying?

Well... I don't quite understand when you say "multiple household select". I've never played TS1, TSO or TSS so I have no idea of what this means.

I had multiple families/households in TS2 and played them when I played them. The thing in TS2 is because each household/lot was in its own little bubble, I could play them forever and had to go play up my other families to catch up with the previous ones so that all the ages were the same. PITA IMO but it was ok, I managed it. I never played any EA families so I never bothered with them. Hated that my child sim went to school with those EA sims and never grew up but hey, for me I understood the limits of the game. I still don't play EA families.

In TS3, I still have multiple families in the same world. With universal aging, I could play it one of 2 ways:
- Option 1 - each family had a saved game on their own. This was fun because I could check up on my other families and see how they were doing without my divine intervention.
- Option 2 - play each family in turn in 1 saved game. I've done it both ways and I prefer my 2nd option, unless they are a legacy family in which case, I use my first option.

I think the original poster means that you cannot swap the household and return to that household intact. As the game changes everything in the background so you end up with missing sims in families to all sorts of other disasters.

So technically, Sims 3 is better suited to playing one family within the neighbourhood.

I mean you can switch households in the same neighborhood while all of their stats (aspiration, goals, etc), are saved, and you don't lose your progress if you switch.

I've never played without Story Progression (EA or Twallan), but I remember vaguely that you can turn it off.

ETA: I see. I think Twallan has an option somewhere in one of his many mods where that's possible. I think Master Controller.

However, it's not something I use. I like the unpredictability of it since I'm always playing against my control-freak tendencies to make my game less predictable. This is where a "lack" of a feature serves me well.

Thanks for clarifying. I've not really paid attention to goals and such just LTW's. So for me that's not a huge thing. If I'm playing a household/family, I try to fulfill the goals, if I can't I don't sweat it.

As for story progression, I turn it on and off at will. The only time it's always on is if I'm playing a legacy family and that's a whole separate game.

I have several "games" in my Electronics Arts folder so I don't get confused I have Vanilla and EA Store - strictly for building, Play - strictly for playing, Legacy - for legacy families, challenges for challenges. Everytime I decide to play TS3, I pick and choose what I fancy, rename it to The Sims 3 and fire up the game

It's only the ephemeral wishes you lose when you change. TS2 had wants and fears - they were recalculated when you went back into the lot after playing another family, TS1 didn'tn have anything similar anyway. So I think the premise of this thread is wrong.

I think the OP might be referring to lots as separate saves. The Sims 3 considers the entire world as a save.

Same with TS2. Because if for instance your active sim had interaction with non active sim, if you changed to play with other sim the relationship he showed reflected the changes made when you were playing before. There was a division between instance (temporary) data and permanent data. The instance data was saved for those sims who were instantiated on the active lot. Any non-instantiated sim lost whatever had not been laid down to their permanent data. Temporary data included motives.

Relationships may be affected when playing lots in the Sims 2, but inactive households remain in stasis until a member of that household appears in an active household's game session (e.g. walk-bys, phone calls, community lot visits). The Sims 2 still gives you some level of control over saves. If Mortimer Goth visits the community pool, only the sims visiting at the time will be affected. If Don Lothario does not call or walk by the Goth house or visit the community pool during that session, his relationship with other sims will not be affected. The same goes for email and chats.

In the Sims 3, once you start playing the active household, all the other sims are free to run around and interact with each other. If your active household is the Clavell Family, it wouldn't matter if Mortimer Goth didn't call or pass by their house. He could be at the beach or park chatting up other sims. And so will other sims in the background. The world almost acts like one huge lot filled with sims.

In the Sims 2, you can return to a saved lot to find your sim exactly where you left them (unless they were killed on another lot or moved in with another sim on another lot). In the Sims 3, you'll find that everything has changed if you switch households (i.e. day, time, relationships, skills, motives, age).

I think many people get confused with the "Save as" feature.

You can play household A, B and C and always save on the same save spot. Or, what I do is after I play household A in a save called "Household A" for one week, and switch to household B. I make a new save called "household B". The next time I play I chose the save "Household B" and play this family for a week before switching to household C and then I do another "Save as" for this household. Household A, B and C are all in the same hood and same instance as long as I choose the latest save I made.

Of course I could go back and start playing every save as a seperate instance but that would just make every household live in their own separate reality but I don't want to do this. I want them all to progress in the same hood and same instance.

Then why bother with all those save as?
1. Saves have a bigger chance of getting corrupted if you only save on one spot. Saves stay healthier by doing save as.
2. I've once got error 12 and error 16 and both got solved by a nice little save as.
3. My latest save does get corrupted, my game breaks, something explodes. At least I have the last rotation's save as a backup if something horrible happens to the latest save.

Also on a separate note. Mods don't slow your game unless the mod is broken then one wonders why bother having it in the first place, or you are not using the correct mod for you game's patch level.


But this has nothing to do with playing multiple households. This is the benefits/curse (depends how you look at it) of an open hood.

I agree with Inge. Sims 2 didn't have major changes between households if you were not playing them, such as getting married, having babies, moving out to another home. But there was changes in wants and fears if while playing another sims household and the left behind ones were inactive. While inactive those sims may encounter situations or socials that affect the changes. Deaths could happen too in Sims 2 while not controlling the household.

A sim may get an illness that weakens them as they are walking across the lot, for example if your household you are playing have a major illness happen that you are trying to clear but an inactive is walking down the street and your sim encounters them, they can contract the illness. If you continue playing other households and not change to the sick inactive household in due time, once you do play the sick sim's household they could just fall down and die. Had that happen several times to me in Sims 2.

In Sims 3 it is harder to control several households so no major changes happen without mods. You will need something to make the household sacred while you change up. That is if you want to play in the same neighborhood. I have never played that way, I like having one major family at a time and letting the rest grow along with that family. I don't know how effective the sacred method works.

I think they understand that multiple playable households can coexist within the same save. But because of the way the open world is handled in the Sims 3, the whole town acts as one save instead of each lot being its own save. Playing an active household in the Sims 3 is similar to having every single sim in the neighborhood together on a Sims 2 lot.

Once you enter Live Mode, all bets are off.

I think it does have something to do with playing multiple households, especially if the game "punishes" you for switching. The Sims 3 gives you the option to have more than one household, but not the option to keep up with your households.

But this is only if you have SP on. If you turn it off, the only major thing that happens is that your sim will be given a job if they don't have one already and your current active household needs co-workers. You don't need major mods for turning SP off.
Of course because of the open hood sims will still socialize, maybe even die if a meteor hits or they get crushed by a vending machine. But other major things, marriage, babies and so on does not happen with SP of.

What I wish EA would do. Is to give TS2 style ageing by default. You could choose does the whole hood age, or just your sim. Now ageing is basically all or nothing and that's what you need a mod for if you don't want to do work arounds.

I have never turned SP off, so I don't know how effective it is. I have read that turning it off was not how they wanted playing multiple households and it didn't work well. I guess with the all or nothing problem then you are right, you do need to mod that as well.

As has been pointed out, this is not correct.

However, household switching could be made easier and more consistent (click to switch like we can do with mods); and story progression could be made (much, much, much) more sensible and less disruptive, and also more customizable, so the player would not feel that switching households was quite as risky as it currently is. I'd certainly be in favor of that.

Aging is another issue, though. I'd be ok with TS2 style aging as an OPTION, but I for one wouldn't use it; I really like to have my sims and their friends in other households all aging together, and would hate to lose that.

Aging in TS3 has been problematic for me - several times I've had a sim skip an age stage or not grow up "properly" and end up with the pseduo-midgety look. Paper kids are particularly prone to skipping an age-stage, IMO (going directly from child to young adult).

I will say TS3 seems very much designed to focus on one household. I remember someone saying shortly after it came out that it was good for legacy play, but not for playing all hosueholds, and I whole-heartedly agree with that statement.

Darn newspaper delivery business. It changes you. Makes you lose your innocence. Causes unnecessary stress. And forces you to grow up fast.

Not for nothing, but given the utter lack of info on the famous, previously hyped blue plumbob, never mind controlling more than one household, do we even know with certainty you can control more than 1 sim in a household in 4? I mean, maybe EA decided we were too stupid to handle a whole house of sims safely, and decided to go with the "roommate" approach introduced to 3 with Uni. At this point, nothing would surprise me, and I'm not assuming anything that's not explicitly stated.

I made that mistake assuming that CAST would obviously be in 4, as it was one of the most useful features added to 3 for creativity. Yet my assumption may very well have been ill founded, unless EA suddenly whips CAST out and tries to say "It was there all along. We just didn't show it in the pre-alpha demo because we didn't want to confuse our rabid fans".

Yes, we saw switching between sims in the gameplay demo.

In the case of CaST, they've said it's not in, and I think that can be believed, but Gamescom attendees seem to think there's some hope they'll PUT it in, based on feedback. Remember the game isn't finished.

Weird?

Well, the idea of household selection had changed over the 13-14 years that The Sims series has been around and today, I remember playing with my Sims in The Sims 2.
Just trying to choose what household to play was always the challenge whenever I booted the computer up everyday.

I'm not sure what dynamics lie ahead.

IMO, it was less of a hassle to switch households in the first two games. The neighborhood loads, you pick a household, the lot loads and you're ready to play.

I don't even play a family in Sims 3, I play a sim at a time. With AM, you can just right click and change to sims that aren't even on your current household, so I change households every few seconds lol.

I always play multiple families in Sims 3. I typically use a longer age span so less happens while not playing them. I find it to be much easier than in Sims 2 where I had to artificially age up my sims friends so they were the same age. What a pain it was to do each sim individually.

You can turn off aging in Sims 3 or play it Sims 2 style.

I think it would be nice in Sims 4 if they made the options for aging more obvious so in the options panel, you can pick Sims 2 style, All Aging off, or Sims 3 style. Start with the default of all aging off so it would make a mess if we forget. There are times when I am testing a new town that I like to have it off.

Story Progression was a mess but if refined as Twallan did for us, it was a lot of fun. I can't imagine having a static hood again.