With all the Sims 2 vs. 3 stuff being pulled up lately, I decided to compile a pros and cons list for each, in order to help break up all the black and white "one is better than the other" crap. These are mostly big things that massively effect the perception of the two games.

Sims 2:


Pros:
-More emotional/animated Sims: They act alive, quirky, and overall very fun to watch.
-Better thought out expansions: If you have OFB and Freetime you can sell custom clothes or pottery. WIth Pets and Seasons, Pets have seasonal interactions. All of the transformable creatures are compatible with each other, etc.
-Better CC support: They provided tools to help support CC creators, and had an official file system for mods right at launch.
-More Edgy?: Not sure if edgy would be the right terminology for what I'm trying to say, but with things like the "Bubbleblower", more adult animations, etc, I think you get what I'm trying to communicate.
-Better UI: Everything is easily locate-able, you can easily pick up on what everything is, and it is very pleasing to look at.

Cons:
-More claustrophobic feeling: Being stuck on one lot at times feels very boxed in.
-Too sandboxy: The lack of built-in overarching goals can be boring at times, while figuring out what goal to set for yourself next.


Sims 3:


Pros:
-More Goal-based Gameplay: There's always something more to do, so much so that it makes for better legacies, because you will always have some career, skill, or hobby you wanted someone from a previous generation to accomplish, but were never able to. You still set your own goals, but there is a wider array of goals to choose from.
-Better feeling of progression: While the open-world system is very flawed, and in some ways broken, it does give you a feeling that time is actually flowing, because sims who used to be children age up, have children, and die as time progresses..
-Better Visual Customization: With CASt and some newer build tools, the game allows you to make things your own when you need to.

Cons:
-Badly Optimized: The game is very picky about the hardware it likes, and even if you can get it to run well in-game, loading times tend to be horrendous for a modern game.
-Lack of focus on the sims themselves: It is a bit of an issue when the people are the least interesting part of a life simulator...


Anyways can we just accept that some of these pros and cons are more important than others to different people, and stop this stupid game-nazi crap?

Of course people may disagree on the pros and cons.

Point:

That is player choice. You can decide to stay boxed in or you can make your sim walk, drive or take a taxi somewhere. Would it be nice to just go next door to see your friend or relative, yes it would. Some mods that make going outside your box more interesting are 'toddlers visit community lots' (toddlers can go places) 'community lot time' ( time spent at a community lot is really time spent-if you miss the car pool you miss it) Running a community lot business and another mod is 'visit neighbours' (I've been thinking of getting this, this lets you walk to the neighbours like you do a community lot)
I've also played sims 3 just on the lot when there have been both babies and toddlers. Taking a toddler to the library with no toddler facilities isn't that fun. I can't even put down a potty as it swings me back home as soon as I try buy mode. Maybe there is a mod that fixes that I don't know.
Sitting outside a rabbit hole dinner isn't anymore fun then waiting the same time for a real walk in restaurant to load. But then I get to have my sims take a romantic date inside maybe with some dancing as well.


This probably depends how the game is played. Many of us who play sims 2 play rotation style so there is no strange aging. We enjoy playing multiple households. I think many sims 3 players don't want to play many households. That could still be fixed by cheating the aging, but that kind of defeats the main aim of playing numerous families in a hood. Most of us don't want our sims having babies or aging while we aren't playing them.

As to the sandbox, again this is what we want. It's simply a different type of play, so one game suits a certain kind of sims player better than the other. So for someone who really enjoys sims 3 the sandbox aspect of sims 2 is a con, but for a sims 2 player the sand box is a major pro.

When I edit my worlds, I do add on or make available something for all ages on a community lot. Even put a baby swing for the infants, but the townies barely use them. With Twallan's DebugEnabler I click Buy On This Lot to adjust the objects or add on all the time, so the game doesn't swing me back home if I want to fix a community lot.

I am a Sims 3 player that love the sandbox play, family interactions, and always crapping for more. So I wouldn't fit in the Sims 3 player that think Sims 2 sandbox as a con. That is not true for many of the Sims 3 players.

I really hate the division and still feel like some judge if you are not playing the series they play, you are wrong, wrong, wrong. I always believed we are simmers and what each simmer likes is what it is. So what! If I don't like the direction Sims 4 is going then I have to skip it. I loved joining in the new series and interacting on forums about gameplay but right now EA wants to take simming to a level that doesn't make much sense to me. I am not hating it because it will be a new Sims 2 game. I prefer progression and this series doesn't seem to satisfy my desire to play.

I don't think there is any wrong game to play, just one game suits some simmers more than the other. I really wish there wasn't this hate around. It depends what is really important to you and your perception. If I had found the sims in sims 3 engaging I would have stayed with it and modded the wazoo out of it, but because I find the sims lackluster I can't be bothered modding it much as there isn't much point. I put up with not walking across the street in sims 2 because I like the sims themselves not because I think loading screens are great. It takes my game ages to load and ages to load up CAS or a house the first time and I hate that-but that's my own fault for having 17 gigs of cc. I can load up a cc free Any Game in a couple of minutes and load a lot in 10 seconds. But that's also not how I want to play.

With as with the Sims 3, I still feel "boxed-in", I regular go on Vacation/University places, and leaving everyone behind, and technically I feel like i'm on a different planet, than a different location with time frozen elsewhere else.

A Open World is just like 1 huge house without roofs.

I beg to differ. Wants and fears, lifetime wants and aspiration decay constantly suggest goals for you.



Whether that's a pro or con is strictly a matter of opinion. And mine is NOPENOPENOPENOPENOPE.

I don't get it - Sims 3 isn't a sandbox game? To me it's more sandbox. I do whatever I want - don't worry about what I'm 'supposed' to be doing. If I feel like making a sim to add to the town or building a house I saw or making a new wardrobe for a sim or playing a family - there are many choices. I tend to fill in the sims' stories in my mind - their inner turmoil behind the calm masks they present to the world. Which is maybe why I'm not impressed with the whole Sims 4 emotions idea. And I have many separate games going to choose from. I wish it was more edgy, but things have been added over the years like bars. Just no animations for being loaded, but those might get annoying anyway. You have to be careful what you wish for where EA is concerned.
Of course I don't use EA story progression and have many mods - haven't played a vanilla game in years. So thank you to the many people who have helped make this game more stable and customizable - wish I could repay you.

The subject matter of this thread has nothing to do with the upcoming Sims 4 computer game; hopefully an MTS moderator will move this thread out of this Sims 4 forum, or lock it and move it, or destroy it.

I was about to post the exact same thing

This is here because this is where all the Sims 2 vs. 3 hate is active. Of course everyone's going to have different opinions. The point of this thread is that none of this is "one is good, and the other is evil.". This site has become all out war lately, and it's more rediculous and idiotic than words can describe.
I wrote this post after midnight, so of course it's not perfect, but whether or not you agree with every single pro or con I made, the point is the same.

Why? Maybe it can help Inge Jones finally find some use for her mouldy popcorn.

If you decide to try it, do back up. I have no idea how common problems with that mod are - but when they do happen, they tend to be serious.

I was one of those who had problems with the mod.

If you forgot the Sim you visited was going to work or school while you visited and you delayed going back, or the game delayed it for you (a fire, for instance), there were some blood-pressure-raising moments. My Sim got back to his house, but there was a twin of his motorcycle still at the place he visited, and no one could use it.

But that was easy to fix.

Worse yet, no one could use the Sims there either. You couldn't play them. I had to use move_objects to delete the motorcycle, then move my Sims out and back in. Of course, they lost their possessions in the house. All of them.

I've heard of other complications as well, but I'll let those who experienced them post them here. It's a great mod, but if it goes wrong, it can be quite stressful.

EDIT ... And I just looked at where this thread was located. Uh-boy. Time for me to take a real-life walk somewhere.

I had problems too. I ignored the warnings not to use a build/buy enabler because I NEED IT SO MUCH and as a result, when I went to play families I'd previously visited, build/buy mode was greyed out and I had to move the Summerdream and Landgraab households out and back in to restore it.
In the end I decided I needed my build/buy enabler more, plus I didn't like that it saved the lot you visited. I would've preferred it if it had been more like visiting apartments. Oh well.

And you are adding to this idiocy by starting a thread specifically on this 2 vs. 3 nonsense in a SIMS 4 DISCUSSION FORUM.

You've definitely got the pros and cons wrong. One of the pros of Sims 2 is the sandbox nature of the gameplay, and some of the cons of Sims 3 are the goal-based gameplay and story progression. Of course, that's just my opinion. I understand that some people have different preferences.

Even though I don't agree with all the cons/pros-lists of the original poster, I don't think this thread is out of place. I mean, most the threads on this forum are speculation/wishful thinking because EA is so tight with the details.

Both games have some things that are better in one over the other and some that are worst, but surprisingly both also have cons they share together.

Time:
I'm not a fan of the way time goes on (or lack of) when sims went to a community lot in TS2. The community time mod fixed that problem and at least for my play style kicked the game to a new level of awesomeness because the time was such a huge con for me. This is not an issue in TS3 but the con that both games still share, is the none progression of time if you travel on a vacation or go to uni (and most likely with traveling to the future in IF). I wish EA would implement the community time on these two situations as well. Even if it means I'm stuck watching an empty house for 5 days if every sim on the lot was traveling but at least give me the option to play the sim who staid home. If nobody is home, EA could even simulate the progression of time, it doesn't have to flow in RL sim time. Spawn x numbers of newspapers into the lawn representing the newspaper deliveries when I was traveling and generate some bills into the mail and then skip to the correct time.

Spamming:
The hobby people, really you just have to interrupt my sims woohoo and private toilet moment to tell me I can join your club? Do I really need to know every time my kid gains or looses a nerd point?

Gifts:
The only gift giving I like in the game is the chocolate boxes that visitors gave you when they visited you in TS1 ( :lovestruc honestly that was super cute of them), the date roses in TS2, the wedding gifts and gift piles from TS3. Also, sim to sim gift giving. What I don't like is getting a hot tub delivered in my doorstep because I woohooed a date or a random vase in my mail because somebody thinks I'm hot. I also didn't like meeting a random townie in TS2 and getting a pop up telling me "somebody's grandmother think I'm cool, here's a plasma TV and a promotion the next time you go to work". Then there was also Rod and his computer. Not really my cup of tea.

Lack of control:
I wish more things would be under user control in the game. Like promotions. I wish you could just tick a box and prevent a sim from getting that next promotion even if he meets the criteria. There are lots of people in RL who do not get a promotion just for showing up for work every day. Both games have a mod to fix this but I still wish this and many others smaller things would be controllable from in game like a bill multiplier for example. If everybody becomes an astronaut, who will clean those latrines?

I had never encountered all the gifts from admirers in the mailbox until recently. Not a good feature. But I do like it that you can give another sim a gift now. In one game I have, my sim gave one of his girlfriends a car and then she was actually using it.

Because I hate losing a friend of my sims in the game, I love gifting deathflowers. So many things can happen in the town, hearing about a friend, lover, family member being mauled to death by a shark has bad implications for me. Also the multi-tab is a great gift too.

Although the constant gifting by sims trying to gain my sims affections has hit a nerve, they can be useful for sale and help pay the bills. Also keep the repo man away.