OK, so why would I want this mess?
Sagana:
Quote from: mibsywibsy on 2009 May 30, 13:19:50
How the hell is that any different than TS2, though? In both games, the Want trees are pretty much completely deterministic, and adding "life" or individual personality to a Sim pretty much comes 100% from player imagination and creativity.
The difference is that sims2 doesn't get in my way (much) while I do that and sims3 does.
It's obvious, though, that I didn't make myself clear in the previous post. I'm talking about telling myself stories and using the sandbox/toy for myself. I'm not talking about blogging and I'm not talking about machinima. In both of those, all that would count was what I was showing the audience as it's the audience's suspension of disbelief that counts. So what the game says/does matters not a bit if you're using it as a stage. I'm talking about becoming attached to the characters, giving/finding their personalities and playing a game that I play for myself, and what counts there is my *own* response. I've been playing for a couple of weeks now and have run the sims through the first generation and well into the 2nd. At this point in sims2, I was hooked on my sims. Not for me for this game.
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What the text says when you click on a shower to play that animation really doesn't say anything in terms of storytelling or whatever.
Actually it does. It's part of the "wall of text" mentioned in the post I quoted and drags on the concept. The daredevil trait is very poorly done. If I imagine that I'm going to make a sim/character that likes danger - jumps out of airplanes, rides on motorcycles and takes chances in life - it not only adds nothing to the characterization to have almost every single thing he touches be listed as "extreme," it actually pulls away from imaging a serious character of that nature (breaks the wall, makes it difficult to suspend disbelief) and takes him into the absurd. The occasional extreme game of chess might be reasonable, but not for (almost) every item (extreme sleep, extreme shower, etc.) and every single time you do that action.
As a contrast, the neurotic trait is a lot of fun and adds to that characterization. Randomly a neurotic sim comes up with desires to "wash his hands 3 times" or "check the sink" etc. It's easy to put your own interpretation into those. He has his first kiss and wants to brush his teeth 3 times. Maybe he's afraid of germs, any germs, and can only really have a relationship with a girl that doesn't cause that reaction, or maybe he's paranoid about how well he kisses and scared to death the girl doesn't like him. He wants to brush his teeth and try again. Or maybe he washes his hands all the time because Lady Macbeth's blood has appeared. It's random, different enough to offer lots of options and not so absurd that it's hard to explain in some reasonable (for being neurotic) fashion. The only "advantage" to extreme is that it happens often enough that you'd probably get used to seeing it and tune it out at some point. That's not much of an advantage.
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Now, TS3 currently sucks for storytelling and sandbox play because Story Progression Toggle is borked; but if that gets fixed, honestly, it's probably going to be a slightly better game for storytellers, because if you're the type who likes to make up the story of your Sims as it happens through random stuff in play, the space for random crap is a bit bigger in TS3, because of Traits and the random missions at jobs, having actual bosses/coworkers - but that's really just a matter of slightly more inspiration fodder, really; unimaginative people will still probably fail it up and write crappy stories; creative people will come up with amazing ones no matter how barebones the game is.
Story Progression isn't the only issue. All the stuff you're talking about - traits and missions at jobs and bosses/coworkers are *game play* things. It's a good part of how the game convinces you to move along its pre-destined line to "finish" the game. It imposes upon you little missions and opportunities *whether they make any sense within your story or not.* The problem isn't that the game is too barebones - it's that it's not barebones *enough*. The gameplay parts get boring really quickly, for me. Honestly, I've seen almost all of them in sims2. A lot of it is just recycled with another name/description. (I was quite disappointed to find that a fascinating sounding LTW was really nothing more than level 9 in the science career.) But it imposes the game's story upon me, rather than offering me a spot to make my own.
(Skips all the stuff about Legacies and machinima.)
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There's a lot that pisses me off about TS3, but in terms of the storytelling sandbox specifically, the "it is game, not toy!!111eleventy!1" argument makes no freaking sense. Lack of CC, SPT, potential unmoddability, yeah, sure, but I really don't get where "zomg it forces you to do grindypantsery!!!" comes from. Not much more than TS2, really.
Well, I guess we play very differently. (The 'toy' analogy is Pescado's and I'd accuse him of many things but not leet/12ness ;) I don't know if you don't characterize your sims, don't mind if the game changes your characterizations, find it easier than I do to suspend disbelief and to characterize within the game's limitations, prefer gameplay (or building or something else) or what, but I'm talking about MY experience of the game, and what makes no sense to me is that you seem to be claiming that can't be my experience.
I tend to play about the same way I used to play table-top dnd a long time ago. I have (or the GM gives me) a base idea of the world and I come up with a character concept intended to fit within that world. Without the EPs and CC, there are certain characters I can't make. That's fine. I'm a cooperative player and don't fight the party or insist my world view trumps the GMs (or at least if I make a cowboy, I know I'm playing him in a world where everyone has a cell phone.) So I've come up with several character concepts that should fit in the TS3 world (modern, maybe slightly post-modern, town-y/cityscape or something, slightly nutso, a world with ghosts and Goths as NPCs). The thing is, my characters still don't fit. Even if I'm giving them traits off the list and expected careers within the game, the characters break. I've got one more idea to try that's pretty much perfect for this world and if that still doesn't work, I'll just give up and go back to TS2. I'm kind of surprising myself by trying this hard to like this game anyway. And there is a lot about it I do like. And maybe I'm underestimating JM and he can fix more than I'm crediting. Or if the first EP really is business and is like OFB maybe that will help as it opened up so many options in TS2. I'm not sure, but of course TS2 is always there for me.
Scotty:
Quote from: LauraW on 2009 May 30, 18:46:06
Quote from: Blaise on 2009 May 30, 18:15:01
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But I really feel that once we can turn off aging AND Story Progression, the immersive and connected feelings some of us desire will grow. In fact, I have a Sim that I am already becoming attached to. Sadly, I am afraid to switch houses because he might move outta town!
Same here. I am so afraid my Sim's grown sons will move away or spawn children without a partner that I find myself needed to check on their houses all the time. This is supposed to be fun, not add stress! I have real kids I have to worry about all the time...sighs.
I left my self Sim alone for awhile to work on another family. He has the hopeless romantic trait, and when I decided to check on him, he had a romantic interest in some female townie. My Sims are always gay, especially my self Sim. So, I ended what interest he had to her, and hooked him up with a guy Sim. I'm glad I checked in before he married her!
sanmonroe:
Quote from: vagabondher on 2009 May 30, 18:49:22
The still life paintings don't necessarily bother me because unless you're taking a photograph (which would be awesome) or creating via computer-generation, the quality of the work isn't going to be 100% photo-realistic. In the eye of the beholder, though.
On the note of having a camera, I would welcome that feature with open arms. You could open up your own photo gallery! What's that Stewie line? "Every hot girl who can aim a camera thinks she's a photographer. Oooooooh, you took a black-and-white picture of a lawn chair and its shadow and developed it at Save-On. You must be so brooding and deep."
See the way I look at it, if you reacht he top of the skill tree, and make masterpieces, you should be able to crank out things like this for quality and realism
or at least this
Instead the game runs the picture through a cheap pixelizer to make it look painted and we get this
NameGame:
Quote from: sanmonroe on 2009 May 30, 20:48:51
See the way I look at it, if you reacht he top of the skill tree, and make masterpieces, you should be able to crank out things like this for quality and realism
I'm not disputing that the paintings look like poo… Photoshop filters are for sheep. However, the examples in you counter argument are perhaps not the best. That Chuck Close painting would be in a museum long before that photo referenced mess. Like so much of what I've been reading about TS3, the abstracting of paintings should be an optional feature. On the up side, photography is almost guaranteed to be in an EP.
Hook:
Lurker: Very interesting post. You mentioned a lot of things I didn't know existed for Sims 2. I was surprised at a few of them. Here are my observations from the Sims 2 base game.
Sims always slept in their assigned bed in my game unless someone else was already relaxing there. I was always amazed when people said Sims never slept in their own bed. I wonder if it was because they kept their Sims busy until they dropped from exhaustion and they'd end up using the closest bed instead. After you'd sent them to the same bed a couple of times, they'd always use that one.
I even saw evidence that in a house with several toilets that Sims had a preferred toilet they'd use. I finally got some confirmation of this when I had a ghost complain because I'd sold the original toilet. That was what finally convinced people that Sims did indeed have a bed preference: how else would a ghost know that you'd sold their bed?
I never ever had problems getting Sims to eat at a particular table. I had posts on the BBS showing how to set up a house so that cooked food was eaten in the formal dining room while uncooked food (cereal, sandwiches) was eaten in a breakfast area. I had several different house setups where this worked without problems. This was all in the base game.
If you sent a Sim to water some flowers, he would continue watering other flowers that needed it. If not all flowers needed watering, he'd stop before watering them all. There may be something like that going on here.
When we first had gyms, Sims would use all the exercise equipment and even take showers. At some point that was broken, and Sims only used certain exercise stuff and never showered. I forget exactly when that happened, but it annoyed me considerably.
Sims would go to the fridge and fix food if they were hungry. There were no leftovers at the time.
I ran a dozen or so totally autonomous households, three adults each, through about 27 days. After getting it set up and everyone had jobs, it was totally hands off. The only hack I used was Pay-At-Box so we didn't have a repo man coming. My Sims not only survived, they thrived. A few got fairly high in their careers. No one ever died. I don't even remember anyone peeing on the floor. It did take setting up enough fridges so they wouldn't run out of food, and putting two stoves in each house in case one got glitched. Broken showers and toilets gave them plenty of opportunities to skill up in cleaning; a swimming pool built body, two easels each with paintings already started built creativity, a telescope (set up inside) built logic, they'd cook autonomously. Oh yes... they usually slept in the same bed the whole time.
It will be interesting to see how much of this carried over to TS3. I'm waiting for the retail game.
Hook
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