Motive Decay rates
uknortherner:
Unless you're one of those people who actually got a kick out of playing TS2 with a strict rotation pattern and heavy micro-management due to a lack of universal aging, TS3 is clearly better for those of us to want to play the game rather than work at the game.
I never did understand this need for playing households in rotation except for storytelling purposes. The moment you start micromanaging everything is the moment it stops being a game, and becomes more like a chore.
My gripe with TS3 is (among other things) the fact your household isn't aware of the neighbourhood's existence. Your sims will not autonomously go to the park or a nightclub without your prompting and so, to all intents and purposes, you are still playing an independent lot, cut off from the world. The difference is, the rest of the world is no longer static, but it still makes it frustrating and dull if you're playing anything other than a single-sim household as the other members will merely stay at home, rolling wants to do things beyond the lot instead of actually doing them.
Zazazu:
Quote from: uknortherner on 2010 November 14, 13:30:19
Unless you're one of those people who actually got a kick out of playing TS2 with a strict rotation pattern and heavy micro-management due to a lack of universal aging, TS3 is clearly better for those of us to want to play the game rather than work at the game.
I never did understand this need for playing households in rotation except for storytelling purposes. The moment you start micromanaging everything is the moment it stops being a game, and becomes more like a chore.
Eh. Couple things from one who had a strict rotation pattern and micro-management (which I prefer to categorize as a punishment program):
1. TS3 vanilla is a micro-manager's nightmare. TS3 with Awesomemod is actually better in many ways because I can get the feel of a neighborhood growing together that I was going for with my TS2 rotations, use TS2 aging or age on/age off to keep equal play on my families, most of which I'd hate to miss actively watching grow, while having Awesomemod control them from making many of the decisions I'm to make for them. Uppity little things cannot start thinking they control their own lives. That's the sort of thing that allows a crazy people-drinking sim and a bunch of adulterous Romance sims to annoy the Oversoul to the point that it nukes a 'hood, leaving all the remaining residents as grilled-cheese-craving zombies.
2. You say "chore", I say "rich culture with clear distinctions from the ordinary". Sure, I could let all my sims just do what they want, which, due to EA's rather unimaginative programming will leave every sim growing up happy, reaching the top of their chosen career, having several spawn, and dying rolling in dough. Or, I could create a seemingly arbitrary matriarchal caste system mixed with aspects of polyamory and the dichotomy of clowncarism and strict population control, where sims may want what they want, but if it is not allowed by their birth situation or the few ways they can work with the system, they shall not have their pony.
There are still a few things I need to have my perfect game. The possibility of multiple spouses, which is entirely not an option with the game coded as it is and I suspect never will be, and some way to lock a sim from being able to get further promotions.
cwurts:
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Joyriding with your sims? I only spend about 5% or less of my sims time driving around, and I usually switch to another sim while they head to their destination anyways. I don't even buy a car if I don't have to, and let them taxi instead.
Exactly.
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Unless you're one of those people who actually got a kick out of playing TS2 with a strict rotation pattern and heavy micro-management due to a lack of universal aging, TS3 is clearly better for those of us to want to play the game rather than work at the game.
I never did understand this need for playing households in rotation except for storytelling purposes. The moment you start micromanaging everything is the moment it stops being a game, and becomes more like a chore.
But micromanagement and storytelling are the key features that make the sims what it is. TS3 claims to "have something for everyone" , but they are neglecting those players (a large percentage) who enjoy the original micromanagement-style game, and storytelling. Anyone who doesn't care for those things would not be missing anything were they to be included, but those of us who do are missing out. Part of the problem is that chosen sims are not distinguished from NPCs(townies) in any way. If you enjoy having the AI take over the lives of your neighbors to avoid the chore of micromanagement, you could set all sims to "townie" and only control your one family, but TS3 is not giving us that option.
While it's true that awesomeMod and other mods can weed out some of the annoyances, it is far from perfect. No matter what you do to eliminate the problems, there always seems to be one more thing. You can turn off story progression to prevent unwanted move-outs, but then your sims grow old and die without having any children. You can use TS2 aging for rotation play, but families will still progress on their own, even if you don't want that. You can use Twallan's Relativity to slow down time so you can contorl many families at once, but you end up spending all your time switching households instead of watching your sims. I tell you, the whole game is flawed. You should be able to focus on one family at a time AND have universal aging, and there are ways to make that possible.
Aimlak:
Or, if you hate TS3 so much and think it should be like TS2, you could, you know, play TS2.
wizard_merlin:
Quote from: cwurts on 2010 November 14, 01:25:13
EA wouldn't dare make TS4 an online game, lest they suffer my wrath. The online storytelling is bad enough. No more neighborhood stories :'( Anyway, I imagine EA would learn from their mistakes and make an excellent game next time around. The lousy TS3 is hopefully just a overconfident backlash from the perfection of TS2.
Really? and what exactly is YOUR wrath that they will suffer? I am sure they would be shaking in their collective boots at thought of suffering YOUR wrath if TS4 was an on-line game.
If you prefer TS2 so much, go the hell back and play TS2, TS3 is TS3, NOT TS2. There are ways to make TS3 play very similar, but if you don't like those, then go back to TS2. I for one like TS3 the way it is, probably because I never played multiple families on rotation, even now I just play one family, but I do keep one or two other families marked as sacred so I can jump in and out of their lives from time to time to torment them, but generally I play one family all the way through.
There were so many things I hated with TS2, the frozen time at home when your sim left the lot (except for Uni), such as when sending a sim to run a business with OFB and send them home at the end of the day and find the time and everything else was like they never went to work, etc.
If you allow the same TS3 run that TS2 had, then there will be more stuff packs, which may or may not add anything interesting, and several more expansion packs, which will always generate the "I hate this, I wanted this" debate/argument, but each one will add something to the game, how much it adds will just depend on individual taste.
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