Forum Discussion

Damienf519's avatar
Damienf519
New Rookie
6 years ago

Decided to return to the Sims 3 after five years, any advice for a Returning Simmer?

Its been a long time since I've played the Sims 3, mostly because I've been really busy with the Sims 4, and I forgot about it for awhile. Still I missed things like create a style, Sims with more than three traits, controllable pets, the open world, and the ability to create my own neighborhoods from scratch. I used to love doing that, you can still find some of my old worlds for download, a couple of them are even on the exchange. Still I got fed up after awhile, because it got harder and hard to include everything that I wanted, especially if I didn't want the worlds to feel empty. I've currently started playing the Sims 3 again, and I've begun making a new world for the first time since I uninstalled the game, all of those years ago. I own all the expansion packs, and I think at least half of the stuff packs.

I also started playing the game again, and I was so used to the Sims 4, that I forgot that Sims in previous games couldn't multitask. I clicked on one of my Sims and tried to get them to watch TV and eat at the same time, off course that didn't work. Strangely enough, I missed the burglar, and I was actually kind of happy when he first showed up, and robbed my Sims.

Any advice for me going forward?
  • NikkeiSimmer's avatar
    NikkeiSimmer
    Rising Adventurer
    NRAAS. is your saviour. It’ll prevent a lot of the crashes that you experience with the game. It’ll smooth out the game and give you more control.
  • Set up in important.

    You’ll have to sit down and get your game to recognize your graphics card, and do a few tweaks here and there to enable smoother play. If it’s a new game, get the EA world fixes. Get save cleaner as well.

    There’s a guide on steam, but I’m too new to post links so you’ll have to google ‘Sims 3 steam game guide.’

    I’m with Nikkei_Simmer on NRAAs. If you’re not too big on mods get the essentials that’ll help with lag: Errortrap, overwatch and Returner.
  • cocokayla's avatar
    cocokayla
    Seasoned Traveler
    @Damienf519 With that window issue, are you using moveobjects on? If I'm using that cheat while building my windows, doors and arches don't place properly on walls.

    I hope you enjoy your return back to TS3. A lot of us never left and we enjoy the game just as much as we did years ago. My advice is to take things slow and try not to do everything at once. There's so many activities, skills and scenarios to play out that it might seem overwhelming at first. If you have Nraas Traveler, any world including custom ones can be used for holidays. That's always a fun addition! I hope to see some pictures of your new world and sims :smile:
  • Thanks for the suggestions guys, but thankfully so far, I'm not having too many issues with things like lag. I've only experienced one crash so far since returning, and that was in CAW's edit in game mode, which is why I make sure to save and backup my map files often. The only real problem I'm having so far is with this one Ambitions bug, where one of the windows doesn't look right when you place it on the wall. Its invisible on one side, and makes it look like there's a square hole in the wall where the window should be, and on the other side it looks like there are some semi transparent little holes in it. I serious can't understand why EA never fixed that, since I wasn't the only one who complained about it when the game was brand new.
  • "coco;c-17257730" wrote:
    @Damienf519 With that window issue, are you using moveobjects on? If I'm using that cheat while building my windows, doors and arches don't place properly on walls.


    No, the issue with that window happens regardless of what I do. It seems to have nothing to do with cheat codes or, mods or anything. Thanks the suggestion anyway.

  • I think I might start writing a story to go with the Montoya Family save. I feel like there's been enough major occurrences to start it. I'll start with a summary of what happened beforehand though. I'm not going to write anything too dramatic like @emorrill since I'm still quite young and haven't had the same occurrences as my sims (aka never experienced dating or breakups. I'm a loner who likes being with friends and family. Plus I'm far from mature... total kid at heart ❤ If you knew me well or read my profile on a couple sites you'd know I'm a huuuge Disney fan, enjoy crafting (preferably to do with 18 inch dolls like AG...), computer games, and have a too large collection of stuffed animals (including almost 50 Webkinz) and a large collection of LPS Bobbleheads.) Oh, and I adore dogs. And cats. lol.
    Enough about me though.

    Any advice for me starting the story? I wanna keep it so it can be on the forum without spoilers (obvi) I'll make a story thread AND post on my blog which is linked in my signature. I've done a little writing before, kids and teen stories, never published, not yet anyway.