sims 3 or sims 4

Both games are easy to play. So it all comes down to which appeals to you more.

@Rashel1456

if you want a game that doesnt leave you feeling enpty and bored, go with sims 3. sims 4 is better looking graphically, but gave up alot of features to make it happen. which leaves each pack addition feeling stale in a short period of time.

if you want a game that will give you tons of customization and smarter sims, go with sims 3.

also you can save alot of money if you get sims 3 packs thru 3rd party sites, ask around and you will find them.

last night i happened to get my hands on a free 10$ card for one of one of those sites and i bought 2 expansion packs (seasons and island paradise) for 9$.

just stay away from the site called G2A, they use illegal methods to get their games and lots of people dont even receive the items they try to buy from them.

If you can afford it, go with Origin, but if money is an issue, their are cheap alternatives.

I wouldn’t recommend going thru 3rd party sites unless it’s one that ea has approved such as steam.Like the above post sims 3 offers more content and feels more complete.There are still things I haven’t done yet.Sims 4 I find myself getting bored quite easily.However I do disagree with the comment about sims 4 looking better: sims 4 is too cartoony for me and I find sims 3 is visually pleasing; but that is all in the eye of the beholder.as for what is easier; which ever you decide to play first will probably be easier.I got hooked on sims 3 so I find the controls in sims 4 a little difficult to use

Hi :)
TS4 will always have your heart. Play what you love and Enjoy life. :cookie:

The Sims is not a very hard game. It's not an obstacle course, it's a dollhouse. People who are really good at the game and know all its secrets can optimize their household to make insane amounts of money in very short amounts of time, or befriend entire neighborhoods like lightning, or finish the game under an absurd number of self-imposed restrictions that disallow them from interacting with half the game's features, but people who are really bad at the game can just play normally and their Sims will still be pretty successful, even if it takes longer to get there (and even then, it doesn't take *that* long).

So far as which is better, the Sims 3 or the Sims 4, it depends on what you want.

The Sims 3's alleged big selling point is that the entire neighborhood is loaded at once, so you can then play the game with no loading screens, able to move organically from one lot to another. This is a technological achievement, but it hardly affects the play experience at all. It's not completely unnoticeable, in that having the neighborhood be a real neighborhood and not different lots silo'd off from each other means your neighbors feel more like neighbors because it is much faster to reach them for a chat, but that's not really a big deal. The lack of loading screens when changing locations is swapped out for the initial loading screen being an absolute monster, taking 2-3 minutes even on modern hardware.

The *real* big selling point for the Sims 3 is the breadth of content available to it. The Sims 4 is still playing catch up on the Sims 3. For example, the expansion pack coming out soon for the Sims 4 will introduce magic into the game, which the Sims 3 has had for seven years. The Sims 4 will probably get werewolves eventually, but it doesn't have them yet. The Sims 4 still doesn't have as many vacation spots as the Sims 3 does (although it does have vacation spots that the Sims 3 doesn't). And so on.

The Sims 3 also has a Create A Style system that allows for more flexibility in designing Sims and their houses than any other game, including the Sims 4. This is the kind of system that's only really useful in the hands of a really dedicated player, though, so if you're looking for something to play on autopilot, you probably wouldn't use this system anyway.

The Sims 4's big selling point is that its emotion system is a minor but noticeable iterative improvement on Sim moods. All the different events that can happen to your Sim don't just add up to being in a good or bad mood overall, but contribute to specific emotions like "angry" or "excited," giving your Sim a dominant emotion, which affects their behavior and performance. It makes the Sims' emotions and behavior just a little bit more immersive, but it's not really a big difference.

Ultimately, the differences between the two games aren't actually very big. There's very large differences in the underlying technology, but the game built on top of it was basically the same, so we, the end users, don't have much reason to care. The main reason why you'll get people giving such die-hard defenses of the Sims 3 is partly because the Sims 4 had a very rocky launch (critical elements of the game like the ability to build pools were missing at release, but it's been fixed), and partly because people who *already* own the Sims 3 and all its expansions have *still* not been given much of a reason to look at the Sims 4, even years after release.

"AliceAngelis;c-17165306" wrote:
Ultimately, the differences between the two games aren't actually very big. There's very large differences in the underlying technology, but the game built on top of it was basically the same, so we, the end users, don't have much reason to care. The main reason why you'll get people giving such die-hard defenses of the Sims 3 is partly because the Sims 4 had a very rocky launch (critical elements of the game like the ability to build pools were missing at release, but it's been fixed), and partly because people who *already* own the Sims 3 and all its expansions have *still* not been given much of a reason to look at the Sims 4, even years after release.

Sorry - going to have to take issue with this last bit. That's a very simplistic explanation as to why dedicated Sims 3 players don't like Sims 4. I could go on and on and on - but pick any thread about the differences between the two and you can read all about it ad infinitum. This explanation makes us sound like 1) we're holding a grudge and 2) that we're too emotionally undeveloped to realize content will eventually be released. Not even close to the actuality.

> @Surreal said:
> This explanation makes us sound like 1) we're holding a grudge and 2) that we're too emotionally undeveloped to realize content will eventually be released.

How could you possibly get that out of "Sims 3 players have no incentive to re-buy essentially the same content that they already own?"

The point is that the major differences between the two games for many, perhaps not for everyone, are not the feature sets and content. Not everyone feels this way, but many of us who much prefer one game over the other, going in either direction here, do not care which one has basketballs, cars, tombs, dolphins, universities, werewolves, push and pull CAS elements, or any particular sets of content and design tools. The two games do not play the same way as each other, the challenges the players take on as they progress their active households and (if so inclined) entire worlds as they play are very different and do not always have the same appeal. It's not that one has loading screens while the other has a long single initial load time that is a major difference to many of us, it's that in one we can observe, interact, and influence an entire world's evolution and progression all at once if we choose to play that way, whereas in the other this choice is not possible and we are to concentrate only on one actively being played household at a time with or without rotational play.

I have zero interest in playing TS4 and it's not because I don't want to purchase EPs for features that I already have in TS3. I wouldn't want to play TS4 even if the packs were all available to me and all of the content matched up because the game does not live up to what I want (and already have) as a life simulator where the entire world progresses at once. There are others who feel the same way in reverse, and there are those who are able to appreciate and enjoy both games for what they are, quirks and all, while still recognizing that they provide very different long- and short-term play experiences from each other.

@ClarionOfJoy great post, i couldnt have said it better myself.

unlike what some people believe, im not a player who refuses to accept sims 4. i have over 1000 hours into the game. ive been a huge fan since the beginning of the franchise. i've bought sims 1, 2 & 3 with every DLC twice, i've given sims 4 more than a fair try on numerous occasions, the game having so much limitations on it is a deal breaker for me. i dont need to go into details, @ClarionOfJoy said it all. sims 3 we were told here are the tools to do everything you need, make it your own. sims 4 we were told, you will take what we give you, play with life. i just dont see or feel anything alive about it. i want customization. i want to move my lots around, i want open world, i want a game that feels alive. i want to feel like my sims have a purpose, i want to play with other people's worlds. i want larger worlds, i want to see what other sims are doing and how their lives change without my influence, i want to stop right here cause i can go on and on and on.

now im to the point where im so fed up that i want to leave the franchise. I heard sims 4 is going the way of windows 10, it will continue on indefinitely with updates and dlc. if thats the truth, im closing the door. i've been waiting and waiting for sims 5 while all the die hard sims 4 can do no wrong fans have their fun, but apparently EA only cares about them and about stealing the little kids away from their barbie dolls than it does about us long time players who blindly followed them for the first 3 generations of the sims franchise. im not blind anymore, im keeping my money to myself from now on til they finally get it thru their thick skulls what people like me want.

"AliceAngelis;c-17165840" wrote:
> @Surreal said:
> This explanation makes us sound like 1) we're holding a grudge and 2) that we're too emotionally undeveloped to realize content will eventually be released.

How could you possibly get that out of "Sims 3 players have no incentive to re-buy essentially the same content that they already own?"

That isn't what you actually said so.... kinda hard to respond to that. Here's what you said:

"AliceAngelis;c-17165306" wrote:

The *real* big selling point for the Sims 3 is the breadth of content available to it. The Sims 4 is still playing catch up on the Sims 3. For example, the expansion pack coming out soon for the Sims 4 will introduce magic into the game, which the Sims 3 has had for seven years. The Sims 4 will probably get werewolves eventually, but it doesn't have them yet. The Sims 4 still doesn't have as many vacation spots as the Sims 3 does (although it does have vacation spots that the Sims 3 doesn't). And so on.

and:

"AliceAngelis;c-17165306" wrote:
and partly because people who *already* own the Sims 3 and all its expansions have *still* not been given much of a reason to look at the Sims 4, even years after release.

Nothing about not wanting to re-buy in any of that - I looked back through your post to find the sentence you quoted above, but I don't see it. Could be my eyes, but the point I'm making is that while these may seem, to you, like valid reasons for not moving on to the next Sims iteration, they aren't the reasons most of us have for not liking TS4. Most of us moved on from TS1 to TS2 and then from TS2 to TS3 with no real issue that we were playing a base game, and that we'd be buying content we essentially already had in the previous iterations. Having done it a couple of times, we're familiar with the drill. Some may grumble (and often do) that EA should put a bit more thought into their content and not just bang out the same ol' same ol' all the time - but grumble or not, we still buy it. We, and I think I can say we here, really, really wanted to like TS4 - and yes, re-buy anything and everything that was released for it - but the issues we have with the game itself cannot be corrected with EP's and stuff packs or whatever they're calling them these days, and therefore we aren't buying them. Has nothing to do with money or re-buying content we already own.