The Sims Resource vs. The Store
Hello all, I have a somewhat very convoluted question that I hope I can pose here in a way that people will understand. Not because of their inability to understand, of course, but my own inabil...
Forum Discussion
Hello all! I live! I sincerely hope that everyone else does as well!
I've had to break this post up into two separate posts because it's "15,276 characters too long." :smiley:
Here's Part I:
I’m not technically supposed to be sharing these results yet (we’re still awaiting publication), but thanks to my exhaustive work with NISA (the National Insane Sim Association, known mostly for their collaboration with NASA in perpetrating the now-infamous Earth-landing hoax), I’ve managed to successfully time travel three months into the future! This project has spanned billions of years and cost literally dozens of dollars. I’m still trying to adjust to this strange, new time period and hope that people from the past still remember me. And still play The Sims 3.
Or (less likely), I re-installed Windows 10 because Windows Update done messed up my new PC, got sick of said PC after going through that whole process, realized I desperately needed a break and basically glued my eyeballs to my television to try to catch up on a zillion shows on my DVR. And learned some nifty new stuff on my guitar. I may have had some personal issues going on as well.
If it was the first, I’m terribly sorry, but there were confidentiality agreements involved. :no_mouth:
If was the second, mea culpa for simply disappearing and leaving this thread (and all of you) abandoned. It just occurred to me that it’s been so long that this could be considered necro-ing my own thread with my first reply. :frowning:
Either way, I’m sad to report that I haven’t played The Sims 3 this entire time. :disappointed:
Thanks for the feedback!
As an apology for my excursion (whichever one it may have been), I’ve cobbled together what I sincerely hope will go down in history as one of the most epic, disheveled, novella-length posts ever shared on this forum. One which I hope is interesting and/or pertinent and/or lol-able whenever and wherever possible. If I’ve failed – oops – I tried.
I also come bearing Gifts! Which should almost assuredly prove to be at least as well received as my onerous ramblings, if not more so. I would hope, anyway. Those are later though – there’s a whole lotta post here. I hope people in this future world like to read.
I’d apologize for the length, but this is just how my brain works. :) I’ve tried my best to personalize each reply, so there is some repetition at times. Should the mood strike you, feel free to skip ahead to, well, wherever looks neat (and hopefully at least to where I’ve tagged you).
I didn’t so much come to a decision as one just arrived organically. I (or, in the case of the time-travel version of this narrative, someone else on my behalf) managed to diligently follow the new spreadsheet during my missing time period and I’m now (semi-)officially done with The Store (well, basically) and the Daily Deals! :smiley:
I (should – I haven’t even downloaded 99% of it yet) have counters that count, blinds that blind, loveseats that love seating, shoes that’ll shoo, curtains that’re curt (really, they can be quite rude at times) and sofa’s that…sofe? Close enough.
At some point, I decided that I was going to aim for every build/buy mode item in The Store, no matter how unusable. The journey to get there was arduous (I go into that a bit more somewhere below), but thanks to the Cascades and such, my Simpoints went much further than I ever thought they would. I didn’t buy anywhere near all of the clothing sets, but so many came along with the ride that I should be able to fill every dresser in the game. The remaining sets only have a few items that I’d want anyway (which is true of many sets, sadly), so I’ll likely pick those up. The only other things left are the plumload of individual items which aren’t part of sets that I plan on buying (and still have to sift through more ‘cause that plum’s huge).
To commemorate this auspicious and momentous occasion, I…bought a ton of SimPoints. Quite a few of which were/will be required to accomplish the above, but, according to my math, nowhere near all of them.
You see, I pictured a future version of myself, swimming around in my giant vault of Sims 3 Store content like Scrooge McSim, repetitively fighting off the Llama Boys who’re always trying to breach my stalwart defenses (one little burglar alarm placed next to my door) and it just didn’t seem like fun. Well, it did, obviously, but this seemed like way more fun (and more fun sounded like more fun).
So at the last moment, I thought of the people here and of possible purchases down the road (I’ve learned to never say never when it comes to this game), pulled out my well-worn NISA card (I’ve been a card-carrying member since the first Sims game came out) and *bam*, SimPoints galore. This thread helped me decide what to do in both a large and largely roundabout way, with the exception of its main purpose regarding TSR (that’s something that I think will work out in time).
I’m appalled by my original post here (for numerous reasons) and can’t for the life of me figure out why I started the thread as a “vs.” to begin with, as each site obviously has their own benefits and downsides. Maybe it was because I’d just blown a heap of money (got meself some neato sound systems and gaming geekery) around the holidays. Or maybe I had a bug up my plum that day, because that’s how it reads to me now. :grey_question:
It should have just been a “Hey, what do people think of The Sims Resource? Does some of the stuff there match the quality of The Store? Is it worth paying to make the site work like a website actually should – it’s pretty cheap to do once in a lifetime?”
That probably would have been a much better thread for its purpose, but sometimes things work out better when one errs grievously. Had I done that, I may not have learned what I did, which in turn prompted me to do what I did, with the plans to do what I’m doing here now.
See? Making perfect sense already. And we’re only at the bottom of page two in Word. Out of fourteen.
In the words of the immortal, much-beloved and forever-missed Mythbusters: “If it’s worth doing, it’s worth overdoing!”
Anyway, on to the replies:
@InfraGreen Yeah, TSR is “Free” – it just sucks to use. uBlock Origin gets rid of the ads, but everything’s abominably slow and it drives me crazy. The thought of of trying to peruse, let alone download and test, that much content by that many creators is just horrifying. Seeing that link you shared has me tempted to install Chrome, even though I’ve never liked it and use Firefox myself – thanks for that one! :smile:
I’m sorry to hear that your opinion on the content there is so poor. All I’ve ever downloaded from the site are a few hairstyles (I like the shine on a few of Cazy’s originals; the rest were basically terrible as you mentioned) and the S-Club eyelashes (which are indispensable, IMHO). I think I have a kitchen and/or living room set or two lying around somewhere, but never got around to it/them.
I’m mainly looking for build/buy stuff. I think I should have made that clearer in my original post. Clothes perhaps, but that’s a long way off considering how much I managed to get from the Store. Heck, even with just the EP’s/SP’s installed, my system wigs out for 10-15 seconds after I CaST something in Everyday Tops. I’m terrified of what’s going to happen once I get everything installed. Any CC I added after that would have to be truly spectacular and/or original.
I discovered the magic of hair retextures awhile back. There are some truly fantastic hairstyles out there (and just as many terrible ones, both mesh and texture-wise). Plumblobs does (well, did, her site’s just a darn massive hair dump now, like so many others) the best job I’ve seen so far overall, but I have a reasonable-sized collection from quite a few others as well.
I’m forever left with two burning questions when it comes to hairstyles:
1. Why are there are so many out there where ~80% of the hair isn’t even close to touching the Sim’s body (or there are bald spots or other blatant mesh issues)?
2. Why on earth would someone take the time to retexture those monstrosities?!? Let them die already!
If you (or anyone else reading this) happens to know who does great retextures, I’m always looking.
Your post – and others, of course – helped to solidify my decision to focus on the Store because you’re right – the stuff does look nice, despite its hefty price tag (“Greedy DLC paywalling for a game that's almost a decade old,” lol). It was made by EA professionals using 3d modeling software specifically designed for the game. I just sincerely wish that they’d made more of it (what I wouldn’t give for more Alice in Wonderland style content) with greater variety and at a far lower price point.
I’ve spent so much time Tumblr-hopping that I kinda lost my mind. There’s just too much out there spread across (approximately, by my count) 30 billion websites. Lana’s alone has around 2300 pages of links to Sims 3 content, which one can of course whittle down and sift through using the tags and then end up on sites with links to other sites ad infinitum. I’ve noticed that her site and lots of those others lead to items on TSR all the time, so I would hope that at least some of it would be decent. I also wonder about the quality on most of those sites as well, since most are just independent creators and may or may not know what they’re doing either.
My problem has been trying to separate the wheat from the chaff (yay for old-timey phrases!) while trying to balance a pseudo-life and actually find time to play the game. The complete lack of organization among the majority of Sims 3 sites makes that exceedingly difficult. I found some CC shopping videos on YouTube (they led me to a lot of the hairstyles I have, as that’s what I was looking for at the time) late last year that I plan to check out more.
Thanks again, though again I’m saddened to hear that TSR isn’t the Great Mall of Excellent Content I’d hoped.
@igazor Thanks for the comments!
1 – Can we agree to perhaps…generalization rather than exaggeration? This is in large part due to the fact that I still have nightmares of the first time I ever logged into the Store back in 2009 and saw that a single hairstyle cost the equivalent of $1. At the time, I truly thought that was an introductory “New game” pricing structure. However, that same hairstyle is still $1 nearly 9 years later. :o People all over the web have been complaining (quite vociferously) about the cost of The Store since it opened. Without rehashing that debate in its entirety, I personally believe EA should have listened to those complaints long ago.
I’m also surprised that they didn’t.
Instead of ranting (I started one (not at you, of course, but at EA) and it got away from me, so I deleted it for everyone’s sake :no_mouth:), I’ll just stick with my overall positive attitude here and say that I feel lucky that I came back when I did because I got the $5 EP’s/SP’s and (re-)found this forum. I just wish I’d been smart enough to post last July – I’d own even more and be much further along with my game. One link in a post by TreyNutz to a thread about Daily Deals changed my Sim world(s) forever.
With enough time, persistence and a willingness to set alarm clocks, get out of bed, turn on a giant TV (my “monitor”), buy an item off a website, lay back down, pray for sleep, repeat, then it’s totally possible to own the vast majority of The Store for a few hundred dollars.
Thanks to all of that, the average cost of each item in a set was around 15 SimPoints for months for me (or someone else on my behalf, whichever the reality was), which is about what they always should have been. A few hundred SimPoints per set is a much more reasonable price point, IMO. I managed to score the entire Make a Wish Compilation for around 1,000 SimPoints, which was shocking (I’ve wanted that Storybook set since it was first released once upon a time).
I just wish it were easier to pick and choose exactly what I wanted, when I wanted and get the same prices. One second a set costs 1,000 SimPoints, the next second (literally), it’s dirt cheap (or free)! Even buying items/sets in a particular order can vastly change the resultant prices of numerous other items/sets/compilations/conflagrations (the last being the product of a novice Sim trying to use a stove).
That’s just patently absurd and, I suppose, the core of my frustration. Collecting it made me feel like a Sim.
As above though, it’s certainly better than the alternative of paying full asking price. I’d have walked away long ago if that were still the case.
It can be one heck of an expensive game, but I’ve obviously found it to be worth it for the thousands of hours of completely original fun it provides. Any and all complaining aside.
2 – I’ve been shocked, nay, horrified ever since I read this sentence:
I simply can’t fathom living in a world where such is the case.
Would that I had the Points to Gift a World.
Oh wait! That’s what all that perfectly sensible crazy nonsense was about a few pages back. I believe I mentioned Gifts.
Please choose one and it is yours. If you’d much rather have something else, then I suppose that’s okay, but going that route wouldn’t bring us any closer to a world where Igazor owns all the Worlds, which is the world I’m striving to help create here. :)
The only caveat is that you better not be leading us all astray with your promises that NRass isn’t going away. Ever. Or at least until a new Sims game manages to render it obsolete. I will find you. >:) There can't be too many "Igazors" in the phone book.
Also, I’ve never Gifted before, so I have to ask a n00b question: Is everyone’s username here on the forum the same as on The Store? I’d hate for any gifts to go to the wrong person. If you feel like choosing something, adding it to your Wishlist and then replying with the link to that (or messaging it to me if you prefer), that might make my life easier.
The worlds are actually what got me more interested in owning the Store. Sets that I wouldn’t have looked at twice before suddenly had quite a bit more allure to them.
Owning Dragon Valley (thanks in part to your recommendation), for example, made me more interested in sets (Palace of Versailles, Tutor of Tudors, etc…) that I wouldn’t have cared about before at all. I could now see myself creating a set of bourgeoisie Sims who live in a castle surrounded by a moat and who own a pack of hungry Dobermans.
Release. The. Hounds.
Same thing with Lunar Lakes and some of the more futuristic-oriented sets. My play and creation styles have always been based on modern-day realism (and the content I had basically forced that on me), but creating hordes of little green men and women could prove entertaining someday. Add in the right NRass mod(s) and there goes a few hundred hours of travelling to different worlds (literally). :mrgreen:
And on and on with the other worlds and content…
While it’s obviously too early for me to tell what my actual game will be like (I may not lack for anything), it does seem like the Store is somewhat unbalanced. Sure, there are around 1,400 Buy mode items, but of those, around 500 are décor and close to 200 are lighting. That’s a whole lotta lighting. Like they wanted us all to create a mini-Sim-sun or something.
On the other hand, seeing that there are only around 50-70 plumbing items (and not a single truly cool new shower for my Sims to wash all that nasty sim grime off of them), appliances, electronics and far, far less for Build mode (only 200 items total) has made me realize that even with all the Store stuff, I’ll likely be looking for Custom Content to augment my game for a long time to come. Especially since there are only 28 counters that count (actually around half that because most are counter/island sets)!
That’s actually a created a real fear now – having all this Store stuff, getting cluttered up/bogged down and then finding Custom Content that I like better. If it exists, of course.
How much stuff can a Sims 3 stuff if a Sims 3 can stuff stuff?
3 – That’s been my understanding of TSR as well. It’s looks to be a more organized version of the Tumblr pages which does its best to expose you to malvertising and frustrate you into paying them money to stop that madness. Ironically, their dodgy sales tactics actually make me want to give them money far less. No site needs to go to those lengths to pay for “Bandwidth.” :rage:
I’m a big fan of organization though. Not OCD-level or anything, but at least some semblance of “Hey, I’d like to look at just living room sets today.”
Please correct me if I’m wrong, but as far as I can tell it’s the only site which really has Sets a la The Store. That’s the biggest draw for me. There’s a huge difference between getting a cool sofa and getting a cool sofa with matching loveseat, coffee table, entertainment center and Bobblehead.
Based on the photos alone (and I know that some creators use Photoshop), I’ve seen a whole lot of sets on TSR (by creators like ArtVitalex ) that would probably cost 1,000 SimPoints were they made by EA. I’ve been meaning to test out some of those, but time-travelling PC issues got in the way.
Like I wrote way above, that’s part of what this thread was for, in essence. I know that a lot of the stuff there is likely made badly (some of the photos are just atrocious, but everyone’s an amateur at some point), but so much of it looks so awesome. A lot of it also looks substantially different than much of EA’s fare. Which leads to a couple of questions:
1. Does the good outweigh the bad?
2. Is the good even that good?
It doesn’t help that while TSR claims millions upon millions of downloads, I’ve noticed that most of said content has very few comments and there’s no rating system whatsoever (just different tiers of artists). A set will claim 70,000 downloads but only have four comments, two of which are people asking the creator to please make it for The Sims 4. That seems…wonky. Especially when you compare that to the comment-per-download ratio of a site like MTS.
As much as I love content, I love working content even more. Sort of how I enjoy correct answers. :)
Thank you as always sir!
And here comes Part II:
I've had to break this post up into two separate posts because it's "15,276 characters too long." :smiley:
Here's Part I:
I’m not technically supposed to be sharing these results yet (we’re still awaiting publication), but thanks to my exhaustive work with NISA (the National Insane Sim Association, known mostly for their collaboration with NASA in perpetrating the now-infamous Earth-landing hoax), I’ve managed to successfully time travel three months into the future! This project has spanned billions of years and cost literally dozens of dollars. I’m still trying to adjust to this strange, new time period and hope that people from the past still remember me. And still play The Sims 3.
Or (less likely), I re-installed Windows 10 because Windows Update done messed up my new PC, got sick of said PC after going through that whole process, realized I desperately needed a break and basically glued my eyeballs to my television to try to catch up on a zillion shows on my DVR. And learned some nifty new stuff on my guitar. I may have had some personal issues going on as well.
If it was the first, I’m terribly sorry, but there were confidentiality agreements involved. :no_mouth:
If was the second, mea culpa for simply disappearing and leaving this thread (and all of you) abandoned. It just occurred to me that it’s been so long that this could be considered necro-ing my own thread with my first reply. :frowning:
Either way, I’m sad to report that I haven’t played The Sims 3 this entire time. :disappointed:
Thanks for the feedback!
As an apology for my excursion (whichever one it may have been), I’ve cobbled together what I sincerely hope will go down in history as one of the most epic, disheveled, novella-length posts ever shared on this forum. One which I hope is interesting and/or pertinent and/or lol-able whenever and wherever possible. If I’ve failed – oops – I tried.
I also come bearing Gifts! Which should almost assuredly prove to be at least as well received as my onerous ramblings, if not more so. I would hope, anyway. Those are later though – there’s a whole lotta post here. I hope people in this future world like to read.
I’d apologize for the length, but this is just how my brain works. :) I’ve tried my best to personalize each reply, so there is some repetition at times. Should the mood strike you, feel free to skip ahead to, well, wherever looks neat (and hopefully at least to where I’ve tagged you).
I didn’t so much come to a decision as one just arrived organically. I (or, in the case of the time-travel version of this narrative, someone else on my behalf) managed to diligently follow the new spreadsheet during my missing time period and I’m now (semi-)officially done with The Store (well, basically) and the Daily Deals! :smiley:
I (should – I haven’t even downloaded 99% of it yet) have counters that count, blinds that blind, loveseats that love seating, shoes that’ll shoo, curtains that’re curt (really, they can be quite rude at times) and sofa’s that…sofe? Close enough.
At some point, I decided that I was going to aim for every build/buy mode item in The Store, no matter how unusable. The journey to get there was arduous (I go into that a bit more somewhere below), but thanks to the Cascades and such, my Simpoints went much further than I ever thought they would. I didn’t buy anywhere near all of the clothing sets, but so many came along with the ride that I should be able to fill every dresser in the game. The remaining sets only have a few items that I’d want anyway (which is true of many sets, sadly), so I’ll likely pick those up. The only other things left are the plumload of individual items which aren’t part of sets that I plan on buying (and still have to sift through more ‘cause that plum’s huge).
To commemorate this auspicious and momentous occasion, I…bought a ton of SimPoints. Quite a few of which were/will be required to accomplish the above, but, according to my math, nowhere near all of them.
You see, I pictured a future version of myself, swimming around in my giant vault of Sims 3 Store content like Scrooge McSim, repetitively fighting off the Llama Boys who’re always trying to breach my stalwart defenses (one little burglar alarm placed next to my door) and it just didn’t seem like fun. Well, it did, obviously, but this seemed like way more fun (and more fun sounded like more fun).
So at the last moment, I thought of the people here and of possible purchases down the road (I’ve learned to never say never when it comes to this game), pulled out my well-worn NISA card (I’ve been a card-carrying member since the first Sims game came out) and *bam*, SimPoints galore. This thread helped me decide what to do in both a large and largely roundabout way, with the exception of its main purpose regarding TSR (that’s something that I think will work out in time).
I’m appalled by my original post here (for numerous reasons) and can’t for the life of me figure out why I started the thread as a “vs.” to begin with, as each site obviously has their own benefits and downsides. Maybe it was because I’d just blown a heap of money (got meself some neato sound systems and gaming geekery) around the holidays. Or maybe I had a bug up my plum that day, because that’s how it reads to me now. :grey_question:
It should have just been a “Hey, what do people think of The Sims Resource? Does some of the stuff there match the quality of The Store? Is it worth paying to make the site work like a website actually should – it’s pretty cheap to do once in a lifetime?”
That probably would have been a much better thread for its purpose, but sometimes things work out better when one errs grievously. Had I done that, I may not have learned what I did, which in turn prompted me to do what I did, with the plans to do what I’m doing here now.
See? Making perfect sense already. And we’re only at the bottom of page two in Word. Out of fourteen.
In the words of the immortal, much-beloved and forever-missed Mythbusters: “If it’s worth doing, it’s worth overdoing!”
Anyway, on to the replies:
@InfraGreen Yeah, TSR is “Free” – it just sucks to use. uBlock Origin gets rid of the ads, but everything’s abominably slow and it drives me crazy. The thought of of trying to peruse, let alone download and test, that much content by that many creators is just horrifying. Seeing that link you shared has me tempted to install Chrome, even though I’ve never liked it and use Firefox myself – thanks for that one! :smile:
I’m sorry to hear that your opinion on the content there is so poor. All I’ve ever downloaded from the site are a few hairstyles (I like the shine on a few of Cazy’s originals; the rest were basically terrible as you mentioned) and the S-Club eyelashes (which are indispensable, IMHO). I think I have a kitchen and/or living room set or two lying around somewhere, but never got around to it/them.
I’m mainly looking for build/buy stuff. I think I should have made that clearer in my original post. Clothes perhaps, but that’s a long way off considering how much I managed to get from the Store. Heck, even with just the EP’s/SP’s installed, my system wigs out for 10-15 seconds after I CaST something in Everyday Tops. I’m terrified of what’s going to happen once I get everything installed. Any CC I added after that would have to be truly spectacular and/or original.
I discovered the magic of hair retextures awhile back. There are some truly fantastic hairstyles out there (and just as many terrible ones, both mesh and texture-wise). Plumblobs does (well, did, her site’s just a darn massive hair dump now, like so many others) the best job I’ve seen so far overall, but I have a reasonable-sized collection from quite a few others as well.
I’m forever left with two burning questions when it comes to hairstyles:
1. Why are there are so many out there where ~80% of the hair isn’t even close to touching the Sim’s body (or there are bald spots or other blatant mesh issues)?
2. Why on earth would someone take the time to retexture those monstrosities?!? Let them die already!
If you (or anyone else reading this) happens to know who does great retextures, I’m always looking.
Your post – and others, of course – helped to solidify my decision to focus on the Store because you’re right – the stuff does look nice, despite its hefty price tag (“Greedy DLC paywalling for a game that's almost a decade old,” lol). It was made by EA professionals using 3d modeling software specifically designed for the game. I just sincerely wish that they’d made more of it (what I wouldn’t give for more Alice in Wonderland style content) with greater variety and at a far lower price point.
I’ve spent so much time Tumblr-hopping that I kinda lost my mind. There’s just too much out there spread across (approximately, by my count) 30 billion websites. Lana’s alone has around 2300 pages of links to Sims 3 content, which one can of course whittle down and sift through using the tags and then end up on sites with links to other sites ad infinitum. I’ve noticed that her site and lots of those others lead to items on TSR all the time, so I would hope that at least some of it would be decent. I also wonder about the quality on most of those sites as well, since most are just independent creators and may or may not know what they’re doing either.
My problem has been trying to separate the wheat from the chaff (yay for old-timey phrases!) while trying to balance a pseudo-life and actually find time to play the game. The complete lack of organization among the majority of Sims 3 sites makes that exceedingly difficult. I found some CC shopping videos on YouTube (they led me to a lot of the hairstyles I have, as that’s what I was looking for at the time) late last year that I plan to check out more.
Thanks again, though again I’m saddened to hear that TSR isn’t the Great Mall of Excellent Content I’d hoped.
@igazor Thanks for the comments!
1 – Can we agree to perhaps…generalization rather than exaggeration? This is in large part due to the fact that I still have nightmares of the first time I ever logged into the Store back in 2009 and saw that a single hairstyle cost the equivalent of $1. At the time, I truly thought that was an introductory “New game” pricing structure. However, that same hairstyle is still $1 nearly 9 years later. :o People all over the web have been complaining (quite vociferously) about the cost of The Store since it opened. Without rehashing that debate in its entirety, I personally believe EA should have listened to those complaints long ago.
I’m also surprised that they didn’t.
Instead of ranting (I started one (not at you, of course, but at EA) and it got away from me, so I deleted it for everyone’s sake :no_mouth:), I’ll just stick with my overall positive attitude here and say that I feel lucky that I came back when I did because I got the $5 EP’s/SP’s and (re-)found this forum. I just wish I’d been smart enough to post last July – I’d own even more and be much further along with my game. One link in a post by TreyNutz to a thread about Daily Deals changed my Sim world(s) forever.
With enough time, persistence and a willingness to set alarm clocks, get out of bed, turn on a giant TV (my “monitor”), buy an item off a website, lay back down, pray for sleep, repeat, then it’s totally possible to own the vast majority of The Store for a few hundred dollars.
Thanks to all of that, the average cost of each item in a set was around 15 SimPoints for months for me (or someone else on my behalf, whichever the reality was), which is about what they always should have been. A few hundred SimPoints per set is a much more reasonable price point, IMO. I managed to score the entire Make a Wish Compilation for around 1,000 SimPoints, which was shocking (I’ve wanted that Storybook set since it was first released once upon a time).
I just wish it were easier to pick and choose exactly what I wanted, when I wanted and get the same prices. One second a set costs 1,000 SimPoints, the next second (literally), it’s dirt cheap (or free)! Even buying items/sets in a particular order can vastly change the resultant prices of numerous other items/sets/compilations/conflagrations (the last being the product of a novice Sim trying to use a stove).
That’s just patently absurd and, I suppose, the core of my frustration. Collecting it made me feel like a Sim.
As above though, it’s certainly better than the alternative of paying full asking price. I’d have walked away long ago if that were still the case.
It can be one heck of an expensive game, but I’ve obviously found it to be worth it for the thousands of hours of completely original fun it provides. Any and all complaining aside.
2 – I’ve been shocked, nay, horrified ever since I read this sentence:
"igazor;c-16257976" wrote:
I don't even have all of the store worlds yet, although that will probably happen in time.
I simply can’t fathom living in a world where such is the case.
Would that I had the Points to Gift a World.
Oh wait! That’s what all that perfectly sensible crazy nonsense was about a few pages back. I believe I mentioned Gifts.
Please choose one and it is yours. If you’d much rather have something else, then I suppose that’s okay, but going that route wouldn’t bring us any closer to a world where Igazor owns all the Worlds, which is the world I’m striving to help create here. :)
The only caveat is that you better not be leading us all astray with your promises that NRass isn’t going away. Ever. Or at least until a new Sims game manages to render it obsolete. I will find you. >:) There can't be too many "Igazors" in the phone book.
Also, I’ve never Gifted before, so I have to ask a n00b question: Is everyone’s username here on the forum the same as on The Store? I’d hate for any gifts to go to the wrong person. If you feel like choosing something, adding it to your Wishlist and then replying with the link to that (or messaging it to me if you prefer), that might make my life easier.
The worlds are actually what got me more interested in owning the Store. Sets that I wouldn’t have looked at twice before suddenly had quite a bit more allure to them.
Owning Dragon Valley (thanks in part to your recommendation), for example, made me more interested in sets (Palace of Versailles, Tutor of Tudors, etc…) that I wouldn’t have cared about before at all. I could now see myself creating a set of bourgeoisie Sims who live in a castle surrounded by a moat and who own a pack of hungry Dobermans.
Release. The. Hounds.
Same thing with Lunar Lakes and some of the more futuristic-oriented sets. My play and creation styles have always been based on modern-day realism (and the content I had basically forced that on me), but creating hordes of little green men and women could prove entertaining someday. Add in the right NRass mod(s) and there goes a few hundred hours of travelling to different worlds (literally). :mrgreen:
And on and on with the other worlds and content…
While it’s obviously too early for me to tell what my actual game will be like (I may not lack for anything), it does seem like the Store is somewhat unbalanced. Sure, there are around 1,400 Buy mode items, but of those, around 500 are décor and close to 200 are lighting. That’s a whole lotta lighting. Like they wanted us all to create a mini-Sim-sun or something.
On the other hand, seeing that there are only around 50-70 plumbing items (and not a single truly cool new shower for my Sims to wash all that nasty sim grime off of them), appliances, electronics and far, far less for Build mode (only 200 items total) has made me realize that even with all the Store stuff, I’ll likely be looking for Custom Content to augment my game for a long time to come. Especially since there are only 28 counters that count (actually around half that because most are counter/island sets)!
That’s actually a created a real fear now – having all this Store stuff, getting cluttered up/bogged down and then finding Custom Content that I like better. If it exists, of course.
How much stuff can a Sims 3 stuff if a Sims 3 can stuff stuff?
3 – That’s been my understanding of TSR as well. It’s looks to be a more organized version of the Tumblr pages which does its best to expose you to malvertising and frustrate you into paying them money to stop that madness. Ironically, their dodgy sales tactics actually make me want to give them money far less. No site needs to go to those lengths to pay for “Bandwidth.” :rage:
I’m a big fan of organization though. Not OCD-level or anything, but at least some semblance of “Hey, I’d like to look at just living room sets today.”
Please correct me if I’m wrong, but as far as I can tell it’s the only site which really has Sets a la The Store. That’s the biggest draw for me. There’s a huge difference between getting a cool sofa and getting a cool sofa with matching loveseat, coffee table, entertainment center and Bobblehead.
Based on the photos alone (and I know that some creators use Photoshop), I’ve seen a whole lot of sets on TSR (by creators like ArtVitalex ) that would probably cost 1,000 SimPoints were they made by EA. I’ve been meaning to test out some of those, but time-travelling PC issues got in the way.
Like I wrote way above, that’s part of what this thread was for, in essence. I know that a lot of the stuff there is likely made badly (some of the photos are just atrocious, but everyone’s an amateur at some point), but so much of it looks so awesome. A lot of it also looks substantially different than much of EA’s fare. Which leads to a couple of questions:
1. Does the good outweigh the bad?
2. Is the good even that good?
It doesn’t help that while TSR claims millions upon millions of downloads, I’ve noticed that most of said content has very few comments and there’s no rating system whatsoever (just different tiers of artists). A set will claim 70,000 downloads but only have four comments, two of which are people asking the creator to please make it for The Sims 4. That seems…wonky. Especially when you compare that to the comment-per-download ratio of a site like MTS.
As much as I love content, I love working content even more. Sort of how I enjoy correct answers. :)
Thank you as always sir!
And here comes Part II:
