Re: I have a few questions about sims.

@PugLove888 Yeah I don't blame you. There have been some games I've had issues with in the past where I really wanted to play them and give them a chance, but the issues I had just kept me away. Even when it comes to Sims 3, I used to be more tolerant to the technical issues but last time I tried it I quickly turned it off lol. Even Sims 2 I can't play anymore, and that was always my favorite game in the series. While I did manage to get it working on my computer, it still runs pretty poorly at times so I just can't play it anymore. I don't know if it's my own fault and I did something wrong, or if the game just doesn't like my hardware. The workarounds are pretty simple though, and there are sites that give a good rundown of what you have to do. From what I remember, most of it is editing some configuration files for your GPU and potentially setting the game to only use a single CPU core.

I was going to add in my own idea for the Bella Goth theory, though I'm not sure if it would work. I was going to mention the trait Long Lived, but from what I notice it seems to only help elders to survive longer. For example the previous sim I created ended up marrying Cassandra Goth and I had her do the Bodybuilder aspiration, and even though he was younger Alexander just died while Cassandra is still going. So we can go with the Potion of Youth theory, that works for me lol.

@PugLove888Ohhh...I've been looking forward to the metal version of the sims 3. :D I still love and play TS3. 🙂

I've read somewhere that Sims do not age while they are pregnant. Is this true? If so, with standard aging it seems like it might be possible for a Sim to still be a young adult when their oldest child ages up to teen. Maybe Bella got too close to a Cow Plant <gulp> xD

@aodoherty @valohim666 Me too on Sims 3 :D With NRAAS Overwatch and fixed lots to prevent too may stuck Sims (I'm looking at you Isla Paradiso) Sims 3 runs just fine even on my old laptop. My saves do not load very fast but once I'm in the game there are no travel loading screens like there are in Sims 4 so during a regular playing session I probably do not spend any more time on loading screens for Sims 3 than I would in Sims 4. To me the waiting time is worth it to be able to live on a houseboat in the middle of the ocean and spend my days scuba diving :D

You guys are making me want to give Sims 3 another chance lol. I do miss that open world and some of the gameplay features. Plus the customization options were awesome in that game. In Sims 4 I find it hard sometimes to really match furniture (just having the base game probably doesn't help lol), but in Sims 3 you can almost perfectly match anything with the create a style option. Seeing as how Sims 4 has been pretty buggy lately, I may just start a fresh game of Sims 3 and see how it goes.

@aodoherty I agree that NPC families living on houseboats was a major cause of lag issues on Island Paradise, but from what I've seen even some of the regular residential lots had problems. One of them didn't even have a front door! Many of the others had minor routing problems that would cause Sims to get stuck. But yeah, I did move all of the NPC families off of houseboats and into regular houses and I fixed all of the residential lots that had routing problems and now my Isla Paradiso works great. I too have no lag issues at all. Mine does not load nearly that fast but some of my save files are massive & I use a large amount of CC. The Isla Paradiso lag topic has been discussed quite often over on the Sims 3 forum. Here is a link to a "fixed" version of Isla Paradiso. It's basically a Day Zero save with all of the fixes built-in so all you have to do is create a Sim and start playing. I've tried it and it works great :D

https://forums.thesims.com/en_US/discussion/811253/removing-ip-lag

The world itself was beautifully designed and I do love playing it. My most recent Sim lives in a houseboat, though she also owns a regular home on the main island. She spends about half of her time in port and the other half out on the open ocean. She did work in the Lifeguard career in between terms at Sims University. She had a few times where there were too many drowning Sims to rescue and she could not get to all of them in time. From what I've seen none of them ever actually drowned, the worse thing that ever happened was they eventually just swam back to the beach and yelled at my Lifeguard, just like you already posted. She eventually quit that career after finishing University. Now she just does various diving jobs for the restaurants & she earns enough from doing this that she does not need a regular career.

Lol that's so funny about teaching teens to drive on Isla Paradiso xD I've never tried it there but I've had various Sims teach many teens to drive on Aurora Skies and Monte Vista. My Isla Paradiso Sim doesn't even own a car, just a motorboat and a bicycle.

@valohim666 Sims 3 is still an awesome game so there is no reason not to keep playing it. I personally do not have a preference between Sims 3 and Sims 4, I enjoy playing them both. Of course there are some parts I love more about one than the other but they are very different games in many ways. I have mostly been playing Sims 4 recently because I'm still adding more content and the game feels very new to me.

@valohim666I strongly recommend it. 🙂 TS3 is quite funny with the default story progression.

@RandomBuzziness Have you ever tried some of the edited worlds that someone did to try and fix some of them? You mention the save file within that link you provided, but what I'm talking about is in that link too and is basically an attempt to fix Isla Paradiso and there's some for most other worlds if not all of them. The edits make changes to pathing to try and reduce sims getting stuck, and I believe it also helps with poor routing sims might take so overall they're to try and help performance. They were made by a Mod The Sims user called ellacharmed (or I've seen it spelled ellacharm3d) and they have several of their "fixed" worlds that might be worth trying.

@aodoherty I've gone back and forth at times between the default and the NRaas story progression, though looking at my mods folder it seems I was using the default last time I had played. I typically stick with the default, because the NRaas mod can be overwhelming with the options lol.

@valohim666  Ellacharmed's world fixes are great, but in the case of Isla Paradiso, hers isn't enough.  She finished addressing the underlying issues with the broken map itself, and maybe some other stuff, but never had a chance to fix the problems with houses that @RandomBuzziness mentioned.

The fixed version of IP offered by ciane (in the forum link) works great, and for those who'd rather do the edits themselves, everything is documented.  Whether you also install Ellacharmed's world fix or not, it's still necessary to address some of the other issues with houseboats and certain houses.

@valohim666 I haven't tried any of those Ellacharmed world fixes but it's great to know that they still work (thank you @puzzlezaddict)! :D To be honest, I haven't experienced very many routing issues/ stuck Sims in any of the other worlds I play anyway & NRAAS Overwatch seems to be taking care of any that do occur. Aside from Isla Paradiso, I mostly play store worlds like Aurora Skies, Midnight Hollow, Monte Vista, and Sunlit Tides. I sort of feel like playing Midnight Hollow again so maybe I'll load up one of my old saves and reminisce for a while ;-D

@puzzlezaddict Yeah yesterday I ended up adding in those for the worlds I have, but before I did I made sure to go back and do more research about them. I saw others saying what you did about Isla Paradiso, and how it just wasn't enough and they had to make changes to lots and other things. From what I understand the creator ended up dealing with some personal issues, and so they never got around to properly finishing some of the worlds. It would have been nice if they did finish, or if someone else stepped up and took their place, but it's perfectly understandable that personal issues come first. 

@RandomBuzziness The way I look at it, there just is no substitute for Overwatch. It's one of those things where whenever I see someone saying they want to try Sims 3, I tell them that they need it lol. I'm sure those fixed worlds would make Overwatch work a little less though, especially if it can help prevent stuck sims. I don't think I ever tried the store worlds, then again I never spent much money on the game and only have 3 expansions. The Midnight Hollow one did confuse me yesterday. I downloaded a collection someone put together of those fixed worlds, and I got that mixed up with the world of Supernatural. I do have Supernatural so I genuinely thought to myself "didn't I just put that one in" when I saw Midnight Hollow, then of course I realized the Supernatural one was Moonlight Falls. Midnight, Moonlight, it's too similar for my simple mind lol.

@valohim666, I'm sorry you can't play TS2 anymore 😢 since that has the best gameplay of any of the 4 Sims versions! 🥳  I was disappointed in TS3 (even before the lagging and crashes started) because it was just so empty... big world but so hard to find any Sims out and about in it, and when you did, by the time your Sim got over there, the others were gone! 😞  I spent more time looking for Sims (outside of the household) to interact with than actually playing the game. 🤒😃  If it wasn't for CASt and creating new patterns or recoloring old ones, I might have just gone back to TS2! 🤨  (I did prefer that you could actually play as your pets, though! But that pack came later).  
(I'm also happy you like my Youth Potion theory for Bella Goth! 🙌 )

@RandomBuzziness, I did love the houseboats, but they also slowed down the game. By that time I had gotten rid of any mods and all CC ,  I'm glad for y'all there are things you can do to make it run better! 

@RandomBuzziness 

Thank you for the link but I have my own edited version of save 🙂 I moved all the houseboat families to the land and gave them new houses. :D Then, I turned all houseboats into the community lot, no visitors allowed, then the issue has gone. I saved this edited version on my google drive, so that I can use it any time.

The daddy sim and the son went through the mountain while receiving the driving lesson. It happened about 5 years ago? I'm still having this screenshots. :D

If the daddy sim has the magic broom as a transportation, his son rides on the broom, and leaves  his daddy sim in front of  home lot, then he learns driving himself. :D And you know I can hear car engine sound from the broom stick. LOL

@PugLove888  If the active sim owns a fast speed car, then the neighborhood sims can arrive late than you expect, because most of them use Sloppy Jaloppy slow speed car. Of course, it's not crowded but I can see 5-6 sims in community lots. If your sim plays guitar or digital piano on community lot, then the sims will come to listen to the music. 🙂 Also if you place a lot of community lots in the world, then the inactive sims visit random community lots. Some sims visit other neighborhood homes and ring the bells. While my sim is bathing at home lot, I can see one sim is fishing at the fishing spot, one other sim is enjoying hut tub in the club, one sim is arguing with other sim on the street, one old sim is beating up his son in law in front of the supermarket as he is working for the criminal. That's why you cannot see many sims in one community lot. So if you want to see many sims in the community lot, then place  a couple of community lots, then sims will gather there. 🙂

@PugLove888 I used to play Sims 2 to death, and when I say to death I sort of mean it literally since I basically killed an old computer from playing too much lol. Last time I had played, I downloaded a bunch of custom cars and had my sim start an Audi dealership. Found some old screenshots of it too, they're from 2017 so that just shows how long since I played. As for Sims 3, I feel like there was a mod that let you right click a sim in your relationship list and it would find them. I can't remember what it was though, maybe NRaas RelationshipPanel. Finding a sim without that is really annoying, though even with that mod it could be annoying if you are looking for someone you haven't met. With the pets, I remember there being a cheat to control them in Sims 2 though I don't remember how well that worked.

Your potion theory makes a lot of sense, or I think it does anyway. I mean if any played character has access to one then I find it easy to imagine anyone potentially having access too, plus I find it easy to imagine someone wanting to stay young.

@aodoherty Yeah I agree that moving all NPC families off of houseboats and into regular homes cleared almost all of my lag issues too. I had at least one house that had problems with the front door so any Sim visiting that lot would get stuck and would need to be reset. Ciane listed several other lots with problems with their front doors so you can fix those yourself if any of that ever becomes a problem in your game. That's crazy how cars would jump from one island to the next and fly through mountains! It must have been because of the teen driver training? I've never seen that happen for regular traveling between islands. It would have been nice to have a bridge between the two main islands or maybe even a ferry (it always seemed weird to me how Sims could carry their cars in a taxi boat.)

@valohim666  My theory for Bella goes like this: In her career as a secret agent she was infiltrating the lab of an evil villain where she was devoured by a Cow Plant. Surviving the ordeal, she milked the Cow Plant, drank the potion, and went on to complete her mission. Or maybe she tricked the evil villain into being devoured by the Cow Plant and then milked it anyway. If you see an angry evil villain ghost walking around muttering Bella's name then we'll know for sure! xD

@RandomBuzziness I haven't messed around much with the cow plant, I always forget to feed them and they die lol, but what you get from milking one is the same as the Potion of Youth right? If so, I think that seems like a really nice theory too. I mean with her having that secret agent job, I think there are all sorts of possibilities. You could even say that her own organization was experimenting with cow plants, possibly something they found while infiltrating a lab, and that as part of her research she was asked to sample the potion or maybe she did it willingly. I think you could also say that she was part of a team researching the Potion of Youth, and that she was exposed to that too.

Plus since aging itself can be disabled within the game, maybe she was exposed to something that simply disabled aging but only for her. We can call that one the "auto age (played sims)" theory lol. I say that specific option because if she was the only played sim at one point, then turning that option off while leaving the other aging option on should stop only her aging. If we want a story to go along with it, maybe they wanted to keep her around longer for her career so they experimented with keeping her young.

I like the ideas that can incorporate actual in game elements, like the Potion of Youth or cow plant potion or even the aging options. I like to hear all theories, but when you can play the game and actually see things that would make it plausible then I just like those more.