Make Neighborhoods Bigger!

I completely agree. I also prefer neighbourhoods with more lots. I hope future packs will have neighbourhoods with a decent amount of playable lots.

Bumping this thread! :)

LOL @Onverser , if you think these lots are small, you are right, every other sims game had double the size, sometimes triple the size. There were major loading issues back on 2, but they smoothed that out with 3 and still gave some big neighborhoods. I love the fast loading time with 3 and 4, but yeah the neighborhoods always felt really small if you've been playing sims since the original. Like I wouldn't expect all lots to be filled, that's what making your own or browsing other people's stuff is for, but I use the 'gallery' a little less due to there not being enough map room quite honestly, even though there's lots of expansions but really not as much on the map if you compare it to older games (so it's like there isn't as much incentive to fill in empty spot because usually if you find 2 or 3 empties per map you are doing good to find even that). My favorite is probably 3 because it hammered out what 2 had problems with (even though the content for 2 was great but those loading times were terrible), but now we get back to issues like the world feels a bit smaller even though we've accomplished faster loading times. It's hard to find a good medium. Realistically, we probably won't see much improvement there, since we are several expansions in. The neighborhoods did not feel quite as full as some of the previous games, even though letting characters go cross worlds was a big step in the right direction.

@Ligea The loading for the Sims 2 was sometimes long but a lot of times it depended on your rig.

Yeah we need less fake lots in the neighborhoods.

@SimmerGeorge I never found that to be largely true of 2, think I had it on at least 2 machines and I remember saying well I'm loading a downtown lot, better make me a sandwich. LOL, I laugh about it now but it was a little frustrating back then. The graphics were so good, but if lots had too many items on it you were just over-taxing it.lol. I admit I still (item hoard, I don't like my sims getting bored lol) or is it just me lol. Fake lots, any lots in particular you feel are that way? You didn't name one so I wasn't sure which ones you meant.

"Ligea;c-17572899" wrote:
@SimmerGeorge I never found that to be largely true of 2, think I had it on at least 2 machines and I remember saying well I'm loading a downtown lot, better make me a sandwich. LOL, I laugh about it now but it was a little frustrating back then. The graphics were so good, but if lots had too many items on it you were just over-taxing it.lol. I admit I still (item hoard, I don't like my sims getting bored lol) or is it just me lol. Fake lots, any lots in particular you feel are that way? You didn't name one so I wasn't sure which ones you meant.

@Ligea Oh yeah you had to sit through 2 loading screens sometimes. One for the neighborhood you were going to and one for the actual lot itself which was weird but it was 2004 so. I actually remember what I was doing during the loading screens too like you, food, walking in circles, sometimes I would dance like a whole song in front of the mirror (but I only did that with the Sims 3 loading screens cause damn they took their time)

I don't mind loading screens in Sims games as long as they actually load a bigger place that just one lot.
By fake lots I meant fake houses, you know those fake buildings around the actual lots so the world doesn't feel empty. Sorry didn't make myself clear.

That's alright, at least you cleared it up, no biggie. I also prefer functionality. Seeing as how I can't post the thread I want to right now, thought I'd ask, since it still concerns neighborhood issues...why are lot traits not defaulted to randomly generated, if I remember correctly city life introduced traits, yet many are just defaulted to two traits. I recently had to start over on my saves (I might have saved my data somewhere, but didn't really want to hunt it down, most of my stuff is back where I want it, however...I'm finding that I have to individually put 'traits' on the lots is a little time consuming. I'd prefer it just auto generate stuff, if I don't like the trait I can change it individually. Maybe some people like it being empty, but this has bothered me for a good while, because auto-generating it shouldn't be too hard to change (but I really don't know how hard it'd be to change, but it'd be a huge help for people restarting saves or new players.

I'm not a new player but sometimes you have to restart.
This happened due to swapping PC's, so I of course did not have my old data (this is why backing up saves is so important). But, I'm pretty tempted to go looking for those old saves, but I'm not sure I want to do that or not. Since, I mostly have it back to where I want it. I might look for it anyway, because I also had some old sims3 saves somewhere and pretty sure I copied data from 3 & 4. But, from 4 it would have been some mid-expansion play probably not from my last few plays. It's ironic how easy it is to forget to back up stuff. Cloud saves would help immensely for sims games. I liked everything the way I had it, because I never realized how much time it actually took me to get everything the way I liked it.

I am aware the update might have corrupted a few save files for people. I have also noticed an inconsistency with lots still being listed as 'incomplete', and I remember remodeling the 'goth' house, and building on other things for a day or two, and when I loaded up the save, the goth house was not as I left it (sadface). Well, at least it wasn't from the ground up, but still. It might be nice to try to figure out why some of these things are being inconsistent. I do hope this gets ironed out a little.

Though, if I remember right this was not an option in the base game, so I don't know, but it's just a pain to have to set it for every neighborhood (I'd rather it auto generate and change it later, than it be left blank). I don't know how anyone else feels, but that would cut down on some like utility clutter that should be a given if you ask me.

I agree with you that we need more lots since we cant place additional ones like we used to. At least the worlds are connected now so that makes up for it.

@SimmerGeorge Yeah, it is like sims 3 wanted to make sure you wont forget its loading screen. That thing used to take more than 2 hours on my really old, non gaming laptop. I had to throw most of my cc out and it still took 20 mins. It takes less on my gaming laptop but it is still in the minutes, i gave up hope that it could ever take less than that. Saving times used to be a pain too. I honsetly would take one long loading screen at the very start of the game over multiple shorter ones scattered throught, but i know not everyone feels the same, because if a game takes too long to load, people might even dread the simple task of booting it up to play, and lose enthusiasm by the time it is up and running.
@Ligea Whaaat! I am shocked your ts2 game takes more time than ts3! It is a first for me hearing something like this lol! These kinds of issues seemes to be exclusive to ts3 ha.

"SimmerGeorge;c-17572883" wrote:
@Ligea The loading for the Sims 2 was sometimes long but a lot of times it depended on your rig.

Yeah we need less fake lots in the neighborhoods.

@SimmerGeorge I like the deco, it makes the worlds seem more real. The used to call Sims 1/2/3 neighborhoods as suburbs, but all they seemd was villages far away from anything. Of course, I would loved if we had more lots, if I had control over placind/removing decoration, etc.

The only possible reason I can think of is that maybe they plan on a loooot more packs so they want to make sure it runs smooth for a long time to come? But yea definitely need bigger neighborhoods and more lots in general