Missed Call?

Callum9432 wrote:
Townies didn't even need to have phones; notice you could call them at work even if they didn't have a cell phone.

I've never tried it, but I would bet that if you removed all the phones from that Sim's home, then called them while they were at home, they would still answer.

Thank you for the insight into how the TS2 townies work; that's very interesting. However, both the things I quoted aren't correct. Or else I just misunderstood what you were saying (it happens! :wink: )

If you call a townie during their work or school hours, you get a generic voicemail message ('Hi, Goopy's out right now, try calling back later'). So the game would take into account their 'not being home' and therefore unavailable to talk. However, the game wasn't set to do it the other way around. I've had many townie kids call my sims' homes during school hours! :lol:

As for the second sentence, I'm guessing you're talking about playables? This is how it works: let's plop the Ottomas family onto a lot. Now give Dora Ottomas a cell but no landline for the house. If your sim calls Dora Ottomas (during available hours), she'll pick up. If your sim calls any of the other Ottomi during appropriate hours, you get the pop-up message 'Sam/Peter/Whoever doesn't have a phone! You can't call someone without a phone!' That's the same message you get if the family is in the bin and hasn't been touched at all.

Now let's say the Ottomi have a landline and you call for Peter when Peter is at work. One of the other Ottomi will answer and tell you to call back later when Peter is home, w/o any idea to when that would be (at least in 3, the sim would tell you he's going to be busy for the next X number of hours; that was a nice touch).


Anyway, I'm really pleased to see that simmers don't want the universal cell phones back. Yay! I really, really, really hope EA listens and makes them purchase items again (at least for the playables; or allows you the option in CAS to give them to sims if you want to). And for the love of all that is holy if EA does make them a part of every sim I hope they're NOT smart phones. Ugh. No thank you. After I installed Uni Life I about threw up seeing every single sim out and about in the town staring at their phones. :roll:

I'm in the 'Pay and call for taxis/public transport' camp too. Please, EA! Please?!

(And I'll throw in a 'Can we please go back to having to buy clothes from the store, too? You know, in a real store? A non-rabbit hole store? Yeah, that'd be nice.')

*necropost*

I hope not. I hope they give us the chance to reward our sims with gifts from a store or,

when a Simmer wants to play out a story line from a time period that was before phones were invented.

Including them makes it difficult to play the game the way you want to play it. When they do things like that, they make it so it is no longer a sandbox kind of game, but a pre-determined linear questy type of game, which is completely NOT what a sims game is, at least from my perspective.

Think they will have from the beginning but I hope kids and teens don't get one. My kid sim always went on her phone after she was done taking a bath! It annoyed me so much, I had toys for her to play outside but she was on it! People had to go the bathroom too! I wish there was an option for the parents to take them away as a punishment. But since they couldn't as a punishment I locked them in their room and canceled their actions to use the phone.

If they do, I would assume that it is because the game is open world again. That's the reason all sims have mobiles. If they didn't how would other sims be able to contact them when they weren't at home.

I'm hoping they don't btw, just like I'm hoping that taxis aren't free and you actually need to call one. Sometimes I just want my sim to walk somewhere because they have to time to do so.

I hope they have a shut up switch on the cell this time. :)

The UI that we saw in the leaked GamesCom pictures had what looked like a phone symbol. I know myself and quite a few others were quite disappointed in that - I was hoping phones would be an object again, not part of the UI, so that not all Sims would have them and they would have to buy them. They could even have different types of phones.

I the picture of the UI that Curtis Paradis tweeted during GamesCom, the symbol was gone, so that's brought a little hope back to me that phones will be more like TS2 again than TS3.

Molie86 wrote:
If they do, I would assume that it is because the game is open world again. That's the reason all sims have mobiles. If they didn't how would other sims be able to contact them when they weren't at home.

I've actually posted quite a simple solution to that problem before; phones are buyable objects again, and not part of the UI, and Sims don't have to have them right away (some premades might, others won't), then, when the player chooses which household they want to play, all the other Sims in the neighbourhood spawn the cheapest phone into their inventory.

I'm hoping they don't btw, just like I'm hoping that taxis aren't free and you actually need to call one. Sometimes I just want my sim to walk somewhere because they have to time to do so.

Agreed with that; I'm hoping all public transport costs money now. If they still have the options of how to go somewhere (run, jog, walk, automatic, etc), I don't mind the automatic option using public transport for Sims who can afford it, but the other options definitely shouldn't unless public transport is the only way to route there.

I REALLY hope Sims don't all have mobile phones by default. It makes it pointless for Sims to have house phones.

The only time house phones are used in TS3 is to tell you someone is about to die!

In TS3 Seasons the chance of a townie getting an umbrella or parasol is set at 80% so not ALL townies will have them. Maybe the same could be done with mobile phones? It could make the game more interesting if you decide you want to get your Sim together with a townie that only has a house phone meaning sometimes you might not get through to them at certain times of day.

I hope that there is no default-Cellphone again, too.

Wow, will wonders never cease. How did townies in TS2 call my Sims since they didn't even have phones? Why can't it be done this way again? Open world or not.

I don't always play modern day Sims EA, even though the whole town may be very modern if I am too lazy to edit the whole thing one of my lots may be 'before' cell phones, so yeah, please don't make the cell phone a default thing again.