"jheyjuneice;14933540" wrote:
I've reinstalled my Sims 3 and been playing that a lot and boy, oh boy, is it different and I'm not just talking in the obvious graphics way. There's so much to do! I don't even have all EPs, only about 3 of them and it's made me play TS4 less and less. Now there are definite things where I'm like "I miss that we have/could do x in TS4" and that's good because that shows that TS4 at least has some progress (the CAS and build mode are brilliant, no lies) but when it boils down to gameplay ding, ding, ding, we have a winner and it's TS3! The sims aren't as empty in TS4, there's no shallow emotions and more traits, lots of job choices and so much more to do. In TS4 it's like every family lives the same life no matter how much you try to switch it up. Also you have to pay attention to needs so much more in TS4 that it just takes up all the time. It plum that TS3 really is so buggy and the graphics aren't as great, a combination of TS3 and TS4 would be golden.
Let's get on to the emotions. Oh my. I was so excited to see emotions when I started but an hour into gameplay and I very quickly preferred moodlets. I know we have moodlets but they're very emotion orientated and far too strong with their emotional boosts. For instance, as long as your house is nicely decorated your sim will always be happy. Never fine, happy. It would annoy me less if they didn't have that plum grin plastered on their face at all times. Emotions are very easy to manipulate and often pretty annoying. It's far too easy to get out of bad emotions but you often have to stick with positive ones like 'happy', 'inspired' and 'confident'. It's very predictable especially with the traits. If only the traits weren't so emotionally focused maybe our sims would have some depth.
We can only hope it gets better in future patches/EPs, though. Until then I'll enjoy the CAS and building system but hold off on gameplay until it gets better. My sims are withering away with meaningless lives. And can we please have back some form of memory system.
I think we will never see a proper memory system. If the Sim was culled then what would that do to the other Sim's memory? I guess they would fade away like in Back to the Future where Marty's family is fading away in a photograph? How would it work (it can't) asking them, not you, if I can simply delete mom or dad, what happens to the kid memory of mom and dad? See, they didn't think how important our own Sims are to us. They were thinking 'casual gamer' who likes to delete everyone, start over, drop in a copy, clone and do it again. That's not The Sims to me. That is handy I guess like when my Sim became morbidly too skinny all of a sudden for no reason I just deleted him and plopped him right back (copy) into his house. But 'I' knew it wasn't him and that bothered me. It didn't dawn on Maxis, Sims matter to us. ETA: Instead we got the avatar game.
