What you liked:
*How "alive" my sims now feel. To me, the emotions are a great improvement on the title, and I now cannot imagine playing any of the older games that don't feature them. I actually uninstalled the Sims 3 the other night, because I know I won't be looking back.
*The tasks you have to finish in order to get promotions, and how simple it is to change lifetime goals.
*I actually LIKE the current setup for the babies. I hated when sims in the older titles would be like "Ok, I'm done parenting now, I'll just drop you here on the ground. Outside. In the snow...while I go watch tv. Poor baby burrito...
Also, at one point my sim for a 100 Baby challenge I had been playing was coming home from the hospital with a delivery, there was some weird thing where it essentially looked like she stuck the kid's head in the cup holder in the front of the van...and then drove him home that way. LOL!
So yes, I am pleased with the current state of babydom...
*Everything about cooking. Being quite a Foodie myself RL, I love all the thought that goes into preparation, and all the different recipes! I have actually laughed out loud at some of the mistakes my sims have made when they were learning to cook.
*The loading screens, rather than the open world. You guys are taking a lot of flack for this one, and I am truly sorry for it. I loved and appreciated how "open" you attempted to make TS3 feel, but it felt like a big, empty void much of the time. I only truly enjoyed it for jogging.
Now I have a quick screen to wait through (5-10 seconds) and BAM! We are on destination, in a lot...FULL of sims to interact with, or just observe. You guys aren't hearing enough praise for the work you put in on trying to make sure we had folks for our sims to talk to, so, from my viewpoint, just take the lack over overwhelming "thank you" and "Wow!" as people being too busy playing to be on the forums overly much. :)
*The graphic style. I LOVE the way the game looks now. I wasn't a huge fan of the overly super realistic look, and it felt like, if you wanted to take good pictures, or have a story that got any notice, you had to have like 40892350938509485390 mods. I don't like using mods. I would try, because I enjoyed story writing, but ultimately, eventually without fail some random CC would blow up my game, and I would lose a lot of hard work. So don't change a thing here. Please.
What you didn't like & Suggestions
Ok. Honesty time.
*Nor surname change with marriage unless I cheat. I know. You guys have probably heard a LOT about this, but for the sake of keeping my train of thought on it's rails here, bear with me. Personally, if and when you implement a change on this, I would adore it if it wasn't TS3 style where whoever did the proposing became the last name. A pop up with options of each individual last name, or a hyphenated name would be perfect.
*For me, Oasis Springs seems to crash my game often, and I am not sure why...and it's truly a shame because I prefer it to Willow Creek for a place to live. My first game session upon game purchase lasted about 10 hours. (Don't give me that judgey look simmers, I'm preggo and on partial bed rest...I'm allowed. :P) In this time, I played exclusively in Willow Creek, because I wanted the second generation of the family to move to Oasis Springs upon adulthood, so the town would feel "fresh" to me when I arrived. I didn't even visit the commercial lots in OS. Not a single crash during that entire period. 2nd generation rolled around, I moved, and that's when crashes began...I can't isolate it to an event or object, but I now have to save rather obsessive compulsively as not to lose sims days worth of work randomly.
*Objects break WAY too often. My sims do not have the clumsy trait, and should seriously not break every little thing they touch. I love the ideas with the upgrade parts and all, but seriously, maybe fine tune the rate at which things break? I thought at first that perhaps it had to do with the value/quality of the item, since when she started out everything was bought on the cheap, but even after she got really high quality stuff, she still couldn't go potty without the entire bathroom descending into water spewing chaos around her. So if you tinker with this whole aspect, I think it would be really cool to see the breakage rate reflect the item quality/price and for the scale to be a bit more realistic. :)
*Knocking instead of doorbell. I really struggle to hear the knock without having to turn my volume up so high that everything else can be heard from down the street. I think it's cute and such as an action...but I am missing visitors I would like to see when they show up spontaneously.
*Bills. I have a love hate relationship with them. I love how much more realistic they are, but when you are trying to play without cheats, it's hard to budget your sim's income to accommodate bills if you don't know how high they will be, like when you first start out a household, or if you build on. My suggestion for this, however, isn't to change it, but perhaps make a phone/computer action to "Check Bills" so you have an idea of how much you are looking to pay on your next due date.
*Ned. You need to make him. We love him. Our sims world is a little grayer without him and his cowplant and failed romance shenanigans! I have seen other simmers try to make him, but I want the vision YOU GUYS had for him!
Thoughts?
Overall, I love the game, and cannot wait to see where a little time and a few expansion packs will take it! You have, for whatever it's worth, satisfied this fan's expectations, and with a few bug fixes and some considerations to a few loose odds and ends, I will be happy as a clam in water, with nothing but praise for this game. :)
EA Staff (Retired)
