It was already quite slow around the time I got City Living, and since I haven't bought any packs since then I can only assume that it's gotten worse. Obviously, it ain't my hardware. Game's made to run on a potato, but apparently it crawls on a stallion.

I'm sure some people will say no, it's not an actual thing while some people will say it is based on their own experience of it happening in their game. Also, you have to be quite observant or you do tend to miss out on a lot of body language, facial expressions, actions and reactions. I don't find it too difficult to read Sims however, their language in the form of icons that can be literal or metaphorical, etc depending on the the context is a different story. It's one of the reasons why I love TS3 so much because I notice there are a lot of things in-game not mentioned as an actual feature but is there in a subtle manner and I like being able to figure it out and ponder for myself than just tell me, "Hey, Sim A is attracted to Sim B but Sim B doesn't feel the same way and is attracted to Sim C." There's an air of realism, mystery and intrigue to it. Additionally, I love when video games has so much more than the developers let on so there's something new to explore and discover.

The attraction, I think, is so much more than is known. It makes me think a lot about Sims, their relationship to each other and their life experiences as to why they might do or not do something. For example, Velvet and Kanyin used to be romantic interests but when I had to move the whole neighborhood residents to a new save they lost that connection the game's UI recognized. I've noticed that Sims have an internal memory of other Sims and their life experiences that is separate and has nothing to do with the scrapbook/memory feature introduced in GEN. It's something that was already in the base game/game engine that is hidden. Continuing on, instead of just cheating the relationship back to romantic interests I decided that maybe I was too hasty and if they want to get back together they will show it.

But all Velvet kept doing was arguing with him and being mean so then he got a wish to stop being friends with her. They got along before so I don't know what changed or happened but I guess it could have been she started feeling like a rebound and maybe he wouldn't stop talking or focusing on his ex (The game forced a relationship with him and an NPC babysitter during prom). I noticed he was really in love with her but she was in love with his older brother and they eventually got together which probably had him not being in disagreement with my decision to try to get him together with Velvet. Though, he was the one who made the first move by flirting with her and then I got carried away, lol. Because, in a alternate save he had severe depression and was not taking care of himself and that scared me so I thought maybe in the real save Velvet could help him through that tough time. That was all during the teen years and all of them are young adults now. So far, I've noticed Velvet going out of her way to interact with Kanyin so maybe she's thinking about trying to have a closer relationship with him now that much time has passed for him to get himself together.

Basically, knowing your Sims situations/life experiences/personalities will aide a great deal in discovering more about them. I have a topic over at the official forums called "My S3 Game" where I had been sharing my Sims lives and goes a lot more in-depth than what I'm explaining.

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Ever heard and/or played a video game called Detroit: Become Human? Well, I was thinking about the AI in future androids and how does that differ with TS3 AI. Wouldn't the programming/free-will be the same concept except one would be implemented in a physical machine and the other in use for a video game virtually? So why would the Sims AI be any less in imitating human behavior? Which is exactly what the AI is designed to do. Except, this AI is much older so not as advanced as it could be right now, however, it never stops amazing me how closely it can resemble humans.

That's why it bugs me when people cite the emotion system as a new feature in TS4. It's not new, Sims had emotional states too in TS3. How else could they have their facial expressions? It's all driven by interactions, by surroundings, and by experiences. But unlike TS4, traits seem to have a significant influence on a Sim's feelings as well. And yeah, sure, TS4 shows the emotions off more and there's different animations and stuff for everything, but ultimately it's not the first Sims game to have an emotion system.

I don't like the emotion system to be honest. Sims 4 sims feel very bipolar because how quickly they go from happy to flirty to angry to sad all in one morning. I mean most regular people aren't feeling happy constantly or sad or angry, we're just fine most of the time. Not feeling very strongly all the time. Even people who have a good life aren't super joyful and elated all the time. Happy moments and good things make us happy. And sad moments make us sad. Same for other emotions. But in Sims 4 even when nothing is happening, they feel something.
Like Gloomy Sims get sad all of a sudden for no reason. So sad that they wanna cry themself to sleep. Like nothing happened to them but they're sad. Is gloomy a code for depression? And then they can just hug a puppy or take a funny shower or something and they're back to being super happy.
This happens for Cheerful Sims too. They just become cheerful all of a sudden for no reason. Hot headed Sims get angry at nothing. Everything's great in their life but they still get angry all of a sudden.

Emotions in TS3 are the best I have seen largely because of the open world besides improvements and other advancements since TS2. Sims being able to see everything going on around them which present the realism of gossip since it is all continuous and simulation is always going on all over the whole world than one lot at a time. Sims start behaving differently according to how they feel about what the gossip was about and towards whom it concerns. When the developers implemented an open world, they made the most realistic life simulator to date. Unfortunately, EA/Maxis no longer cares about their own gold mine nor the unique genre adopted nor the players who all helped to make The Sims successful. And for some reason, other game developers doesn't seem interested in life simulation and this genre is severely lacking to the capacity of TS3 or greater. Anyway, I liked how The Sims Studio created TS3 though many things could have been better, it still is a great game that holds my interest for 9+ years.

TS3 overall, to me, is the most mature and realistic. I can tell right away that TS3 was designed and meant to age with those who had started with TS and/or TS2 unlike TS4 which took a shallow, immature and over-the-top approach with no balance of both realism and cartoony/fantasy concerning graphics, art style and gameplay. Ever heard or saw the animated Cartoon Network series, Samurai Jack? Well, they finally brought it back to finish the story but this time they aired it on Adult Swim and made the show more mature to suit those that had grew up watching that show who would now be adults. I love when so much thought and care is taken into account of those who were always there from the beginning and shows the appreciation and love they have for both their work and their audience.

As far as the misconception about TS3. Some can't even play the game and experience it the way it's meant to be played so I can't take anything they say seriously. It's like someone reviewing a product who never even properly used it or giving bad reviews because it shipped late or broken. That doesn't help at all when others want to know someone's thorough and honest experience about the product itself. Some blame TS3 for the fault of their underpowered computer even when it's not the game's fault it can't run as well on minimal system requirements or less with all EP's/SP's. That isn't a problem that's related to just The Sims but any PC game needs to have the proper machine to run it at its best. You can tell some doesn't care to even learn about their own hobby or invest in it. Since when has PC gaming ever been inexpensive or any video game console?

Additionally, having a computer that over exceeds the recommended system requirements (Which The Sims Studio never released so we don't know.) can also have an ill effect on how TS3 runs because of unsupported operating systems, new hardware features that may be incompatible with TS3, etc.

I am playing on an about 7 year old PC now with a dinosaur card with windows 7 and last time I checked frps I quit looking when it hit about 86. I have everything installed except KP which I did not get. Sims 3 does not need a top notch current PC to run as said, I agree.

Depends on how you play. If you're a megalomaniac, you're going to run into a lot of performance-related issues very soon. But at the core, it's very playable.

I am not worried about mine. It has played well since 3 came out and plays well today. Knock wood as nothing is being changed with 3 now it should stay that way. I stayed on 1.67 and am glad I did. It is a shame though that many folks have so many issues with it.

I do use some Nraas mods such as Overwatch which I am sure are helping.

I guess some people also complain despite going trigger happy with the downloads.

Some are like: 'The Sims 3 is slow'
Meanwhile, Oh! You have 1,090 different CC downloads you say? Hmm, I have no idea why your game is slow...

It is also quite subjective to what you find acceptable performance-wise. Personally, whenever TS3 starts some stutter that I can't explain, it is like someone is constantly giving me little pushes. It is ok for a while, but at some point my eye starts to switch until I reach my boiling point and just want to hit that person

This is what I don't like about TS3,it can be so difficult sometimes to find the source of a laggy save. Making my frustration growing. And if it turns out I have to give up a save, it also usually means I stop playing for a while then. But I think it has to do with the amount of preperation I sometimes take for a new save, to make it as lean and fast as possiblel. Even more so if I also put in a lot of time by editing the neighbourhood. What doesn't help are certain engine issues in TS3. Like for example how the pattern tool does things when you hover over objects with your mouse pointer (so not clicking, just moving over things). Do this too much and your game can slow down to a crawl inside build mode I noticed. Things like these trigger me

I have a similar love/hate relationship with modded Skyrim and Fallout 3 New Vegas. Modded minecraft is fine, because in my experience it has better tools to find the problematic mod on a modded server. And removing that mod usually makes it running fine again. Unlike with TS3, or the Bethesda games, where your save can become seriously corrupted.

I had 40000 cc items in 2 and it took 20 minutes to load. Compared to that 3 is a breeze to play. I have had a few thousand CC items in at once in 3, but never that crazy number. LOL. I play with packages and have merged some. And that helps also.

Now when I play I put just the CC in I need for the world(s) I am playing at the time.

I'm playing with a relatively humble 650 packages, though I do have some 300 active Sims3Packs as well. My game is definitely playable by most people's standards, but I still get my fair share of issues in regular gameplay. I stopped playing in Bridgeport'17 when I had been dealing with memory issues for so long, and no good way to keep the simulation lag at bay, that it completely dissuaded me from ever pressing play. Large amounts of Sims may cripple the game, but detailed lots are a pretty big part of it too. And you guys know I like my realism, which means I want a diverse and busy world and elaborate-looking lots.

I thought going into a dedicated builder's world for my Bridgeport'88 builds would solve most if not all performance issues, but even with the load taken off the engine it's still hardly smooth as butter. Good news is that some graphical issues are forcing me to do a complete overhaul of my postprocessing which is a good opportunity to see if I can't take some load off the rendering side of things. A very sizeable portion of the performance issues stem from these elaborate screen space effects which don't always add as much as I'd like.

For ts2 you needed one file for each set of recolors, in ts3 you just recolor what you've got already.

Very true! That made a big difference. Love CASt in 3. Love, love, love, love it.

And just for it to get taken away with Sims 4. That's one of things that I love about Sims 3 that 2 doesn't have.

Could you explain why it's hardly any different from TS2? I'm very curious because Sims 3 to me is a lot different from 2. It is true that 3 borrows a lot from 2 such as some of the animations. They look as if they were copied and pasted straight from 2.

It also doesn't help that a lot of people have no set method of organizing their packages either, short of throwing them all inside the Mods/Packages folder and hoping they work. Which they do, but when your game starts slogging or you experience other craziness due to a corrupt package, outdated mod, what have you, it's not particularly easy to find the issue when you have something even as small as several hundred. Especially if you've been playing with it there for a while. I don't understand how some people don't at the very least do something as simple as subfolders to organize it all.

Don't forget that you also have to be careful for the high polygon hairs and outfits. They could make the game take forever to load and slow the game down drastically if you don't have a computer with a strong graphics card and processor that could handle those things correctly. I had some of those and it really made a difference to the game performance when I took them out.
If I could figure out how to lower polygons without losing the detail on the hair then they would be much more usable. It's a shame really because they were really well made.

I think the original poster intended to say 'Hardly different from TS2 ' as a thing they didn't understand that was said about TS3. That's how I interpreted it at least.

Yeah I was kind of confused about that statement which is why I would like to hear his thoughts about it.

Funny how my post got a disagree. As if corrupt saves in TS3 is not a real thing. I also think that the chance you encounter problems is partly dependant on your playstyle (amount of mods, CC , ep's). And yes, what performance you find acceptable is subjective. TS3 is simply a problematic game. And I still want to play it so bad.

Some anecdote about how you manage to play with loads of CC without a problem does not change this. I never said that I never had a good playthrough with a save. Just that when your save becomes corrupt, there is not always something you can do about it. This to me is comparable with modded Skyrim/Fallout 3. I know of no other games that cause the same problems for me.

But maybe some people here forgot how much time they had to invest to get a smoothly running modded TS3 with a lot of CC and ep's. Not everyone is willing to do this and imo it is understandable that this influences their opinion about TS3. To me any statement about how TS3 runs like shit and is laggy is hell, is true. A game should not be this much work to get running smoothly. The fact that you guys are simply used to go through the necessary preparations does not change this. It just proves it. You guys look at TS3 performance with NRAAS mods, save cleaners and possibly routing fixes in mind, but most other people don't even know about those and maybe even would think that it should not be necessary to play a game (I agree with that). Their opinion is based on TS3 without those mods. And they are right in saying that it runs like shit.

Just ignore it. It's most likely a troll because I had seen at least one dislike on other people's posts

Sims 3 is like darn near everything else in life. We hear the squeaky wheels. The people who have problems speak up and the players that have very few do not raise their hands all over the place to say my game is fine. Clearly most/many players can play the game well enough that the game lasted as long as it did. If everyone had problems after an EP or 2 they would not have bought the later EPs. EA produced the later EPs and people were buying them. And people were buying them as the game was playable for them.

I read ages ago that something like 95% of Sims players play vanilla games. No mods, no CC, etc. I use Nraas mods as many of us do here, but we are in the distinct minority of the players worldwide.

3 has issues, like all versions, but if as bad as some folks claim it was for everyone it would have failed almost from the get go, and it did not.

I can't imagine what Sims 3 would be like without mods and custom content. Let's just thank the heavens that they exist.

I agree, as someone who has played and does still play with no mods/cc with certain game files. Every single time, I am relieved to not have much to worry when it comes to the extra push that mods can put on the game in terms of CPU and GPU strain. So I immediately notice I can be a lot more carefree and not have to worry about Error Code 12 or crashing, lag and freezing. Mods aren't perfect either and definitely not a solution for every single player. Just like developers make human errors, so do mod creators. Mods can be great if one knows how to manage it properly and knows the limit of their computer and how the mod(s) are affecting their game performance. Otherwise, someone who uses mods and still says TS3 runs horrible whether with or without...I often ponder do they even know the root cause(s)? I mean, there are many who do not use mods/cc at all and if they are having a decent gameplay experience then what does that tell everyone else? For me, that it is not solely TS3 or every single person would have the exact same issue(s). And because computers come in all kinds of configurations...there you go.