I was wondering in TS3 when the game started you could only play with one family,in TS4 should playing with multiple families be possible?

You could always play with multiple families in TS3. Story Progression sometimes messed with them when you were away, but you can turn that off... Why would anyone want the ability to play more than one family taken away?

Would be pretty neat if they made switching easier again like in sims 2, even easier.. that you can switch to any sim by pressing Alt while clicking on them or something, instantly causing you to switch to that household.

No stupid things like locked wishes being gone.

Why do people keep saying this and it's not even close to accurate?

Because lots of people never bothered hitting the edit town button? I dunno, man.

Because in TS3 it was such a pain in the ass compared to TS2 that most didn't even find it worth it. Broken story progression that was never fixed and losing wishes were the two biggest problems, but there were other little annoyances that added to the frustration (like the house always having at least 500$ if they were not the active household). The stupid savefile thing probably contributed to the confusion, because why the hell did they have to change loading the neighbourhood + selecting the family you want this time, to always loading the last family you played? There was no reason to have to go to edit town when it was fine the way it worked in TS2. It was like they hiding the feature. So poor UI planning had a lot to do with it too.

It was mostly fixed thanks to modders, but this time we would like it to be achievable without 3rd party help. It is one of the game's biggest features and it should not be so broken out of the box.

Personally, I was under the impression EA designed it to be obscure because they did not want you actually switching households at all.

If it were the original intent to easily switch households, the game would not have been designed to treat inactives in such a shoddy, second class fashion.



I gather you are referring to the progression system here ? EA Story Progression did not start broken, its design was sound in the base-game.

However, to make it work one needed to allow inactive sims to emigrate and immigrate freely, and have sims randomly die to ensure that the demographic statistics the system relied on remained balanced.

When EA relented and added the "protected flag" to make certain sims immune to the effect, that was when the entire system fell apart.

It went rapidly downhill since then.

While that system is good in theory, personally I think it was badly designed from the beginning. The way it picked sims to be offed was not balanced at all. From what I remember, you could have a family that you had played two days ago disappear when 10 EA families you didn't care for were still there, which is why simmers were so pissed off. Having an option to tell the game "you cannot kill this family ever, but they can do everything else" would have helped a lot. Alas, instead they kept on breaking it more and more.

Then again, I'm also of the opinion that they did not intend TS3 to be played with multiple families, which is probably why they failed to see why such an indiscriminate population control system would make simmers so angry.

That was what the "protected flag" was all about. It was auto-assigned to any family you had ever played actively, and to any sim you kicked out of the active household. Eventually this led to every sim in town being marked as protected, leaving only the newest sims (babies, toddlers, and new immigrants) as the only choices.

EA could have spent a bit more time and integrated the protection into the system a little better. However their reaction appeared to be a "OMG the community is going insane, we need to stop this now!" sort of thing.

The EA design relied on the fact that the game simply relied on inactives to be fodder for use by the active family, and that users would not care what happened to the sims once they were no longer part of the active family.

Obviously, users such as you and myself did not agree with EA regarding that design approach.

It took me 3 years before I realised that we could switch between households.

Really, that's how they did it? I remember that awesomemod's sacred state worked better than that even back then, so why not do something similar? Because it's obvious that in an open neighbourhood sooner or later everyone is going to be protected under the system they choose. It's like they tried fix a cut in your arm by breaking it instead. That way, you won't even think about the cut. Just put some bandages on it EA,

I'm starting to see the problems TS3 had were not just coding issues, but complete and utterly poor planning and disconnection to what simmers actually want.

I concur, it was a failure of vision. Start with a bad design, and there is nowhere to go after that.

Just look at [World Adventures] for instance : The very first expansion pack relied on a system which was never designed into the original base-game, the ability to have multiple town-files per save.

EA needed to change the entire save-file structure to allow for it, and then reused the Library Import/Export to perform the transition between town-files itself.

Tacking on things like that to an existing system, which was not originally designed to handle it is going to cause mucho problems.

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Hopefully Sims 4 is better designed with a little more forethought from the get-go.

We all know EA will release multiple expansions for it, and a better base-game foundation for those packs to stand on will benefit everyone.

TS3 is not TS2. It's a completely different game. Just because something was a pain in the ass doesn't mean the statement that you can only play one family is accurate. It's simply not

^Yes, TS3 is not TS2. It is its sequel. And as its sequel, there should be enhancements and improvements, not downgrades and borked systems.

If it's a completely different game, then it shouldn't still be called the sims. The load neighbourhood and then choose a family has been in the series since the sims 1. As a sequel, it should make some new additions and improvements, but not completely bork stuff. That'd be like taking genetics, one of the biggest features in TS2 and screwing it in the as--oh wait.
And with the things Twallan has pointed out, no, it's pretty obvious that they didn't mean the game to handle multiple families. That's why the game could kill any family you weren't playing, because you weren't supposed to care about any other families. Which is something you had been able to do since the sims 1. Not intending multiple families to be a functional part of the game from the get go is not it "being a different game", it's a huge failure.

I guess I was just never one to see the value in EAStory. Emigration and immigration were the two things I absolutely loathed about it.

From my point of view:
Emigration = The game DELETING purpose-made sims that were lovingly crafted by a HUMAN (myself or an EA employee) who spent time sculpting their faces, planning their outfits, choosing traits, favorites, etc.
Immigration = The game replacing emigrated sims with ugly random computer-generated clone-faced puddings (all looking like the base face meshes) with unnatural skintone and hair combinations and ridiculous random clothing.

I didn't mind too much the other stuff EAStory would do, but I couldn't handle the emigration and immigration part which is why I now use your StoryProgression so I can customize that.

The Sims 3 didn't change that. That's exactly what happens every time I fire up my game. What happens in yours?



Strictly your opinion, nothing more nothing less. Just because they screwed up the implementation of the idea doesn't mean they didn't intend for you to be able to play multiple families. I think it's the complete opposite as the Open World and story progression is conducive to playing more than one household. I don't disagree that they screwed up the design of it, but what you're saying makes no sense whatsoever. If they didn't want you to have the ability to play more than one household, why is there a "change active household" button?

When I fire up my sims 3 game it starts right off with the last family I left. If I wanna go to CAS, build empty lots or another family, I have to go to another menu because the game assumes I want to keep working on that family. When I fire up Sims 1 or 2 it shows me the neighbourhood, and from there I can access CAS, place lots, decorate the neighbourhood or select a family. I shouldn't have explain the difference to you. But here it goes: The first two games assume you wanna mess around with the other game features, like making a neighbourhood, building lots or creating many families. TS3 assumes that you just want to play the same family forever, so it doesn't even let you do anything else before you load you current one. Can this be blamed on the stupid save file system? Yes. Does it give a bad impression? Yes. Which is why they should have given the system some more thought.

And if they wanted you to play multiple families, why the hell would they make game ship with a system that could kill sims you wanted to play just because they weren't the active family? Why hide the the feature deep in the UI instead of the simple and straightforward system in the previous games?

"Change active household" was there to switch families, but it wasn't made with the intention of rotational play that was possible in previous games. Even if you played with TS2 style ageing it wasn't possible, simply because the next family in line could disappear randomly. So I guess, technically you can play many families, but there's no guarantee you could go back to one after you left to another one, which is what most of us mean when we say "multiple families".

Again that's strictly your opinion. When has EA ever said that? Do you have a quote? There's no button in TS2 to switch families because it's a different game than 3. As I said they screwed up the implementation oft the idea, but you make no sense here.



That's funny when my game starts up it goes to the saves screen

Because it's impossible to play a rotation of families if the game keeps killing them without your input! You're the one who makes no sense. Do you even understand what rotational play means?


Very funny, because when the game starts up it shows the game and companies logo. Of course I mean after you choose the world/save you wanted. Notice I didn't use "choose neighourhood" in the comparison either, because I thought I didn't need to. Guess I was wrong. Wanna know what the "switch active household" button is in the previous games? Loading the neighbourhood.

I'm still waiting for the quote from EA. You were forced to play rotational in TS2. That's why there's no change active household button in that game or story progression. TS3 was designed to be an open and living world. If not they could have just not included a change active household button and you'd be forced to play one household just like in TS2. Your position still makes no sense

You weren't forced to play rotational in TS2. That's why legacies existed, you could totally play one family forever. Yes, the rest of the neighbourhood might not age, but you could play the same family forever nevertheless just like you can in TS3, and the game would generate new townies/npcs if you moved them in or killed them. Again I do not think you understand what rotational play means. Read a BACC sometime to get it, and realize that you cannot do the same with the way TS3 shipped.

But since I know you won't, here's how rotation play works: You plays families in this order: family 1-> family 2 -> family 3 -> family 1-> family 2 -> family 3 and so on. New families could be added to chain, say family 4, in that case you played that family after family 3 and when you were done with them you returned to family 1 and the chain continued. The period of time you played each family could vary or be set, like a week for each. With the way TS3 was shipped it didn't work, because any time you were playing one of the familes, let's say family 2, family 1 and/or family 3 could disappear, therefore breaking the chain. So no, rotational play is not possible.

Actually you are the one not making a whole lot of sense as you just stated two opposites in your last post. First you said playing TS2 forces rotational play but then you say TS2 forces single household play. You can do one or both with TS2. The whole point was the game didn't force you into one way of playing. With TS2 If you only want to play one family you can. If you want other families to age with them, only then are you forced to either play them or cheat them. But you don't have to play them, you can even summon, age them up and zap them away.

Also I am not understanding why you feel a quote is needed. The other poster had sims they wanted to play killed off by the game. If the game as shipped, kills or moves away sims then it was designed by EA to do so. The player who wanted to play rotation style can now not move onto that family and play them because they are not there to be played. This was their experience in game, it doesn't require a quote.

You know, it really wouldn't be hard for them to design an open neighborhood with proper Sims 2 functionality.

You load up a save, and it takes you to the Neighborhood, from which, you can either choose or create a family like in The Sims 2. However, when you first set up a new neighborhood, you will be greeted with a progression screen, which gives you some play-style options. Things like, "Disable/Enable Aging for Played Families", or "Put Inactive Played Families In Stasis". All of which would be re-configurable from the options menu, if so desired. Every time you load up the neighborhood, you will go to the neighborhood screen, to choose your family though. Best of both worlds! Sims 2 play will be easy, and Sims 3 play will simply require an extra couple clicks to load your family.

You could only play one house at a time. If your child grew up and you moved him into his own house, you'd have to play the houses in rotation to keep the child from becoming a senior before his parents. I know it's been a long time since I played TS2 but I'm pretty sure that's how it worked and why I was so happy when TS3 came out, because you no longer had to do that. So that's not opposite.



I don't know why they didn't do that for TS3