I still like how EAxis did sims 2, I've been playing since I was in the 4th grade (22 now) and I never got tired of it. I've been focusing on my overdue project of making a long-lasting uberhood in sims 2 recently. I have sims 3 as well but I'll get to that soon;



I tried looking into different weight meshes but it seems rather complicated and limited to one outfit at a time, so I'm fine with the weight options the game has (though I wish they made the male fat mesh less of a beer belly :p). With height I don't particularly care about, never tried using the height cheat and I don't have a desire to use it now.

And the one lot thing is something I personally really enjoy. When I bought my sims 3 triple pack copy last year I was overwhelmed at how everything was so open! It was fun for a while but I felt like I was missing out on stuff when I only had a test family to play with. Seeing sims walk around and drive by was nice, but I started getting motion sickness at how fast everyone was going . I get headaches two hours into my sims 3 save compared to a headache seven hours into playing sims 2.



That's another thing I like; no story progression. I immediately slapped NRAAS into my sims 3 game because having no control over my sims is a hair-pulling headache-inducing issue I wanted to avoid, which is why I've played with Free Will off in my sims 2 game for years. I will admit, very rarely I wish I could take the sims 3 open world feature and put it into sims 2 just to see my neighborhood be more lively, but it's nice to focus on the house in my rotation now and time freezing on the lot until I get back . As for modern conveniences, I've pretty much downloaded and defaulted every corner of sims 2 to make it look more modern while still keeping the maxismatch style. The most modern cc I have is cars, I hoarded every car I could find at this point .

I haven't played my sims 3 save since I streamed it for a friend in my personal Discord server. Since getting the Generations+World Adventures double pack my game started getting slower, and that was pretty much the end of my sims 3 excursion since Walmart took the last few expansion packs off the shelves. I do have mods in sims 3 but none of them really makes the game or the sims look any better, my CAS-defaulted sims gave my friend nightmares he said . I couldn't escape the pudding face issue even with all the sliders I have. It was nice to have a color wheel and such but seeing how a child could spawn with bright yellow hair and vivid purple eyes because it's not marked 'custom' made me enjoy the 4 basic hair colors sims 2 has.

My aforementioned friend and another both have sims 4, but they always tell me how much they don't like it and how overpriced the expansion packs are currently; we would joke and laugh about the little quirks and limitations sims 4 has. I've streamed sims 2 for them a couple time since they never played it and they both want to play it now, too bad they missed the free copy on Origin. I made up my mind in saying sims 3 will be the last sims game I'll ever own as I don't like the art direction they took with sims 4 and the otherwise surface level emotion system (no offense to anyone who enjoys sims 4!). So as for your original question, how do I cope with limitations, I guess I can say I never really saw sims 2 for their limitations first. I did everything a sims 2 player SHOULDN'T do as a kid (move occupied lots in the housing bin, delete graves, etc.) and had the time of my life doing it .

If you really can't think of fun things to do in TS3, well then that's your prerogative, and I respect that. Personally for me, again I always find something new, like you can skate on ponds in the winter, or that videos on the video camera can be watched on the TV, or that same-sex marriage is implemented by default in the game (which is super cool to me, especially after TS2's joined union, which I know can be fixed with mods, but still.)

Also, joandasarah, I totally understand sticking with TS2 because of the playstyle. I switch between playing multiple households in TS2 and sticking to a family in TS3 a lot. Some people may prefer the former or the latter, but I like both because they feel unique and nice to me.

You're the same age I am and about the same age was when I first started playing Sims. I actually first started playing Sims around 2002 or 2003 by watching my older sisters play. I was a really little kid then so I don't really remember the exact year but I do know it was around that time. Back then I just liked making my sims and then catching my people on fire. Then when we got Sims 2 around 2004 or 2005 I had already knew what by playing the Sims games on handheld and console.

I think I had tried playing sims normally but I usually just wound up catching them on fire. I don't remember much of anything but that unfortunately because I was really into the Playstation 2 and games like GTA,Crash Bandicoot,Spyro,Jak and Dexter 1,2 and 3 and other games that I had forgotten about that a game like the Sims didn't appeal to a young boy such as me. When we had the lost disk to play Sims 2 with and the Sims Life Story disk we moved on to Sims 3. I thought it was really awesome that you could walk,run and ride around the town without a loading screen and the more advanced CAS and how you could change the color and pattern of pretty much every outfit and object you could think of.

When I had got my laptop back in 2012 there were a bunch of expansions and stuff packs coming out for it that was the period of time when I was really into playing Sims 3. I didn't know that mods and cc had existed for it until I had started looking for stuff for it and that's when I had discovered this mod and that's when my love for cc and mods had began. I looked up how to extract rar and zip files and how to setup Sims 3 so that it's able to read and recognize the mods that I install for it. I had installed so much on it that the game started lagging and freezing like crazy and it had gotten even worse when new expansions came out and I installed them. So when Sims 4 was announced in 2013 I was really excited because I had thought that they had learned their lesson from Sims 3 and that it would be a more optimized version of Sims 3 with better sims and more stuff to do but it just turned out to be a huge disappointment and although I had eventually gotten around to playing it I had quickly grew bored of it and went back to Sims 3 and just deal with its endless lagging and freezing.

After a while I had eventually discovered the existence of NRaas mods made by the savior Lord Twallan and downloadable worlds small enough for my computer to handle so I had installed NRaas mods, a lot of Sims 3 worlds and had even gotten around to cleaning and removing some cc and mods that I don't need and had even played the game vanilla and left the NRaas mods in. The game got kind of annoying with its pesky forceful unmodded behavior such as the game forcing the parents to scold the children and teens when they do something bad,the cops arresting the teens during the night when I want to play a rebellious teen and other stuff that really bothered me while I play it. I hate it when a game tells me what to do and how I should play like a really strict parent so I put those mods back in. It had reduced a lot of the lag and freezing and I had enjoyed for a while until I watched some videos of Sims 2 and I suddenly remembered the wonderful and fond memories of me playing and really enjoy playing it.

When I got it and while I was drawn back the limitations at first the nostalgic early 2000's music,gameplay and sims with more depth made me feel right at home and made me remember what a great game Sims 2 is that I kind of took for granted when I was a child and when I installed mods and cc it didn't affect the game performance all that much compared to Sims 3 when even a small amount of cc and mods could bring the game to its knees so that's a huge bonus to me and that's when my real love for Sims 2 had began and every time I come back to Sims 3 even after I had figured out to get it running okay I still can't enjoy it as much as I used to after playing 2.

Sorry for the long essay and life story. I just wanted to explain how I got into Sims and Sims 2 in the first place.

My memory's a little spotted nowadays but it was around 2008 or so when I got my first sims 2 for pc copy, it was sims 2 double deluxe and sims 2 seasons from my parents because I got good grades in school. Before that it was the sims life stories, and before that it was both the sims bustin' out and the sims 2 for ps2 . Never played the first sims game for pc, or any of the handheld games. I would play my games constantly every day until it got to the point my seasons disc got scratched (I still have it, just not the case haha).



You don't say! I also had GTA on my ps2 (san andreas and vice city, didn't care about the others), got GTA4 when I had my ps3 but I didn't enjoy it as much. By that time my sims 2 ps2 copy was gone but I still had my sims 2 pc discs, but I think I gave them to my sister before I asked for them back. Like I said earlier, I got into sims 2 in or around 2008, and the last expansion pack was released that year. In 2009 was when I started looking into the sims 3 and the developer videos on youtube. I was very excited and waited for it to drop so I could rush out and buy it, but then...



I begged my mom to get me a copy of sims 3, which back then was $60 ouch. Our family computer was a lower-end Dell desktop that saw its amount of viruses (thanks Limewire...) and the hardware was chugging along. It still played sims 2 but sims 3 was a rude wake-up call for little me. Our computer was basically held hostage and it took 20 minutes for the game to move anywhere, the lag was horrible. My mom chewed me out about that and we couldn't get her money back at Walmart bc it was already opened, so now I had a disc I couldn't play and a long lecture from my mom. Skip forward a few years later when I got my first laptop, an HP. It played sims 2 flawlessly for the build, but sims 3 was barely playable. It wasn't as slow as, on our now long dead family computer, but it wasn't as fun as I thought it would be since I only had the base game. Ended up giving it to my cousin and as far as I know, it's still with her today.



Sims 3 was out of my mind for the next decade or so after that little fiasco. I ended up buying the compilation packs of sims 2 off of amazon and I almost completed my collection by that point, I only had free time and apartment life to get. But I still played sims 2 on my trusty HP laptop until one night I smelled what reminded me of burning plastic... and then my laptop never turned on again . By now it was over 4 years old and outdated, and sims more than likely contributed to its demise. I have a new laptop, the one I got a few months after my old one after using my brother's and my ps3 to watch youtube. But school got in the way so I couldn't play sims 2 as much as I wanted to, but then I found out back the Ultimate Collection! But this was a little after the free code promotion ended, but I tried anyway. I had to jump through hoops and talk to 3 EA representatives over the online help chat, two of which told me sims 3 is much better than sims 2. Finally the 3rd one gave me the code for UC and I installed it on this laptop and it ran even better. I don't know what exactly happened but I uninstalled UC, maybe I got bored? But then skip forward to 2 years ago when I got my gaming desktop, then I installed UC onto it. Runs like a dream even though I was wary about Win10. It's still on there now.



No I get where you're coming from! I got into sims 3 extremely late but after playing it for a few months I'll go back it to every once and a while, I don't think I'll put my desktop under any more stress with sims 3 seeing how the performance dipped after the last expansion pack bundle I got even after capping the fps, and it's a mid-tier desktop with a good CPU and GPU for what it's worth. But sims 2 will always be my favorite title out of the series, it got me to be more creative with my sims and I learn new stuff every day . I just gotta work up the strength to actually turn on my desktop haha.

I wonder if age makes a difference in what people like to play and in expectations of what the game gives. I tend to think the average sims 2 player is older than the average Sims 4 player but I am not sure about sims 3. I was well into adulthood when Sims 1 came out and that was my first sims game. Sims 2 was a huge upgrade, it passed my expectations but not so the next two games.

From my experience on simblr the age demographic on the sims 4 side was more my age and younger; midway through college aged and high school aged. They point out the missing features sims 4 has often but they still enjoy it for the most part. Didn't have much to look at on the sims 3 side because it was fairly quiet. But the sims 2 community had some people in my age range (15-24 maybe), but most of them were older with kids of their own, some I recognized here on the MTS forums. This isn't concrete and I was involved in simblr for less than a year so this is just what I remember from the top of my head.

Yeah that's one of the reasons why I had stopped playing Sims 3. The lag and long freezes had gotten so bad that it's not even worth launching anymore. I mean why play a game that doesn't work or function correctly just for a few or more improved and advanced things when I could be playing a game that may be a bit dated and limited with some things but runs smoothly most of the time even with a good cc and mods and has the best sims,babies and gameplay in the series. What it doesn't have doesn't matter much to me anymore.

I see we've got the phantom disagreeer back with us in this thread, disagreeing with every post, no matter what it says.

Now I appreciate that life is difficult just now, and you may be shut in the house, bored, miserable, and unable to go out. But there are a lot of us in that situation, and coming and being disagreeable here just makes everyone else miserable and unhappy too. So I respectfully suggest that you go away and be disagreeable somewhere else.

Or, better still, why not start up your Sims game and see what your Sims are up to? If your Sims are anything like mine, they'll soon cheer you up. Or, if it really turns you on, you can disagree with everything your Sims say, and with everything they do!!

Convincing them to leave is as effective as telling troll to stop trolling around. Just saying..

The only way to deal with trolls is to ignore them. Saying anything to them or about them just encourages them to keep doing it.

I was thinking about this thread in the shower the other day when I came to realize why so many TS2 players dislike TS3: They're old. This isn't meant to be offending or anything, but I've noticed that a lot of the people who dunk on TS3 have been playing TS2 for a long time, well before TS3 even released. I can conclude that because of that, many people who go into TS3 expect that the gameplay style of it is going to be similar to TS2, the rotations, the micro-managing, etc. But personally, for me, because TS3 is so different from TS2 is why I really appreciate and have fun playing it. And no shame to you if you play The Sims in a certain way! If you feel like you prefer rotational gameplay over story progression, then good for you! But that doesn't necessarily mean that because TS3 doesn't adhere to the traditional Sims playstyle, that it's a "worse" game. I started playing Sims well after TS4 came out, so I got to try all three games without sticking to one for too long. Speaking of, the fact that TS2 players are a lot less opinionated about TS4 proves my point because again, TS4 is much closer to the traditional one-household-at-a-time play style. Anyways, just my 2c

^ Well, I wasn't that old when I started playing TS3 (barely going on 20), but I had played TS2 for a while. I think a lot of it comes down to personal taste, and perhaps to seeing other limitations in the newer games than those who go directly into one of the newer games. Your favorite is most likely going to be the game you started out with, or at the very least the game directly after.

I started out with a small TS1 collection just a few months or so before TS2 came out. While I really liked the game, for me personally it wasn't remotely as interesting as TS2. Maybe if I'd played TS1 for quite a bit longer, and had all the EPs and such (the collection I had was pretty basic), I'd come to enjoy that particular game more. As it was, TS2 was shiny and new, and with 3D graphics, and it was really fun to play, so I forgot all about TS1. I did enjoy TS3, but never quite warmed up to the sim esthetics, and felt it was too much of a chore to set up the game in a similar fashion as my TS2 game was set up with CC (By that time I was heavily into storytelling and taking photos). Maybe if it was my first Sims game I'd like it more, because it's not a bad game (it's resource-heavy, though). With TS4 there were so many things lacking in the basegame that I didn't even get the game until toddlers were announced, because the younger ages tend to be my favorite ones and I couldn't imagine a Sims game without toddlers and crib-bound babies would be any fun (would be like going back to TS1). It also has a lot of annoyances in it I'm almost certain I would find annoying even if I hadn't played any Sims games before TS4. I really don't like how the creators of the game try really hard to be crowd-pleasing while somehow still completely miss most of the target. I also don't like how they've handled most of the ages. Adults (plus teens/elders) are the only ones who get to do anything fun in this game, and I've never been particularly interested in playing with adults. Babies are a flop, elders and teens are basically adults with reduced play, and the kids have too little to do (I like proper skilling for kids like in TS2, not the wannabe skills in TS4 that need to be fulfilled before adult skills can be gained, and there's no proper social toys that don't take a lot of space - the the dollhouses take up half the kids' rooms, and child playground toys take the entire backyard on their own, plus the social gain looks to be really low). Honestly, the only age I kinda find fun to play is toddlers, but even they get boring after a while, and they're almost too easy to take care of (an adult is needed to make and stock food, bathe them, maybe a bit of socializing, and to get potty training to the first level for non-independent toddlers, and maybe thinking to the first level because that's a slow one without the blocks - other than that the toddlers can easily manage on their own, though skilling does go faster with an older sim teaching them).

Back to TS3 - I like a lot of the gameplay for the older ages, but have the same issue with younger ages as with TS4 (they're for the most part boring and pretty much useless because skilling and interactions are reduced). What can I say - I like playing with the younger ages too, and I feel TS2 has more for them to do (plus, the TS2 babies are adorable). It's all down to personal taste, perhaps somewhat influenced by having played the games for longer. There are TS2 players who have converted over to TS3 or TS4, TS3 players who have converted to TS4 (or opposite), and there are TS3 and TS4 players who have converted over to TS2. Some people play all or several of the games, and some even still play TS1. There are things I like and dislike with each of the games, but I guess there are fewer things I dislike and more things I like with TS2 than with the other three.

It has nothing (or at least very little) to do with age, by the way. It has to do with what you're used to. It would be much of the same going from an old version of a program or device to a new one (or the other way around). If you are comfortable with one of them, know all the quirks and tricks, and then suddenly switch to a newer/older model, you will get frustrated with the things you can't get to work or what's missing, but maybe you'll also come to like features the one you're familiar with doesn't have. Perhaps it's just a matter of which game is more accessible at the time (TS2 can be very difficult to find, and I haven't seen TS1 games in quite some time. Even TS3 CDs are difficult to find. For online versions you need to know where to look, and none of these are advertised much any longer, so it's not all that weird if people playing Sims for the first time choose TS4 and for whatever reason love it).

I agree with Simmer22.

I am 20 years old. I have been playing TS2 since I was in middle school. I got the game when TS3 had already came out and chose to get TS2 because it was cheaper for me to get the the Sims 2 Double Deluxe and Fun With Pets Collection than it was to get the The Sims 3 base game. I have played both TS3 and TS4 now as well. I was completely open to trying them and I didn't like them. Yes, I like to micromanage every detail of my neighborhood. I like to design the SC4 terrain, build all of my own buildings, and create my own families and stories. I don't deny that TS3 and TS4 have a lot of cool features I wish TS2 had, but I love how creative I can be in TS2 and make everything from scratch.

In my case, age doesn't have anything to do with it. It makes sense that younger people play TS3 and TS4. My friends play them, and well it's because that happened to be the latest Sims game when they bought the game. And it makes sense that older people would play TS2 since it is an older game, but from what I've seen in the Sims community is that it does not have much to do with age but more so to do with play style.

Also, going off of what Simmer said. I totally agree with the lack of features for the younger Sim age groups. Toddlers are one of my favorite life stages- I couldn't do without them. And in TS2 you can already get a glimpse at what your sim is going to be like as an adult. I love how in the Sims 2 I can see the progression of my Sims from baby to elder, whereas in the other games I feel like toddlers & children just need to be kept alive like the babies in TS2. I think TS3 and TS4 are more so about all of the flashy features that they can come up with to include in the game, whereas the TS2 is more about the simple things. And they did a great job at creating the simple things, allowing the game to be modded and transformed into anything a player could want.

This is long, sorry, but there seems much to explain - I admit, I am old and have grey hair. First computer I used was a BBC micro, I remember before calculators, I remember the only place to game was in the arcades. I am proud of my age and the knowledge it gives me.

I remember before the sims. I was given a commodore 64 and that was my most favourite possession. Eventually, a game came out called Little Computer People. I really wanted this game, it spoke to me and I knew it would satisfy my intellectual and computer needs, but I couldn't work out how to buy it, because it wasn't sold in shops, only rich people had credit cards and Paypal didn't exist. I dreamed of this game, and longed for it, but I knew deep down in my heart that somebody, somewhere would recreate it and it would be the best game ever. In 1989 Maxis produced Simcity for the commodore. You can bet your last dollar, that I was first in the queue. My kind of game. A thinking game, no fighting, no dragons. City building at it's finest, I was all in. At the time i could see the idea of sims folk hiding in SimCity. Not long to wait, just be patient. Eventually, somebody would let these little people out and they would be free to talk. Lucky for me, Will Wright from Sim City Maxis had played Little Computer people too.

Then it happened, reading the computer mags (which came out monthly) gave me a good head start. THE SIMS WERE COMING. They were better than I could ever imagine, they were perfect. By now Amazon had been created and many people had credit cards so I could pre-order. I loved that game, and was mightly addicted. But when the computer magazines announced Sims 2, I walked away with a backward look. Proper babies and toddlers. Yep, perfection had been surpassed.

What I loved about Sims 1, was it had intellectual ideas about the world and that was it's driving force. Same as Sims 2. Same as what most computer games, and many books were trying to do at the time. This was the time of writers like William Gibbson who were creating the language for the information age, new modern fantasy fiction that were retreating into made up magical worlds that would help support the rise of the D&D and MMORPG's , with their rich storylines and complex ideas about personality and morality. This was the era that created the word cyberpunk

Will Wright managed to introduce so many intellectual ideas into Sims 1 & Sims 2, from city planing and architecture to pyschological theories on human nature, philosophical ideas about the mind and artificial intelligence

What did the sims 3 give me? Ideas about human motivation modelled from Craigs List (Personal Ads), Seinfeld, The Simpsons, and Arrested Development (TV). Sims 3 replaced the rich animations and AI for moodlets. Sims 3 moodlets like "extreme shower" (does nothing) and never nude (a seinfeld joke rather than anything about a real human condition) were both shallow in nature and lacking animations so the game became a read me thing, rather than watch and play with me thing.

If old means I value things with depth, remember history and past and can thus have more resources to compare things with. Then i stand guilty, amused and happy.

As for sims 4, the game is a moodlet feast of make everyone happy for no reason at all. Bumpfist, pushups everywhere, no intellectual whatsoever in what they do. Thus, LGR can easily create slave labour for children and gang rape for elders a whole world is now so small (if we change the name from neighbourhood to world people will boast it's bigger and won't notice the reduction) it's something about 7 houses small. The real earth is a world containing 6 billion, MMORPG's have world's containing millions of players, sims 4 doesn't even equal a street in the Sims 2. A pub/bar is now somewhere children hangout at 2am in the morning and school is optional. What intellectual theory created such. Where is the AI person? Did nobody do algebra or computer science and learn about coding "and,or,if,then?" As an older person, I lived in more innocent times, where such representations were found disturbing and teenage sex was still forbidden. But hey, Sims in 1 and 2 could still hit a girl and nobody thought the sight of a burglar would trigger our sensitivities.

I don't consider myself either inflexible or stuck in the past. Like many of my generation, we are used to quality and avoid the commercialised Mainstreet crap in favour of the unique, handcrafted experience. I didn't waste my money on Sims 4 money feast (light on content, light on entertainment, but the largest number of expansions ever and still unsatisfactory to many). No I spent it on indie titles like Rimworld ($40 cheaper) and absolutely adored it, so I'm not tied to Sims 2. I just need games made by people with intelligence, that can immerse me and get me to think. So yes, your maybe right about the age thing. Because of what I know and what I've experienced, I expect and demand a hell of a lot more than Sims 4 is producing now. There are so many indie games, made to high acclaim with only 1 person. The moneytrap that is Sims 4 is made by about 300 people, why is it so quality poor? Why have they seperated the packs so deeply, so to get the same experience as the past you have to buy so many packs?

Younger people than me rushed out to buy the Sims 4 at launch, they bought the deluxe version for $69.99, a game lacking, pools, nanny's, burglars, toddlers, graveyards. The very basics which has always made the sims the sims. Within 2 months, EA was offering me this same game for 25% but with added improvements (they'd put graves and pools in), eventually, they just gave me the silly game for free. Your loyalty is wasted with EA, you get more benefits if you use your brain and stay away. I feel sorry for the young people who are actually paying for less in their game by showing that they loved to be ripped off. This old lady could see the rip-off coming so easily claimed the rewards.

^ TS4 basegame for 69.99? Heck, no. I waited until the packs I have were on sale (would've jumped on the free BG if I didn't already have the game, though). My main reason for getting the game was so I could convert TS4 items (and CC) to TS2 (it's a bit easier with access to the sim skeletons and such - S4PE gave me lots of trouble and S4S complained without access to the game), mostly because I wanted some hospital stuff and such from GTW, which is the only EP I had for quite some time (decided to give C&D a chance a while back, but was disappointed, so I doubt I'll get more unless I find a particularly good offer). I admit CC creation was my main goal with TS3 too, but at least I liked that game, even if as you say it's lots of "read me" and not so much "play me" with all the rabbit holes (the traveling to said rabbit holes is the most annoying thing).

TS2 feels more alive, and even without any objects on a lot, there's a lot more to do. Leave a group of 8 sims on an empty lot for a few sim hours (not long enough to starve them, mind), and they'll be busy playing and having fun, interacting in all sorts of ways. TS4 sims not so much (they'll probably talk, but not much else, and most likely they'll be busy playing on their phones). TS2 sims seem to be more aware of each other. Even babies will turn and look at sims, and they'll react to pets being close.

I think from the last poll taken that most of us who play Sims 2 were 40+. Since the UC came along I think more slightly younger people have arrived too, those between 20-40. I don't think many sims 2 players are under 20.



As to why I don't like Sims 3. It's more to do with the sims themselves. I dislike them, the actual sims in that game. How they look and act and that whole pop-up system. Add to that my motion sickness zooming across or following would bring on. My pc didn't like it, could only handle about 3-4 EPs and a handful of CC as in a few patterns and hairs. And bugs, I never did complete The tombs or one other thing due to game destroying bugs. So family player with vanilla baby, toddler and kids. *runs from the nightmare*

I'm 23 and Sims 2 is my go to favorite since I was 10. Once thought myself an outlier till I found MTS. Sims 3 looks weird to me and I do like having the degree of control that Sims 2 offers even if I don't admit it. Sims 2 and its spin offs are my Simming Universe History and I've never felt 3 or 4 to be as expansive or enjoyable.
The Limitations I barely notice.

To the tune sung by Tina Turner "What's age got to do, got to do with it?..."

Maybe, maybe not. I actually enjoyed a bit of TS3. The cast system, the ability to do your own laundry, the sunsets were things i loved. What i HATED was the socialization between sims felt so robotic and awkward...unlike in TS2 where sims interacting with one another felt super smooth and "real", you actually feel their personalities. In ts3 when my sims talked they would always stop after a few seconds then stand there blankly staring at one another. It felt like something was missing. And this really bothered me so much that every other positive thing in the game wasn't enough to erase this annoying flaw.

I could've gotten past the bloaty dough face even though that bugged me, but the social interactions really annoyed me.

I'm 23 and I've been playing since Open for Business (before that I played at my cousin's house). I never switched or tried Sims 3 for one reason: My laptop would not be able to handle it. The laptop is now 10 years old and still going strong and steady but definitely not in terms of gaming. I tried Cities: Skylines and while it starts, it can't handle it for very long.
I just stuck with my Sims 2 CD's (my M&G Stuff is already transparent from so much use) and I'm happy with it. I've got Sims 4 when it was free (same for the Ultimate collection, just in case) but never played it. My game has become so modded that is nothing to do with vanilla anymore. My game style fits best with Sims 2 from what I gathered from the other games. I rarely visit any community lots and I want full control over what my sims do (storyprogression would be my worst enemy). So basically, I got nothing to cope with.
I would be willing to try 3 but only once it is modded in a way that I can play rotations in the same way. Definitely not in the vanilla way.

The 'they're old' argument just made me start giggling for no reason. Well, there is a reason. So, I'm just about to turn 18 and though I have dabbled in TS3 and the TS4 CAS (and enjoyed it), I have been playing TS2 since I was seven years old. I remember not knowing how to make walls because I was so little, so all of my sims lived in fence mazes because, in my eyes, they were the walls. I cannot quit TS2. It just made me laugh because I am so young compared to a lot of people on this forum, which I knew anyway.

Yup.

My main complaints with TS3 were the saves that got corrupted before save 8-10, even if I saved them individually. My laptop did manage all the EPs except ITTF (which ruined my game due to a faulty CD or some such - it made lots of weird noises), but with some lag and almost no CC.

The 100+ rabbit holes got annoying after a time, and the traveling to rabbit holes. The pudding faces (especially the pudding burritos) annoyed me, and there were bugs everywhere (not collectible ones - those sometimes wouldn't show, but rather invisible sims or sims playing paranormal by going through the floor, and all sorts of craziness). The "stand still until commanded" and "stand still between each task" was also annoying. And the loading lag and grey buildings taking their time.

I know there's probably CC and patches and mods and whatnots to fix all of this, but at the time my TS2 game worked, so I kinda just gave up when my game threw in the towel with ITTF. Decided to give it a new chance now (via Origin, but I hate that thing), and it took me several tries just to get all the EPs to work and the game to load everything in (who knew the EPs had to be enabled?), and it looks rather crappy to be honest (I think it looked better the last time, not sure if it's a problem with settings).

Even though a crap-ton of people insta hit disagree on my post (and I bet there's gonna be a ton on this one too) the replies under it prove my point. Most of you have been playing TS2 again, well way before TS3 was out / when TS3 was the newest game. And again, that's totally fine! If you're used to playing The Sims a certain way, and you're used to that, that's fine. My only point is that just because you are used to Sims 2 style of play, doesn't make TS3 the "worse" game.

@joandsarah77 You should know by now that there are no-drift camera mods which eliminate motion sickness in the game. (http://mahamudosim3.blogspot.com/20...d-modified.html)

(One thing I have to say; you have to be shitting me when you say toddlers & kids are bad in TS3. Generations is like, one of the best packs that solves that. Actually, I much prefer Sims 3 kids because they aren't A PAIN IN THE ASS TO MANAGE, BRENDA!)

What made TS3 the "worse" game for me was that it was an unstable, untested and unreliable piece of crap when it was released. I was so excited to try it; I pre-ordered it and installed it (without any CC). Then it crashed multiple times before I finished making my very first Sim in my very first session. And even after applying the first patch(es) released for it, the only way I could play it without it crashing was to play 10 minutes, close it, then open it back up again. Before anyone tries to blame my hardware, yes my PC far exceeded the minimum requirements for the game.

I played both Sims2 and Sims4 for many, many hours before experiencing any crashes in them. Even years later when I gave TS3 a second chance and applied all the patches released up to that point, it crashed again within 20 minutes. At that point, it left the computer never to be installed again. It wouldn't run long enough for me to really dislike any difference in play options or even go looking for any improvements to the puddings. THAT'S what made it the worse Sims game for me.

And getting back on topic.... Adjusting to Sims2 limitations, I learn to live with them or if it's game play related, there are mods out there to do about anything. So I have so much CC that it takes 45 minutes to load. I start it and go do something else and check back. So there's no Open World. Okay fine, that's just the way it is. I accept it. It's a game. I can wish for it to be better and try to find mods to improve what I don't like but when it all comes down to it, every game has limitations. Either by what hardware/software it requires or by the amount of programming it has. It is what it is.

That's good if it helps some poeple. I don't know if would help me or not since I don't have sims 3 installed to try.



I was talking mostly about how they look.

second was how babies are in sims 3, with no legs, toys, no changing nappies or bathing properly. The stroller was the best thing about babies, but the babies themselves were so blah I didn't care.
CC may have helped.
There was no floor edger to stop the sound of crying or any toddler beds and I did have Generations.

I actually love the baby, toddler and kid stage. I also have a ton load of CC in sims 2 which my pc simply could not handle in sims 3.