^ It's fine I guess, and there are some decent tools like foundations that can be added at any point, and to some degree shiftable windows, and moveable rooms (which can also be a pain because they're very easily grabbable when you don't want them to be) - but you may need EPs or CC to have some decent building content. There's not that much in the basegame. They updated basegame content a while back just to have more swatches of doors and windows (and I mean black and white swatches, not colored ones - several items didn't even have swatches before the update). It's also a game of figuring out what goes with what, because the swatches of this and that never seem to match quite up with other items (but that's always been an EA/maxis problem, if partly solved in TS3 with CASt).

Yeah I do. And I'm not ashamed to say that I enjoy both.


Sims 4 homes are more detailed, but I always found the build tools to be annoying since it goes on this system where it is room-based instead of TS2 wall-based. This means that if you want to delete one wall it will delete what the game thinks to be the whole room and can cause decorations, friezes, windows etc. that you want to keep on other walls to be deleted since the game thinks the room was deleted and they were a part of that room. I have had that happen with friezes several times.

I have found TS2 build mode to be more intuitive, user-friendly, and with the right CC just as detailed as TS4 homes are.

This had me in shock and I had to google it. This video shows that deleting walls in a more TS2 way is possible using the sledgehammer tool:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6DE0Iytc7AA

On the one hand... happy to see the sledgehammer being used for a lot more things (starting with TS3!) since the tool's introduction in TS2, where it's basically saving you exactly one click and deleting the object immediately instead of pressing the Delete key or clicking on the UI. On the other, I would never find this out on my own in TS4, probably.

Can't you still drag walls + hold ctrl to delete them in TS4?
(I honestly can't remember - I don't build stuff very often, but when I do I tend to default to trying the TS2 methods first, and try something else if that doesn't work...)

At 1:00 shows what I meant by removing things you don't want removed. In the video it got rid of the top above the floor too instead of just the floor under it because the game thought the top was a part of the same 'room'.

I can't get my head around building in TS4, but I think that's just because I'm used to TS2 and know the tricks etc.

The two things I miss are being able to click and drag walls, and the search function. OMG how I wish there was a search function in TS2 buy mode. SO MUCH CC.

Searches and filtering by EP/SP, both in the Build/Buy Catalog and in the Lot Catalog. I would give my proverbial eyeteeth to have any sorting/filtering at all in TS2's Lot Catalog.

^ I'm having troubles in the TS4 catalog, to be honest - The catalog is so messy, especially deco, and I don't have any CC... In TS2 I tend to use the catalog by object, but in TS4 I mostly do by room because otherwise I can't find anything.

You can click-and-drag walls (there are several options in the wall section), but the whole room system is kinda messy, especially with the click-and-drag walls, so I tend to end up with rooms that don't make sense, with wallcovering that decide to go outside the rooms and other weird things happening.

Probably a matter of practice, though. I haven't built a lot of houses in TS4 (usually I'm lazy and do a couple changes to a premade one because I can't bother).

there is sorting by EP/SP, sort of, if you look in collections...

But yea, proper search would be so useful...

I would vote for that ^

I can't talk about Sims 4 or Sims 3 therefore I will shut my mouth. Lol all I know is Sims 2.

Collections are helpful for the Build/Buy Catalog, but there are almost no categories/filters for the Lot Catalog. User-created lots all get dumped into the main category where they are "sorted" only by the date they were installed into the game. I've been using the Clean Installer to sort my lots for a couple of years now. File names in one number range are BV vacation lots. Another number range is for apartment lots, etc. This procedure helps, but it's no substitute for real categories and filters.

I don't know why I keep griping about this. It's not like anybody can fix it and I do have a usable workaround that deals with it.

This actually always bugged me since the introduction of the specialty lots. It is clear that Maxis were intending for some way to filter between vacation lots, beach lots, and apt lots but never finished the job and/or even give us a way in-game to organize said lots into the specialty lots menu.

I definitely feel when a Social Event takes place you're racing against time even with just a Party like some of the goals you have to make a certain amount of food before the party is over to get the reward but for me i don't want it to be about rewards and what items you get from it but it's ignorable and you don't have to do it because they changed the rewards you get for it anyway... and it's nothing good lol but i just want to have fun with it.

I think the more Expansions you put in there it does force things on you but each Expansion and Stuff Pack is more tailored to the theme now and it's just all several totally seperate things to the Base Game, nothing mixes well together because i feel that's not what they had in mind they wanted to seperate the themes so you would buy only the ones you're interested in but... they still try to get you to buy them all but it just doesn't work having them all since they had in mind for you to only have the 1 or 2 that you liked based on your biggest interests, the items in all but the Seasons Expansion doesn't fit with building all different types of Builds just what you bought the pack for.

In The Sims 2 i mean you still had to go to seperate places to do stuff but it mixed in together fine because it wasn't tailored so much to each Theme and you could still do some things at home from other Expansions and as for Holidays you just pretended and you set up halloween decorations a few days before halloween on their calendar and then had christmas when it was xmas for them and with just TS4s Base Game you can still do that except with a few less things sadly cos they seperated stuff to make you buy them which confuses how they tailored all the Packs to the theme, it seems to work better with less.