Hey all, I really enjoyed the sims 2 it is by far the best game in the series to date and whenever I play it I find myself just playing it for hours on end. I thought the sims 3 would have improved upon the second game greatly but I just can't enjoy it to its fullest potential like I did with the sims 2. I don't get why this is.

First off, I really enjoyed story rotation in the sims 2 than I did with the story progression of the sims 3. I don't get why but it just feels like I have more control over my world in the sims 2 than I do in the sims 3. The sims 2 encourages you to play all families in your hood and its just a better mechanic than story progression. Story progression just fast forwards things in the sims 3 and leads to stupid decisions, even when Nraas mods are installed.

Is there a way to play with rotation and if so, since story progression is disabled, will this stop sims from going out in the world?

I also prefer playing the sims 2 with a custom neighborhood for further control and story telling purposes but the worlds in the sims 3 just aren't the same as those in the sims 2, everything isn't as simple and placing down a zone for housing can be problematic at times. I just want a nice world with multiple empty residential lots for multiple families WITH all rabbit holes and community lots placed, this is another problem with the sims 3.

also, I have heard there is a mod for the sims 3 by Nraas that allows you to switch families with a click of the button without having to do it manually which I really want to use. That would solve a few of my issues quickly. I also wanna know how to use the clans in Nraas, as some people who do medieval role plays control all sorts of clans that have rivalries, I love this idea because I've been getting into Total War: Shogun 2 recently and I wanna do this in the sims.

I think the reason why I haven't enjoyed the sims 3 as much in recent years is because my rigs in the past weren't powerful enough to play it. Now that I have a really powerful rig (RTX 2070 super & R7 2700x), I should be able to play this game with no issues at all (I am also aware that the sims 3 can't run on more than 2 GB of ram as well, which can be fixed). Can anyone help me with this?

One last thing. I also noticed that the sims 3 has a few LOD graphical issues, for instance when zooming out character clothes may look glitchy because of the LOD. Can this also be changed?

Expansions I own can be seen through my profile

Oh my, here we go again.

NRAAS story progression has options to disable story progression and aging of inactive households.

There are so many custom worlds for The Sims 3 that I find it unlikely you haven’t found one you like if you truly looked hard.

Making The Sims 3 use 4 GB of RAM and utilize a new graphics card are covered here: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfi.../?id=1131162350
It also has other tips.

Lastly, there is nothing stopping you from playing The Sims 2. If it’s your favorite, I presume you took advantage of the free giveaway on the anniversary. You will need to update some files to make the game recognize your new hardware. If you cannot do that following simple tutorials, you are not computer literate enough.

See I hated rotational play and it's why I ended up losing interest in TS2. I want my Sims to have extended family, friends, love interests,etc without my having to play them all. So I love TS3, especially the story progression mod. Sure it does things I don't always want it to, but I can fix them pretty easily as well as use settings to disable certain things.

Also yes the switch active goals households feature of nraas MC is invaluable.

That is my thinking. If you love 2 play 2 instead of trying to force yourself to like 3? Some folks like 2 best. Some 3. Probably nobody 4! LOL Just play the one you like.

I've mostly come to the conclusion that it's just difference in playstyles. Many like the rotational, isolated nature of TS2. And many like the open nature of TS3 and the freedom it allows. Two different styles of play, and one isn't more right than the other.

To answer your questions in a broad sense, there really isn't any way to "freeze" families in TS3. At least not the way you're wanting. The way that TS2 keeps households in suspension isn't really possible in TS3 because the entire world is being simulated at once. The best you can really do on that front is to create custom castes with NRaas Story Progression to keep them from doing/accomplishing certain things without your intervention.
https://www.nraas.net/community/Sto...-Caste-Settings

Custom worlds in TS3 aren't as simple as TS2, there's a bit of a learning curve with Create a World. The best thing is to look around online for custom worlds that other people have created and find one that seems interesting to you. They're easy to download and try out at least.

Not sure what you are referring to with LOD issues, never have trouble myself. The game does contain different levels of LOD, with LOD0 being the highest quality. If you keep your Sim Quality at very high, you shouldn't have any issues with it appearing low quality.

Finally, the mod I believe you are referring to to be able to switch between families quickly is Selector over at NRaas. You simply right click another Sim with it installed and you can switch right to them instead of going to Edit Town first.
https://www.nraas.net/community/Selector

Also, don't put any stock into those supposed RAM "fixes". The edits that are suggested on many external sites are, at best, unnecessary, as TS3 has been Large Address Aware (being able to theoretically use the maximum of 4GB of RAM) since Late Night was released in 2010. There's no fix to be able to make the game utilize more, it's a hardcoded limit.

This would be an interesting topic all on its own I am sure. Whether our personalities determine in part which game we like most? I am the daughter of a "control freak". There is no way she would play 3 and she would have to micro-manage 2. I am more freewheeling and love to play 3. Neither is right or wrong, (but being the child of the control person was challenging to say the least), but it would be interesting to investigate personalities and game preferences?

To a certain extent, with Nrass Story Progression set up you can prevent families progressing, having their lifetime wishes and oppornuties not be cleared (called dream catching) and from themselves changing (like getting jobs/promotions, being impregnated, moving out or being shipped with someone). Though there's no way of ultimating freezing the world's time for other places and having them stay put where they were left on standing before the switch. All you can do with is either alternate between saves or at best stick playing TS2, which is one of the reason why I miss that game so much. As for the feature switch households with a (right ?) click, it might be either awesomemods or a mod of NRAAS which I don't exactly remember which.

Here's a way to set up rotational play: https://www.nraas.net/community/Sto...-Caste-Settings

I do not see the problem with what I have stated


I have tried to look as much as I can, but what I have looked for in the past is something with empty res lots and community areas already placed in. I understand how to do the Ram thing, I made a mistake with my writing in OP, I was meant to say if anyone could help me make the game a bit similar to two as I know how the utilisation of ram can be fixed. The main issue with the second game is that last time I invested a lot of time into a hood, it ended up getting corrupted and it kept crashing when I played it, so since the third game is a bit more polished than the second, I'd like to have a trouble-free experience.


But isn't there an option to turn off the story progression? what does it do? does it freeze everything or not? also forgot to mention that some custom worlds use expansions which I don't have which is another issue I encountered. As for LOD issues, I think it was with some mods that I had installed for cosmetics that had this problem. Thanks for the mod but do you know about the mod by Nraas that adds in clans to the game?

There is, if you look up the link I posted. You can prevent most of things for inactive households to happen, but you cannot ultimate everything such as the clock or have them stay put where they left off per say.

Also, be sure to have these mods installed: overwatch and errortrap! so you're game run into lag. You could say they're the equivalent as how TS2 has essential mods for certain pescado's mods. While in TS3 you don't have to worry about your world becoming Big Fiery Ball Visible From Space, while a save can't corrupt it can be become bloated and thus overtime if you don't exactly measures the save has a probability of becoming unplayable.

You can turn off both EA Story Progression (that comes with the game) and NRaas Story Progression, which you have to voluntarily activate anyway. But even when turned off, you can't completely stop Sims from being "pushed" to other lots. The game isn't designed to have Sims in complete stasis with an actively played world, the only time this is the case is with vacation worlds that aren't currently being played.

I'm not sure what you're referring to with "clans". The link I posted with NRaas SP Castes lets you create individual castes that prevents or pushes Sims from doing certain things, depending on what you want. There's plenty of documentation there that lists what the Caste system entails.

I think the OP might be referring to the SP Personality modules where they mention clans. On this page you will see 6 "regular" SP add-on modules and 6 "Personality" ones, unfortunately they are currently sorted alphabetically but the Personality ones have titles like Lovers, Meanies, Cops and Robbers. One does have to embrace SP's form of progression though for these to have any impact and they are not for actively played households. The active household cannot be a clan leader or member, the mod will reassign the positions if this happens. The point of these modules is to add measured amounts of chaos to what is otherwise a (mostly) orderly system of progression among the inactives or those whom we allowed to be controlled by SP.
http://www.nraas.net/community/StoryProgression

But it doesn't work both ways. You cannot have total control over the entire world population's progression by way of rotational castes or have no progression active at all and expect the Personality modules and their clans/leaders to actually do anything meaningful as what they do is by definition not player-controlled.

Ah, I forgot about those. But honestly OP, there's really no way that you're going to have that complete TS2 style play in TS3. It seems the big thing you want is for everything else besides active to "freeze" until you're ready to play it. This is just something you'll either have to compromise with, or stick with TS2. It sounds harsh, but the game isn't designed for having everything freeze in the background. Half the appeal for a lot of people is that it isn't static.

Actually, looking back at the original post, I noticed this bit:
"Story progression just fast forwards things in the sims 3 and leads to stupid decisions, even when Nraas mods are installed"

I honestly get tired of seeing this thrown around. I don't go over to the TS2 boards and tell them their game and style of play is stupid, because I know it's a different style of gameplay that they enjoy. Story progression is meant to make the neighborhood more dynamic, not "speed things up." I don't get how that is stupid. Vanilla EA Story Progression leaves a lot to be desired, but it was a logical progression from TS2. And NRaas SP basically perfected it.

I think a lot of people forget that rotational play in TS2 was strictly because of technology limitations. The game was released in 2004, there's no way they could have developed an open world Sims game at that time that actively simulated everyone. Even TS3 was pushing limits at its release in 2009. They built the game around those limitations, which is why rotational play exists as it does in TS2. Not because they wanted to encourage you to play every family in the hood. That's just what many enjoy doing who play TS2.

I know this is the case, because one of the more requested features for TS4 to add is still SP, despite it being in MCCC for quite a while now. People who had played TS3 missed having it in their games, and there's still a sizable chunk who are still waiting for it to return.

My perspective on this is a little different. I never played TS2, but I did play TS1 long ago and I understand the concept of the TS2-style of play. But I was also a big SimCity player for a while there. The way I approached TS3 was, there is this whole world in front of me that I am not meant to control except for my actives (and then later some households that split off from them as kids grew up and moved away thus requiring at least some form of rotational play with protection against unwanted forms of progression on "my" households). The simulation, or story progression if you prefer, engine is supposed to take care of the world all around these sims. And EA's would do a pretty good job of it too, if it ever worked as it was designed to for long enough. But it doesn't, hence we have the NRaas SP and AwesomeMod alternatives for progression.

I also can't see the point of wanting to control what every household does when I have upwards of 80 of them per world (so some of my worlds have over 250 resident sims at any given time). With now a collection of 16 Traveler mod connected worlds going, that would be way too much. But this is the way I like/choose to play, I don't even want my sims or myself to necessarily recognize every sim who walks down the street or shows up on a community lot when my actives are there, and larger worlds in TS3 provide that kind of fun for me. The EA way, inactive households exist merely for the benefit, convenience, and amusement of our actives but we really aren't meant to care about them very much. With mods, we can do a bit better than that.

Sims do stupid things in general when totally left to their own devices. They do not understand that their actions have repercussions or have much of a concept of long-term planning, they can only react in the ways that EA has programmed them. But setting up or guiding a world to move forward through generations collectively, within player-defined parameters while not controlling every household and what they do, is a very satisfying part of the game to me just like setting up and guiding world economies and infrastructure was in SimCity, then letting the engine take things where they will go from there.

I agree that TS3 is not TS2 and never will be. The two games offer very different experiences from each other and forcing either one to act more like the other is not going to be very successful beyond a certain point. Many players can enjoy each game for what it is, modded or otherwise, while others are really just not going to take to the different world structures that they offer. And that's okay, the key is to enjoy what we can out of each game and perhaps just set aside the ones that aren't going to engage us as much as others for longer term play.

Tbh MCCC is good but the story progression just isn't at the level of nraas SP. Maybe that's because of TS4 itself though.

I play Sims 3 the Sims 2 way (as far as possible). With AwesomeMod and the Configuration Tool u can enable "Sims2Aging". And if u disable "AllowInactivePerfGain" only your current household gains work performances and promotions. Switching households is also very easy with AwesomeMod - just strg+rightclick on a house and it's active.

I use Ani's mods, which you can find on NRAAS, and Rabitthole rugs, to create shops or produce stands for my farmers, fishers, writers and so on.

And I prefer smaller worlds, like Cladbridge or Winchester. They are easy to manage, with lots of businesses, and If you want them unpopulated, just don't use the savegame file.

Ani has a mod with ts2 style aging on her tumblr here: https://anitmb.tumblr.com/Downloads

I’ve never used it myself but it may be what you’re looking for.

IMO- you need to find a good, manageable town. Smaller is better in TS3, and towns under 100 actively simulated sims with fewer community lots run better in every manner.

NRAAS MasterController and StoryProgression are prerequisites, as is a weather mod to improve the general contrast and lighting in the world.

Finally, I think that NRAAS Tagger is a must- it essentially allows you to track every sim, and this single mod is what elevates TS3- transforming it from a sim simulator to a community simulator.

The only way to really turn off story progression and aging for inactive households is AwesomeMod. I used to use it but now I use NRAAS because I prefer a realistic story progression which my computer can handle (that and I had a falling out with MATY).

Can we just......not have threads like this for one week?

No. We are just coming up on the 11th anniversary of what must have been the first Thread Like This™. If anything, they should be doubling and tripling in frequency until we reach the complete frenzy level of Total Celebration Mode. Then maybe they might subside, just for a bit.

Oh, come on, guys! This is your chance to CONVERT SOMEONE! Embrace it. It doesn't have to devolve into a "which game is better" discussion.



Before I embark on what will probably be a wall of text.... ^^This.

OP, speaking as a person who, until about this time last year was adamantly TS2-only (and who now likes both games equally), here's the bald truth: In order to truly enjoy TS3 as much as you enjoy TS2, you're going to have to give up your control-freakiness. You are going to have to accept and, moreover, embrace the differences between the two games. You're going to have to accept that if you find yourself liking TS3, it will probably be on its own merits based on its own strengths, not because you've succeeded in turning it into a half-assed TS2. You're going to have to realize and accept that they are different games that you will probably end up playing differently and that trying to force TS3 to be TS2 is ultimately futile. TS3 is not designed in such a way that you can control every aspect of the world you play. Yes, as people have said, you can use mods to get closer to a TS2 experience, if that's what you want. You can (more or less) completely protect households that you stick in a caste via NRAAS's Story Progression, and you can play them in rotation, and you can use some tricks to, for instance, sync up seasons and retain wants when you switch active households and yadda yadda, but you will never be able to control everyone. Because you are not meant to.

Can you accept this, relax, let go, and open yourself up to something new? If so, then you will find ways to enjoy TS3. If your experience is anything like mine, it will take patience and experimentation to find out what you do and don't like about TS3, to decide what's important to you and what isn't, and to adjust the way you play the game accordingly -- just as you had to do when started playing TS2, of course -- but you will find your way. If you cannot let go of the control urge, then do yourself a favor, turn back now, and continue to play TS2 (and/or maybe try TS4, as it is more similar to TS2 than TS3 is, from what I've seen/heard; at the very least, it too is a closed world). BUT! realize that TS2 is on borrowed time, no matter how much kicking and screaming we diehard TS2ers do. It is no longer being sold (or given away) or supported by EA. In the not-too-distant future, you probably won't be able to play it on modern machines with modern hardware and software. So unless you're hoarding older software/hardware and have the ability to maintain and adjust an older-school computer into the future, (relatively) soon you will be out of luck. By the same token, TS3 is also on borrowed time because EA is phasing it out, slowly. Soon they will stop selling it, and that's when its borrowed time will really begin, although the fact that it's sold on Steam may be its salvation. But for the moment, TS3 still does just fine on modern machines. And on not-so-modern machines.

Assuming that you're still open to TS3 once you decide whether or not you think you can cease or at least moderate your control-freaky ways, here are a few things that've helped me make the transition to the dark side, so to speak.

1) Read this. And then download and install at the very least ErrorTrap, Overwatch, and Master Controller. Eventually, you might want Traveler, too, if not just everything that NRAAS has to offer. (More on Traveler in a bit.) But to start out, the other three will make your game run more smoothly and, more importantly, they will protect your saves from the self-destruct that will tend to happen in an unmodded TS3 game. The first two generally run in the background, and Master Controller works much like Sim Blender or Sim Manipulator for TS2 does, only it does MOAR.

2) Start out with the idea in your head that you're just experimenting. Don't commit to any one save or way of playing the game. Don't expect that you're going to play the first town you try for 12 generations. Get it into your head that you're testing the waters, finding out what you like and how you do (and don't) want to play the game, once you settle in more seriously.

3) TS3 is huge. With all expansion packs (plus store content if you get that, legitimately or otherwise.), it has TONS more gameplay than a fully-EP'ed TS2 does, and when you add in mods, it's a lot. A LOT. For me, it was quite overwhelming. In some ways, it still is. My suggestion, if you ultimately intend to play with all EPs: Don't do so right away. Start with just the base game. Play around with it a bit, get used to how the game basically works. Don't jump into an empty custom world or a host of mods just yet. Just play good ol' Sunset Valley as it's designed to be played (i.e., NOT controlling everyone) and get used to the game. Add EPs slowly, and get used to each one's new gameplay as you go. Places like Carl's Guide, especially the Expansion Guide section, can help you to know what's new in each EP and how that new stuff works. Try out the worlds that come with the EPs. (Though you might want fixed ones because many of EA's worlds have atrocious routing which will eventually cause the game to lag like you have never seen lag before. Isla Paradiso that comes with Island Paradise is especially bad. I mention this because the lag is something that turns off a lot of potential players, but it is something that can be, if not fixed completely, then at least mitigated to a great degree.)

4) Once you have the basics under your belt, start experimenting with different ways to play the game. Maybe install NRAAS's Story Progression, learn how to use it (which takes time!) or maybe Awesomemod (though that has some "features" that I personally do not ever want in my own game and, more objectively, it's more resource-intensive), and try out the rotational thing. Maybe stick with the "legacy"-style playing that the game is actually better suited to, natively, focusing on one extended family while you let the game handle everyone else. Maybe the idea of starting with an empty world with only empty lots placed and building/developing it yourself from the ground up, sort of BACC-style, is appealing. Look into the challenges here on MTS. Explore those options. Maybe mash together pieces of all of the above.

5) By this point, there's probably some stuff that's annoying you about the gameplay. Investigate mods to take care of those things. Like with TS2, there's a mod for just about anything at this point. NRAAS's Retuner by itself is a revelation, allowing you to easily tune (meaning, essentially, customize) a lot of things about your game to your personal preferences with just the one mod. Now is also probably the time to start investigating custom worlds, testing them out to discover what you do and don't like about them. Be aware that some are made better than others. Some are huge and will not run well on weaker computers. Some may be plagued by routing errors, some of which you may be able to fix by tweaking things in Edit World in-game, but some you may not be able to fix unless you download, install, and learn to use the separate Create-A-World program, which has a pretty steep learning curve and is, from what I understand, quite buggy and temperamental. That said, if you want worlds you can just drop in and play, that you don't have to do any building in at all, and that will run smoothly on just about any machine, IMO, My Sim Realty is a good first stop. I like some of her worlds better than others (Winchester and Meadow Glen are probably my faves), but in all the ones I've tried (which is most of them), I've had no major routing issues with them. SimsZoo also has many nice worlds. (I'm currently in love with empty, roadless worlds, and SimsZoo has a lot of nice ones, so I might be a bit biased there. ) And of course there are some lovely fully-built worlds right here on MTS, too.

6) For a bit of TS2-ness that I don't see mentioned often, consider the NRAAS Traveler mod. Its main function is to allow you to take your Sims on vacation to any world that you have installed in your game, not just to the three vacation worlds that ship with World Adventures. But what perhaps isn't talked about as much is that you can use its "Change Homeworld" function to spread your population out among multiple "linked" worlds, similar to how you have a main neighborhood plus subneighborhoods in TS2. Sims who live in a different world can show up in the one you're currently playing as "tourists," much the same as they will walk by in TS2. Not only is this a bit of TS2-ness in TS3, but it also helps you to have some of the control you desire because the game can only simulate one world at a time. While you are playing one world, all the other worlds you have linked in are in stasis and nothing can happen to their residents, playable and otherwise, while you're playing the current world you're playing. Sims can easily travel between worlds, you can dictate whether or not you want the Sims in "hibernating" worlds to increment in age while you play each different worlds, and you can easily switch playable households between them.