2nd photo is so darn cute lol

What limitations? I have computer what is especially built for TS2 the best experience and I don't even need a 4GB patch.

Thanks, I took them both for contests.

Same here. Much due to the fact that I make a lot of CC, baby CC in particular. I have more baby items than I could ever find a use for, I imagine.

Gotta love these three stages, especially when they're well done

- but unfortunately, that's never been EA/maxis' priority. At least in TS2 the babies look like they're tiny versions of the sims they grow up to be (face structure and skins), and there's perhaps a little bit more room for modders (where in TS3/4 you kind of have to move to toddlers to make "babies" that look decent). Kids did recieve more love in TS2 and TS3, but I felt toddlers regressed depth-wise in TS3. While toddlers did get some more toys and independence in TS4, the younger ages were still quite left behind (babies especially, but kids have too little to do).

For TS3 I found I didn't care much about building and decorating (just found a house and moved sims into it) - I think by the time I'd finished CASt-ing the family I guess I had creation fatigue and just wanted to play. There can be too many choices, too. There were often very few nice swatches available, so I had to tinker with them a bit, and it took ages to get hairs to look alright if going away from the presets. I don't have that problem in TS2 because creating and building/CAS is separate, so it's a bit easier to just pick an item and move on to the next.

"Those OLD people only think they are having fun."

Thanks for the update, I guess.

Attention everyone. I have received an anonymous tip claiming that certain individuals have been criticising The Best Sims Game™, The Sims 2, and the Second Best Sims Game™, The Sims 3, in this thread. These accusations are taken extremely seriously here in my mother's basement. It's one thing to be wrong, but to be wrong on the internet is a most HEINOUS crime. The Sims 3 Fun Police kindly requests that you make yourselves either known or scarce.

(this good enough for you @redandvidya?)

Yeah I know you guys are always going to continue hating on TS3, so might as well invite The World's Biggest Troll (TM) to do it for me

People can dislike or like whatever they want, it isn't an attack on you or what you like. If you like olives and I say I don't, are you offended? It's okay to like or dislike something. This doesn't make it hate.

If something is disliked because of something specific and it's been fixed then point it out.

Most people who play Sims 3 like that it has story progression and that they don't have to manage the world.( sims 2 makes them feel trapped)
Most people who play Sims 2 Like that sim families stay frozen until played and play in rotation. (Sims 3 feels out of their control)

Those are the two most basic reasons -play style. Neither one is wrong the same way Country vs Rock isn't wrong, its just preference.

See, that's the thing; Many people are coming in here acting like their opinion is like fact. When we all know it's just preference. Listen, I love TS2 too and I think it's a wonderful game with so much fun. Because judging from the disagree counter, many of you seem to think that I'm just here to be angry and bitter about TS2, but again, I'm not. I'm just saying that because of your preference, that doesn't make it a fact that TS3 is the "worst" game.


(And again, many people will probably hit the disagree counter randomly without reading whatever I have to say.)

I haven't looked but I will assume you have, but how many times has TS3 been called the worst game on this thread? I am guessing that has been said about TS4 far more often.

I will say the title of this thread immediately put the backs up of many of us because we don't see any technical limitations. So not a great starting point.

Yeah this just turned into another TS2 vs TS3 thread that won't go well. Mods can we lock this already? I don't really think there's anything that can be added to the discourse.

While I do think the title could have been better I doubt this will get any more 'heated' (which it isn't) than it is now. Most of us here are older players, we don't take things like this too seriously.

Well, I don't like to admit it, but I had recently turned 61, when I bought my heavily discounted copy of Double Deluxe in October 2012. So I suppose that I really am quite old. (I try to keep myself young by hanging out with a crowd of Veronaville teens.) I don't hate TS3 (or TS4); it's more just a case that I've never tried them. I very much doubt if either game would run satisfactorily on my 2011 Packard Bell netbook computer. And anyway, all my Veronaville friends live inside TS2, so why would I look anywhere else?

I didn't play computer games when I was in my teens. Computers did exist, but they cost zillions of pounds/dollars, and, if you wanted one, first you had to buy or build a skyscraper to keep it in. Basically they were seen as huge calculating machines. If you wanted to play games on one, you pretty well had to work in the research department of Bell Labs or IBM. I do remember as a child watching a TV programme about the new emerging technology, and being very interested in it.

I did keep an keep an interest in computing and during my 20s computers became considerably smaller and cheaper. By the time I turned 30, home computers and games were becoming a possibility. I distinctly remember a craze of people playing Space Invaders on arcade machines. I didn't play though -- I was far too mean to put my money into the machines. In my 30s I went to university as a so-called "mature student" and studied for a general arts degree. Personal Computers were becoming mainstream and several students that I knew had them. But good ones were still quite expensive; even in Germany where I studied for a year, most students still used mechanical typewriters. Around the middle of my course, my sister gave me a Commodore VIC-20 (about 3K RAM) that her children had grown out of. I learned a little about basic (BASIC) computer programming from it. After graduating and unsuccessfully running a small shop for a couple of years, with a growing interest in computing, I enrolled in a 1-year postgraduate conversion course in Systems Analysis and Design. Despite the name of the course, I mainly leaned how to program in COBOL. I never got any work programming in COBOL, but I taught myself Visual Basic, and eventually specialised in developing databases in Microsoft Access. I generally held myself aloof from computer games, and the few freebies that I tried (like Minesweeper and Solitaire) I found unsatisfying. But I was reading computing magazines, and saw adverts and reviews for the then new SimCity. That did look interesting, but it wouldn't have run on the computer I had then, and anyway I couldn't afford to buy it. Then, around 2000, I saw adverts for The Sims, but I have to admit I wasn't attracted at the time. If anything, it was still SimCity that attracted me as a game I might buy one day.

Eventually, around 2010, when I eventually had an internet connection that was fast enough, I started watching videos on YouTube. I saw some Sims ones, with some rather naughty animations, and they caught my attention. I realised they weren't real people because of the funny things floating above their heads! I grew interested enough to check out The Sims on Wikipedia, and saw that there seemed to be two current versions available at the time: Sims 2 and Sims 3. I reckoned that Sims 2, being older, would be more likely to run on my modest, but then still quite new, netbook PC. Then I saw a copy of The Sims 2 Double Deluxe for sale for only £7 at our local supermarket, and the die was cast -- I bought it! I didn't know if it would run on my computer, but at £7, it was worth taking the risk.

Over the next few weeks, I assiduously read the little manual that came with the game, and the more I read the more interesting it sounded. A couple of days before I actually started up the game, I launched Body Shop to see what clothes I had to dress my Sims, and to try my hand at creating Sims. I have to confess I was a little disappointed. Pretty well all the male underwear and swimwear, especially for teens, was long and baggy. But, unlike most Simming newbies, I did know about CC clothes, because I had stumbled across it when looking online for real clothes. So I found some male teen swimwear by Lissa and downloaded it. Then I made a white recolour and alpha edit of it to make a very basic pair of underpants for my first Sim.

So then, maybe a couple of days later, I finally started up the game, made Andrew and then Gloria in CAS, and moved them into 19 Chorus Court in Veronaville. . .

And then, Andrew, Gloria and the game just blew me away! It far, far surpassed all my expectations. When I bought the game I was hoping for a little bit of fun with some naughty animations. Instead I met two fascinating little people with very complete and individual personalities. Idiosyncratic personalities, yes, but really lovable. I fell for them almost instantly. Here was a teenage boy and his mother who clearly cared deeply for each other, and I couldn't help caring about them too. I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that meeting them has been life-changing for me. I don't know if I could face life just now -- especially life in the lockdown -- without being able to escape to the refuge of my Sims and their world.

I don't know what would have happened if I'd bought Sims 3 instead. I might have enjoyed that game. Or maybe it wouldn't have run on my computer at all. But it was Sims 2 that I bought, and it has changed my life. The technical limitations of the game don't bother me at all. As I said in my previous post, where the game mechanics leave off, my imagination takes over. In my imagination my Sims live in a world with at least as many possibilities as my own. In fact, in this age of lockdown, I'm sure theirs is quite a bit better! :lovestruc

I totally agree that I could've worded or named this thread better but I'm not very good with coming up with name or fancy titles and that's the best thing I come up with at the time. I wanted to know how people enjoy Sims 2 even with the tech limitations of the computers it was created with at the time,not a debate on 2 vs 3. How do you guys think Sims 2 would turn out if it was made with modern computers? I had wondering about that for a while now.

All I want is Sims 2 remade with modern technology :-P

Like with others in this thread no story progression is actually a feature for me, not a "limitation". I'm a control freak and I like to play out sprawling story-lines across multiple households, not being chained to a single Family/Yoursim like in 3/4.
As to the open world. I mostly play Sims 2 like if it was a virtual dollhouse. But if there was a Sims 2 style game with an open world I wouldn't mind it. I think it could work...like make the whole neighbourhood a giant community lot, you wouldn't be able to visit other households (since they are frozen in time like in Sims 2) but you could run around the whole neighbourhood and interact with the Sims there and call family friends for an outing and stuff.
(But please no rabbit holes)
I don't mind having no CAST either, I prefer the body shop and the genetics of Sims 2.

As to things that bother me...I wish the build mode and Create a Sim mode were as advanced as in Sims 4. I also wish we had body shapes (and no, the CC body shapes, while good, don't do it for me) I also found face sculpting in Sims 4 a lot easier. And begin able to give Cas sims different family names from each other...

Limitations of Sims 2. For me personally, there are very few,
Need that VR machine from Sims 3 - modded, I got it in Sims 2
Need to separate tops from bottoms - modded, I got it in Sims 2
Need a tattoo gun and shop - modded, I got it in Sims 2
Need stuff for my casino - modded, now I got slot machines in Sims 2

Need horses - Modded, but not good enough... I WANT SIMS 3 HORSES - SIMS 2 IS LACKING
Need better Science Stuff - Sims 3 has great machines - SIMS 2 IS LACKING
These are only 2 limitations i have with sims 2. I own Sims 3 and all its expansions, and never play it because I find it lacks too many things for my needs.

Open world... nah, I miss too much gameplay, and the AI choices infuriate me. I love my fluid world made by Chris Hatch's Globe, with working schools, hospitals and such. I can visit sims and they stay at home for me to visit, and I can invite them and their family to my home and they actually turn up the next day. My Sunrises and Sunset come courtesy of Radiance Mod. For someone who has a corneal transplant, Sims 3 is too dark sometimes to play. For someone who loves sims interaction, the empty roads and long car journeys of Sims 3 seem so lonely. But SIMS 3 SURE HAS A LOT OF NICE STUFF.

I deal with the limitations of the horses and science stuff by grabbing all the mods I can, and I admit they are not good enough. But still better than the alternative, because I can always dump the phone and live in an alternative world.
Sims 3&4 seems so limiting, can't play medieval world with a smartphone, nor space Star Trek world when the backdrop is locked and uneditable. Where are the modders in sims 3 & 4 for such things? How do you cope with the limitations of these games?

How do you guys think Sims 2 would turn out if it was made with modern computers? Well, it would have modern sensibilities. Sims 2 is a product of people who cared and had ideas and passion. Sims 2 was made at the dawn of a technological revolution, by people who had more ideas than money and skills. (Because the book on skills was still being invented) Without money, (cause Maxis was broke) you have to fall back on the "necessity as the mother of all invention".

A modern game would be empty, expensive and called Sims 4. Instead of Mimes, sad clowns, gnomes, strange calls and lamas, it would have checklists, fistbumps, pushups and cleaning up rubbish. (no longer a sandbox, but with a dedicated goal and game-ending) Its producers would talk about safe spaces and diversity, rather than talking about AI and the behaviour of players as Will Wright used to do. Instead of talking about numbers of games sold, it would talk about numbers of woohoo data recorded to their Origin spy account. This modern Sims 2 game would have children ignoring the death of their father when the producers in the original Sims 2 hated this and ensured it couldn't happen. This modern Sims 2 would celebrate introducing Hajabs, just as the original Sims game celebrate "girls in cakes" and "dance cages".

The passion and ideas of the original games no longer survive, that was a different time. The morality is different. For the original Sims and Sims 2, women producers stuck their babies in cribs underneath the desk and just kept working. Now the Sims staff work 9 to 5 and have no crunch time. I watch let's play's, Sims 1 & 2 are too slow and sandbox for modern 21st century goal-seeking people. It's over, done, past. Old abilities and sensitivities can't come back. Many developers now working at Maxis have never played Sims 1&2.

To get an idea of what a modern Sims 2 might look like, many people are placing their hopes on the new game Paralives. What would a modern Sims 2 game look like? It would look, play and be financed just like Sims 4.

Honestly, I'm okay with how Sims 2 works, with the mods we have. Both Sims 3 and 4 sims hit me in the uncanny valley: they're not just off, they're disgustingly off. That's 100% personal.

If it were built today, it would at least run on more than one processor core. That would be nice.

I mostly agree with your central thought that TS2 if done today would be much like TS4 but please, don't glorify crunch. Been there, done that, and I can tell you that it _really_ messes you up (I too have a corneal transplant and crunching is a big part of the reason why) and very rarely is truly necessary (although there are situations when it is.)

Not glorifying, just acknowledging that times and sensitivities were different. It's a modern thing to refuse to mention the past and pretend it didn't happen. My mother at 12 was a live in maid, working 24 hours a day. When I was 12 she called me lazy, if I didn't clean the house and cook a full meal for all the family, wash my father's work shirts and do all the shopping. (Someone has to do the housework, when adults work 90hours a week) My great grandmother at 12 was probably raped and a slave. My younger relatives at 12 did babysitting and went to school. Now in 2020 relatives at 12 go to school and stare at smartphone, and that's all, anything more seems abusive.

Life is different now, and many people have scars. But less children died from drug overdoses and school shootings. It is as it is, and I don't feel the need to hide anything. Sorry, that you had bad times, like everyone else.

Trouble is, if it were built today, even with the original ethos, it would probably require more than one processor core. And at least 4GB RAM (maybe 8GB). And Goodness know what sort of graphics processor. All of which would mean it wouldn't run on my computer. So I wouldn't be here. So all told I'm glad that it came out in 2004, with what was at the time just about cutting edge technology.

Anyway Sims 2 isn't an old game. It's a product of the new millennium. Chess is an old game. But lots of people still play it and enjoy it. And you can still even buy it new. And my Sims tell me it's not only great fun to play; it also helps you to think logically!

Good name change Squid.

I would love a remade revamped sims 2. Taking the best from Sims 1,3 and 4 but retaining the Sims 2 look, feel and control. Take the best mods but made without clashes and with animations that look to be fully part of the game.

Okay except the foreheads. I was looking at a sim I made last night thinking I could hire a team to scale that forehead like a mountain. I want a slider that can compress that bad boy to say... I don't know, 8 fingers? Pleeeease.

I just want all recolors along with mesh in one file

Some people are just born with large foreheads. And those people like to be called Sims.

Let's get this straight. TS2 and TS3 (IMO both tied for the best game in the franchise, but that's a whole other can of worms) are both really lacking modern content. I think that we as a community, instead of "wishing" essentially for more features from EAxis that we know we're not gonna get, we should push the limits of what TS2 can and cannot do. Great things have been achieved with mods that EAxis probably could never do as well as us; (hospitals, in-game economies, custom neighobrhoods). For example, (shameless promotion) I dislike the aged ugliness of the base game neighborhoods; while they're okay in the eyes of some people, I set out to completely renovate CC-free Pleasantview and Strangetown! So like, we as creators have achieved a lot, and we can achieve much more because we are resilient. Do you get my point?

"What do you think Sims 2 would be if it was created today with modern technology?"
The Sims 4.
I want my pixel dolls in their pixel dollhouse to look like pixel dolls. Sims 3 and 4 are right down the uncanny valley for me. The Sims creep me out.