I've been thinking lately about the TS3 open neighbourhood concept and comparing it to TS2 neighbourhood and, while I agree that no loading screens is a good thing to have, I really miss the neighbourhood decoration possibility of TS2 and just about anywhere placement of lots. I like to build my towns, inhabited by my sims who live accordign to my rules, and that's not fully possible in TS3 anymore. At this moment I just wish that they had implemented the open neighbourhood concept on TS2 lots, they didn't even have to open up the whole hood like in TS3, but just the lots.
So, my question is, do you think it was worth it to have the open neighbourhood and lose all those customising possibilities that TS2 offered? Not to mention the other things that were also lost as a consequance, like car animations and story progression issues. Also, if EA were to release another EP for TS2 that opened up the neighbourhood, would you buy it?

I've never gotten past the CAS in TS3 (It was a demo in an Apple store and I had to leave) But I would buy an EP for TS2 that opened up the neighborhood! Defenitely!

Well I never really do much more than control one sim/family at a time, so for me anything open neighborhood brings is an exciting advance

I probably wouldn't use the TS2 EP, but i think i would buy it... lol

I really tried to play Sims 2 again, last night, because I miss some of the characters (like Vampires) in it. But I found it so dull when I created a sim and was stuck with a voice for him that I didn't like and I couldn't recolor his hair or his clothes. Or even change his face to what I wanted. And not being able to give him any personality with traits. Then when I put him in a house and tried to redo some of the house, I really missed the navigation from Sims 3 that allowed me to move around the house in different views in order to decorate or change things. So no, I don't miss TS2 at all, now, except, as I said, for some of the characters that comes with it and it's expansion packs. Game play itself, really sucks for me, compared to TS3.

Oh, dear...I was going to say a resounding YES, but now that I read some of the other comments I had to rethink it. Maybe what I would want is a TS3 that played like TS2. I use the AwesomeMod and like it but there are still many things in TS3 I don't like, like the interface and the inability to place many houses. I do really like the open neighborhood, tho' and I guess I do like the traits as well as the much easier promotions.

Yes, I would buy it! Before my motherboard meltdown I found that Sims 3 was fun, but I got bored after an hour or two...don't know why, maybe I simply wasn't in the right mood. I'm much more drawn to my Sims 2 and can play for longer periods of time...most likely reason being that I have a couple of EPs and stuff packs I never got to play with because after I installed Freetime on my old computer, the game wouldn't load. So I have Freetime and Apartment life that I'm still exploring...or at least I *will* be when I get my computer back up and running.

Ignoring the fact that my TS2 is completely frakked, is it better to have the neighborhood I want but never go into (TS2) or the ability to quickly go into the neighborhood but it not be what I want (TS3)? Tough question but I lean towards town I can customize (TS2). If I add into the equation that in TS3 there just isn't much to do once I'm in the neighborhood I can't really customize, then I really lean towards wanting a customizable neighborhood most of all (TS2). And if I think about long term playability then I lean until I fall over towards customized neighborhoods (TS2).

I like quaint little towns, but they aren't the only type of town I like. They aren't my fav either - give me a post-apocalyptic town or an urban ghetto any day. So being really stuck with only 1 type of town (2 versions but still really just 1 type), is disappointing. And it's not just that I can't put the lots I want where I want. Or that I can't place roads. Or that I can't remove trees or change terrain paint. But I'm stuck with the awful rabbit hole buildings and how they look. So no post-apocalyptic town, no urban ghetto, no futuristic city, no alien world, no Victorian town. Nothing but the town type that came with the game.

It's almost enough to make me go back to trying to get my TS2 to work again. Almost.

I am playing the Sims 2 right now, and came here while the game is paused to see this thread. It goes along with a realization that I had when I tried TS3. I was so exicted about the open neighborhood more than any new feature.

But when playing I realized that I only have two eyes in my head. I can only watch one or two things at once. So the open hood did not do me so much good because I just could not watch so much of it at once.

I redid SV as far as I could, DLing all these totally cool mod houses. Placed them and played my Sim. But in the windows of the neighbors houses, NO furniture showed up! So a neighbor sim would sit down at an invisible desk and type at nothing. Takes you right outta the world you are in. And don't get me started on catching sight of a neighbor sleeping in the bed through a window. Creepy under the covers animations.

So I went back to TS2 and am happily playing my whole neighborhood that I can see through the windows and yeah, it is static, but it is still MINE. I designed it. I know every lot is placed WHERE I WANT IT. So I will take MINE and static versus EA's dynamic hood but with weird idiosyncracies like invisible furniture and a big old hood that is not mine.

Yeah, I should be able to make any hood I can think of - from post apocalyptic L.A. to a little cozy village in the Cotswolds and in TS2 I can do that.

Going back to my TS2 game now.

I prefer TS2 over 3. If there was an option in TS3 to play it like TS2, I would use it. My sims never left their lot aside from work, so the open nhood was really just extra lag...

Ahem, first of all, TS3 has towns, not neighborhoods, and the word towns is so much easier to type!

There are good things in both games, but I absolutely love, love, love having a wide-open town in TS3. The way the game is designed gives me reasons to use nearly the whole map regularly. Even with as many cognitive and memory problems as I have, I still don't have trouble keeping track of the Sims in one family. Part of that is that I adapted a play style to work with TS3, and part of it is just the simple fact that if the family is large I can get part of them out of the house and out of my hair while I'm concentrating on those left at home. That actually makes things a lot easier for me than trying to constantly keep tabs on every Sim on a home lot in TS2.

I'm afraid that no, I would not buy another expansion pack for TS2. My computer can barely handle the ones it has. TS3 runs very smoothly for me and while I don't doubt that with expansion packs I'll see a decrease in performance, I can play it now with it running really well. Perhaps by the time I do see a slow-down I'll be able to upgrade my processor.

I'm a TS 3 guy now through and through

Hmm well if they'd have made the ep before the sims 3 then yes I would have bought it instead. Because what would be the point in having exactly the same game just with better graphics. I do love the sims 2 but I don't think I can go back to it now because of the sims 3, yes with all its faults I still have a lot I'd like to do. However I don't really use the open town that much because I just build up big families and tend to leave them. I like having the OPTION of going out into town but I don't do it very much. In the sims 2 if you wanted better clothes you kinda had to go into town, and dating was really nice so it was another way to get you into lots. In the sims 3 even with all the opportunities I never feel like I want to or have to go out into town, occasionally I will to pick up gardening supplies and get married. So what I'm basically trying to say is the sims 2 had more reasons for you to go into town and those reasons were good and more fun then the sims 3 reasons which kinda lack the charm to make me really leave my house and comfort. So I guess my answer is yes I would have bought a sims 2 open town expansion pack.

I don't like so many things in TS3 compared to TS2.
But OPEN NEIGHBORHOOD is what I LOVVVVVVE in TS3. I love to take my bike at night and go on adventuring around the town.

It's so great to bike pass through the town and see some people coming back to their homes, walking to the library or just plainly cross the corner of the atreet. So much fun!

I like the ability to make my own neighberhoods in TS2 but not enough to go back, I can't wait for world adventures, because I am not creative enough in my building to match their new awesome content

I just got Sims 3 a couple of days ago. I like the open neighborhood but the sacrifices they had to make to open it were a bit much. (Not to mention the difficulty involved with learning my way around an entire neighborhood rather than just a two story house.) I like sims 2, and I like sims 3. Right now I'm playing both about equally.

If they made an EP that opened the town in Sims 2 the way it is in Sims 3 while keeping the ability to build your neighborhoods the way you wanted them to it would probably tip things back to sims 2 for me. (Along with causing me to ask why they couldn't do that for sims 3 after all? And by the way, where is that neighborhood editor they promised?)

Hell YES. The Open Neighborhood was so worth it. I was so used to changing households to keep the hood in sync, but was relived when I really didn't have to. But occasionally, I WILL change households to change ridiculous clothes or hair that they gave the sims when they aged up.

mdossantos - I hate the clothes they grow up into sometimes too


I DO like the open neighbourhood, thb.

Guess that makes three of us Every time I go back to a house I go "What the hell do they have on?"

I made the mistake of installing the long mandarin coat/outfit that you can get from the EA store. I wanted to be able to use it for any Asian sims I create, but now most all teens that age up to young adult in the game or new characters that the game moves into town, end up with that outfit as their everyday clothes and it looks silly to have lots of sims running around in the same outfit and one that doesn't suit their character.

i sure would and it would help alot for people making series and story's so if ea were to do that i would definitely buy it

I care more about the ability to edit the neighborhood easily. I wouldn't trade my ability to edit the neighborhood in-game for an open neighborhood.

It's all I know because I didn't play the other two. So I didn't have to make any extra adjustment to the open world. At first it was hard like if you have a big family or housemates group to control them all, but I got used it. And sometimes funny things happen when you forget about a sim and they start doing their own thing. I wouldn't like only being able to send one sim at a time off-lot.

That's happened to me - I installed that free New Year's download, the jester cap - not thinking that townies were going to randomly end up with it for their everyday hair.
Edit: Maybe this thread was supposed to be in the Sims 2 forum?

Maybe it spontaneously morphed over from the Sims 2 forum to the 3 forum after a carefully crafted bit of coding was triggered that allowed the jump to occur 4 years and 21 days after the date of the last post in 2009.

lol- yeah I didn't even look at the date as usual - I wondered why bluegenjutsu was here.

I also didn't even notice the date when I read this, just kept thinking why are people complaining about stuff that's possible in the game