Sims 3 vs Sims 4 - Where do you stand and why?

Mari 2018-11-30 18:22:46 UTC #1

(Oops I'm alive hello long time no see)

Alright so I'm betting I'm not the only one who plays these games, seeing that making your OC's in them is the shit.

Sooo, this has been the debate practically ever since Sims 4 was launched, what is your opinion on it?

My Lengthy Opinion ---->

Personally, I have around 1000 hours on both games (yikes), but I still prefer TS3. Remember how we all were so upset and done with how TS3 had so much DLC content and it was overpriced? After playing Jungle Adventure (TS4) vs World Adventures (TS3), it's just....Yikes. Sure, Jungle Adventures was half the price that WA was, but there is nothing in it. Yea the relics are cool and the world is somewhat pretty but there's what, less than 10 lots you can find and one area that randomly generates one of (3? I've never seen more than 3) templates for the temple. There's no puzzles or anything that requires you to use your brain, it's all just a bunch of clicking and chance, and what felt most like a slap in the face was that there was no plotlines, which is the easiest thing to code in. I loved the WA opportunity chains with really silly storylines (sometimes kinda dark, what with how many had to deal with moving dead bodies around the place xD), but this is completely missing from JA. Like yeah it's just a bunch of words on screen, but it was the shit! It made it feel like there was a purpose to it all, but with JA it's just like...You can go do it, but it's not actually fun and most what you get from it is a relic you can use to murder people so what's the point.

Ofc TS4 is far superior when it comes to CAS and build mode, I tried to build a basic house in TS3 and nope the roofing made me rage quit. Gallery also feels more and more important the more you play TS3.

The only DLC that imho tops TS3 so far is Dine Out. But that bothers me too, since it's super buggy when you run a restaurant yourself and it's basically content that in my opinion should've been in Get to Work, seeing as running a bussiness was an all-encompassing DLC for The Sims 2. Years ago. > Also it is so annoying that you cannot have a hybrid bussiness. I used to do nothing but open Bakery-Restaurants in TS2, so the limitations that your bussiness can only be one thing seems dumb.

I also don't get why TS4 has such a huge issue with simulation lag. I was led to believe that because there's no open world the game would not lag, but my god is that not such bullshit. Like yeah your fps doesn't drop but your sims just get stuck at work or stand around doing nothing for hours on any longer save game. I don't understand this, since it was never a thing in TS3. TS3 just lagged in general and would randomly freeze because it leaks memory like a mofo, but there was never any issues with the simulation.

Emotions also feel stupid. They do nothing. They are so easy to manipulate. Your sim kid has their parents die but because they ate a good meal and there's a few paintings around they don't care. Or if you have parenthood the kid can just write in a journal twice and boof losing your parents who cares. It's also like, every expansion or DLC there's 50 000 more ways for you to swap emotions so they just become pointless buffs rather than...well, emotions. Also most that sims ever seem to do when they have any emotional state is just talk to themselves in the mirror. Idk. I was so dissapointed in the whole emotion aspect and how easy it was to just make them swap their mood as if it was nothing.

The traits are also dissapointing, all they ever do is change how often certain moods appear as far as I see. All the sims just bounce around like perfect people even if they have like Evil-Erratic-Clumsy traits. There's just no depth to it

I just dunno man. I had a science major is TS3 University Life that was a coward so everytime they had the activity class and he whipped out the model skeleton he got scared and would pee himself/run away/pass out. It was hilarious (and unintentional). Or the socially awkward/Shy combo that makes it near impossible to make friends. Or the loser trait that just makes your sim fail at life in general. There's so many good negative traits in TS3 that affect the game play. I just miss the shit traits : I

NanettesClouds 2018-11-30 18:24:07 UTC #2

Spore will always be my one true love

Mari 2018-11-30 18:25:17 UTC #3

Spore was the shiiiiit even if it suffered the Peter Molyneux-ism (I am aware he had nothing to do with it) where they hyped it so far everyone ended up dissapointed

Except me! because I was too young to care about game reviews!

unknown_user 2018-11-30 19:10:15 UTC #4

Well, I've liked Sims 3 more. As well as Sims 2: University, which I've played much as a teen. I remember, that I liked to give my sims a proper education and gain good marks... Too bad that they didn't really start to behave smarter after reaching their Academic degree. That was the most... disappointing in this game
But I should add that I've played in Sims 4 not for long, to be honest. Maybe because it was released when I've already lost interest in this game. Anyway, I have noticed that that they deleted a bunch of features which I liked in Sims 3 and was a bit angry because of this. I have no idea why they did it.

echoeotto 2018-11-30 20:36:02 UTC #5

I've spent way too much time modding The Sims so I could probably talk forever about this

I think The Sims 3 had better expansion packs/content made for it, but I think The Sims 4 was better quality. The art for 4 was more stylized & focused, and the basegame was better optimized than any of the other Sims basegames. You can stack more expansion/stuff/whatever packs on top of Sims 4 before it starts to crack under its own weight.

That said, I think 4 fell prey to bad management. The way they marketed it hurt it more than helped it, and too much of the content was overly-monetized.

ConradComics 2018-11-30 20:41:02 UTC #6

In a meandering sort of way I came to appreciate The Sims 4 as a proper sequel to The Sims 2. The Sims 3 was a once in a developer's lifetime masterpiece (when complete) that'll always be hard to top.

When I first got Sims 4, I was reminded heavily of going from Civilization 3 to Civ4 (and 5 and 6). In that Civ3 was this feature rich, modded as heck, play for 10,000 hours game; then Civ4 came out and was bare bones, stripped of content as you can get, play for 1 hour a pop 'mini' game. Sims 4 struck me the same way. Sims 3 was a feature rich, open world, living, breathing sandbox and Sims 4 was feature poor and instanced.

Except, I came to appreciate the instancing again because less sims got stuck somewhere, never to be seen again. Yes, sims had schedules in Sims 4, but they didn't actually go anywhere. They existed when they needed to. So if you wanted to throw a party and certain sims were "gone," you just started the party anyway and it would populate with the instances of those people. In the Sims 3 you could be invited to a party at a house where nobody was home (usually because they got stuck in a downtown elevator or something).

Appreciating instancing again is when I realized they actually went back to The Sims 2 as opposed to rehashing the The Sims 3. In that, I could make stories and families with The Sims 2. I could populate a whole neighborhood with my own unique (read decadent) story line, then go in and play each and every household of it. That's not something you could really do with The Sims 3. In that, once you got the ball rolling, the neighborhood quickly went it's own direction. Which is fantastic engineering in it's own right, but was definitely something missing from Sims 2.

So, I absolutely love Sims 3, but I'm glad they went the Sims 2 route with The Sims 4.

Edited to add: As far as glitchiness, I noticed a lot of The Sims 4 glitches came in content that "faked" you going somewhere and doing something (Careers generally, going to the hospital to have the baby specifically). The more they (and I) stayed away from that, the less issues I had. It's just not how the game was designed and they should have realized that.

Kittosaurus 2018-11-30 21:32:19 UTC #7

You have opened up a can of worms my friend! And I don't even know where to begin! I have been playing sims since the the first one so admittedly TS2-TS3 have kinda melded in my memory and I find it difficult to differentiate the game play since it has been soo long since I played them!

I think what I miss the most about the Sims 3 is the open world and the ability to customize just about everything. I would spend hours upon hours building my houses customizing every single surface...it was a dangerous obsession!

I definitely agree with you on this point. But even with all all the expansions, stuff and game packs sometimes I still find it frustrating to decorate as I cannot match the colors and they have a much more limited palette in TS4.

While I have enjoyed some of the additional gameplay added in TS4 it still feels lacking in comparison to previous Sims games. It was also a big smack in the face when they increased the prices of the expansion, game and stuff packs, as it feels like they are lacking in compared to previous iterations.

So far I have found that the TS4 hasn't been too buggy for me. I have a family that I have been playing for 21 generations (Alphabet Legacy), and when it does glitch I can usually fix it by simply resetting the sim. The only major annoyance I had was I lost all my achievements when I installed one of the expansions - I think it was Cats and Dogs, but it wasn't the end of the world.

I know there is still a few years left of TS4 before they release TS5 so I am hoping they fix a lot of these issues - but I fear they will continue to increase the cost while providing less gameplay.

Mari 2018-11-30 21:36:50 UTC #8

I wouldn’t say TS4 really went TS2 route, It’s got way more in common with TS3 than TS2 imho. Conversation tones / interactions / DLC content is much more like TS3 except that TS4 is just kinda hollow. It’s the first game since the OG sims where there’s no conversational memory It annoys me to hell and back that you can announce your pregnancy like every other hour and your partner is going to be just as surprised every time. I get that this is because of smoother gameplay, but there’s a huge amount of stuff that could be limited instead of all the things that give the game depth.

That’s just the general thing that’s wrong with TS4. There’s a lot of content on the surface level, as in you get like 50 different names for ”chat” - type socials that all have the same animation and only vary in bonus points depemding on traits, but there is no depth. It’s hollow.

That being said TS4 CAS, graphics & build mode were vastly better than TS3. Also like the gender neutral stuff, but it’s on purpose coded so that there’s only CIS - sims around, which is DUMB. So annoying you have to make all trans sims yourself like why can’t the game sometimes generate them... I know this is to avoid offending the frail bigoted players but come on. TS2 is just a timeless masterpiece and that is not debatable It had the best interractions and charm and fears!!! Those were dope.

echoeotto 2018-11-30 21:51:47 UTC #9

I totally agree with you except for the lack of terrain elevation tools in TS4, which still really bugs me. But yeah, the roofing is vastly superior, as are the build tools in general.

Not to mention that almost every pack has its own color scheme, which almost guarantees nothing will match That's the point where I'd get frustrated enough just to open up Sims Studio and create my own recolors.

Some mods, like Master Controller, change how sims are generated and fix this. You can even configure your own % chances for different things like sexualities, gender, age, etc.

Mari 2018-11-30 21:53:56 UTC #10

My game had huge simulation lag when I was at around generation 15? I.E workday would end at 15:00, but the sims would be stuck at work until around 15:30, hyperspeed would jumbo back and Fortum etc. It got bad enough I had to pause the game for a minute or two every sim-day to let the game ”catch up”. At that point I jumped back to goofing around in TS3, since the gameplay was far from smooth :I

Kittosaurus 2018-11-30 21:54:40 UTC #11

And can we also talk about how NPCs/ families that have been created and placed in a house don't randomly marry and have kids anymore. I wish they had an option to toggle this on and off like in past iterations. I am forced to constantly re-populate my worlds and it is annoying!

echoeotto 2018-11-30 21:55:31 UTC #12

Sounds like save bloat. Or too many townies. If I'm playing a legacy, every once in a while I'll have to go through and delete all the "homeless" families I'm not attached to. The game's supposed to purge them, but it doesn't always do this.

Yes! The lack of story progression is really annoying. Another thing I loved about Master Controller (in addition to the sim generation tweaks, it recreates story progression for TS4).

Mari 2018-11-30 22:01:17 UTC #13

Yeah, but that was what TS4 was supposed to not do, since TS2-TS3 all had problems with corrupting save files that ran long. Like this was one of the major things that was supposed to not happen. It annoys me so much.

I do have MC doing my LGBT justice, but the point is that EA on purpose has them disabled with no way to enable them > : (

I’m sure I can get the save file work properly again, but my annoyance at broken promises is what is keeping me from doing it xD.

BlackRoses_RedRavens 2018-11-30 22:04:29 UTC #14

Well I'm gonna have to say Sims 4 simply just cause it takes like half an hour to load on my gaming computer (the better of the two which is designed to be able to run games).The loading game also was really laggy but it was nice because of the loading times.

but both games have their upsides and downsides. I prefer the layout and look of things in sims4. Sims 4 also has better building i think but and I think cas is about even for me. I only ever made two sims on sims 3 both of which were female so I can't say how good the male and/or children outfits are but I know that when it comes to kids sims 4 is lacking in cas content.

I'd have some bugs with sims 4 I'm not so sure about sims 3 I haven't found anything but its probably there.

I prefer Sims 4 overall but honestly I only got sims 3 because a member of my family wanted it to play with the horses lol

echoeotto 2018-11-30 22:06:26 UTC #15

Yeah. EA makes a lot of questionable choices.

Mari 2018-11-30 22:09:09 UTC #16

There should be like a Slider in gameplay like ”how much homo” with no homo - all of the homo range

echoeotto 2018-11-30 22:37:59 UTC #17

Haha yep! Bonus points if the slider goes from, like, gray to rainbow the higher you set it.

AmysGames 2018-11-30 23:04:19 UTC #18

I haven't played Sims 4 so I can't comment on it, but I've played some Sims 3 and an inordinate amount of Sims 2, haha.

I'd say they both have their advantages—I love the personality system in Sims 3, and I like how it's more open-world—but I think I somewhat prefer Sims 2 because I feel like I have more control over what happens. (Also I got the Sims 2 Ultimate Collection for free and I can't argue with free. )

Kann 2018-11-30 23:11:09 UTC #19

I haven't played TS4, so I can't really say where I stand, though I loved the way you can set colors of almost everything (as far as I can remember) in TS3 and the personality system.

I've played A LOT of TS and TS2 and tbh what I miss is having more control over the neighborhood like in TS2.

Btw, I remember my sister trying to play the very first Sims games some time ago and it did age badly... xD

Kura 2018-11-30 23:48:38 UTC #20

Sims 3 is superior because I can play it on Steam.

Sims 4 needs Origin, and I hate having that thing on my computer. It is literally the only game I need that god forsaken program for.

Another thing, being able to pick your hair and clothes colour from a friggen colour picker (more so the hair cause it's usually my characters that I'm making in this game), why did they get rid of that for TS4? I don't understand?? They make everything else a lot more customization for CAS but then they remove THAT??? Despite everything they added that small thing being removed feels like a step back and makes it feel like I have LESS customization options even though that's clearly not true. They're just all on the body sliders.

Sims 4 is.... fine... if you have money to burn. As yeah, it gets more enjoyable the more packs you have to cator to your style of play, but I'll still echo what a lot of people have been saying, there is too little content in all their expansion and stuff packs even though there is so many of them. It ALWAYS feels like I could do more in TS3 than I can 4, and it's not because it was out longer. That said, the packs that are similar to one another usually is more polished for 4, but is not as content heavy or exciting as 3, cause you're not really constantly running into stuff that surprises you.

Pets are also a lot more fun to play in 3, but they're also really well done and act more like pets in 4.

Oh yeah, another big thing that urks me, it takes friggen YEARS for EA to fix their glitches in the Sims 4 even when they are game breaking. I don't remember it ever taking this long to fix bugs that literally broke the game for Sims 3. Only this year did I get a fix for the glitch that made it impossible for me to progress in police job line for Get to Work. For an idea on how LONG it took them to fix those glitched Get to Work was released in 2015 with the glitch existing since release (AND KNOWN BY EA)

There was also a glitch with the hamster cages, they were just WAY TO INTERESTING for every sim in the house hold, if I put one in the house all the sims (both people and animals) would go over to the cage and just STARE AT THE HAMSTER WHILE PISSING THEMSELVES UNTIL THEY STARTED STARVING TO DEATH and even then you manually had to force them to go eat. This was really frustrating when you had pets and children in the house because that counts as neglecting their needs and having services take them away. Obviously the best option was to not give them that pet at all, but that pet was also a separate 12$ add on (and really the only reason you'd want to buy the pet stuff pack)

The things I like about the Sim4 is mostly performance, it loads a lot faster on my computer, the build mode is also a lot better but damn I really want the spiral staircases back. They took up so much less friggen room. I also really like the options Sims4 has in their create a Sim menu that allows for you to make trans characters, but as mentioned before in this thread, is sucks that the games auto generation doesn't also do this when filling your world with sims.

Another thing for CAS mode is that I REALLY wish they had more black hairstyles... I mean... like... really curly/kinky black hair not the hair colour...)