Premades and Precepts

With TS3′s story progression and simultaneous aging would it be harder to create an integrated economy. That is, one where taxes and fees go out, and money is used in a meaningful way. Even with appropriate mods and hacks, every other family is left ‘chaotic’, freely squandering their family funds without any player control over where the money goes. Even if there was some kind of automatic deduction hack, it still might be limited by an inability to pay at the right time. Further yet, families will autonomously move house, presumable with more money from nowhere…will the madness stop?

While it’s a blessing for those of us who hate micro-managing everybody, it doesn’t help players who want to keep records, levy fines and stop money coming from nowhere. If you want the degree of control back, you have to return to the TS2 static model. Well, it’s not clear how aging and story progression will be tied together, but I presume you’d need both on, otherwise you’d end up with families full of kids (no aging) or Sims growing old and dying alone without your input (no SP).

I imagine there will need to be some creative hacking of the game, plus the capabilities to allow it, before there could be a truly integrated ‘autonomous economy’ in TS3. Otherwise, players who wish to ‘integrate’ will need to return to meticulous micromanagement of each Sim. Bit of a bummer really. I really hate the giant promotion bonuses and 20K handouts.

From the interactive preview CD revealed in this thread:

http://bbs.thesims2.ea.com/community/bbs/messages.php?threadID=1b3acec347263a40b763308c4af2d0a2&directoryID;=225&startRow;=1&openItemID;=item.225,item.43,item.61,item.104,item.41,item.127,item.23

*Sigh* Will they ever learn…

I don’t know if I’ve expressed it elsewhere on this site, but I don’t like the whimsical nature of the TS3 careers. They should at least pay heed to the notion that the workplaces are visible, that the setting is a medium-size town/city, and that people in the real world don’t get paid for jobs that employers aren’t willing to pay them for. At least in TS2 the action happened offscreen. They could be a bit more imaginative with the settings.

Anyway, here’s my take on what was revealed career-wise.

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It seems overly philosophical, but if I were writing a Sims story, I would really try to evoke the sense that Sims live in a completely different universe, with different rules. If you think about the game in that way you don’t get hung up as much on the less realistic parts of their lives.

• Technology never changes.
• Sims have different physiologies. They are pregnant for a large chunk of their lives, they are all the same height, and they make blue pee (and they can ONLY pee.)
• No real-world references in general, especially branded stuff. I would probably go to pains to avoid using brand names, or even pixelate the stuff like a 90s hip-hip music video. Advertising truly bugs me when it gets subliminially inserted into Sims stories.
• There is no English in the Sims world, no real-life writing or signs.
• Sims are fully capable of driving, swimming, etc. without lessons.
• Sims are strictly non-religious except for the odd supernatural element (i.e. Grim Reaper).
• Sims are more relaxed about privacy – witness the TS2 telephone directory. Also, they’re generally more permissive with their children and teens (letting them go off on their own), even though they can NEVER be left at home alone.
• Education and professions work differently. There’s no such thing as professional qualifications: any entry-level bum can become a doctor or lawyer without a degree (despite TS2′s weird reference in the Paramedic description to ‘night school’). Uni was a bit of an aberration if you ask me.
• Llamas must pervade everything. (Hey, why haven’t there been actual, ownable llamas in The Sims yet? If you’re listening, EA, OWNABLE LLAMAS!!!!

So, somewhere in development EA dropped the Entertainment career – it seems. Future EP, maybe? Possibly involving some Stars that are Super? I have to admit that I didn’t buy the last two EPs for The Sims, Making Magic and Superstar. As I’ve said in the past, I am a realist player. Letting everyone be famous and practise magic is not really that fun for me. If such an EP comes out in the future, I’m unlikely to buy them…unless awesome objects make up for the undesirable gameplay.

Damn you EA! Always putting neat new objects into expansion packs I have no intention of buying!

How should Sims look? As I’ve said before I’m not heavy on the use of  custom content overload. But I’m also totally not original, and will just randomise most of the time. It’s trickier to roll for style, though.

What should dictate style? I’ve started thinking about these things, TS3-wise:

• Traits - obvious things, like an evil Sim will wear black, or an outdoorsy sim will wear shorts and skimpy clothes to soak up that sun. Slobs won’t really care what they look like, etc.
• Interests - rather more abstract. I actually looked at Interests for inspiration in TS2 quite often.
• Fashionable friends - Sims will copy the style of their best friends if they are popular. (Here’s my hoping that Sims 3 socialising will be more clique-y like real life, so we can have real social groups. It was always a bit more detached in TS2)

One thing I started to randomize in TS2 was baldness and glasses. A nice touch of realism. Basically at each male Sim’s age transition (or when I get around to playing them) I would roll for baldness. The older they are, the more likely they are to go bald. Same for glasses.

The fun part is deciding how they will cope with their baldness. Some might shave their heads. Others may wear hats. Some might choose the combover! Again, this is based on their pre-existing fashion tendencies and what I think would suit them. Similarly for glasses, choosing the type of glasses they wear is based on their personality and fashion ‘set’.

• Inconsistent world style. Especially careers. There is a definite shift towards ‘realism’ in the presentation, yet TS3′s writing still sticks to the far-out whimsical style of TS2 when you can become the World Leader of a town with a population under 100.
• In game advertising. Especially having to pay for it. Take a hint, game companies – gamers (well, PC gamers I’d like to think) don’t like to see advertising except in certain contexts (e.g. sports games). They’ll respect it less if all it does is add to the game company’s revenue, not drop the price meaningfully for consumers or provide some tangible benefit. Example: they could give discount codes for the Store to players that leave ads on. Reward people!
• The missing features. Not just pets and weather. Specifically: guitarist-ism. EA, please think of the pianists, the drummers, and most importantly the BASSISTS. And give brass and woodwinds some love too.
• Four month delay, and they STILL wait to release the neighborhood editor? Come on it can’t be that hard to do in that time.
• Crappy textures and copied stuff. Yes, it’s meant to be a low-spec game, but not everyone appreciates “gameplay > graphics”. I do, naturally. I actually like that TS3 sticks close to the graphic style of its predecessor, but some screenshots and videos show outright duplicates of objects and animations. Don’t make TS3 “53% new game.”
• Lack of custom content. EA’s the type of company to whom ‘modding’ is a foreign concept. More advanced creators will undoubtedly be frustrated from the lack of concern.
• The dodgy save system. On a PC game this is inexcusable. Limiting save numbers and tying them to a single family seems like a recipe for fiery-ball descruction.

Really, PC developers should not overlook a good save system. Don’t use a limited list, use the file system. Let players organise their saves into subfolders. Do it automatically, and let the player define rules (like email clients). Give save files meaningful, renamable names. If the game has quicksave/autosave, I really mean this, ROTATE THE SAVES. It’s not that hard.

Gradual aging is one of those “OMG wishlist features” that gets brought up a lot. I personally like life stages. It fits in well with my idea of ‘Simminess’; the fact that Sims are distinctly not human, but only resemble them in the entertaining ways.

But on the topic of gradual aging, I’m going to use my soapbox here and spell out exactly why gradual aging (GA) sucks.

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One of the ‘traditional’ additions of Sims expansion packs is exciting new methods of death, with a corresponding shiny new ghost colour. But ever noticed that the death-types added in the TS2 expansion packs practically never happen unless you play to that end! It’s a conscious design decision by EA to NOT have Sims die in hilarious ways in the course of normal gameplay.

I’m definitely in the minority here, as a player who doesn’t actively ‘play to kill’, but I do wish that random death would occur, you know, autonomously. It’s the natural consequence of story progression. Would it kill EA to occassionally have an adult Sim die of some accidental cause offscreen?