Premades and Precepts

Yay me. I ninja’d a copy at 8:30 in the morning because I didn’t preorder (or rather, they delayed the preorder by a FULL DAY and it would have cost more). I wasn’t the only one buying it at that time, oddly enough, though I was the only single guy there.

I’ve been pretty busy over the past few days, while most of my free time has been taken up with playing TS3 (of course) as well as mucking around with the .packages using S3PI. Already I’ve made a few basic hacks for personal use: an aging hack to reduce the duration of Toddler- and Elder-hood, a hack to reduce the chance of genetic mutations, and a hack to stop families moving out. I don’t know what effect the last one has on long-term Story Progression though, so I’m currently testing it out.

Anyway, I won’t post my full thoughts on the game here because it would just repeat what others have said over the past two weeks. At first the game didn’t “hook” me like TS2 did, but I’m warming to it. I will make a few comments though:

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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.

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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