Premades and Precepts

This is just a fun little revisit about a post I made exactly ten months ago: So, what will suck in The Sims 3? Let’s see what was fixed, what’s fixable, and what still sucks.

• 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.

Realism mods might still be thin on the ground, but for the most part few players have taken an attitude towards the unrealism being detrimental to the game. Personally, I found it was not so much the whimisical style that put me off, but the surprising lack of quality in the writing, and also the lack of attention to detail to constructing a believable, fictional world. The release of World Earth Adventures proved that I, and probably a few other players, are in the minority when it comes to caring about the fact that Sims world != real world.

• 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!

Non-issue, as TS3 shipped without ads, and it’s highly unlikely that they’ll ever be introduced in the future. I was pretty pleased they used Simlish in-world banners as replacements.

Instead EA is much more focused on advertising their own Sims store in the game, as the addition of Shop Mode last November proves. I guess they just couldn’t strike a good enough advertising deal with anyone, so they resorted to shilling their own stuff.

• 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.

Yes, think of the bass guitarists. It should have added fuel to the fire when revealed that a lot of missing features are already coded into the game (those images I put up are barely the tip of the iceberg), but most players take this in their stride.

• 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.

Ha ha. I was only beginning to get whiny about it, and seven months passed before Create-A-World was released.

• 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.”

Yup. And let’s not forget that most of TS3’s reused objects have fewer features than their TS2 counterparts did (e.g. the toddler play table).

• 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.

On this point I was wrong: there was no lack of custom content. In fact TS3 modding was quite storied. First came the advent of core modding, with the rapid rise & fall of Indie Stone and ongoing development of AwesomeMod; the subsequent boom in scripting mods and TS2 conversions; the release of more mod tools; the patch that broke .packages; the patch that broke Sims3Packs; the patch that broke both; and so on.

• 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 …
• There was no save limit, but certainly more than a fair share of fiery ball destruction with Error #s all around (the # depending on the patch level, or indeed any unknown factor). AwesomeMod added an autosave function.

Overall? The things I complained about were for the most part alleviated, although the release of TS3 brought many other issues to the fore. Over time, the game will mature with more mini-titles adding more gameplay, objects and features.

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’.

The  appearance of TS3 Sims seems to be a mildly controversial topic. I actually think they look kind of weird now. Especially the children. But I can see why they changed their aesthetic – it makes it easier to make Sims resembling real-life people. Particularly, the fact that you can make Sims with wider heads makes up for their “Sims of the Corn” appearance.

I think it’s partially because we haven’t seen them moving very much. TS2 Sims always had an undercurrent of activity and excitement which was only really obvious when you saw them flailing about. I know I always look awkward when frozen in pictures.

EA wants  to monetize custom content through the TS3 Store/stuff packs/expansion packs/special advertising tie-ins. Can’t blame them for milking it, they’re a corporation, and at least they’re entitled to profit from it. Doesn’t bother me too much.

The thing is, most online writers and story tellers revel in hoarding CC. I’m not saying that’s bad, but I like sticking to the vanilla stuff, and excessive custom content often puts me off.

Mainly it’s the aesthetics. I’m happy enough with making Sims look consistent with the ‘EA look’. Much CC ‘clashes’ with the vanilla content, making things too realistic, perfect or attractive. Shiny skins (I HATE SHINIES WITH A PASSION) and prom-queen/anime-vixen hairs are the prime example of this. Making everybody look beautiful doesn’t appeal to me. Probably because I’m a guy.

Which brings me to my next point. 90% of CC caters for young, hot females. A long while ago I tried to find a non-grey elder female hair (you know, dyed) and brought up nothing. OK, there’s probably an appropriate hair out there now, but I’m illustrating a point. It just doesn’t seem fair to the guys, who get stuck with boring vanilla outfits and hairstyles next to their glamorous female companions.

To a point, in my world EVERYBODY MUST BE EQUALLY BORING.