1. The cover

While it might be entertaining looking at all those little simmy icons while you are holding it in your hands, it still just doesn’t make a damn good impression. I think something like a game cover should be distinct and presentable even when downsized to a tiny avatar size image or when looked at from the distance. And it just looks way to cluttered and doesnt have this ‘Bang!’ feeling to it. Although, taking that into account, it does suit the game well..

.

2. The fact that they don’t look like this

haha this is a render of a poser model, well i don’t really expect sims to look like that. I’m fine with level of detail they have.. it’s just I have had a hard time creating a nice looking sim, and looks like its not just me who had the same problem. Their faces could use more angles..and less fat:P
I did see actual beautiful sims made by the game in my neighborhood, so I didnt lose all my hope yet, just still all sims use the same skintone texture, therefore, end up looking like members of one big family. Hate that.

3. Custom content now being a taboo
This one I’m frustrated about the most
Instead of making it even easier for us to mod, they take away the option completely. I could swear i would have quit sims 2 after a month of playing if it wasnt for custom cotent, as it managed to keep my interest alive. Stuff in ea store sucks anyways, I pay for content only if i feel it’s worth it, and it so doesnt. so that lets monopolize the custom content creation move was just moronic
Yeah everyone says modders will get to it and there will be some tools to make the game look what we want. Basically, I dont think there will be ‘userfriendly’ tools any time soon. And your average texturer won’t wanna bother with tutorials, dowloading 10 applications or plugins and going through complicated series of steps to import it back. You just want to create your texture and single-click import it and have fun, pretty much like bodyshop did it. So i’m guessing there will be less quality CC because of it, but I hope I’m wrong

4. Game Content
Too little stuff..and too crappy stuff. but ppl are bitching about it all over the net,so no point in another ea is just trying to rip us all off speech

5. Rabbit hole buildings
yea..talk about realism..

6. No new stuff for moviemakers

except camera pans being more smooth and camera tilts.. wow that means revolution…
You even can no longer edit cam parameters in a txt file. [Edit: ok, you can it just can be found elsewhere...]
i really expected at least some new tools, as sims 2 machinima got really popular and could be good (and free) advertising to the game
instead, the game is even less controllable, custom content is under a question mark.. no control of the time of the day and townies. Great job, EA

7. Whatever happened to boolprop

if you look into the boolprop history, it wasn’t commonly known at first, it was an actual debugging tool used by game devs, thats why there were a ton of weird options and no one even knew what those were for.
now of course that we ‘know’, they took them all away
you cant even delete a sim wont even mention spawning an object similar to pauls reaction tester and all other stuff which made moviemaking at least a bit easier

Edit: ok I was sorta right lol you can activate the ‘new’ boolprop and lots of other stuff here:
http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,15185.0.html

8. Despite all the promises, the social aspect of the game still lacks alot

i thought the main focus of the game would shift from fulfilling sims needs to making sims social lives more fun and human-like. well i dont see too much changes in their social behaviour. 80% of social interactions are recycled, hardly anything changed really

9. And yes, gotta love recycling

alot of meshes and animations are same as in sims 2, so it just automatically loses its freshness.. and gets you bored more quickly as you already have ’seen it all’

10. All the stuff that was present in base sims 2, but missing in sims 3

starting with wedding arch and ending with aliens
the list is very very long

and okay not to sound like a complete buzzkill…

10 Things I love about Sims 3

1. Sunset Valley
the scenery, landscape.. just the way the town looks.
that’s the only thing that wows me about this game, it feels like this is the only aspect which was actually taken to another level

2. Traits & moodlets
when i started playing I didn’t pay much attention to those.. i thought like so what, its alot like personalities in Sims2.. in fact traits are much more elaborate.. if you observe them more closely.. you’ll notice how each trait has a set of special animations or interactions..like clumsy sims would be tripping over things all the time. I had a clumsy girl propose and she almost dropped the box with the ring. Thought it was so cute lol

3. Design a style tool
changing colors/pattern sometimes can bring even most hideous clothing meshes to life. Too bad there is no patternmaker tho

4. Performance
Comparing to Sims 2, performance/game load improved, no annoying loading screens!

5. Story progression..
Adds up alot to the gameplay, its one of my favorite new things in the game as it’s nice to have a ‘real family’ who ages along with you, you can visit them and see what they are up to, you can stalk your neighbors too.. (although whenever I did it, they just were standing there.. i know this was made to save up the system resources.. but still.. the game knows when i’m trying to look into the house, it could just make them do something lol

6. Cementary & ghosts
lol i just like it there lol plus ghosts are more fun as you can interact with them, or even control them(which hasnt hapened to me yet)

7. Careers
are a bit more fun and not just a ‘label’ type thing anymore.. as you get the opportunities assignments which are somewhat like quests.. but i wish they required at least a little bit of thinking lol
also creative freelance jobs can actually be profitable.. love that too

8. Gradually changing lighting
self explanatory

9. All the small things
the ambrosia salad, $3000 worth of plutonium found in neighbors trash, steal candy from a baby interaction.. there are a ton of little touches that are not so in your face and you discover them only when playing

10. It’s not sims 2
since ive developed an allergy to sims 2 by now, i much prefer to play sims 3.. even with all its flaws:P

so.. my marketing advice for ea would be

scrap sims 3 release sims 4 in one year lol OR
release a set of tools which will make sims 3 fully customizable

because despite the positive reviews from the ‘critics’, the customers are generally unhappy [link]

Otherwise Sims 3 is a major letdown…not saying its worthless or a waste of time, no, its improvement over sims 2.. just it’s not enough. the main purpose behind this game was to make the majority of sims fans say omg sims 2 totally blows comparing to this one, i’m swtching to the sime 3! and i could see alot of ppl sticking with sims 2 for now.. as basically sims 2 with the best CC on them beats the raw sims 3..at least in some ways

now as for me..
I’ve played it for quite a bit, but then decided to wait till there are at least some new hairs and decent skintones are made..because playing without cc… takes away too much fun for me.
As for the moviemaking, to be honest i didn’t get this omg i gotta make a movie with this, as moviemaking-wise it’s same as the old sims 2 which is imo not moviemaker friendly at all.. So this will surely take some time till some hacks/tools are developed… I’ve made Helena 2 years after sims was released, there is no chance I could make this movie even a bit earlier than that.. so I guess i’m just gonna have to wait and see what modding community comes up with..

[This post will not contain any useful information. just some contemplations on the Sims 3. Guess I just needed to vent]

So.. It sure is gonna be a blast to play.. Can’t say I’m a very demanding player, so whichever way they expand the gameplay, I think i’m gonna be happy and apart from questions like ‘what kinda machine would you need to have to handle sth like that??’, I don’t have any worries. Sims game really is what you make of it anyways.

Now when it comes to stuff like moviemaking….
The graphics.. yeah kinda disappointing.. they did improve the look of the buildings and added more polys to the sims, the gradual change of the lighting is really cool too (the sunset is awesome!), but I don’t see too much improvement on the way the objects are rendered.. It’s not ‘jawdropping’ enough and at times it does remind sims 2 alot.
And since Sims 3 is gonna be around for like 5 more years.. so just imagine how lame it’s gonna look to us in 2014!

But.. come to think of it.. if you compare sims 2 with no cc at all and sims 2 with cc you can tell theres a big difference. Hope it’s gonna be the same with the Sims3

You know what I’ve been wondering about this screenshot? the woman in red dress. Because if you look at it, the whole screen taken with smooth edges off, and her outlines seem really smooth and even if you look at the shading, it looks waaay better than comparing to the other people on the shot. (click on the image to see the full size version and you’ll see what i’m talking about) Was she one of those 3d prerendered models just edited into the image?..

It’s also been a disappointment to see that they still haven’t fired their clothing designer lol and the faces are somewhat clay looking, but whatever. Thank god at least the members of the community have some talent.
So, seeing that there are no more ugly edges on the faces, lets suppose the sim ppl will look whichever way we want. Amen.

The open neighborhood thing is sure gonna be hella fun for the game play, but I really hope you can just freeze everything and still have the full control, cuz I wouldn’t want to find my actors old and married with 5 kids while I was filming on the other set lol.

And lastly, the animation.. not much can be said about it yet.. but I duno, when you watch that ‘lil movie which came with FreeTime…  It does seem like some of the animations are gonna be recycled. And that is really creepy. Why EA just can’t change the direction in which it’s going from from dorky and funny to serious and realistic, cuz this is what ppl actually are looking for. (compare success of Helena and NANM and you’ll know I’m right )

And this is my Sims 3 wishlist [aka 'dream on'?]
haha I’m wondering how many of these will actually be in the game.

MUST haves:

- ANIMATION EDITOR!!!

- Scaling and vertical rotation of the objects, ability to raise and lower objects without having to edit the damn meshes outside the game and then wait half an hour till it reloads!

- don’t think that’ll happen, but it would be really cool if you could edit package files without having to quit the game. like you save it, click somewhere in the game ‘reload’ and it just reloads the file you just edited.

- at least 20 preset camera positions. Would be cool to have them show up on the screen and name them too.

- key frame based camera control and easier config

- ability to modify the lighting through USERFRIENDLY interface

- save game ‘lite’ option. tell the game to memorize positions and actions of the Sims. basically the same thing like saving the game, but without having to reload the lot (or w/e that will be in sims3)

- it would be nice to set up multiple cameras and tell the game to record from various angles simultaneously

- ability to change the color of the objects in game (I’m SO glad it’s actually gonna be there)

- at least some basic mesh editor
………………………………

Personal wants:

- decent singing and rocking out animations
- Acoustic guitar and I want to be playing guitar in different poses
(sitting, standing.. (damn i just thought of sth!)
 here!
 
well.. it’s better than nothing? :P

Okay back to the list:

- Public transport
- living in apartments
- gradually growing hair? :P
- there will be weather, right?
- Better romantic interactions
- more violence, diseases, wounds, bone fractures, traumas all that fancy stuff
- Skateboards!
- Cars with the option to drive anywhere on the lot
- Wind!
- it would be cool if there was some sims 2 sims importer. you know just stuff like general features like name and family tree.. I’ve been playing my family for years it would be cool to still have some of the sims in sims3.. but I would definitely survive without it.

And lots more I could go on and on. Anyways,  you know, now I have a feeling that the game I was looking forward to all this time was in fact Sims 4… damn.