I found not really. Yes, they act on their own needs, but only when the bar is really into the red. So your Sim will not go to bed unless he’s really, really tired, which is usually way too late for him to get up early in the morning to accomplish anything at his job. Time management is still not something a Sim is good at.
I found that if you want you Sim to be successful, you still need to tell him when to eat, go to the loo or to bed. One thing you Sim is good at is having fun. I noticed he always started watching TV as soon as I stopped giving him orders, no matter how empty his happiness bar was.
As I said, they do this if they’re too busy with something else, just like in real life. Mine don’t have much of a problem with fulfilling a need on their own right after the first little warning icon (the one that doesn’t affect mood) pops up, unless they’re asleep or at work.
Of course, if you just want to play and not worry about any needs at all, you could enable the testing cheats. The command is almost the same as it was in Sims 2.
I knew it was a bad sign when this game quietly slipped out of EA’s corporate anus without a hint of fanfare. I knew it wouldn’t be very good, but I’m infected with the stupid virus which means I own all of the previous Sims plus most of the expansions, so I had to see this one through. And now I can confirm that it’s not very good.
At first it looked great. You can watch your sim drive around the neighborhood in his little sim car without any load times. But you can’t enter any of the locations, so what’s the point then? Drive to a theater and enjoy staring at its facade while you imagine that your sim is having more fun than you are. It’s basically like the first Sims where people disappear when they leave their house, but now you can watch them drive to their destination first. So essentially it’s been downgrading from Sims 2. I guess we need to wait for the expansion pack The Sims 3: Bursting Out.
And microtransactions. There’s a pitiful number of pre-installed hair styles. Like a dozen, no joke. You gotta buy “sim points” to download more. Nice try EA, but I think I’m done with this belabored series.
No, you don’t. EA gives you 1000 points for registering your game; enough to get you about a dozen additional hairstyles. I haven’t used even half of my grand yet.
Carnick covered the main one: being able to see and explore the entire town just by having your Sim walk out the door. No more loading screens between lots!
Signs and their associated personality traits are gone. Sims now get up to five specific traits, out of a pool of 63. The number of available traits depend on the age of the Sim; babies get two and adults can have all 5. You’re able to give created Sims any combination of traits you choose, within reason (e.g.: a Sim cannot be both Brave and a Coward). The traits babies gain as they grow older depend on their life experiences, or if your Sim is a really good parent you can select specific traits.
Comfort and Environment needs are gone. For the remaining needs, there is now specific feedback as to what and how they are being affected. There are also warning icons that pop up before any given need drops to where it will start affecting mood.
There are now a whole range of body types instead of just three. It would be nice to be able to set sizes for different body parts instead of the entire body as a whole.
For designers, there’s Create A Style. Virtually everything in the game can be given a custom color–sometimes a combination of custom colors–with the click of a button. Items such as clothing, furniture, wall and floor coverings can also be given custom patterns, with differing levels of custom colors.
It seems that, unlike the pirate version, a hard copy of Sims 3 does *not * have Securom. People are suspicious and still digging around for nefarious behavior, however.
I have enjoyed the Sims 3 so far. I do like the open neighborhood; I like seeing the job buildings even if we cannot get inside yet. The parks, etc are fun. I am not particularly bothered that a lot of buildings are rabbit holes. Furniture, hairstyles, etc, are few in number, though the create a style helps make up for this.
I have mixed feelings about the ever-changing neighbors. Sims move away. This is annoying when the sim is your friend. Fortunately having friends is not necessary for job promotion (I hated that part of Sims 2.) Getting new recipes is also annoying. You must purchase them individually (what? No cookbook collections?), and they’re only learnable by one sim, as far as I’ve been able to tell. Yuck.
I recommend it with the caveat that if you are a micromanager, if you like to play several families in the same hood, this is probably not for you.
I see! I was a multi family player in Sims 2 - I enjoyed planning out marriages and playing with genetics.
It seems you basically play the one family and everyone ages around you? You can’t have a few families that you control as yours? I like that people age/change - in theory at least - as I don’t want to play every family, but I do want to have several that are under my control.
I had been planning on playing the Goth’s, the Bachelor’s, and the Landgraab’s at least (with my token self-created family to add the pretty) ;), but it seems that it is not possible?
I had bought the game yesterday and played it for a few hours last night and came away with mixed feelings (and still confused about the other families) - though I accidently opted out of the tutorial without knowing you couldn’t go through it again.
The graphics are great! And I love sending my sim out - the open neighborhoods are fun!
I didn’t like head portraits for each Sim though. My Sim had tan skin and brown hair, but his head portrait was a ghastly, pale, blond thing. Had anyone else had this problem? He looked fine in game, it was just his portrait in which the colors were off.
You can have several families you control in the same save game–however, as soon as you switch active families, the non-active family can do whatever they want–which may not be what you want.
Say you’re playing the Goths for a little while, and you switch to playing the Bachelors. Well, the Goths can have several babies in the time you’re gone. If you’re okay with curveballs like that coming at you, then this might not bug you. If you have a specific plan for them–well. I’m okay with using one family per save game.
There’s an option to reset the tutorial, I think.
[quote[
The graphics are great! And I love sending my sim out - the open neighborhoods are fun!
I didn’t like head portraits for each Sim though. My Sim had tan skin and brown hair, but his head portrait was a ghastly, pale, blond thing. Had anyone else had this problem? He looked fine in game, it was just his portrait in which the colors were off.[/QUOTE]
That’s strange. I haven’t noticed this or heard of it before. Bummer.
Thank you for the explanation! You (and the lurking I’ve been doing at Sims 3 forums) have helped quite a lot!
I think I’m going to keep plucking away at my Sim and enjoy the game as it is meant to played (though I hope I’m not the only one who occasionally misses their old families.)
I’m really enjoying the game, at least so far. I like the new personality system, the open neighborhood approach, and the automatic story progression. I’ve read on the Sims forum that you can’t turn off the auto-progression yet, so playing multiple families aren’t really possible yet, unless you don’t mind them doing stuff when you’re playing a different family.
For those of you who are seeing off colors in your portraits, is your graphics driver up to date? The only problem I’ve had so far was graphics-driver related, but updating it seemed to fix it.
I have a question. My main character so far is in the music career and has a goal to play a guitar in a park. I apparently I need to put a guitar in my inventory to do that, but I have no idea how to do that. Anyone know?
Ah, not just me then! The color issue is only the portrait (though my Sim is currently too-poor-for-lights so that could be influencing it some.) He chooses to eat sitting on the toilet too as we’ve no chair!
It’s sad, he plays his guitar all by himself through the night, and has a little ‘it’s dark!’ unhappy symbol in his mood box.
Pleonast,
Thanks! That hadn’t occurred to me, so I’ll check my graphics driver out!
