Recently I reinstalled the Sims 2 after re-acquiring a copy. I really enjoyed the Sims 2 back when I was a teenager and found Sims 3 to be horrendously disappointing to the point where I departed from the series. I reinstalled it expecting to maybe have a night or two of fun, but I was sure it was only as fun as it was back when I was a teen because I was a bored teenager trapped at home with nothing better to do.

Well, I was wrong. It was kind of disheartening and shocking to see how much more I liked the game as opposed to Sims 3. The game just felt more well-made, more expansive (the neighborhood size is limitless (literally) with Open for Business or Nightlife installed) and more challenging and intriguing. Sims 3, I'd felt like I'd done everything worth doing within a matter of days.

Two main complaints I have specific to Sims 3 are:

1) Sims 3 makes you feel more limited to one family thanks to the story progression. I remember thinking back when I played Sims 2 that it would be cool if each family I made could age and progress on their own as I play one family, and it certainly sounded good on paper.

But....in practice, it's ultimately a pretty poor mechanic in my opinion because the game simply cannot be expected to creating interesting progression amongst NPC families. They won't marry, they won't have kids, they won't get promoted, they won't divorce, they won't do much of anything. With a few exceptions, basically any NPC families can be expected to meet "status quo," doing the EXACT same stuff day in and day out, except they age. Sure, I seem to recall a family or two set to actually give birth, and a couple having a random falling out and hating each other to the point of divorce is always possible, but since the game doesn't specifically try to do this, it's unlikely. And of course, no, they don't get promoted. So basically if you make 3 families and put them all in game, two of them will do JACK ALL for the entire duration of the third family's lifetime. Infact, the game's aging system will kill them off before you even get a chance to play with them, so what's the point in making more than one...?

The result is that basically all you do is limit yourself to ONE family instead of several, which gets very stale. Oh sure, you can turn the story progression and aging off for other families, but since the game is specifically designed towards having them on, certain problems arise when switching the active household, such as losing any aspirations or family inventory, something Sims 2 would save.

I can understand this "mistake" being made because it does sound good on paper, but it was a swing and a miss that really hurt the game, in my opinion.

2) "U buy money u giv EA moniez PLZZZZZZZZZZZZZ"

It was painfully obvious EA was using Sims 3 as a cash grab. I can't help but feel like the Sims 2 gave you a good 60 haircuts per gender in the vanilla game while Sims 3 gave you 16, BUT DON'T WORRY WE HAVE 24 NIFTY HAIRCUTS YOU CAN BUY FOR $1 EACH THAT WE'VE BOTHERED TO HIGHLIGHT AND PUT AT THE TOP OF THE LIST FOR YOU!"

They would however bother to highlight that the game was "more customizable!!" by showing that each item design could be changed in 4 different ways so that you could bother to make your OWN sofa textures or OWN sofa colors. So yeah, only 3 sofas instead of 16, but you can custom spec the snot outta those three!!! Great, but I have better stuff to do than design sofas for my Sims all day. Seems like EA just passed some of their work to me, to be honest....

Gotta say, this does kinda echo an attitude I hear from Bethesda fans aswell, where we shrug of complaints by saying "we can fix it with mods though," which is just a lame excuse for the company to do less work.

And a final minor complaint is, again, and I don't own all the Sims 3 expansions (or any, for that matter lulz, not paying $40 for an expansion) so I could be wrong, but Sims 2 is more limitless in that the neighborhood borders NEVER end. You can keep adding sub-neighborhoods on that function EXACTLY the same as the main one if you so choose to utilize it as one, the result being you could make a city if you like. But Sims 3 had borders and a limit. It stops at the borders of the main neighborhood.

And then there's one last complaint which is the reason I'm bothering to write this and share this. It's one that I think all of us can agree with....except game developers for some reason, which is rather unfortunate.

It's this damned philosophy of not allowing the player to fail. The player MUST succeed and the player MUST feel important at all times, to the point where gameplay often becomes largely trivial and there's nothing, and I mean NOTHING, worth accomplishing.

In the Sims 2, if I want to make a Sim with an extensive family that also owns three businesses, doing all that before he dies of old age, that's rather difficult. Sometimes Sims get lifetime aspirations which you read and think "screw that, way too hard" and that's that. And ok, if you truly wanna succeed you can probably just spam that anti-aging stuff until you finally succeed, but if you were to put a ban on such items, then suddenly yes, achieving lifetime wishes can be quite difficult.

In the Sims 3...? You literally cannot fail. Countless hours spent making your sims study hard and keep their friendships healthy in the Sims 2 become nothing but mere "suggestions" in the Sims 3. What once were requirements for promotions are now only "extra credit;" your sim WILL become president of the universe some day even if he has no skills whatsoever and only goes to work every other day, as long as he goes to work in a good mood. For as annoying as the relationship requirements could get for some of the more people-friendly jobs, at least they provided some sense of challenge; Sims 3 has none of this, to the point where promotions are simply handed out like candy...What's more, while Sims 2 featured both aspirations and fears, with aspiration successes making your sim happier to an extent that they can actually bypass mood obstacles that would normally obstruct valuable study time or the like, while fears can immediately bomb their mood to the point where you have to drop EVERYTHING and focus solely on getting their mood back up, Sims 3 cut fears out entirely, meaning you literally cannot fail. Getting your sim in a bad mood in Sims 3 is a challenge in and of itself, one that would basically REQUIRE you to sit there monitoring him and forbidding him from meeting his needs round the clock. You could literally drop a sim on an empty lot, never control him and not build a house for him and he'd probably survive by living in town alone.

The entire thing just makes the game feel so pointless. Within minutes, I've accomplished everything and there's nothing left to achieve. I just find it so odd that here I am playing two games that are more-or-less the same, and yet they couldn't feel more different in how much fun they provide me with. It speaks volumes about what challenge can do for a game; I already knew this since I tend to love New Vegas but find FO3 ok (challenge disappears after you get power armor, unfortunately, but the game is more or less still fun and decently challenging), but I find more situations of similar-games-feeling-world's-different only reinforces the argument. Some people may respond "if you're playing the Sims for a challenge then you're doing it wrong!" Well one, no, I'm not specifically expecting a challenge from it, I only expect ENOUGH challenge to keep me occupied, but 3 is devoid of -any- whatsoever. Even games like Minecraft provide some form of challenge in the form of enemies; challenge is a basic gameplay concept. And two? Two, I've heard that line before. "If you're playing Elder Scrolls for a challenge, you're doing it wrong!" I'm sick of excuses. I'm far more partial to objective arguments where if someone highlights a flaw, then only the flaw itself is discussed and debated, NOT people trying to derail the subject by highlighting other strengths. Yes of course there are other strengths, but if I tell you "Sonic '06 has abysmal gameplay" and you say "the graphics are nice tho!!" then that doesn't fix the gameplay, now does it?

I simply don't understand this. The philosophy of never allowing the player to fail is one that's http://youtu.be/gwb19cdoKOU?t=6m26s And mind you, by no means am I saying the linked video provides any "challenge" to begin with. However, perhaps it's time to take a step back when, back in the day we were hard on Resident Evil 4 for trying to provide "challenge" via quicktime events, and now we've hit a point where quicktime events aren't even quicktime events. They're....interactive cutscenes. As if having to press a button somehow makes a cutscene soooooo much more enjoyable. I cannot name a single person on these forums or any other forums who would advocate this design philosophy, and yet game developers seem to be leaning towards it and many of us often use the "if you play _____ for a challenge then you're doing it wrong" line, which again is simply not an objective argument that simply affords the devs to sidestep some criticism they deserve to get.

So tell me, am I wrong? Am I the only one who absolutely loathes this "don't let the player fail" attitude? Absolutely boggles my mind that game developers seem to think this is what people want, or that anyone COULD want this. Though then again, maybe game devs are targeting the http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NSH39aiTx2A, as if everyone else won't notice or mind...

I must be the only one that prefers the SimCity series.

But I should probably try out at least one of the Sims games.

I agree that The Sims 2 had a better difficulty curve. It feels like you had to work for your promotions, while I get promoted almost every day in The Sims 3. And it's almost impossible to die of starvation in TS3 because even when the bar is empty you have to wait for the moodlet to expire.

But even though I prefer the challenge of TS2, there are too many new features in TS3 that I love that make it hard to go back. The seamless neighborhood being the best new feature, of course.

I don't play with more than one family per world (I make a new world for each family), but if that's what you're trying to do then you should try Awesomemod. It vastly improves the story progession feature, so your inactive families don't get messed up. It also lets inactive sims gain promotions/skills/lifetime happiness on their own.

I played Sims and Sims 3, I do wish that Sims 3 was a lot more difficult, because it seems to take no effort at all to be come rich. I still prefer it for it's generational thing and the modding.

I actually like that I don't have to worry about 'everything' in The Sims 3. See, when I want to play a challenging game I go play challenging games, however when I play The Sims I want to create characters and see how their lives unfold with me tweaking their directions like a puppet master. When I have to worry about finding a job, making friends in that job, making friends outside of that job, keeping up said relationships, increasing my skills, handling the money carefully, finding a mate, getting kids, making sure they study and on and on and on the game just becomes a constant state of worry. I end up sitting there worrying about everything.

But, The Sims 3 went a bit too far with it and made it too easy, I wish it would have had a mix of S2 and S3 where it's not absurd and I actually have some damn time to spend on my Sims but also so it's not ridiculously easy to reach the last rank in a job and achieve the life goal. Both games have their problems with this. But when it comes down to it I play The Sims to play a puppet master, not so that I can worry about every little [censored] thing, The Sims 3, for all it's faults, allow me to relax and focus on the RPG elements. In The Sims 2 I remember the college edition became so boring because of its constant needs that I barely had any time for my sim's to do anything but study and fix their meters. I ended up dropping one of them out of college to become a moocher who lived off of his parents because it was far more fun.

That is not to say that The Sims 3 is better in every aspect but one good thing about it is that I can actually relax while playing it, in S2 and S1 and I feel like I always have to worry about everything.

I'm an avid Simmer (actually just downloading Sims 3 Pets right now) and though I agree with many of these points I don't find a problem with it. I don't really play the Sims for the challenge but the roleplay, starting off as a homeless orphaned teenager living in a tent of the road to building a large dynasty and doing loads of [censored] - like effectively becoming a despot over Shang Simla from World Adventures.

Try some of the Nraas mods because they are really good, especially the traveller one which effectively fixes the limited neighborhoods by allowing you to move to any other installed world but keep your relationships in the previous.

Over-all I prefer it to the Sims 2 and 1, the buy/build mode music was never as good mind, and I don't like that a lot of lots seem really empty and that it's not as easy to customise but I've never had more fun with it.

Just a personal note but I always felt that the "family friends" requirement for promotion was rather contrived and am glad it's gone.

EDIT: Personally I think it's very hard to become rich, even with the top job.

I think you and me sort of have the same opinion, except where you want a middle ground leaning towards Sims 3, I want mine leaning towards Sims 2. I could understand someone wanting things slightly easier for the sake of simply having more time to do what they wanna do, but Sims 3 is omgwtfbbq [censored] easy to the point where you're president of the world who owns every property in town and has kids and pets that are all rocket scientists and astronauts. I think a good mechanic Sims 2 had in regards to difficulty was that if you had a successful date for example, then your mood was automatically maxed out upon completion of the date. This was nice because it meant that exploring the dating scene didn't actually cut into your sim's life, since it's mood auto-maxed and time spent on community lots was NOT removed from your Sim's day time. Open For Business perhaps could've benefited from a similar mechanic (restore energy to half after you return home would probably be fair since other stats are easy to keep up during a business day) and the University life? I think they simply made University life too long. It's a fun little break from normal gameplay, but 24 game days is a bit much for doing nothing but socializing and studying. 16 or 12 would've cut it without it becoming just downright repetitive and boring.

Side note and don't know if you know, but I recently reinstalled 2 with all the expansions, and one of them adds this lifetime rewards feature that makes needs decay slower and can even make you learn skills faster. I have no idea which expansion adds that since I got them in a bundle and only got up to Seasons when I was a teen, but that could potentially be a nice little middle ground.

Don't get me wrong, I fully understand the Sims is the type of game that may attract people that just want to relax and basically write a story without problematic interruptions, but yeah, Sims 3 took it too far. I think the point they need to aim for is...if you want a Sim who's at the top of his career, it should certainly be achievable with some breathing room for other stuff, but it would need some level of focus and time. Sims 3 did the extreme and simply GAVE IT to you; I'm not exaggerating when I say increasing your skills is optional, sadly. Sims 3 is a game where, without even TRYING, your Sim can become Jesus H. Christ just because he....actually bothers to show up for work. If Sims 3 were real life, holy crap we could all skip out on work four out of five days of the week and still get a promotion every 2nd week. Good game design, to me, is when everything holds value and purpose, and skills drastically lost purpose in Sims 3. As did friendships. And hell, mood. You'd need an abysmal mood to actually manage to be fired or interrupt your day.

And part of this is more a general statement about the trend of gaming where failing is becoming harder to do than succeeding. Again, no exaggeration, it would be more difficult to fail than to succeed in the Sims 3.

Another example of where I sorta agree and would want a compromise. Some of them got ridiculous and needed friends to the point where the career ate your life cause you'd be calling friends over every day after work to maintain a relationship with them, but needing 5-6 for the top position? That I find doable and reasonable. 16? Screw that, but 5-6 for the 6-10 positions I find reasonable.

I disagree, with the typical lifespan of the Sims I don't think children and maybe even teens have enough time to be fully explored and have fun with and I certainly am never rich even as a Power-Broker.

I agree on University mind-you, it takes a damn long time and get's really boring - whether you talking about Sims 2 or Sims 3.

Also it's OPen for Business which adds the need decay slower "perk" things.

I do agree that the Sims 3 is way to easy mind, how you can even get fired or die is beyond me.

Kids and teen lifespans weren't really what I was talking about, nor do I really have opinions on them. I think that'd be difficult to discuss cause while you may prefer teens and kids living longer before aging up, another person may want them shorter. For me kids felt a little fast while teen is just right; perhaps the same lifespan for both would work, but hey one thing Sims 3 did right is it lets you customize their lifespans.

But how you don't manage to be rich? Man that's beyond me. I was rich in a matter of moments with Sims 3...Annoys the crap out of me.

I guess in the same light that Gabe wants to roleplay his sims, no, I do NOT desire to roleplay rich sims exclusively. Being rich, famous and powerful gets damned boring, and it's frustrating as hell that even when I ATTEMPT to be mediocre or sub-par in Sims 3, it's literally a challenge that involves me playing in ways I wouldn't want to. That's sort of the key: afford difficulty leniency to a degree where people have enough time to play as they like, but don't be so lenient that failure is impossible or exceedingly difficult, because believe it or not, roleplaying a super-mega-ultra-town where all the world's astronauts, rocket scientists and presidents live is pretty lame.

And yeah, again, was also sort of a general comment on gaming as a whole becoming increasingly easier. Something I'm not particularly fond of.

How do you manage to get so rich? Like 100k on a car, a 200k house? I've never earned that much simoleons without [censored] the World Adventures to sell expensive artifacts and such. I personally like to roleplay a dynasty of really powerful sims so it works for me, conquering neighborhoods and so-on. It's pretty fun IMO, especially cause it takes a generations cause I don't have your magic money generator.

And yeah I've increased both on mine, at-least children are prohibited from learning too many skills so they aren't uber-geniuses by teenage years.

Maybe that's the challenge, being upper-lower class .

I still play Sims 1. Aside from being challenging and that whole "no dying of old age" thing, it also had some nice DLC, like Command and Conquer skins.

The reason behind that development philosophy to not let the player fail it's pretty straightforward, especially with Sims, which has a well-earned place in the Casual' Pantheon.

As for the other issues brought up in the text, I can only agree. Sims 2 was a major improvement over the first part, while 3 merely an adjustment to officially turn the series to a cash cow. From what I see, the Sims 4 won't be different either...

Oh, yes. That was a game-breaking issue for me back in the day, which is funny, because I wanted to return to the original Sims to play as a poor family with a tons of kids, and found the second part too easy to this. And that was before Sims 3.

I only have Sims 3 base, so no expansions whatsoever. I was making a legacy family who were going from rags to riches. After two generations they were practically millionaires, and I had to keep sabotaging them with crappy traits and random deaths to keep them challenging.

I had another family who lived in the worst shack I could build, five of them to one room, only three beds, and the only bath sitting right there in the living room. They were still comfortably well off from the one guy's part time burger job and the massive profits from the mother's apple orchard and fishing hobbies.

I think the biggest thing from the older games was the way the needs bars would deplete so rapidly. Energy and comfort were important, and you couldn't just go from a workout to work without a rest. Food did not always fill up the meter, and neither did low quality beds or baths.

If the garden was too dirty or bare, your room meter would plummet every time they went out to the carpool, ruining any chance of promotion. Just avoiding getting demoted could be a challenge, and being able to sink 1000 on a new TV was a rarity only an option halfway through your career path.

I guess it's just a compromise between how gamey or how sandboxy you like the game to be. I do like the wider freedoms of sims 3, but damn, sometimes it would be nice to feel like the effort is necessary.

I dunno; while I agree that Sims 3 "streamlined" some things a bit too much, particularly career progression, I preferred its overall vibe to Sims 2, at least once I felt I'd had a chance to get used to it. The main thing for me is that Sims 2 just felt a bit too hemmed-in: I guess the open world of Sims 3 counts for a lot in terms of what I get out of it. Even in Sims, I guess I just like to explore and nose around.

Well let me put it this way cause I feel that somehow misses the issue and focuses on another: if you could have the open-world aspects of Sims 3 along with the general difficulty curve and mechanics of Sims 2, would you take it?

I won't lie, the open world of Sims 3 is kinda hard to let go of after having it, but when the core difficulty and mechanics are so lackluster, it's not enough for me to want to stay.

I played Sims 1, 2 and then 3. I think 2 was the best and I agree with OP on most points. The thing that killed the Sims 3 for me was....

*The rabbit holes. Send your sim into a restaurant and get told they have eaten, same for almost everything in the town. You can't enter shops, or theaters, or restaurants or hospitals. The town isn't open and free, the streets and your house is. I would have happily traded that stupid feature with all it's rabbit holes for loading screens and actual usable community lots like in Sims 2. Sims 3 just always felt incomplete.

*Most of the stuff was ported from Sims 2, that was obvious. Sims 3 was really lazily made, or so it appears.

*The sims are fugly. No matter what I cannot make an attractive sim in sims 3.

*Then came the holiday expansion, where you can't even stay in a hotel, instead it is just like home where you have to cook for yourself etc. (the thing I loved about the Sims 2 was staying in posh hotels for vacation and my sim being pampered with room service and swish restaurants etc)

*The expansions were lame, with the exception of the business one. I did like the interior decorating career. That stupid Freestyle one or whatever it was called....seriously!? The last one I bought was the pets one and by that time I was so fed up that it is still sitting unopened in my drawer, since October 2011.

*Players are nickeled and dimed for content that should have been in the game. That stupid, over priced, ripoff online store!

I am not going to buy the Sims 4 unless I hear that it is something new and spectacular and not just a rip off.