1. The fact that there is nothing cool to do at a beach. Literally nothing. There is nothing you can do at a beach that you can't do at a park.

2. The fact that you get bludgeoned over the head with new features. Vampires? Awesome, but now there are too many. Memories? Awesome, but prepare to be bombarded with memory spam about that meal you just cooked. Celebrities? Awesome, but it's far too easy to inadvertently become a celebrity, and if you don't have something like the Master Controller, then it renders one of your previous expansion packs (WA to be exact) nearly unplayable. A level 3 visa sim has to make a lot of friends, and explore a lot of tombs. Celebrities and tombs just don't mix.

All in all, my biggest complaint is that they made the game too nice. I miss a lot of the random chaos from the previous two iterations. It feels either missing, or dumbed down.

Meteors? Never seen one. Never happened to me.
Mummy's Curse? I used to be terrified for my little sim's life when a mummy woke up. I had all my back-up plans secure in the event that I did get cursed, but silly me, that hardly ever happens. I had nothing to worry about. I don't think I should have to purposely stick a sim with no athletic skill and no martial arts skill in a room fulla mummies just to experience getting cursed.
I want there to be a chance that my male sims will be impregnated when they use the telescope.
I miss the phone calls in the middle of the night with ominous messages.
I miss the waking up in the middle of the night with terrifying sounds playing, but have there be nothing there.
(The previous two made my little child mind so paranoid that there were several times I just had to stop playing.)
I miss the purple genie who randomly decided my house wasn't on fire enough.

This game is just too nice. I want all the chaos again.

I hate how it lags on my laptop with hardly any CC.....Our desktop died and we can't replace it now, so I am forced to play on the laptop. The machine is only a year old but it's not a gaming computer (as if) so I have to just sit wait forever for loading and playing. The hour or two of free time I have results in only a few minutes of real play time...

This is frustrating!!

What I mainly find annoying:

Lag. Despite having a new graphics card that improves on Rollercoaster Tycoon 3's lag really well, it honestly hasn't done much for the lag on the Sims 3. I mean sure, the graphics are nicer (some of the shots I have seen as I played the game were incredibly realistic), but the game still lags a hell of a lot. Why? I know we are running a kind of 'world' now, but still it really takes the fun out of it when it takes so long for the objects to load and the animation to run smoothly. I couldn't say how to improve on the lag as I have no idea how to produce a game, so forgive me if I sound ignorant.

Rabbit Holes. It's been mentioned a hell of a lot, but it really does take away the 'feel' of the game. In The Sims 1 and 2 you could create and visit the restaurants and actually go inside them, but now you just wait for your Sim to reappear from the 'secret building'. It takes a lot of the fun and creativity out of the game. In the Sims 2 I liked being able to create a restaurant themed as a castle or whatever, but now that creative part of the game has gone, leaving a large chunk missing in the game. I don't want to sound rude in saying this, but I feel that EA just got really lazy with this. It's like the heart of the games have gone, and now all that matters is the money. Of course money has always been the big thing (lolloadsofexpansionpacks), but now it's worse. Maybe they were just lacking the motivation or ideas or something?

Robotic Sims. Like others have mentioned, the Sims actions get repetitive and Sims are rather 'robotic'. They always socialise the same way, with the same repeated Simmish and actions. I know it would take a long time to animate a lot of socialising actions, but if realism is what people want then maybe we do need a lot more varied actions and sounds. It also makes them feel so... fake? Like a robot being told to do something without really 'feeling' it when they do it. In the Sims 2, the Sims felt like people; they felt like humans with emotions and love for things, but now they seem as if they have just been programmed to do what they do. To me the Sims in the Sims 3 feel rather flat, or 'empty'.

I did kind of repeat what others have said there, but I just felt the need to contribute to this thread Lol.

This is actually PC dependent. If you're using a high end PC with fast processor, enough RAM and best graphic card, its hardly laggy.

Minimum requirement are what needed to run the game, but that doesnt guarantee best performance.

I couldn't have agreed more. You took the words right out of my heart.

Sims 3 sounded so exciting. There were so many traits. So many different personalities possible. A promise for so much variety and 'endless possibilities' like Ben Bell had said.

But this one thing, changes the whole situation.

Emotions are what make a human being and therefore taking away emotions it is not possible to properly simulate human beings or make a life simulation.

Yeah, it's like there is a disconnect between the sims as well as between the sims and their environment. Not fun!

Just because your GPU can play RC3 doesn't mean it can play TS3. My on board graphics chip plays RC3 at max settings, it struggles with TS3. By contrast my graphics card plays both fine. RC3 is over 7 years old, it's hardly a decent judge of ones graphical capabilities, especially when compared to a game from 2009.

True, very true. But RCT3 uses a different coding system (so I have heard) that makes the game lag more or something? I have no clue how to program games, so I can't say XD

The car animation and Sims being dumber then in TS2

Same. The problems I have with the game are the fact that the load game times are at least a minute (which is acceptable, I'm just impatient as hell), and that they took away some of the interactions we had before. In many ways gameplay wise, I feel that the Sims 2 was much better, but cosmetically, and also in terms of some other gameplay, I like TS3 more. Currently I still favor TS2 overall though, simply because it felt like it had brought much more to the table in four or five EP's than TS3 has so far.

I mean, by now we were able to bring sims to college (love or hate it, I actually enjoyed it), we could start our own business and customize already existing ones, plus we could actually go inside of the businesses we customized. With TS3 the rabbit holes almost ruin the game for me. It dumbed down the gameplay so much IMO, that it makes me want to just go back to TS2, sure there were some load times, but I would rather live with that than have almost nothing to do in terms of out of house activities.

And finally, the fact that there are no animations for sims to get in/out of cars, no listening to car radios and things of that nature, why even remove those? I've seen plenty of recycled animations in TS3 that are almost certainly from TS2, so why in HELL couldn't someone at EA get some animations for getting in/out of cars in there? Even if it was lazily copied and pasted from TS2, it would have been much better than nothing (that is as long as it worked right).

Don't get me wrong; I like TS3, but with all of these down sides, and the amount of work I've had to go through with seemingly every new EP, I cant say I favor it over TS2 yet.

Yeah, now that someone has mentioned this, there is a rather odd disconnect emotionally with the sims in TS3... I never actually noticed that as well before, but I did know something seemed off. I guess that's it.

I think it's just like the Sims in the Sims 3 are in their own little world, like all they focus on is following a command like a robot. In the Sims 2 they were much more human, they would walk up to each other and talk, and we would feel like they connected with the relationship system that was in the game. But in the Sims 3 when people interact with each other it just feels so forced and emotionless. I can't really pinpoint what makes it that way, but I know something is definitely wrong.

I think that rabbit holes are okay, but I wish there were more options for users to make their own non-rabbit hole community lots for those who don't like rabbit holes.

Lack of llamas. The only thing Sims 3 was missing >.<

I hate the way you cant actually go INSIDE some community lots.

The concept behind the trait system is wonderful, but the implementation and execution of it wasn't so spectacular...

Not forgetting the fact that Sims have the memory of a goldfish.
I could have two sims get into a very heated argument and 2 seconds later they start to chat with one another as if nothing has happened.
Its almost as if you can see each Sim bounded by a very basic algothrim of "if XXX condition is fulfilled, execute YYY action or else... "

Exactly. Like I was saying, it's like they're programmed to do it without even feeling it. A normal person doesn't slap someone in the face and then compliment them on how they like their new car, you slap them in the face and walk away from them because you don't want to speak to them any more. On the Sims 3 though your Sims will just, like you said, forget it happened or something.

Sim 1: -Slap-

Sim 2: Hey, what did you do that for?!

Sim 1: Because... I don't know. Hey I like your car!

Sim 2: Oh thanks!

With the traits thing I think the problem is their personalities aren't shown enough. Neurotic Sims hardly ever look anxious! They walk and drive like a normal person, and the only time they worry is when they are afraid their sink will break or something. WTH? I'm a neurotic person, and I worry about most things like going out and seeing friends even. Why don't they worry about that? They aren't really changed when they are neurotic, just given the option to freak out sometimes and to be worried about a couple of little things. Maybe I haven't seen it in action enough, or maybe that is all that is really changed with that trait.
It's the same with other ones too. I do love the trait system, I really do, it was a nice idea to be implemented in the game, but like aurica said, it wasn't executed well. But maybe I haven't tried them out enough (I have yet to use them all), but from what I have seen it doesn't work like I thought it would have.

I feel like such a complainer and a downer, sorry Lol. I think I'm ranting without realising it

A lot of their emotions and trait charcteristics are, in fact, textual, so it's no wonder that they don't show much. We no longer get cute interractions but instead have statistics, either in the form of interraction description (evil bath), or moodlets (sugar rush, hunger, or sleep), or just plain text (Sim is bored). Also, when they are in public, their favourite group activity is now reading instead of kicky ball.

While the statistics can be funny, it just kind of leaves you to imagine it. But I don't really want to imagine how my Sim feels, I want to see him expressing how he feels, you know?

I will add the Bloom effect to my list of disliked things about TS3. A Grey table is now White! A Black table is now Grey! A Sim or object which is placed under a ceiling light or near a window suddenly becomes burn-my-eyes-until-they-bleed bright! Not to mention the decrease in performance that this bloom effect creates. It's a shame that modern games rely on this bloom effect to achieve nicer visual qualities. It is also a shame that (without using hacks) there is no way to actually turn this bloom effect off.

^ I do find lighting can really effect how a game looks. Sometimes it can really help enhance the look of the whole game, but constant in-your-face lighting does get annoying.

Well, for one thing, it's not as sexual as the Sims 2. I have the Sims 3, but after a while it's just boring. In the Sims 2 it's cool because they have a Special Event camera so they have cute little scenes when your sim has it's first kiss, get's married, gives birth, or "Woohoo"s in bed. Also, on The Sims 3, the make-out on the couch is just plain boring. It's funny to watch them make-out on the couch in Sims 2. And on Sims 3 there is no body shop. I like making my own clothes! I have so many Projects on the Sims 2. It's so much fun! The other thing is that every time your sim does something on The Sims 3, it comes up as a stupid memory. They're so retarded! LITERALLY EVERYTHING YOUR SIM DOES IS PHOTOGRAPHED WITH A CAPTION. I don't care if my sim cooked a meal! Jeez!

There's a lot that I don't like about the sims 3. Particularly the baby thing that everybody keeps bringing up. I also don't like how no matter where my sims go, even if it's super close - walking distance, they'll call a cab/take their car to that destination.

I miss seasons the most. It's not the same when everything looks the same. No rain, no wind, nothing. Just night and day. YAWN!

I guess the worst thing for me - right now - would be the way they handle diaper changing and all that. I've only recently had a toddler Sim (yes, I know, I haven't played it as much as most people here :P) and to give the changing sequence a semblance of realism (since the animation only involves a little "twirling cloud" around the area), I decided the tot should be clad in nothing but a diaper from the waist down. (She could wear shoes, of course, and I had her in a full dress for formal (as a diaper-only lower section seemed inappropriate for a formal occasion, but I can just pretend her skirt's lifted for changing. ) Consequently, when it was time to potty train her, I bought a bathtub (presuming bathing would replace changing as the main way to address her hygenic concerns) and contemplated what outfits she'd wear in her post-diaper toddling days.

Then I have her mom hold her but - when I clicked on the bathtub, no tot-specific options came up. "Disposed her last diaper?" Hardly. Even after mastering the porcelain throne, the game's oversimplified way of dealing with toddlers means they'll only graduate to "Big Kid" pants once they actually age to the Child age itself...

(Also, in TS2 you could only change a baby/tot if they actually did something in their diaper. What hygenic value could there be for exchanging one clean diaper for another?)

Sorry about the long spiel. It's just something I didn't even realize until I got around to playing with a family that had a baby/tot in it. Anyone up for making a "toddler bathing" mod?

I can't recall any bugs from when I had just the base game, but then there were the patches, the stuff packs, and the expansion packs. And then there were the bugs they introduced. The bugs, man. Invisible sims, broken inventories, disappearing UI, sims suddenly changing nationality after a vacation, abrupt cancellations of interactions, abandoned cars, memory spam, missing shopkeepers, and of course, the constantly freezing sims.

Enter cheat input mode, resetsim, send sim back to work, sim freezes again. Then it repeats, except now it's not just your sim, but more than half the town, and also resetting your sims doesn't work anymore. WHY EA WHY. Do the releases ever get debugged, at all? It's to the point where I play The Sims 1 and 2 more often now. Thinking about it, I can't recall every encountering any bugs in The Sims 1, and the only thing I can recall for The Sims 2 is animation clipping. Yes, it's still ugly, it's still a bug, but at the very least it doesn't break the game. Freezing sims and disappearing UI making it impossible to save break the game.

I got Generations. I installed it. It destroyed the photographs of my sims, rendered their cameras and portolios empty and useless, somehow caused the disappearance of map icons when those affected sims were selected, and just made it impossible for sims to vacation. Set up a trip to France over my sim's cell, got into the limo', limo' started driving, then stopped and dropped my sim off at the local gymnasium. What? OK then. Set up a trip to France over my sim's laptop, got into the limo', limo started driving, then stopped and dropped my sim off just a few metres away. So not only did I end up stuck in Sunset Valley, but I was a few thousand simoleons short too. NO.

I uninstalled Generations.

I'm glad that there are mod's that can salvage the game, and that I can clear out my game caches any time I want, but it makes me angry that I even have to do these things. I'm not playing as a consumer but as a bug tester among many other bug testers who only end up ignored, our threads conveniently deleted, leaving us to pick up the pieces.

If a Sims 4 comes out, I'm not buying it. EA, you just destroyed one of my most beloved franchises.