Hi there :howdy:
I've been debating whether or not to buy TS3 for months now. After seeing some pictures, I want it more than ever. But I have a question. I know other households in the neighborhood progress while they're not being played. I do know there is a way to turn the storytelling mode off. My question is, with storytelling mode off, will time freeze in other households, like in TS2? I'm not gonna lie-I'm a control freak. I want to decide who my Sims marry, or if they get married at all, when they have children, what jobs they have, etc. I don't like the idea of them running their own lives. God knows they aren't smart enough for that.
I've looked for the answer to this question, but I haven't found anything absolute, so hopefully someone here can help me.
A couple of smaller questions, too:
1. How many playable households can there be in a neighborhood? Not taking into account computer specs of course, because I know it depends on what the computer can handle. I mean, how many will the game allow?
2. Is there weather in the game? It's not exactly a deal breaker for me if it's not, but I will definitely miss the EP elements from TS2 if they're not included in TS3 yet.

I'd really appreciate any help, as I don't want to buy the game only to completely hate it.

Well...you're going to have to let go of the control. Even with the storytelling mode off, Sims age and die. Pescado's mod is supposed to help control things a bit, but it's not like TS2.

You can play as many families in a neighborhood as you want. But as stated above when you switch they will go on without you.

And no, there isn't any weather.

Turning off storytelling mode doesn't freeze households. The sims keep going, they just don't start making babies with couches and quitting level 10 jobs for level 1 jobs. What turning off story mode mostly does is insure you have a vacant town in one generation. Even if you bounce from house to house while you are gone your other sims will be neglecting their kids and causing them to get negative traits. So no, Sims 3 is a terrible game for people that like everything a certain way.

1. You can have as many playable households as their are lots, so about 50. (not that you'd want to play those many, by the time you made it through the rotation every sim you knew a generation ago would be dead).

2. No weather yet.

There are four game settings that affect what sims can do. Story progression (which is what that toggle is called ) is just one of them.

The others are Aging, Lifespan and Free Will.

Aging controls whether sims age or not, but it affects all sims, including the ones in your active household. If you want to though, you can force the sims in the active household to age up at intervals you decide, using birthday cakes.

Lifespan determines the number of days in the sim life. You can make it as long as close to 1000 days. That gives you a lot of time to circulate to all your sims before they die. It also affects the whole town, at least theoretically, though I've seen reports that it might be buggy.

The Free Will slider is similar to Free Will in Sims 2, but since it also affects all sims in town, it's not very useful except for particular purposes like machinima.

There's no combination of settings built into the game that makes it play exactly like the Sims 2. However, there are a number of mods, some released and some in development, that give you a lot more control over what happens in the families you aren't currently playing, and at some point it may be possible to get a Sims 2 style game. Check out Pescado's Awesomemod at MATY if you're interested in one approach to some of these issues.

Free will only effects the household sims. If it effected the entire town all the characters you aren't currently playing would be frozen in their houses waiting for the next command.