OK, so I have played sims since I was 8. I love Sims 1 and Sims 2. My issues are with Sims 3 and Sims 4. Sims 3 is a fully fleshed out game with tons to do but the performance is absolute trash and you need a ton of CC to fix it up the way you want it, and doing ANYTHING even running the game requires an excessive amount of fiddling with files for example (THIS IS NOT ASKING FOR HELP ITS A STORY) In order to run my game I had to study how to dump cashes, apply FPS loader to my ep 11 .exe file, add the Large access aware patch to that same .exe, download about 3+ utilities in order to sort cc and check for faulty update etc. And then I had to download a bunch of Nraas mods to take care of functions the game should be doesn't. SO after all that my CAW breaks when I try to edit my custom world. Sims 4 on the other hand is very young and very limited but it works without having a trillion mods and fixes and its cute and reminiscent of TS2 so I said all that to ask, is Sims 3 worth all the stuff you have to do to/with it? And does Sims 4 have enough content for me to dig my teeth into it yet. Plus I heard a rumor that Sims 4 has some sort of membership/subscription thing going now which makes me wonder if it is smart for me to get into it if EA is going to rip my heart out by making it a subscription game or something. But I wanted to ask what you all thought. Please forgive the length of this post and if you have any questions or thoughts along the same lines you can post them here and maybe we'll figure some stuff out. Yours truly, Emie937

Hi Emie,

TS3 is my game and, to your question, my own view is yes.

It's true that to get the experience you want from it, you may end up with a lot of mods and maybe some arcane-knowledge-via-frustrating-experience. But at this point, you have already paid most of that price. Also, because the interval between game patches/updates is now somewhere between two years and never-ever-again -- whereas MTS and NRaas are still live -- it ought to be possible to get things working and expect they'll probably stay working. So, TS3 players ought to be in a decent position to spend increasing amounts of time playing & enjoying, and decreasing amounts wrestling & cursing.

As to your point about TS3's performance, yes it's true and always was. My only answer to that is that computer power per dollar only ever gets better as time goes on. So, with luck and if you're willing to play a six-year-old game on a newer-than-that PC, or take some of your game money and instead gussy up your RAM or whatever the bottleneck is -- then the game could get a lot faster than it was before, even if still slow when compared with other games running on the same upgraded hardware.

Hi Emie,

I play all four Sims games.

I hear what you are saying about needing to tweek and twerk your files and computer in order to make Sims 3 playable. Between Sims 2 and Sims 3, I fall far heavier on the side of Sims 2, but I still enjoy Sims 3 from time to time, enough that it's worth it for me to work at the files and install a few important mods to make the game somewhat playable :P. The base game by itself doesn't really draw me enough, but a few of the expansions together have rounded it out to the type of game I can sink my teeth into. I especially appreciate Generations, University, and Island Paradise. Of those, Island Paradise brings some of the worse routing issues, but there's always NRASS mods and EllaCharmed's re-worked worlds to fix much of that. Also, the Sims 3 players here are very helpful and can walk you through many of the issues you may face.

It's all a matter of what you enjoy. None of us can really tell you what is worth your time and energy because we can't judge the payback for you. For me, all of the games are worth it.

Sims 4 is going to a subscription? What does that mean? Would it have to do with new content? As I first stated, I play all four games. Sims 4 is getting more and more interesting with new additions to the game and some great cc available. At this point, it's not exactly the same immersive experience that the other Sims games were, but it's absorbing enough that it's the game I play 98% of the time. I've gotten into the stories of my Sims and as soon as it starts to drags, I find another story I want to tell. It was the same with the other games, too, however, so I'm not seeing a difference in that way.

Are you trying to figure out if you wanted to get or try a new game? I would suggest watching a few of Lazy Game Reviews videos to get ideas about the various games. Whether you agree with his final judgement or not, he will show you what you get with each game.

I already watch LGR and LOVE his video I watched every one of his TS3 videos twice or more. Last night was just a bit rough for me because my CAW broke and I accidentally updated my TS3 to patch 1.69 which apparently cripples CAW completely and drags your performance down my 10% and dose strange things to your game that no one knows exactly what... I will be testing the CAW thing but I am thinking of reverting to original TS2 because I just do want origin snooping around in my PC. But if I could manage to unhook TS3 from origin and still use CAW I would be very happy, although it seems like that might not be possible anymore... Why does EA even want to hook all their games into a central, MANDATORY launcher anyway? For mmorpgs I could see that but stand-alone PC games? Anyway <rant> </rant> lol. I'll figure something out. Wish me luck

I have issues with the launcher as well. You can bypass it by using the exe file. I don't remember why, the the booter file here helped me bypass it when I couldn't get the exe to run: http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/s...p?topic=15585.0

And, as I said before, the people who post in the Sims 3 section are very helpful. If you run into issues, I would go there and see who can help you.