Haven’t played either game for quite some time, but I have played both quite extensively.
From a gameplay point of view, The Sims has gone the way of all EA games. Cut out more and more base content in order to fleece the player by selling it as DLC. Sims 4 launched missing a LOT of stuff that was included in the base Sims 3. Granted, they added some of it in a free patch (but only after a hell of a lot of complaints), but even so, the base game was really bare bones. As for the amount of DLC for the game… bloody ridiculous! It was given away free on the PS4 this month, and seeing the huge amount of paid addons for the game really brought it home as to how much the whole game costs. (I freely admit to having a pirated copy of Sims 4 with about 80% of the DLC on my PC - will be a cold day in hell before I give EA money again)
From a fat point of view, Sims 4 has better graphics, of course, and in general, a better way of implementing fat characters. But, and it’s a big butt (geddit?) you could have larger characters in Sims 3. Yes, Sims 4 has slider cheats to modify sizes, but they look bloody awful. Some of the Sims 3 ones were really good. I guess I just generally preferred Sims 3. It’s the one I’ve played the most, at least.
(Oh, and haven’t EA just announced a new game in the Sims Universe? Bet any money that’s the Sims 5, so should be more info on that coming soon…)
@Skinny_Guy below are a few images that I quickly found of the increased Sims 4 sizes. They don’t look too bad static, but when the’re moving… ugh. IMO at least!
Oh I didn’t mean the mod, I thought you could get your Sims 4 Sims fatter than the max CAS weight in the vanilla game if you over fed them, sorry for the confusion .
Also poor Bella Goth, her neck looks deformed in that screenshot lol
Hello first time posting here, only recently learned of Weight Gaming. I do some limited modding of Sims 3 and I’m still learning but many of the issues you bring up Expeng can be mitigated if you simply use models specifically designed for different body types. From what I’ve learned modding Sims 3 essentially all the clothing in the game uses a simple template and if you edit the template using something like Blender 7.0 or 8.0 or Milkshape 3D it’s pretty easy to create body types with the exact shape you want. The only real issue starts to come in sometimes when you want to add things like multilayered models, transparency or materials.
As far as all the Sims games go I’ve had Sims 1 waaaay back when it first came out, 2, 3, and 4, but by far the longest clocked time in 3, and frankly at least IMO I think it’s the best. Criticize the microtransactions definitely, but the nice thing about 3 is that it has the best scope. It really does feel like your playing and interacting with an entire city of people in 3 which needless to say makes things interesting at times. Only downsides I can see to Sims 3 is that there’s only a 32-bit client for Sims 3, no 64-bit client, and because of the nature in which the Expansions were done, at times it can be unstable and buggy. Usually you begin to see problems after like 240 sim days, but I also play with extreme length lifespan and I have quite a few of the mods. Generally speaking the fewer the Expansion Packs you use, and the fewer crazy mods you have the far more stable it is. I think I posted this in the wrong spot.
64-bit client was released for mac only, re; Sims 3.
The mood system of 4 is superior to 3, as is the AI. However, EA’s design priorities have more or less discarded the advantages of Sims 4 by focusing mostly on more Stuff instead of more events, opportunities, etc. And when there are storylines, they’re simple go-to-place-collect-things grind instead of something more meaningful. Hell, they’re spending more on tone-deaf marketing at the tail end of the game’s lifecycle while such challenging changes as having untextured ceilings elude them.
Remember when Maxis made fun spinoff games like Sims Medieval and (even further back) SimGolf?
The Sims Medieval is a pretty cool game, i’d honestly like to see some sims 3 weight mods applied to that game since they use the same fat system. I think I honestly just miss when the sims franchise wasn’t a huge cash grab.
Really? Never heard about that, interesting. The way others explained it to me is that since it was only 32-bit on PC it only had memory addressing up to 4096 MB of RAM, so you couldn’t have LOTS of textures like in newer games. It also meant that even if by today’s standards you have a state of the art system with like a 2080Ti it wouldn’t matter because Sims 3 would only be able to make use of so much of that memory before it wouldn’t know what to do with the rest. Do you remember SimEarth, or perhaps SimTower? My wife still has SimTower on disk I believe. Those were the good ole’ days. It would be cool if EA ever released like a remaster of some of the old Sims games designed to natively work in 64-bit environments, then that way people can use their uber much newer and better systems to play it again enhanced.
Less than that, actually. Windows 32 applications had a hard, safe limit of only 2gb of RAM at a time (there were some work-arounds that could bump it up to 3gb for a single app, but it had other drawbacks). I don’t believe Sims3 was multi-threaded well either. I know I fired the game up last year for a brief bit and it didn’t feel any faster or smoother on my computer than it did 5+ years ago when I played it last, on vastly less-advanced hardware.
Technical limits aside, I still liked Sims 3 better. Like others have said, it had a much larger scope, with an actual active city/neighborhood. Sims 4, IIRC, was more like Sims 1/2 in that anything outside of your active household might as well not exist.
With its technical problems - which weren’t just related to RAM limitations, Sims 3 was nigh unplayable even on high-end PCs if you combined mods and a full set of DLC. That problem was one of the reasons for people being annoyed at Sims 4 iirc, since EA decided to dump 3 rather than fix it.
I preferred Sims 3. S4 just feels… soulless, and of course Sims 3 wasn’t quite as much of a cash grab.
God knows what Sims 5 will be like. Loot boxes everywhere (assuming they’ve not been banned by then - fingers crossed they are!), pretty much everything beyond the most basic actions as paid DLC, etc. etc. Damn, I hate EA
Assuming EA is even around much longer, lol. I can’t remember the last time they produced a good product, they’re pretty much hated by everyone and for good reason, they’re major shareholders have been selling out, and now they’ve lost their exclusivity deal with Star Wars.
Honestly, if they don’t change their ways soon, they’ll be done.
I can definitely second this. Have quite a few of the Expansions and issues DO arise later on in the game when you play 50+ days. I’ve found no other Expansions kill Sims 3 quite like Pets and Seasons. Pets kills the game cause there are no population controls on animals, or the way population controls are implemented, they don’t work (they’re broken). Also when playing Seasons if you make it to Fall because of the dynamic defoliation (leaves falling) all the piles and layers of leaves make the game lag to the point you wanna wish for death. I would definitely recommend playing Sims 3 with NRRAS Master Controller Mod. It just lets you optimize the game more so it doesn’t choke NEARLY as bad.
Quck Edit: the game would basically choke and die cause the animals would reproduce until the game engine crashed from overpopulation.
Graphics quality I think is slightly better in Sims 4 versus Sims 3, and Sims 4 runs better, but there isn’t as much to do, relatively speaking. Sims 3 simulated the entire neighborhood, and you could explore the entire area without loading screens, but Sims 4 has only a small portion of the neighborhood running at one time (your active household IIRC)
Unfortunately all of the games are just SO grindy. Twice over the last year I’ve tried to play Sims 3 with the Gro-Virus and I just can’t play it for more than a few minutes before I’m utterly bored. I used to be able to play these games quite a bit, but not anymore.
Yeah, well, the reason why I said that I’d prefer The Sims 4 is due to the Master Controller mod of The Sims 3, where if the sliders are extended further than intended, any Sims fatter than the default maximum will not only have vector warps on their models, but if the player goes beyond the recognizable levels of fatness, the Sim will end up an ugly blob-like thing. The reason why I mentioned the consequences of Master Controller was due to a Machinima-type YouTube video based on The Sims 3 where a sort of virus takes hold of Sims, causing them to gain weight until they figuratively explode with fatness. And no, it wasn’t in Garry’s Mod, either, which uses an Inflator Tool that, while somewhat similar to the consequences of Master Controller, has an entirely different function.
This is DEFINITELY a plus in Sims 3 favor. I’ve tried playing Skyrim SE through all the way, but Bethesda keeps updating the game with the newer, better version so all my favorite mods break and I have to start all over. This can definitely be a thing, that can sour people away from certain titles…
I wish someone would happen upon the idea (and I have no idea how actually feasible or difficult this would be to do in any of these games), but actually create extra geometry on a character’s model to simulate the fatness. We have garden variety weight gain now, sure. What if as a character gained weight though the extra body weight actually had jiggle physics like say Skyrim? I think it would be cool too if it was an actual volumetric physical object, like if the person becomes soo fat they become huge, they have a hard time fitting through hallways, doors, and just navigating around. It would be funny if they actually had to ‘smoosh’ their fat to one side or up and down to squeeze through a too tight doorway lol. You could have alot of fun with /stuck machinima with that.
.
