Today marks the day where 40 lucky Sims fans will play The Sims 3 – 20 in Manchester and 20 in London. Each person will have 2 hours to play the game! Soon after the people play the game, reports will make their way across the internet. This post’s job is to collect and gather all of the information from the event!
- 5/6/09 – Added link to SimsMad question’s and answers
- 5/6/09 – Added link to article from The Sims Zone
- 5/5/09 – Added link to article from ‘The Sims Hub’
- 5/4/09 – Added information from SilentPsycho
- 5/4/09 – Added information from VampNeko
- 5/4/09 – Added information from Gothic_Girl
- 5/4/09 – Added link to Sunset Valley New’s report
- 5/4/09 – Added info on Build/Buy Mode
- 5/4/09 – Added info on Cheats and birth of baby Sims
So we didnt actually get to play the Sims 3 because of problems EA had with the disks…sigh.
However Aurora from the official UK site has been kind enough to answer the questions you all posted a few weeks ago.
Will there be mythical creatures such as vampires in the game?
There were none that I have seen so far. Screen shots were released showing Sim vampires but I think that is a look rather than an actual vampire. There are playable ghosts though.
Is there a way to stop the rest of the neighbourhood from ageing?
There is a slider in the game options to adjust the ageing. As to whether this stops the whole neighbourhood I do not know but I am not sure that it does. Some people who played said it only affected the family that was in play when you accessed the options when playing early code at least.
Is the pregnancy cycle and birth more realistic?
The pregnancy seems to be quite similar to The Sims 2. I didn’t see a birth but I didn’t hear anyone comment on anything very different either but I believe they can give birth at the hospital lot. The animations with the babies and the cribs were very similar to in The Sims 2.
Is there more age stages? or do they gradually grow?
The young adult stage is included but all others are the same and they do not age gradually, however you can adjust the length of the age stages.
just to ask will you still be able to add your own music to the game?
This I don’t know. I thought I had read that you could but I cant find that now.
and will the cheat bar be the same as it it how ?
Cheats such as motherlode still work and are accessed in the same way I assume as people found them with no problem.
I wondered if personality traits change or can be changed over time, as sims age, or by being influenced by other sims?
I don’t think they would evolve in this way but your Sims can get rewards that would allow you to change traits I hear.
oh yeah, and does someone who is “clean” go mad when a messy sim doesn’t flush the loo, or clean up their dinner plate?
They certainly do react to things depending on their traits.
As with all personalities, there are times in your life when you can change yourself. You can go from being a positive upbeat person to being depressed. So will personalities be able to change throughout the life cycle of a Sim or are you stuck with what you pick in the CAS area?They will react depending on the mood they are in as with The Sims 2 for example after a death etc.
I’m curious about the traits parents can give their little ones, so I would like to know if all the traits are available to choose for your babies, or is the list reduced just to a select few for the parents to choose from? For instance could a parent choose a musical trait and artistic for a newborn or toddler which will influence the toddler to prefer playing with toys of this nature? Also speaking of toys, will Sims 3 toddlers still get skills from using toys like they do in Sims 2″ I ask this because from my understanding the skill building system has been reworked for the Sims 3.
This is something I really have no idea on I am afraid although I do know that traits are passed down family lines and I think that mothers who are happier in pregnancy pass on better traits.
1. Is there a university which can be used in the game?
No there isnt that we saw.
2. Can you build buildings such as the hospitial?
Not at this time, no.
3. Can you dress babies?
They appear to be swaddled only.
4. Can you make you sims interact more with babies and toddlers?
The interactions are very similar as they have been in the past.
5. Is it only adult sims you can give personality traits to or all sims including toddlers? Can you choose sims interests?
You can choose their favourite colour, food and style of music. All Sims (apart from babies I think) have traits, just varying amounts.
how will personality traits effect: what job you choose, what friends/lovers you choose.
They mostly effect reactions and options in the pie menus. The traits system means that no two Sims are likely to end up the same.
1. With a whole neighborhood full of sims living and dying, wont lots/the graveyard be full of graves after a few generations? How will the game deal with that?I think you could move the urns or gravestones to the graveyard easily but I have no idea how many it could take in total.
2. Let’s say your sim moves out of his parents’ house and you start exclusively playing as him at his own house across town. Eventually one of his parents die. How will the player know? How does the sim find out? Will the sim be able to visit the grave? Where does the grave even go?
I think that the grave will still on the lot probably. I assume that a pop-up would tell you the news in this instance.
3. If your sim’s best friend gets married (on their own) is there a wedding, or do sims you don’t control just become married suddenly without notice? Also, how does the game determine who moves in with who?
I assume that a pop-up would tell this again and as for who moves in with who I have no idea. Your playable Sims can have weddings at rented lots or at home.
4. If two teen sims are a romantic couple, and one of them ages before the other, what does it say their relationship is afterward, since obviously adult-teen couples aren’t allowed?
As with TS2 I think that they would have a high relationship score but no romance indicators at that point.
5. How does the game furnish houses you don’t play as? Will your sim go to a friend’s house only to find that his friend has been living in an empty, featureless shack?
Other homes are furnished, at least they are if the are townie homes for sure, I have not seen this tested with CAS created Sims.
Hi there, i was just wondering..will my friends be able to play in my neigbourhood via the internet?
There is no online play but you will be able to use the online aspects to add content or share videos, images etc.
And will you be able to build robots?
Not that I have seen. Didn’t notice any robots I’m afraid.
This is one incredibly bold claim and with the aforementioned constraints, I was not properly able to put it to the test. I can imagine a great deal, actually, and I had a few people in mind who I would have liked to accurately render. Nevertheless, we had a few attempts with character creation. The new Create-A-Sim (CASi) is similar but superior to its TS2 predecessor, although I would have preferred to see it being closer to TS2’s Bodyshop. Nevertheless, it is clear and you cannot be mistaken about what you are doing.
You can create sims in six life stages. These are Toddler, Child, Teenager, Young Adult, Adult and Elder. The default age is Young Adult.
The skin seems less plastic than in TS2 and you are not constrained to one of four skin tones. I am pleased to note that there are sliders that allow you to tone the skin to being darker or lighter. As well as this, there are green and blue skin tones that allow you to create variant humanoids.
As time was limited, I didn’t spend a lot of time building a house (in fact I ended up placing a bed inside the open plan living room/kitchen). So I quickly threw some objects inside and started to explore the new seamless neighbourhood. First of all I wanted to visit the town’s park, so I selected the park from the Map View. The Map View can be entered by clicking on a button on the User Interface (UI) or by zooming out and clicking on the magnifying glass icon that appears. Here you can filter out different types of lots and easily zoom to different locations. Visiting a location is as easy as clicking on the appropriate icon above or by zooming in and clicking on the ground. It’s also easy to see where your Sims’ are as they have an icon on the map as well.
My Sim automatically got inside a taxi when approaching the road and the free ride took me to the park pretty quickly. Once I was there, I noticed just how realistic this game is compared to other games in the series. I saw Sims sitting on a park bench reading the newspaper, other Sims sitting on the side of the fountain reading a book, two Sims playing catch and a bunch of others playing Chess. It really does feel a lot more alive. Whilst there, I spotted Bella playing on the swings and Mrs Crumplebottom enjoying the afternoon sunshine on a bench, so that was pretty fun.
CAS
- There is a colour palette for EVERYTHING! Clothes, eyeliner, blush, eyes, hair, you name it, it’s there. I ended up with two silver haired Sims with the deepest blue eyes you have ever seen.
- You can put freckles and/or beauty marks on your Sims.
- There’s Multicoloured blush.
- Jewelry comes with the base game.
- In the hair section, the view is of the side of the face so you can see what it looks like properly.
- There are reasonable bikinis and swimming costumes! And with the colour palette, you won’t wish to gouge your eyes out anymore!
- There are three separate voices for each age group, and you can adjust the pitch to whatever you want.
- Traits are placed in five categories – Mental, Physical, Lifestyle, Social, and All.
- There are high-heeled shoes. 😛
Gameplay
The game play in this was absolutely brilliant! It was definitely my favourite part. Here’s the quick list of what I saw/learned.
- No familyfunds cheat, alas. Motherlode still works though.
- There’s no auto-load when you place a family in their first home.
- When you move to a different home, you can do it via the computer. That gives you options on who will move with you, and if you will take the furniture with you or not.
- One of the surprises happened when the person I watched entered their home for the first time and found out that her home was on an ancient burial groud, and she was asked whether she wanted to immediately get rid of the ghosts, or if she wanted to manage it. She said yes, so the lot had several ghosts in it. Later, the Repoman appeared and offered to get rid of the ghosts for her, and as she was getting bored of them she said yes. Ghostbuster Repoman to the rescue!
- SIMS CAN USE CORNER COUNTERS!
- Leftovers can be put away in the fridge.
- If you have no car but still have a drive way and a place to park, the welcome wagon arrives in a car.
- Flamingos can be included in the CAST, so we saw red flamingos.
- Most expensive car was 105,000 simoleons.
- There’s an option to sit on the edge of fountains.
- Tables and chairs are automatically locked together, so when you move the table the chairs come with it. Likewise, when you delete/sold the table, the chairs are deleted/sold too.
- There’s an extra-long dining table.
- Buy and build mose are either in the usual categories, or in a picture mode where you click on the item you want.
- Deja-vu furniture! There were several Sims 2 style furnishings that had been updated for the Sims 3.
- You can Engrave Epitaph on the graves, which allows you to write a short message.
- Video games within the game include NFL, Skate, and Need for Speed.
- There are ceilings.
- You can learn about Sims when you chat with them, e.g. traits, money level, careers, whether they are single, in a relationship, engaged, or married, etc.
- You can hold a baby and talk to others. Not sure about other actions.
- There’s a food called Goopy Carbonara. Yes, you get to eat Goopy.
- You can tell your Sims to automatically invite someone over by clicking their picture in the Relationships section.
- 3 volumes for Stereo – Low, Medium, or High.
- You can watch TV in High Definition.
- You can buy new cooking recipes at the bookshop.
- Computers go in the middle of desks.
- You can actually see the gossip! For example, when two of my Sims gossiped, pop-up came up saying “People are saying Tori Kinura is actually an alien, living undercover in our neighbourhood!”.
- When your Sims move to a new home, they can ‘Enthuse about New Home’ to other Sims.
- Each bookshelf has different books on it, and you can choose which ones to read. Books include the following – ‘The Crumplebootom Legacy: A Tale’, ‘Demand Excellance or You’ll get Mediocrity’, ‘Zombies? Zombies!’ and ‘The Noble History of Socks’. There’s also a number of baby/pregnancy related books for expecting mothers to read.
- Teens can hang out on playground equipment.
- Sims can get an ‘Unfinished Room’ moodlet if the room they’re in isn’t wallpapered and/or floored.
- The paper is delivered by children, and there’s a different one each day.
- When you get a job, they tell you the name of your boss so you can go and smooze them to your heart’s content.
- Advanced warning if kids/teens will bring home a friend.
- Teens and children have a curfew to be home by.
- You can talk classes at the rabbit holes which increase your skill levels.
- Raising your skill levels can give you advantages, i.e. if you increase your athletics skill, you get the option to ‘Work Out Without Making A Sweat’, meaning your Sims won’t get smelly.
- When you read the newspaper, pop-ups appear tell you what’s happened in the news.
- A townie gave birth to a baby girl called Tawanna.
- Buyable décor includes a giant MilitaryGuardTower.
- Teens don’t have Lifetime Wishes until they grow up.
- If your teens and children do really well at school and end up on the honours list, you may be able to choose their new triat when they grow up. The better you do in school, the better the trait will be if you can’t choose.
- Criminal career’s workplace is the ‘Outstanding Citizan Warehouse Corp’.
Trait-Related Stuff
Okay, in my time playing, I created three Sims – Puck, and his twin children Pietro and Wanda.
- Puck – Green Thumb, Good Sense of Humour, Kleptomaniac, Dare-devil, and Family Orientated.
- Pietro – Hot-Headed, Kleptomaniac, Snob, Athletic.
- Wanda – Artistic, Flirty, Hot-headed, Lucky.
Puck ended up stealing a dustbin from the local park, and loved to hug his children. He was also able to talk to plants, although I don’t know if all Sims could do that or if it was because of his Green thumb. He was also able to have special options to entertain other people. His Lifetime wishes that I had to choose from was Become a Master Thief, Become an Astronaut, Be Surrounded by Family (raise 5 children from baby to teen), Have a PerfectGarden (Grow 8 Plants/Fruit), and Lap of Luxury (100,000 simoleons).
Pietro often wandered off to admire himself in the mirror, and was able to ‘Brag about Fishing Accomplishments’ after he caught a minnow. He was also able to ‘Talk about Self’ and ‘Talk about Possessions’. He was able to learn athletic Skill faster, and had the option to ‘Imply Your Mom’s A Llama’.
Wanda also had the last option, as well as several others. She had several special flirting behavours, such as ‘Confess Attraction’, ‘Give Marvelous Massage’, ‘Use Pick-up Line’, and several others. She often rolled up the wish to flirt a lot. Her Lucky trait often gave her an added moodlet which made her happier, while her artistic side often showed up in being able to ‘Talk about Art’, as well as an option when you click on her to ‘Go to Art Gallery’.
Opportunities
Over my time playing, I got the chance to see several Opportunities for my Sims. Puck had to go straight from his work at the Outstanding Citizan Warehouse Corp in order to deliver a package to City Hall. Pietro got school credit and cash for fixing the school’s boiler after school, and was later asked to catch a fish and deliver it to the Landgrabb Science Faculty for an experiment. Wanda had to read‘Demand Excellance or You’ll get Mediocrity’ for school credit, and later got the opportunity to work for DooPeasCorperateTower for school credit and cash.
Well I particulary enjoyed this trait it really stood out in how your sim interacts with certain objects such as “Wash hands with evil soap” or “Evil slumber” I’m really excited to see other options! ( Couple others are evil bath and evil shower! I was cracking up :3)
First time I tried to make them woohoo she rejected him! But then.. they both hadn’t have a shower really… and she was a bit hungry haha I must note there are petals whilst you woohoo! I thought that was rather sweet~ My hubby sim was really happy all the time being so excitable which was lovely and they did actually get on very well. No arguing or dissagreements which other players with me were having within their couples :3
Kleptomaniacs within the sims are HILARIOUS! Why on earth did he steal the dustbin! and this mirror! I didn’t tell him to do either a bubble come up telling me he did the naughty.
The moodlets really are great and I feel are quite central to the game or at least your sim. Though I do like to keep my sims happy..
Extra: Trees sway in the breeze and the lighting is quite dramatic. Plus you can use kitchen corners to cook!!
Hehe yeah I sent back the mirror though since I didn’t want it! I’m not yet sure how to use the items that were stolen so I didn’t bother. :3
Well the evil baths and showers seem the same and its the only option for that sim. Maybe it progressively makes her worse? Clicking on the mirror she had an option to practice her world domination speech! ( I gave her the politics track of course.. evil politician kind of thing haha)
She was certainly not paying attention to the petals and rather her silver/white haired hunk of a husband!
Here is some extra info:
You can choose to create young adults, palettes for eyeshadow and eyeliner, multi-coloured blushes, glossy lipsticks, matt lipsticks etc, lots of accesories that can be overlayed well. Legwarmers and also barefeet!
The traits are divided into mental, social and lifestyle.
In the buy mode they have a scene for each room , take a bathroom for example and you can hover over each bit i.e sink then taps then bath choosing whatever type of furniture you want so you can browse that type. I just realy love how it now looks!
- I could not find a wedding arch, or wedding dresses… this made me sad
- You couldn’t ask a NPC to move in, which also sucked.
- Interactions have improved, but have shorterned. There was less options, (like, play, admire, etc) But more options for other things (Like it went Romantic –> Whisper in ear, or shy kiss, things like that
- You could customise everything!!!! In the bedroom, I think that there was carpet on the floor, I just used the Create a Style tool and made it look like wood -At no cost!!!
- Exploring the neighbourhood was so easy… but I found that some places, your sim went in, but you got to see nothing.
- When a sim goes to work, you go with them, but again, when you arrive, you see nothing
- And skill building CONFUSED the heck out of me! Normally with a book shelf, you could learn Cooking, Cleaning and Mechanical – well this time, you read a book (For example cooking was something about too much salt) I couldnt find the others really
Onto transport. A question which was asked to a fan who attended the event, was can families go on a bike ride together. We believe you can. When a sim needs to go somewhere, a small pop-up appears in the corner, asking the player “Walk, Car, Bike, Run”. Staying on the subject of bikes, sims can only ride a bike on roads. Sims cannot ride bikes elsewhere, like off-road. It would be cool to see your sim mountain-bike down the sand dunes of Sunset Valley! Actually, the beaches are very interesting in The Sims 3…
In fact, there are several beaches in Sunset Valley. We think that each beach has it’s own features, and there’s a lot of space on them to do it in. On beaches, sims can have barbeques and more activites.
One amazing thing is that your sim can be talking to another sim about a certain topic, and then that sim is thinking about something totally different! It’s very funny to watch conversations between sims! Also, when socializing, you can also see how your sim is doing
Simmers worldwide loved two of the objects added in The Sims 2: Apartment Life. However, these objects don’t make a return in The Sims 3. From what we could see, spiral staircases and the bookcase door are not in the base game of The Sims 3. Spiral Staircases were a very in-demand feature of TS2: AL, so they may be added in an expansion pack later.
Build and Buy mode completely threw me when I first went on it. Buy mode is fine, it’s changed but you can view the items either by rooms or by specific items (such as computers, phones, rugs, lights etc).
It looks a lot better as its got line drawings of the items (like the living room has a tv drawing, phones, rugs, coffee tables etc) and you click on them and that opens up the items you can buy in that category.
Build mode is what confused me more. I just could not build a second floor to the house I’d bought (I did make my own after a fiddle around or two) until I discovered you had to put a flooring down (I would go into detail, but I found it out accidentally and couldn’t remember what I’d done) and THEN I couldn’t find the stairs (this was before realising I had to click the image of the steps).
Overall, Build and Buy mode has been made more user friendlier, just make sure you have a quick search through it first. ^_^
We got told that some of the cheats from TS2 work in TS3. True, but I found out that ‘MaxMotives’ and ‘Motivedecay’ DON’T work (which slightly upset me, but I then found out that the needs don’t go down as quickly as in TS2) BUT ‘motherlode’ DOES work.
Babies. Your sim can either stay at home and have the baby OR be sent to the hospital. To send her, you just click on her and it says ‘Send to hospital’. She then runs out of the house, into a car or taxi and goes to the hospital.
Once the male has calmed down and realised what’s happening, he goes and jumps in a taxi and arrives at the hospital with an icon saying ‘Stays with Mother’. I thought it was quite cute.
Once the baby is born, your asked to name the new baby (you have to read it carefully though as it doesn’t show the gender like before) and to give it 1 (yes, one) trait. Once all that is done the new mother walks out of the hospital with the baby wrapped in the corresponding blanket (blue for boys, pink for girls) and then it’s a case of everyone jumps in the taxi and returns home.
I’ll have a report…
http://www.sunsetvalleynews.com/exclusives/thesims3preview.php
I don’t suppose you could make this a sticky post?
It is a sticky post 😉
It’s not acting like one — I keep having to find it far down on the Sims 3 News page — it’s not even in the recent posts screen anymore.
Have you tried clearing your cache? I don’t know if that’s the problem. I checked it in both FireFox and IE and the post is at the top =S
Yup, tried that already — oh well, I’ve bookmarked it now. Thanks anyway!
I don’t understand why these folks weren’t allowed to take photos of the gameplay – we’re 3 weeks out and no images/gameplay videos? What is EA trying to hide?
Unfortunately some “answers” seem more like best guesses. Some participants answered questions they admit they really had no idea about or never tried/saw ingame.
When you don’t know just say you don’t know!
My lifetime wish was to be a master thief. I accidentally picked “evil”, and the last saved game i had was weeks behind! Is there anyway to switch from “Evil” to “Thief”?
Please! HELP!
-Jared
You can change your traits in-game via the cheats. Push shift+ctrl+c and you’ll see a little box at the top of the screen. Type in “testingcheatsenabled true”. After you put that in, hold down the shift key and click on your sim – you should see an option to change traits on the pie menu!
i love the sims and want to know if you can get mythical creatures on sims 3?