*Smacks forehead* Oh, right! But I was referring to the core abilities added in the EP's like being able to go to University, having a vacation, different seasons, pets and so on. Didn't think about the smaller features....

I played for about 5 hours I didn't fully explore it. If i can I will go to friend's house tomororw and try to make my opinion about the game change. Unlikely it will.

I understand how you feel about sticking with the sims 2. I'm going to keep a close eye on the modding community for sims 3 though, I have more faith in the quality of their work than whatever the first expansion will be.

The part, I think, that's making people think they all look alike is the fact that you can change the shape of the lower part of the face, but not the top. Most people look at a person's (and sim's apparently) eye area first. So, they look the same.

I wish they'd change that, but I think it probably has something to do with the way the hair fits to the heads.

forever to just improve one skill point. in sims 2 first five points are fast to improve(usually) then it gets slower. There was nothing much to do...

when it comes to getting there skills up, unlike in the sims 2 were sims can be great at every thing, sims 3 takes a diffrent idea a more real idea if you ask me, when making a sim in cas it, it will ask you to choose 5 traits and some of those are to help with skills e.g. nartire cook, if you pick nartire cook for a trait your sim will want to do more with cooking than any think elce and will also be able to learn skills quicker, if that makes sence.

mine is a wanna be rockstar or something like that...and she has a...crap..one of her traits is virtuoso or something like this. It took her a good while to improve on one creativity skil point o_O

I think it's because they're meant to study and learn skills autonomously, and skill points also are not 100% necessary to get to the next job level, although they certainly help.

It seems like we're supposed to play other sims and households and they autonomously skill up, problem being, playing other households also screws up the game...

Bad balancing, basically.

I haven't gotten the game yet but im reading these threads for tips

- only play one household
- sims look like clones

any other tips?

i got a tip: if you change the hair color with a mirror after create-a-sim, apparently hair dye is radioactive in the sims 3, because the new hair color becomes genetic. it's really weird o.O