Ah yes, forget about that issue. Still, they could simply make so that as long your sim stays there performance (though at a slower/regular rate than the faster If you micromanage and put your own effort) bar would still progress. I think that be fair share and win&win for pleasing both types of players, who enjoy working with their sims and visible rabbit holes and those who prefer sims earning money on their own without you be force to engage.

They’re alright. I just wish there had been an expansion that opened them up. I’d love to do actual work at the bistro/cinema/movie studio/science lab. I guess that’s where The Sims 4 gets the higher score.

And yes there is Ambitions but the careers got semi-broken and there’s just not that many of them

My main issue with rabbitholes was mostly taken care of by the end of the game. My issue was with not having venues open that we had in previous games, like stores and restaurants. The other rabbitholes were made to put careers and jobs in a place on the map. These venues were not only not open in previous The Sims games, but weren't even visible (which is something that one can prefer one way or another), so I never complained about stuff like the school and business building being rabbitholes. Sure I'd love to be able to customize them to my liking, but my beef was with open venues from previous games now being rabbitholes.

Granted, as much as they were fixed there are issues (we never got open grocery stores back. =( ) such as features like the open restaurants are still quite different from previous games. Riddled with glitches and they're high-maintenance to keep running. I find that very frustrating. I also find the fact that said open venues are locked behind a fairly stout paywall in The Sims 3 Store even to this day.

Even still, I stand by The Sims 3 as my favorite The Sims game. I just wish the open restaurants could be fixed (and yes, I have Ani's mod, which helps, but sadly even still can't keep up with the strange coding of the game, which causes Sims I hired to oftentimes never show up for their position at the restaurant, thus the restaurant doesn't function).

I'm still not a fan of EA adding in and then taking out clothing stores pre-release. They should've left those in the game, because I don't see anything wrong with how TS2 did it. If you want a big wardrobe for your Sim, it's gonna cost ya.
Now I don't know the exact details of what you can and can't do with restaurants, but there should've been more to do there, as well.
And as far as I can tell, there's several ways to do retail but none of them are particularly flexible. There's no singular, all-encompassing system like Open For Business, instead you have to make do with consignment store stuff, with selling baked goods and tickets to entry, and with weird rugs. And the only mannequins in the game are holographic?

TS2 had such great community lots. In the base game, too. You could take a taxi (not a car!) to the local strip mall and shop for clothes, groceries, entertainment.....that felt so much realer. Sometimes I even wish you'd have to go to furniture stores. Or imagine buying a new TV and having it delivered to your home. Your Sim would need to be home during the afternoon to take delivery of the TV.

One thing I find really neat about TS3 restaurants is that you can set exactly which foods they serve and which they do not (unless that is a feature of Ani's mod, I forget. Someone correct me if that is the case). Thus you can actually effectively create specific types of restaurants.

The problem I have with restaurants in TS3 (aside from the bugs I mentioned in my last post) is that the interactions are extremely basic. For example, you can't have a romantic date there like you could in The Sims 1 Hot Date because there are none of those fun interactions.

Let me put it this way. It's awful, plain and simple. One chef, who does eeeverything. Cooking, cleaning, taking orders. Predefined working hours. Always dressed in the exquisite 5-Star Chef extraordinare apparel, so forget about those small time burger joints. Oh, and the sims ordering do absolutely nothing while waiting for their food. Glad there's ani's mods at the very least.

The problem is that there's no dedicated, unified retail system in the game. You have all of these different features, and none of them work in harmony together. All of the store sets especially, which utilize none of the later expansions' features. That was one of the store team's biggest limitations. They could only use base game coding for anything they released.

That's one of my issues with the game, too. We now know that DLC that requires other DLC is a big no-no, but from a gameplay perspective it's incredibly inconvenient to not have any interaction between the different packs.
Again, it's perfectly possible to have packs interact, but if that means locking away content for players who don't have both packs, apparently that's a crime against humanity. Thing is, though, I don't see why all the EP worlds and the Store worlds have to be filled with base game content. You might say they can't use other content, but if the Build/Buy content was categorized better (e.g. by style, colour and price range), EA could use EP content interchangeably and have the game's AI fill in the gaps, should there be any due to missing EPs.

If I recall correctly, the Vampires from Supernatural were designed to tie into the Vampires from Late Night. Meaning, both packs come with Vampires, both have different content for Vampires, and both integrate with one another. But then there's the Celebrity system from Late Night and the performer careers from Showtime which don't do that......or the boats from Island Paradise which only work properly in Isla Paradiso, or the complete lack of segregation between present and future in Into The Future.....

The problem is, there's all sorts of expansions and Store sets, and none of them were designed to coexist peacefully. This is especially obvious when starting a new game. First comes the weather stone, then the time portal, then the University mascot, then the welcome wagon, and by the time they're done there's a stray horse taking a piss in your garden. And there's poorly positioned vanity lots all over your world because the game decided the world MUST have a vampire bar or a horse training center.

Yeah, exactly. I love TS3, don't get me wrong. But I'm not going to sit here and pretend that several bad decisions throughout development didn't hold it back from its full potential somewhat. I remember how disappointed a lot of people were when Seasons was released and we couldn't create real aliens in CAS. Graham even explained exactly why. But it didn't make it any less disappointing.

I must've missed that, but seeing as I'm not a fan of the aliens I don't really care either. I can see why people would want to create aliens though, after all you can create magic fairies and werewolves too.
With TS3 these otherwise only occasional omissions were disappointing, but tolerable. TS4 has taken it to the extreme.

@GrijzePilion It wasn't really a loss for me either, though I guess it seems that way with my post is worded. Heh. What I really meant was it was a disappointment for people that like playing with different life states but in the end it was like everything else. What we got was what we got, so to speak.

Going back to the topic at hand, I guess you could say all of this is a big part of why RHs don't bother me. Do they work 100% effectively for everyone and their playstyles? No, of course not. But I would take what we got any day over sacrificing features and lame excuses.

Every simmer plays differently and wants different things. As said, there is no way EA can ever please everyone. I am like you, I am fine with what they did. To me they help complete the look of worlds and fill task needs that I do not want to micromanage. And they help cut the load for our computers.

This is kinda where I am- I've never thought to be annoyed with rabbitholes because it is what it is. They are a part of the game and while they're not 100% all the time, honestly nothing about this game is and yet I'm still sinking hours into it every week so it's good enough. Besides it's nice not to have to control every member of a family all the time.
I will say that I like the interactive careers in TS3 way better than the ones in TS4 because at least you have some creative options like the architecture and stylist ones. I got bored with TS4's interactive careers after a few play sessions because you end up doing variations on the same stuff all the time- they feel more like weird side quests with a lot of grinding to me.

I think they're a good idea, overall. The viable alternative, like in TS1, 2 and 4, is not having these locations at all. Your Sim gets in a car and vanishes 50 meters down the road. Surely, watching them actually go somewhere is more interesting. This also allows you to interact with places of work outside of work hours.

Still, it means that every world has to have every type of rabbit hole. And with a focus on small towns, that's a bit of a stretch sometimes. I'd rather have my Sim work at SimCity Central Hospital than at Cranky Joe's General Store. Obviously I've changed this in my own savegame, but why does urban metropolis Bridgeport have a city hall the same size as smalltown Sunset Valley's? Isn't one much too small, and isn't another somewhat too big? For the record, I've replaced Bridgeport's with the lovely Roaring Heights one.

But that's just it. We have options. No matter if regular EA RHs, RH rugs, or even not at all. Swap them out if you don't like a particular one, or take it out completely. Whatever you'd like.

I'll use something from TS4's base game to explain what I mean. If you look around in Willow Creek, there's a random city skyline off in the distance (possibly elsewhere, but that's where I've noticed). No matter what kind of save you may be playing, it will always be there. And since it's a backdrop, you're just stuck with it. Yes, a replacement skyline can remove it, but what if someone doesn't use mods/cc? Again, too bad. EA doesn't give you any options. Same with all those decorative houses beyond the neighborhood boundaries. Stuck with those too. And yes, they serve a different purpose than the interactive RHs, but what I'm getting at is that TS3 is really whatever you want it to be, right down to the rabbitholes.

To this day, I feel content-wise the only things TS3 missed the mark on were some of the more interactive elements of TS2 as a choice, like the community lots, clothes shopping, etc as you mentioned and real business simulation elements, again like TS2.

Are those active careers in TS4 that good? They seem to be that something would be more-to-ask than what TS3 offered. Haven't played the three that are only included in that first expansion pack, but why do I get the feeling their so mediocre? Maybe it's just me that old bias grudge to the so-called sequel


One day you should teach me whenever I decide to de-rabbit-hole the buildings on my world If I loose and unable to retrieve your post

Funny you should use that as an example though because, as I've kind of mentioned before, TS3's small town sizes bother me sometimes. I wish worlds were more heavy on embellishment. Not so much in terms of details or building shells, but fake backgrounds like in TS4. Instead of making Bridgeport look like a tiny squashed version of a city, they could've made it look like a few city blocks and used models to portray the rest of the city. Like in San Myshuno.

Actually, I agree. TS3's worlds were largely made to be like typical American suburbs/small towns. Even in cases where it was supposed to be a city, like Bridgeport, size was affected negatively as well because they were still bound by the same limits as other worlds, number of sims and so forth. I love details that enhance the believability of the scenery of the towns/cities, but only if they're there to truly enhance it. So, not having one little backdrop over here and trying to create a false sense of ambience. TS4 worlds can't be edited to any meaningful degree, so it cuts down on the usability of specific worlds in certain cases.

Going back to the example I used, TS4 doesn't even do it that well. If you happen to look close enough just with the regular camera those little lot details have very little depth to them. The roads actually cutoff at a certain point. Mountains completely flat. If those types of details were actually in TS3 I would want them to be done well. But the bottom line, I agree with your point. I really do wish there was more of it.

Have you seen this amazing world? It's everything I've ever wanted from a TS3 urban world and more.

Yep, I have. That's exactly what I'm talking about. The level of detail is absolutely astounding.

Nitromon, I have done the same thing, and put a restaurant RH rug on a lot and also used the restaurant items. The restaurant was packed with the sims as the rug was pulling sims to the lot. Even when I had just a food register rather than the store restaurant items it worked well.

gp, that world looks amazing. Thank you for the link. I want to keep an eye on that.

I don't hate them or like them.... I know some people do and some don't ...... I do use them some times when i want a certain service but don't feel like building it...lol It comes down to what you prefer..... I like choices...lol I just wish they weren't all so big, I like making small worlds and their rabbit holes just don't fit... or when you're making a world and their rabbit hole just don't fit you aesthetic lol.... it happens.... I just wish we had more choices.... Now that doesn't mean that i would use them.... I just like choices....

I think the RH's should have been open, with sims doing various activities when the camera is focused on it, and static when the camera is elsewhere.
A combination of rabbit hole rugs / doors, zerbu's mod and NPC markers achieves the desired effect however.
Having said that, the RH system is a step up from Ts2's completely off-screen way of doing it, and I don't know nor care how Ts4 does it.

NPC markers? What are those?

And do you guys use Arsil's rabbit hole rugs/doors?