Crappy title, Sorry, here to vent.

First off this isn't another "SiMs 3 iS BeTtUr" post, well, not entirely. DEAD HORSE.
Anyway I just wanted to say after a couple of months playing the sims 4, buying all the crap and trying to make stories I learned why I really enjoyed about the sims 3. Freedom, duh. In my case, freedom to be a freaking farmer.
That's right, I played the sims 4 and lived a normal life, BORING. Made homes, made families, pretended to go to school or work, did some yoga, owned a store, because that's what the sims 4 has to offer plus some other off the wall things but all of it is forced to exist in the "normalsphere". None of it compared to my sims 3 stories of being a simple farmer living in Shang Simla or Champ les Sims.
AND the Sims 4 absolutely does not have any way of me living out my rural dream and I doubt it ever will since the style and framework of the game does not properly suit rural or historical gameplay. At all.

So in reality, this exploration was the best thing to happen to my sims 3 journey so far. I had apparently deleted all my sims 3 stuff because I lost my old computer and was so sure I wouldn't be able to play it on my new one and wouldn't have time for it anyway, but lo' and behold, now that I know exactly what I've wanted out of the sims 3, I've just grabbed the appropriate cc, most of which I remembered having by heart (maybe I'll download smaller cultural worlds to frankenstein some lots into) and hopped right into the game, which is running smoother on my "new" pc.

Finally, here I am playing the sims 3 again. I currently only have WA, AMB, and SEAS installed. I think that's all I'll need. I'm back to gardening and fishing with purpose in beautiful worlds I can actually explore and with locals who are actually interesting and worth talking to.

TLDR; the sims 3 has more freedom especially when it comes to being a simple farmer DUH

p.s. the sims 3 community is different from 4's. I hated it.
Thanks for reading this mess.

so, basically you spent quite some money on&in Sims 4 to prove yourself you cannot live without watering virtual tomatoes in Sims3? It's like getting a divorce for a fling with a promising stranger only to realise you prefer the former spouse much more.

I'd say (as a married man for like more than 20 years now) - you could reach that conclusion in a much cheaper way. Buy her flowers. I mean: install some cute CC!

My mom was in a relationship some years ago. They were lovely together, they loved sitting on the couch drinking wine and chatting, they loved the same music and the same movies. He was from a fairly upper class family and owned 3 boats and a summer home in the country. He had a great job, a nice car, a cute dog and a welcoming family. It was an almost perfect household, the 3 of us, but then he eventually turned 40 and started acting weird. After years and years of fun together, of him being around her family and her being around his (great chemistry on both ends) he randomly decided to leave. Overnight. Apparently he got scared of something and wanted to leave, and maybe he'd found another woman. That phase lasted 2, maybe 3 weeks. He then spent years trying to reconcile with my mother, who absolutely refuses to ever live with, or be in contact with, "the sad fucking bastard" ever again. He ruined her year, he ruined the relationship with his own mother who had become very close with mine, and he willingly gave up everything he had in terms of "the family life" because of an impulse. It cost him everything but his job and his car, and he gained nothing, aside from a bout of depression.

ElaineNutella's response reminded me of that. Doesn't really have anything to do with TS3, per se, but imagine you decided to try TS4 out by uninstalling your game, burning your CD copies, deleting your Origin account and throwing your PC out the window. And then spending weeks setting up a new PC, buying TS4 packs, getting ready to play it, and finding out it sucks badly. And you're out of money, because you spent it all on TS4 and that new PC.

I'd like to say its a little more complex than that but yeah
When I first had sims 3 installed I was overwhelmed with custom content, story ideas, building and perfecting worlds. I never really "played". I was always preparing.
It took the sims 4 for me to find what I actually enjoyed doing in the sims 3 and that is enjoying a rustic lifestyle in a faraway place.
It speaks to my person honestly. I grew up in small German towns and then moved to the suburban US. AND I HATE SIMS 4'S WINDENBURG

People have commitment issues. Men seem especially vulnerable, but women can be just as anxious about it. There's always a feeling of "Things are good, but what if that grass really IS greener over there and I miss out on it?!" So, you get people freaking out. It happened to my first husband when I was pregnant with our second kid, who he didn't really want but never SAID that he didn't want to have, and given that he was ga-ga over our son and never talked about birth control or anything, it seemed natural to assume he'd want more. So, he just took off one day when I was about seven months pregnant. Couldn't deal with it. And he never really came back. I found out later that he was having something of an epiphany about his sexuality which, as an evangelical Christian, was freaking him right the hell out. (Like, literally. ) We divorced a couple months after our daughter was born. It wasn't fun being a single parent of two little kids, but that was over twenty years ago so I got over it, and now I'm much more happily married to a atheist/Buddhist man who isn't bothered by his flagrant pansexuality. But, anyway, there's MY sad story.

But yeah, there's always an itch to try the new thing because it might be better than what you've got. I'm not sure how people could think that TS4 would be better than TS3. Or even TS2, for that matter. I've never played it, myself, but from everything I've read, it's pretty obvious that it's stripped down even in comparison to TS2, much less 3 which has more gameplay options than 2 does, especially an unmodded 2. Though apparently it has its good points. From what I've heard, people like its toddlers that it took them years to add so I hope they're worth the wait. I can't really see much to recommend it in terms of what I like to do in a Sims game, though, so I'm not tempted by that particular patch of grass.

Okay so you left your movie star for a cheap hooker then realized the cheap hooker was cheating because she's a hooker.

It was literally just purchasing the base game and GTW back at the end of 2015 that made me realize that the game is doomed. And the only reason I did so honestly was so I could have an informed opinion about the game, instead of going blindly off other peoples' complaints about the game. Haven't bought anything else for it since.

In hindsight, the bout of depression I was going through at the time probably didn't help my enjoyment at all. But even through that, I knew TS3 was for me, no question.

True, but at least I got them cheap. Haha. A very small price to pay to sate my curiosity.

Rule number one with new versions of games: don’t uninstall the older version until it’s basically redundant...

I get it, @pretenshus. I really want to like TS4 because it is the new thing and I prefer how the sims look in TS4. But fortunately I get to see and play someone elses copy sometimes because I search and install mods for her. There I realise every time that TS4 lacks the customisation for me to do my thing. If it wasn't for her, I might have bought an TS4 expansion pack or two at some point, even though I really don't like the base game.

Well, TS4 has recieved a lot of crap from a lot of players, and it's not without reason. The gameplay feels like a much cheaper version of TS2 (in regards to what you can actually do, because there's plenty of intereactions, just not any interesting ones) and is somehow much more repetitive than TS2 and TS3 combined, and I feel like you're pretty much stuck doing the same things over and over, and you can't even make proper customized hoods since there's no real neighborhood customization. Sims don't look any appealing, and babies are the most boring and annoying creatures in the entire game - I've never skipped this lifestage during family play in TS2 (TS2 babies are the cutest little things ever!), only rarely in TS3 (boring, but easy-going most of the time), but after my TS4 game threw triplets at me I realized just how bothersome the little critters are, and started skipping to toddlers (which I do like, though they do tend to get repetitve after a while). With the genetics completely borked (missing baby skins, and don't get me started on pets) family play loses a lot of important aspects.

I do play TS4 currently, but mostly because my TS2 game is having issues, and TS4 is the only one working. I tend to get rather bored with it after a short amount of time. Got the "played for 5 hours" achievement today, (which I'm not entirely sure is realistic, because I thought I'd played longer), but considering I installed the game back in March, then I wouldn't say 5 hours is an "achievement". With TS2 and TS3 I could play 5+ hours in one sitting.... But it loads quick, so if I just need to relax with a game for a short amount of time, it's fine.

That said, I did get all the TS4 games I have on sale, so it's not like I paid full price. I only have 2 EPs, there are a couple I may get at some later point, but after watching gameplay videos I've realized they're just more of the same with some possibly halfway decent features. There's no way I'm getting all 20+ expansions for this game, unless they package them all into one nice bundle at the price of just one EP. The amount of expansions is absolutely ridicolous, particularly in regards to what you're actually getting (not much).

I did quite enjoy playing TS3 back when my game worked, but for me TS2 will always be "the one I go back to". I have installed TS3 on my new laptop, but I know it has some similar running issues to TS2, so I'd like to sort out the TS2 issues first, before I tackle unknown territory with TS3. Too bad they both have issues with Win10 (I never had this amount of running issues on my previous computers).

I got bored after a few hours on the day it came out. I played it for about 2 hours and to my own surprise - no, disbelief - I felt an overwhelming urge to play TS3. Serves me right for having the foolish idea of buying into a new game on day one. I did the same thing with Anno 1800 this year, but at least that game is actually good. I certainly don't regret spending €50 on it, even if I can think of 10 better ways to spend it.

I tried looking for the first picture I took in TS3 after 4 came out - there isn't one. From the looks of it I just played continuously without taking any. I did take pictures in TS4, which it seems I've managed to delete.

Isn't it odd, here is the latest game that you can't even be a tomato farmer on and yet I can do all of that in Sims 2 which came out in 2004. Something wrong with that. I keep thinking I should play sims 3 or 4 (both are installed) but I never do.

Personally, I don't play any game that doesn't let you farm tomatoes for a living.

Tomato Simulator 2020. I'm calling it.

Yessss, life is complete.

This is exactly why I enjoyed 3 much better. Sims 3 is far from perfect, but has two main things going for it: the scope of customization and creativity, and as you said, the freedom.

The Sims 4 is bland and limited. Maybe with all EPs and tons of CC it's better, but the base game is horribly bland. I'm not sparing 3 from this criticism, but I'd rather play any Sims base game over The Sims 4. I loved how 3 took advantage of the open-worlds. You could truly live off of farming and collecting. I made a medieval world a while back with nobles and farmers, you can truly do just about any kind of gameplay with the right CC.

The Sims 4 is commonly called the watered down version of The Sims 2, which I don't disagree. The Sims 4 borrowed heavily from 2 and 3 all while sucking out any of it that made those games fun and engaging. It didn't help the original release of 4 was critically incomplete until a series of patches. The Sims 3 did the same, by slashing memories, a beloved feature, then tastelessly adding it later without thinking about why it was beloved, all we got was a useless save bloat.

Murdering Sims isn't even fun in TS4 and that's the first test each Sims game should be able to pass.

Honestly, I'm mostly playing base game scenarios, with the others added in for spice. The way I figure it, that's what expansions should be and a base game should be able to stand on its own. The fact that Sims 4 can't is a huge problem.

On the topic of murdering Sims, I was so disappointed when I tried to start a fire in 4 and all my sims immediately produced a fire extinguisher and put the fire out before I could even cancel the action. Sims 4 is too much happiness and rainbows and sunshine. Stories aren't as flexible and there's fewer features because of all the precautions EA put into place to make sure your game is trigger free. RIP burglars and dog houses.

Can't agree more. I'm not hating on 4 either, it just fails to keep me interested. And that made me realize what I appreciated with 3, even with all its faults. Gameplay have become progressively easier with every new game, and I appreciate that my sims doesn't have to shower twice a day to keep their hygiene up like in 1, but there is a point where the game just stops being challenging and therefore becomes boring. You don't even have to wait for the stuff you order to get in the mailbox, it just magically appears in the inventory. I appreciate the addition of water and electricity getting turned off if bills aren't paid, but I have never gotten to the point where I didn't have enough money.

I am just the same that I do hate 4 but only play it in limited doses as it does not hold my interest long. I can play 3 all night long and then finally have to stop as am ready to drop on the keyboard. And wish I could keep playing as there is always that one more thing I want to do.

Saaaame, @Daisylee. I enjoy 4 for the buildmode freedom, but that's honestly about it. After a while, what the sims themselves do is flat, boring and the same. I mean, I like the load time, but...even as bloated as my Sims3 cc folder is, it doesn't take the *do the laundry, take a nap and gestate a child* amount of time Sims2 used to. ROFL.

In fact, running CCmagic right now to clear up some CC and get back into the game - I played for about 6 hours or so, and even though I was still able to save, the computer needed a rest.

I had 40000 CC items in 2. It took 20 minutes to load. 3 is much slower than 4 but so worth it to me.