When I first heard about the Sims, I wasn't that thrilled... I can watch
myself pee my pants and start fires in the microwave, at the same time even, and it'd be far more exciting than any game could ever be! But then I played it, and well, now I'm a fan. If you build up some base skills, and learn how to stack up your daily objectives, your Sims aren't nearly as stupid as they can be if you let them wander around aimlessly. And the AI isn't
that bad lol, not in TS2 anyway. They do their best to fulfill needs, else they kill time doing fun stuff.
I had all of the expansion packs for the first Sims, and quite a few for the Sims 2 as well (Night Life, University, Open for Business, and Seasons). The game loads pretty fast... I haven't timed it, but maybe two minutes... three at most? I don't get any of the lag others report either, or at least I didn't before I got Seasons. I can run TS2 with a sim on a college campus, living in the dorm, at full speed without conflict. The weather from the Seasons expansion does slow it down a bit though. Rain forces me to only use x2 speed, and snow is pretty miserable above x1 speed. But 85% of the time the game cruises along without conflict. And mind you, my computer isn't the fastest in the world or anything, it's a P4 3.0 GHz with 2 GB RAM, and I'd guess I have one of the worst video cards of anyone on TGC lol, an ATI Radeon 9200 with 128MB RAM
.
I think it'd be neat if the Sims could be played online, and not like
Sims Online, either (I wouldn't care to pay monthly for a Sims MMO). Instead, you could make a neighborhood with a set number of plots. This neighborhood could be inhabited by your friends (with a password), or open to the public. But here's the catch, and what makes this idea remarkably simple: you aren't actually playing online. Let's say, I dunno, Bill and Ted are sharing an online neighborhood. There could be a special community lot where they all interact, but otherwise, each player can have a set number of lots that they can build as if it were a single-player game. Bill can build a business, and Ted could shop at that lot. Their sims can interact and hang out, and they can both check out each other's houses (but not play inside them). There could be "consent agreements" or something that arrive via telephone or mail... so if Ted's sim-son wants to marry Bill's sim-daughter, Bill would have to agree to losing that Sim. It would liven up and properly fill a neighborhood, and would give you good reason to build a really unique house other than showing it to friends who come over or uploading it to the Sims website. That's the only thing I've ever truly disliked about the Sims... I want the neighborhood to be an online thing I can share with friends, not in a truly multiplayer way, just in an online, "sharing space" way. Give me a reason to fill out the Sims bio and all that
Edit: To prevent comparisons to Raven, I edited out a few ideas I had for The Sims 3, assuming no one cared to read them lol. Long story short: proper bands that gig and get record deals, sims getting bored with daily repetition, etc. Maybe later I'll write a few
