Into the Future - First Impressions

[Twinmum]

Yes they age. Time stays the same in the present until they return and it's the same for the future. So, you could travel to the future on day 1 of week 1 in the present and spend a week there. When you return, the date in the present will still be day 1 of week 1 and you will have seven less days until you age up. Then you could stay in the present for a while (say 3 days) and when you travel to the future, you will be three older, but the date in the future will still be what it was when you left it, ie day 1 of week 2.

[Twinmum]

Double post I'm sorry, but I found a few things I thought deserved their own post.

First up, if a room doesn't have a roof over it, you Sim will not get the unfinished moodlet, even if the ground is just terrain and the walls are unpainted. This means we can now have a garden courtyard in the middle of a house and the Sim won't complain about the dirt floor! Not sure if this is new to the EP or was added in a patch.

For gardens on the rooftop or indoors, you use the Nature's Soil Rugs - If this means what I think it means, we can now build enclosed greenhouses and actually plant things! Not sure how the plants will react to the different seasons, that will need some testing. The rugs come in a few different sized squares and one small triangle.

While you can live in the future, you can't switch households or as has been noted, you can't actually start a game there. You have to start any game in the present and travel there.

[Namaya]

Yes they age. Time stays the same in the present until they return and it's the same for the future. So, you could travel to the future on day 1 of week 1 in the present and spend a week there. When you return, the date in the present will still be day 1 of week 1 and you will have seven less days until you age up. Then you could stay in the present for a while (say 3 days) and when you travel to the future, you will be three older, but the date in the future will still be what it was when you left it, ie day 1 of week 2.

Wow that can really cause some messed up situations for example cases where a child can become older than its parents once it's old enough to travel alone o-o.

[Pam]

We need to remember that this is a first impressions thread, not a thread for asking questions.  If you need help with something, it's best to start a new topic.  That way, others can see it easily and benefit from it, too.

[MarianT]

Squee! My sim just won $3,000,000 in the lottery.

Also if you pick love crystals, when you click on them, you get the option to "harness romance." This gave my sim 8 hours in which all romantic overtures would be accepted.

[Snufflesxx]

Here are my thoughts so far:

I really like the Plumbots. My Bot Fan Sim has made one so far named Chip. She's still trying out nanites and trait chips so I'll have to experiment further with the Plumbot features. Create-a-Plumbot is very nice and there's a whole load of options so you can make your bot however you like.

I like the new hover train! I assumed it was going to be a bit like the subway system in Bridgeport where you enter at one station and come out of another but on these trains you actually get to see the train moving! I also love all the new hover cars, hover boards, jet packs, etc. 

One of the first features I wanted to try out was at the hospital where you can engineer a baby for 5,000 Simoleons. You can choose whether you want to randomize the baby's genetics or customize the hair colour and eye colour yourself. I gave mine aqua blue hair with neon pink eyes! 

Lots and lots of new furniture. My favourite object has to be the rug which you can grow plants on. I can see that being very useful in dynasties.

A lot of the new clothing and hair is pretty wacky. I'm not very keen on most the female hair (though they'd be perfect for insane Sims!) but love the clothing and vise versa for males. My favourite thing in CAS a Sim is the beard that has an uncanny resemblance to Seneca Crane's in the Hunger Games. I'm just loving all these Hunger Games references!

I made a Sim with bright orange hair and sent her into the future and was thrilled to see that 3 out of 4 of her descendants also had it! She's yet to meet any of them but they're always out 

So, overall, I think this is a very good expansion and a nice final addition to the Sims 3. I can't wait to try out the rest of the new content!

[Shirin]

Haven't played around too much with this just yet, but so far, I'm really liking the plumbots. My test sim Alex found a Next Gen plumbot at the emporium with a bunch of decent chips for about 6k. Handiness, Cooking, Gardening, Fishing, Limitless Learning, and the Music one. I had a spare friendly chip, so I put that in, took out the music one, and swapped it for the cleaning chip a 2nd purchased plumbot had (which I then sold back). That was one heck of a find!

I also found some descendants. Two had the same vivid purple eyes (the other two were grey), and only one had the red/pink/purple hair. Three of them were...um...well fed. The one thing I wish they had was a means of identifying how the descendants are related to one another. The two with the purple eyes are both female, and they both carry the same surname; the other two are male, and they carry a different surname, and also look like identical twins.

I found two Mysterious Keys, but was kind of underwhelmed with the ship - two money bags for about 4k, a book, and something that I can apparently activate (but haven't yet). And a spot to watch TV, apparently. I also picked up a bunch of nanites, mostly the common ones, but a couple of the uncommon too.

The jetpack is fun, but I found an annoyance. Whenever Alex is "using" the jetpack, she'll crash land with it happily. However, whenever she is indoors and doing something other than standing there, she'll put the jetpack on, walk over to wherever she's going, then take it off.

The travel center is...interesting. I set bed ownership to one, and someone else took it anyway. The other travelers keep walking in and out of Alex's room. But the plumbot repairs things FAST.

So far, I am enjoying this expansion very very much.

[Elena]

My favorite thing so far in this expansion, surprisingly, is engineering a baby. I am so glad that my same-sex couple can finally have kids without mods or adopting clones. They have the option to choose hair/eyes color and two traits, but can also have random genetics. I wonder if I could dream this being somehow allowed in one of those forum dynasty challenges, even just as household members, so that I can have some same-sex romance storylines, well…

The second favorite would be plumbots - instant nanny/chef/gardener/handyman, wow. I doubt I’ll ever sell bots for profits, they’re far too sweet. Besides, giving a robot emotions, having them treated as sims and then give them away as commodities? Nah, I might be silly, but I find it rather cruel to do so:P So guess my sims will only make perfect bots when maxed out their skills, and just sell nanites and chips for the self-employed career. As for the nanites, they are somehow cute for collection, but I wish they’d choke my bot-making sim less, consider she’s already level 10!

Dream-pods are interesting too, the best thing is that sims can now dream of vacation at home, turning it into a good dream and receive real visa points, cracks me up but you can simply dream your way to level 3 and buy vacation home, no more tomb exploring or adventure ops! Also, the ‘dream of waking up’ will instant fill full the energy bar if it is a good dream, fantastic.

A few minor things I don’t like about this expansion: The first being plumbots wanting to scan you for no reason all the time and interrupt your queue, I can’t even work properly in the stellar observatory because of plumbots coming nearby and want to scan my working sim! The second being…the utopia, it creeps me out more than dystopia, honestly, as people want to throw dews to my sims all the time (again I hate queues being interrupted) and they look cheesy when walking in that same style as imaginary friends. I prefer the dystopian future to it – apart from the stink, the collectibles, meteors and holes simply thrills me, only if it could be darker, and more dangerous, well I am a fan of dystopian worlds

One more note: I’ve tried all three LTWs, High Tech Collector is right down easy, just do the ops from Emit and steal thing from base camps, it’s unbelievably fast to accomplish.
‘Made the most of my time’ is rather buggy. It takes me some luck to complete. Theoretically it is done when all three futures are travelled but the first time I completed it I have to take my sim once more into the future. The second time I was unable to trigger it by any means, only Master-controller’s change lifetime wish function made it work. Midlife crisis might do the same job.

[Carl]

I'm a little annoyed right now so I'm going to say that if you don't have this Expansion yet, you are missing out on some decent gameplay but saving yourself from the frustration of experiencing some incredibly annoying bugs. I have covered all 10 previous EPs and not encountered such a buggy mess before. We need a patch, badly. I am now hung up and unable to upgrade food synthesizers, couldn't use my Almanac of Time with another save, find jetpack deaths too likely, can't get a Sentient Plumbot to get Wishes/LTW and see countless other problems people are experiencing.

My Sim is now in the Dystopian future and I'm wondering if the 5+ meteors (and lightning) a day are a risk of death or programmed to skip our Sims. I'm about to say grow a field of death flowers or roll an unlucky Sim before you ever go there and try a jetpack.

I feel like this has all these teasers for TS4 almost to market it (there is even a dream pod dream to dream of TS4) and was not beta tested as much as others. They got arrogant after making so many and thought they could just throw it out there and it's showing. I know a lot of people have had problems with other Expansions, but my monitor is at risk of demise due to keyboard impact if I have to reload a save again just to look at the time almanac or losing a Sim to jetpack when it could be the best way to level the skill. I have never had such a bad time covering an EP nor complained publicly so much. This one is the worst in that department and only a patch can save it from me calling it a 'D+'.

There are merits to it. I love plumbots, bot making, trait chips and customizing them. Future technology is cool and it's nice to be able to make such a high-tech house with even better ways to fulfill your Sim's needs like Dream Pods. I want to like it, but I'm frustrated to the point of posting this to let people know they aren't necessarily missing out on the beta testing we are all doing at the moment. Maybe by Thanksgiving or Christmas this will be really good, so you guys who are latecomers will get a better game than the one we're playing now. Some people may have no issue and wonder why I'm so annoyed, but I find these issues troubling and can't restrain my need to vent.

Do NOT attempt to level your Advanced Technology skill via the Jetpack. You are basically asking for a death and should simply get a holo disc and clean/talk to the pet over and over. There are too few ways to level that skill, yet it focuses on several of our new gameplay features and allowing us to take full advantage of them.

My install was 100% clean and my PC has never been in better condition. If the quality is just going to keep going down, I'm glad to be moving on to Sims 4 when this is done. I'm angry and frustrated at this expansion pack and have been for days to the point that I will probably not release anything tomorrow just to get away from the PC. My experience is different from a lot of folks' though, so I have to throw it in there. I have to focus on a couple of gameplay elements and take notes, and notice all that is wrong and in the meantime work my way around those bugs. Maxis can do better than this and should for their millions of loyal fans, but it's impossible to fully blame them when you get the impression their studio is rushed to work on TS4.

[MeestorMark]

It is sad that you are having such a bad time with it Carl (and others who are as well). For me this has been the least buggy so far. Knocks on wooden desk.

I have tons of sim-crashing-into-the-ground while flying and traveling around with the jet pack, but so far no deaths from it. My time almanac sometimes won't let me click on it, but have only noticed it when I am doing something related to one of the future opportunities or have clicked on the time portal recently. If I just keep playing through what I am doing, it usually works just fine when I am done with that task, or when I remember to come back to it.

But I certainly feel your pain. Several of the past EPs were bug city for me. World Adventures, Island Paradise, Late Night, and Generations all come to mind. With every EP they have released I am always expecting a large number of bugs until they release the first couple of patches for it. Just has been the nature of the beast, and I have wanted to break stuff numerous times dealing with bugs. So definitely feel your pain and sorry it has been this one for you that has been so frustrating.

[jillz]

I'm having fun with the expansion so far. I've experienced the most bugs with Plumbots and trait chips. My Almanac of Time has stopped working too but I'm not that bothered by it.

I really love all the new objects that make managing needs easier and the "elevators" are awesome. I don't like playing in large homes but I do like large families. The lag from large house lots is just too much for my aging computer to handle so all of the new future tech makes playing a large family in a small house so much easier.

One neat thing I discovered yesterday: I have Landgraab Sell n Swap in Dragon Valley so my self employed inventor can advance his career. I took out the regular consignment shop register and put in the future one from the Plumbot store from OL along with a Plumbot pedestal and now my consignment shop in Dragon Valley is open 24 hours. This makes selling things so much easier now the shop is open all the time.

[Namaya]

I love the expansion because there's tons of new things to do and I also really enjoy the smaller enhancements like the new social interactions or traits. But what I don't like about this expansion is the fact that you can enter buy mode in the community centre and sell everything on the lot. I mean, it's nice that you can adjust the community centre but this possibility makes it way too easy to become very rich in the first 5 minutes of the game.

[Turoskel]

After waiting to see what people thought of this expansion and keeping an eye on Crinrict's bug thread for it I decided to take the plunge and order it, now after reading Carl's problems and seeing more bugs appearing in that thread I'm praying I'm one of the lucky ones who doesn't get them, I've always been okay on the whole with expansions but then I bought most of them well after the fact and I guess the bugs were already patched.

It appears there's quite some discrepancy with the patches for this ep, just wondering what your patch number is Carl, Crinrict advises using the superpatch after installation because of all the different version numbers.

Reapplying the manual super patch seems to solve a few of the more common tech issue.

The super patch has a different version than the incremental one. Make sure your game is at 1.63.5 and not at 1.63.4 or 1.62 (patch on the DVD)

Link to Crinrict's bug thread

[Seabody]

I feel like this has all these teasers for TS4 almost to market it (there is even a dream pod dream to dream of TS4) and was not beta tested as much as others. They got arrogant after making so many and thought they could just throw it out there and it's showing.

Please someone correct me if I am wrong, but from looking at the code, there seems to only be two teasers. The Sims 4 related dreams, and a wall scene with the holographic projector (I can't remember the name offhand).


My first impression of the game is very brief, I was focused on true gameplay rather than sampling everything for a change. First thing I did was have Taylor, my Sim, buy virtually everything portable from Buy Mode to check it out, there didn't seem to be an awful lot of new content but there was enough for me. I especially loved the windcarver and hovercars. Above all, I was attracted instantly to the concept of entire home automation, something I'd love to do in real life. I immediately bought a bot at the Bot Shop, Franken Bot (later rechristened to Butler Bot), who became a stereotypical butler, a chef, nanny, repairman, etc. I found a Sentience chip at the Bot Shop (which is essentially a consignment shop), installed it in Butler Bot, there didn't seem to be an awful lot of changes. I also tuned him up somewhat (he came at around Level 6, which means he's a pretty decent quality), and gave him a better body, swapping rust out for a sleek grey chassis.


Moving right along, I also handmade another bot, BeepBoop, who was more of an experiment with the genre. But the annoying thing is, both Butler and BeepBoop are attracted to the pool at my Sim's future home.   Seriously, it's not funny. Any spare moment is spent swimming.


BeepBoop and Butler came back to the present with Taylor, I wanted them to stay in the future whilst I played Taylor in the present. I assume it's not possible? Regardless I had her talk to Emit about making a Utopia, which involved analyzing Sims during laughter, and throwing Dew at people. That's where I left off, I haven't checked back since (worked all through Labour weekend).


Random note, has anyone else noticed the pun with Emit Relevart's name? If you spell Emit and Relevart backwards, you get "Time Traveler".

[callycat]

Moving right along, I also handmade another bot, BeepBoop, who was more of an experiment with the genre. But the annoying thing is, both Butler and BeepBoop are attracted to the pool at my Sim's future home.   Seriously, it's not funny. Any spare moment is spent swimming.

Did you make them solar-powered? I've noticed that happens when I used that chip, I suppose it's something for them to do outside. The one without it doesn't jump in the pool nearly so often.