Why I'm so Quiet

Well, yes, it's because I've been playing other video games.

Here's why I've been playing other video games:

Ever since installing Pets, my game has become laggy and unstable enough to more or less suck all the fun out of playing it.

This has been a gradual and measurable decline.

Before World Adventures, I could do as I liked with the game - play in any town I wanted, have a large CC collection, and live with a family of any size in any lot I fancied.  There were still some problems, but overall, not that bad.

By the time World Adventures rolled into Ambitions, I had to trim my CC collection down, and houses with more than 4-5 people in it, or lots of more than 40 x 40 size, were un-doable.

By the time Generations came around, to keep my game performing, my CC collection was bare-minimum at just default replacements, a few skins, and a handful of Twallan's mods.  I was unable to play in a town with more than 50-70 people in it.

When I installed Pets, I tried out Appaloosa Plains with a single sim in a starter home, and crashed three times in the first day.  I pared down my Twallan mods even more, moved to a small custom world with a population of about 30, kept my lot modest, and even then, by the time my singleton sim had acquired a decent collection of pets - a couple horses, a cat, and a dog - I was back to laggy and unstable.

So let's go over that again:

- I cannot play in any EA worlds, or any custom worlds of similar size and population.  I will crash.
- I cannot keep a normal custom content collection.  No custom hair, clothes, furniture, cars, or the like.  I will crash.
- I cannot live on a large lot, no matter how wealthy my sims are.  I will crash.
- I cannot have a household of more than 4 playable individuals, including pets.  I will crash.
- I could theoretically remove Twallan's StoryProgression to try and ease the load, but before I got SP, no one in my towns married, bred, worked, or did anything but age until death.  Boring.

And this is in addition to all the normal bugs that come and go with each update.

My computer is NOT crap.  I have a proper desktop machine, 2.66ghz quad-core processor, 8GB memory, and a 1024MB graphics card.  However, EA cannot code for Mac worth a crap.  They just wrap the game in a Windows emulator and call the bloated result OSX compatible.

So, at this point, I am finding a lot of other things I'd rather be doing than playing Sims 3.  I'm not gonna jump on a soapbox and scream at EA for it - they won't listen anyway -  but I will find other things to do, and stop giving them my money in the meantime.

'Scuse me for a Bit

... You mean I can build stuff AND battle zombies?

brb, Minecraft.

Her Name Is Skittles

Just a little treat for you before bedtime...

I got the idea in my head to make a populated cemetery.  The graveyards filled with nondescript "Remains" that most custom worlds boast are boring.  This involved killing a LOT of sims in rapid succession.

Which soon led to the realization that none of my sims have diddled with an active Grim Reaper since before Late Night came out.

Heh.  That strut...

And with our new critters running around Simsland now, the cemetery just had to have a pets section.

So, in the interest of collecting victims to fill my graves, I adopted a kitten and threw it into CAS to tweak its appearance.

... Have you seen what happens when you try to use a preset body shape on a kitten in CAS?

Isn't she precious?

Thwarted

(#&*%*$

So, the only way pets can die is old age?  Really?

My simself fulfilled her Lifetime Wish of owning 2 of each pet type (all the way down to beetles!), and after a couple days of that chaos I decided to off some of the excess for the sake of game stability (big households = crashy crashy) and being able to move around my living room.  Also because I like ghosts.

Built a pool, threw the dog in, built a fence and dragged the energy bar down.  The minute the Drowning moodlet appeared, she auto-teleported out of the pool.

Built a shed with no door, put the cat in, and set it on fire.  The minute the fire caught the cat, he auto-teleported out of the shed.

Sent the dog and the cat out for a long walk into an empty field.  Dropped a meteor right down on their fuzzy little heads.  When the explosion cleared, they were standing around, safe and sound, next to a giant space rock.

And of course if you try to starve them, the social worker comes to get you.

I imagine electrocution isn't going to work either, and I probably can't order a kitten to attack an angry mummy.

Seriously, where's the fun in indestructible pets?