The bugs and glitches, the problems with the aging and story progression are having a big effect on me.

I feel I\'m just wasting my time starting new games in the Sims 3 in order to see the things I want to in the game. Over a short time, usually one generation, the bugs and glitches begin to creep in and then spoil the game it\'s either try and go on with them, which is not fun, or start another game which is soul destroying when you have spent time building up your family only to abandon them! I have had nearly 3 months of play and probably have over 1000 hours of play and I have seen and encountered so many glitches, it\'s beginning to wear me down!

I feel the game has got so much easier now I have been playing for sometime. When I first started out it was hard for my Sims to get a few reward points. Now on a normal aging game they consistently get 150-200,000 points and I\'ve recently had a couple of Sims with points of over 200,000 and that\'s in just one normal lifespan although 2 of them lived to be 100 Sim days old!

I miss a boost to needs rather than the Mood Meter. I would much prefer a Sim to have boost to the energy meter or other needs rather than the mood meter. Put a Sim in the right situation and the mood meter is mostly high all the time. I have only had a few times low mood meters and this was usually due to witnessing a death and then having to go to work! Of course the reward item moodlet manager will soon put that back on track!

The only way I have reasonably played this game for around 75 Sim Weeks was with aging and story progression both off, so I could play various families in the neighbourhood and have them interact with each other from both sides. It felt more like a community in a similar way to the Sims 2. I just felt the challenge wasn\'t there with aging off and there was little point in having ambrosia as there was no aging turn back although it did come in useful for the resurrection of ghosts.

I\'m disappointed that we were not given the choice of having a active household with aging on and aging off for the rest of the neighbourhood as an \"in game\" option. I have played the game on Normal Aging and I wouldn\'t want to have the aging less than this. With all the bugs and glitches that came with my Normal aging game I wouldn\'t want to play anything less than this and don\'t really see the point of having such a short lifetime age with the population turnaround.

I feel I should get back to my Sims 2 game, it\'s not perfect with FT, AL and MG stuff packs but it\'s a far better game to play than the Sims 3! People moan about loading screens but I would rather wait a couple of minutes for a screen to load and have decent gameplay than put up with all the problems that the continuous neighbourhood presents. I don\'t dislike the continuous neighbourhood, I think it is great and the scenery is lovely, it just doesn\'t work for my style of gameplay. I want to have the challenge of keeping my Sims young with rewards with aging on, like they do in the Sims 2! I want to be in control of the whole neighbourhood and not have a computer dictate the outcome of my game! I want to see Townies and Service Sims that don\'t age (until you play them) around the town to provide the familiarity that I know is the Sims!

I expect I will get the new EP due out at the end of the year as my curiosity will get the better of me, but for me the Sims 2 (and Sims 1) have been far better games in terms of gameplay. I never had any doubts when playing the base games of the Sims 1/2 and was excited to hear about new EP\'s but all that has been lost with the Sims 3!

I have had no music in my game for so long it was making the game quite miserable, but after reading the forum today I found a fix! A big thank you to Steelfalc0n who posted on page 5 of this thread a temporary fix for this problem.

http://forum.thesims3.com/jforum/posts/list/75/2301.page

I just hope that EA are aware of this and will soon sort out this problem in the game.