Mod The Sims 3 Better | Deficient AI In Sims 3

The Sims 3 is an excellent game, don't get me wrong. It will suck away your life and leave you an empty husk of gamer within mere weeks so it is totally worth the purchase price. After many moons of playing the Sims 3, I do have a few bones to pick with the AI however so why not read along, and even add your own moans at the end of the article! What fun we will have!

Cold, Heartless Sims

All too often, Sims won't greet each other. For example, a newlywed bride sits alluringly on the bed in her lingerie, reading a book. Her new husband comes home, runs in the door, dives into bed and is fast asleep without so much as a glance at his wife. Would it really have taken that much time to program in some greets between members of households? Note that this happens between sims with traits such as 'hopeless romantic' and 'friendly' and 'charismatic' and what not. It spoils the realism of the game entirely when romantic partners, friends and even parents and children go weeks on end without communicating.

Sims Are Bad Parents

Did I say parents and children there? Oh yes. The same goes for parents and children. My sims managed to have twins taken off them by child services at one point because they had apparently neglected and ignored them entirely to the point where the children were so utterly desolate and lonely that child services actually noticed. These are children they passed by every day, on the way to school, on their way to get breakfast, on their way to shower, in short, the children they saw several times every day and never bothered to speak to. Likewise, the children evidently never struck up a conversation with the adults of the house. If 'high free will' equates to 'locking your children away behind a wall of silence,' then there's no wonder the world is messed up.

Magical Police Radar

Of course, in some cases the AI is too good. This is something that can be tweaked with Awesomemod, but it is an incredibly annoying 'feature' of the standard game. Say you send your teenager fishing in the graveyard and they stay out there all night.

Aha, Sims 3 players will say, they can't stay out there all night because a policeman or woman will show up shortly after the curfew expires and take them home to mom and dad, who will always yell at them.

What the hecking hell? In real life, police spend most of their time trying (and failing on a fairly regular basis) to catch actual criminals, let alone picking up every teenager who stays up too late. Is the Sims some kind of police state? In what world can innocent teens be plucked off the street simply for being there? Sure, if my sim teen is peeking in the windows of other people's houses, vandalizing their trashcans or otherwise causing trouble, a call to the police would make sense, otherwise, let my teen sims go!

Path Finding Idiocy

All too often Sims decide that they can't get where they want to go for some reason or other and their response is to stand there and scream for a few minutes. Awesomemod will allow you to turn off that inane behavior as well, but the reason for it seems bizarre. Also in path finding problems is the habit of sims to simply stand in front of one another, tapping their feet until someone moves. In the case of bathroom queues, this can lead to Sims urinating on the floor rather than just walking around one another.

Let Them Play!

In other cases, the AI is stymied by game play blocks. On a setting of 'high free will,' Sims will pretty much play themselves, in fact, all you really need to do is sit there and click on the alerts which pop up periodically and pause the game. I assume the reason for this is that EA thought it would be a bad idea if someone absent mindedly wandered away from their computer for an hour or two and discovered that his or her Sims had created an entire civilization whilst they were away. Unfortunately, if you want to simply be a god like figure in your creation's lives and let them play themselves for a bit, you can't. There should be a way to allow sims to choose their own opportunities and let me become the ultimate passive gamer.