How much as it changed through ongoing game or by the last/current save? What's affect/result it left on the world?

From Sims to Lots. Are there any remaining premade households in the area? Have any of their story changed path once you intervened and ever since you been evolved?
How much lots have evolved (been switched to what if every got replace)? How things have shifted progressively after you gradually installed more packs, store and cc content? Explain more if you can

And for those who hadn't touched it ages to remember, never play or aren't interesting: wanna talk about and answer questions of the other premade (or custom) world you play?

Overall, I love the actual layout of Sunset Valley. It has a nice quaint, small town feel that I feel EA hasn't really replicated since. The premades and their backstories are pretty bare-bones compared to TS2, but they work well enough. The only problem I have with it nowadays is how it really takes some work to make it up to date with all of the EP content. Several house layouts are designed strangely, they really improved that with the later EPs. Also, I don't know who designed the SV houses, but they really had no clue how to decorate. I don't even know what kind of aesthetic they were going for there. It's this really ugly, old 1930s look.

I really like it, especially nowadays. But when I do play in SV, it needs a fair amount of touching up. Both Sims and houses.

For me, it's too big and quite too many lots really. Aside that, I will modify to my liking the next time I start a new game. ATM, I don't have enough content to do large makeover.

As for what his happening in my sunset valley, my current household are resided 10 Summer Hill Court. Moved them when another household townies inhabited after Landgrabbs (maybe it was the landgrabbed household in future generation, but I doubt it). As for what's happening in the lifes of inactive Sims, I don't really follow or track them.

I just evict families and delete them on the clipboard. I then replace with families I had in mind. I delete the school lot and add my ideas of making it better.

Keep in mind that I have every EP and SP, including the 2 retired Katy Perry licensed ones. I can and will dress Sunset Valley like a candy forest!

It was my first town played, but I’ve moved on past it now.

It’s definitely Californian in feeling, though which part of California it is is up to question.

If I ever want to return to it, it’ll have to involve upgrades to the terrain painting, trees, deco and houses as well.

I've never thought of it as Californian. In my mind it's always been New England (despite the evidence to the contrary), only done poorly.

Same, especially the coastal aspect. I feel as though they got the community aspect of a typical NE town right. It's just the poor landscaping and mishmash of styles sets SV back in my mind.

I mean to be fair, TS3 worlds are always kind of their own thing. They don't want it to be too American, but also not too something else. They want a little of this, a little of that, and a little of something completely else and I think they know that when you throw 17 different things together, the end result is never going to be very convincing. But it's good enough for a cutesy game about happy little people.

I always find it funny when people say this. Nothing wrong with it of course. I guess my take on it is whatever lots I don't use just kind of sit there until I'm ready to use them. It's part of the reason I love this game so much. If we were confined to TS4's model where I have to decide how to use these five lots they've given most effectively, I'd be ripping my hair out. I also do a lot of building so I don't tend to have much empty space.

Take something like the University world, the best TS3 world EA ever designed as far as layout. Some don't like it because of how big it is, but it works because it's fairly realistic and designed well.

I find it funny because I don't believe in "too big" in any way, really. It's only a consideration because TS3 doesn't take large worlds well. But I personally have no problems whatsoever with abnormally large worlds. Sometimes I feel like murdering Bridgeport because it's so ridiculously small and cramped. Seriously EA, I want Bridgeport but 4-6 times larger. How fucking hard can it be? Instead of squeezing in 4-5 highrises, a dinky little bridge and a couple of hillside mansions would it kill you to have a proper uptown district, a majestic bay bridge, and a hillside littered with expensive-looking real estate? Having to fake it like I do is dumb.

Don't know if I'd necessarily say the University world is realistic....maybe if it had twice the amount of lots in it. The US does sprawl very well. I'd like to see not just a dozen houses scattered across a field but hundreds of them. Make 75% of them purely decorative, I don't care. Just make it look right.

Yeah, you also probably wouldn't have the coffee shop and bowling alley directly across the street from the university as well. I think for all of EA's shortcomings with world design in TS3, the point I was making was that the University world was one of their better attempts. Was it entirely realistic scale-wise? Of course not, but then almost nothing in TS3 is.

Considering things like that makes me kind of upset that we'll probably never get a follow up to a proper open-world experience again in the Sims. I feel like the entire concept was an experiment that not even everyone liked.

Everyone would have liked it if they'd bother to design a game engine that scales properly. Instead they put out a base game and then didn't optimize it at all while very actively pumping crap into it for 5 years.

Have you tried Roaring Heights, by the way? I don't have anything against the University world per se but Roaring Heights blows it out of the water. It's well laid out, handsomely decorated, the lots look great, and it also just so happens to come with some very useful Build/Buy content. It's a shame it was TS3's last world because to me it feels like they were starting to get good at it at this point. You can tell their standards went up between 2009 and 2013 because visually, it looks more polished than the early worlds. The assets were pretty good too at this point, it's like Maxis was a lot more interested their texture work than the studio that did the first 3 years of TS3. They're all nicely modeled and mapped and shaded and meanwhile, much of the rest of TS3 still looks dead and lifeless. I want more of this Maxis-style TS3.

I think they learned a lot about world building along the way, just as we do/did. If I looked at the first world I uploaded again I am sure it is pretty blah compared to later worlds. And what was nice for EA was they had the base game limitations for trees to use and so on for SV and R, but as EPs were released they could use more in the worlds.

I liked most of the worlds. Still think the swamp in Twinbrook is cool!

Lol I don't like almost any of the (non-store) worlds but I also love the Twinbrook swamp. They really did great there, it has such a cool atmosphere. Also really like the industrial part.

I never really warmed up to Sunset Valley, I think because it just feels too generic for me... I like a world with a more distinct feel (like Twinbrook, for example, which is still far from ideal but overall much better to me).

I love Sunset Valley, it never loses it's charm, it's simple but not boring. I really like that there is a bit of a secluded beach and that it probably has the best community park of the game. Lots of cute townies as well that I love seeing again and again

I mean, aside from a couple of the early Store worlds I think it's fair to say none of them are particularly bad. There's a lot of worlds I don't care for at all, that I've only played in for a couple of Sim days at best, but even those seem to function just fine. I'm pretty sure I've never actually played in Appaloosa Plains, Starlight Shores, Sunlit Tides, Lunar Lakes and Moonlight Falls. I've had households in them to explore the world a bit and generally spend a few hours with the pack, but beyond that I've never done anything with them.

For me the list of worlds that I've spent significant time in in the past 5 or 6 years is pretty short:
Bridgeport
Champs Les Sims
Sunset Valley
Roaring Heights
Twinbrook
Shang Sim-la

Most of the time recently, I play in Moonlight Falls, which I have fixed for as much from other EPs as possible. I also did some changes to some premade community lots with things from other EPs as well as store. For example, I've added the basketball court on the parking lot of the gym and created new basement floor where I've put the bowling and the coffee bar. Houses and premade Sims I've kept untouched unless I play with them.

As for Sunset Valley, I addmittedly never played much in it. I've got the game with Ambitions and definitely spend more time in Twinbrook then Sunset Valley. I also spend a lot of time in Riverview and Lunar Lakes. However, as game progressed, it was harder and harder to keep them updated, so I moved to Moonlight Falls.
However, few years ago, I've felt nostalgic and returned to Sunset Valley. I Used Naga's Sunset Valley 7.0 from Carl's Sims 3 Guide (whose full version is unfortunately no longer available for download) and I played it without any changes. I've decided to play for Goths, because, well, everyone loves Goths, doesn't they? I've made Cornelia Architectural Designer and she did some interesting changes all around the town, most of them appreciated by her clients. I also concentrated on improving Gunther and Cornelia's relationship, since, as you may know, it wasn't that well. And I succeeded. They had a cute baby girl. Fortunately, at that time, Mortimer was already teen, so he was able to help his parents with his sister. Speaking of Mortimer, he became very close friend with Malcolm Landgraab. So close, in fact, he decided to invite him on a prom, much to Bella's chagrin. From then on, their relationship only blossomed and once they aged to YA, I've send them to university, where Malcolm got degree in Science and Mortimer in Business. After university, they married and followed the paths of their fathers in Medical and Business careers respectively. Eventually, they went to Oasis Landing and engineered cute boy named Alexander (I know, I know, but I just couldn't come with anything better ). Unfortunately, I did not get any further with that game, because my computer started to act up and I lost the game So, that's how my last play in Sunset valley ended. However, recently, I've felt like returning to Sunset valley and maybe playing Goths again and see how will their story unfold this time around.