Showtime is a complete waste of money?

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Kukko69
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Showtime is a complete waste of money?

Post by Kukko69 » August 20th, 2019, 9:51 am

The title is a bit provocative and I'm late to the party, but in my - what, ten? - years of playing TS3, Showtime has been the most... disappointing expansion pack (I don't have Into the Future, though it might be as bad imo). Please tell me what good can I get out of this EP?

First of all, those live shows or whatever they are called. Can they be any use without online gaming with friends and sending your sim into the bit space and what not? When I play Sims, I play alone. Period. Can my sims enjoy performances on stage in the regular game play? A dummy question probably, but I've never managed to get it to work and after some time long ago gave up on the whole idea. Besides, anything related to those shows is buggy as hell. When I send my sim to the park where something is ought to be happening, nothing is happening. There's this one guy, manager or something, and clicking him usually causes bugs and all sorts of trouble...

Secondly, can I somehow set celebrity points to freeze? I want to have celebrities, but I also absolutely want to manage them and who is at what level and so on - I don't want every other regular nobody earn cp and suddenly turn into a three-star-fame as a fisherman... So - celebrities = ON, automatic celebrity points = OFF.
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KittyTheSnowCat
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Showtime is a complete waste of money?

Post by KittyTheSnowCat » August 20th, 2019, 1:27 pm

I also could never get the shows to work.. I use Showtime for the Rodeo thingy and the karaoke machine ;p
You can freeze the celebrity points with StoryProgression. I think I only allowed certain careers types with Castes, but the options are pretty flexible.

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Showtime is a complete waste of money?

Post by Sonshine » August 20th, 2019, 1:34 pm

I don't know the answers to all of your questions, but I have no problems at all when I have a sim do a live concert or a performance. I can click on the proprietor to get an audition and nothing bad happens. It sounds like you might have some other mods or maybe something else going on that is interfering w/this. The Singer, Magician, and Acrobat came w/Showtime and even if you don't do live performances w/these professions, they're kind of fun. You can just have your sim "perform for tips." The Genie also came w/Showtime and is fun to play with.

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Showtime is a complete waste of money?

Post by fxchristensen » August 20th, 2019, 2:01 pm

Simport is entirely optional. I have never used it as I don't have any friends who play TS3 so I know where you are coming from.
Besides, the additional stage props you would earn through Simport are "available" over at MTS3 ;)

I have not had any problem interacting with the proprietor except for an odd glitch that blanks out the audition request but, since I realize what the blank bubble represents, it's no big deal for me. The game schedules regular Simfests (with performances by entertainers the game has generated or which you created but aren't playing) which I can direct my active Sim(s) to watch. If there is no Simfest there will be nothing to watch. When my own performer is performing at their scheduled event, the Sims visiting the venue will stop to watch and cheer (or jeer!).

The whole idea of Showtime is that one of the Sims you control becomes a performer and is working their way up in a career. Watching a show in no way helps that process.

The Showtime EP works well with Late Night as you can create venues that have stages from both EPs, saving space and drawing more visitors.

As far as controlling how celebrities advance (a Late Night feature, not Showtime) there might be a way to do so through an NRaas mod but I am not aware of it myself.

I don't often play the Showtime careers but they are still fun once in a while.

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Showtime is a complete waste of money?

Post by Sarah_Sims » August 20th, 2019, 2:19 pm

Kukko69 wrote:
August 20th, 2019, 9:51 am
Can I somehow set celebrity points to freeze? I want to have celebrities, but I also absolutely want to manage them and who is at what level and so on - I don't want every other regular nobody earn cp and suddenly turn into a three-star-fame as a fisherman... So - celebrities = ON, automatic celebrity points = OFF.
fxchristensen wrote:
August 20th, 2019, 2:01 pm
As far as controlling how celebrities advance (a Late Night feature, not Showtime) there might be a way to do so through an NRaas mod but I am not aware of it myself.

The following FAQ may help you. :-)

How To Designate Celebrity Careers Above A Certain Level

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Showtime is a complete waste of money?

Post by deedee_828 » August 20th, 2019, 2:58 pm

I've played with all of the Showtime careers and really enjoyed them with or w/o participating in Simport, which is totally optional.
And really doesn't involve other players in your game, just their singer, magician, or acrobat, but ONLY if you invite them to your town.
Same goes for your performance sims, they only leave if you request a friend to host a show for them. It can be a little glitchy sometimes, but I played them way before I used NRaas mods, and it wasn't that bad. Kind of nice, hosting and going on tour!

But even w/o that, all three performance careers can be quite fun.
The initial levels of the career can be a bit repetitive, like most of the active careers, but you can perform for tips all on your own w/o having to wait for any jobs to show up. And then you have the choice of accepting those jobs.
Auditioning for gigs works fine, as long as you have the proper venues for each of your career levels and no mod is messing that up.
And I really love the songs the singers have to choose from especially once they reach higher levels of their career.
Some of them have stuck in my head for years and when I hear them sung again in game, it makes me smile.
Fond memories just like in RL when you hear a familiar song!
And you get to choose what to do for your performances too, sing, repeat a verse or refrain, and I think you can even sing along to a guitar if your sim has one in their inventory. Even tell or joke or chat with the audience during your performance and then do a big finale.
Of course each career has it's own performances to choose from and the more you practice, the better you get.
Don't forget to use you lifetime happiness points to get perks that really help performers.
And of course, your performance sims traits play a big part too, choose those like charismatic and born performer rather than shy or socially awkward!
I'd also recommend checking out Carl's Sims 3/4 Forum to learn lots of tips and tricks to really get the full experience of this expansion:
https://www.carls-sims-3-guide.com/showtime/

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Showtime is a complete waste of money?

Post by igazor » August 20th, 2019, 5:45 pm

As to the title of this thread, let's bring things down to earth if we could. Showtime is the EP that brought us genies, dominoes, bananas, and golf (such as it is). I don't know what any of that has to do with show business, but to me anyway the rest of the EP is all incidental stuff.

So the next time you see a group of genies playing dominoes while eating bananas and talking about their golf scores, you might ask yourself how this would be possible without the EP in play. This is EA's thing, or at least it was with TS3, to hide beloved content in random seemingly not associated EPs like that. :)

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Showtime is a complete waste of money?

Post by Chain_Reaction » August 21st, 2019, 8:31 pm

fxchristensen wrote:
August 20th, 2019, 2:01 pm
an odd glitch that blanks out the audition request but, since I realize what the blank bubble represents, it's no big deal for me.
Are you talking about the interaction bubble? That should be fixed in the careers testing version I do believe.

I see so many talking about SimFests not working and I recall doing a ton of work with Register to try to fix that. Perhaps most of you aren't using it or I just need to take that back to the drawing board.

As for the EP it's self, meh. It's definitely the worst of the bunch we got I think. As igazor said the supporting content is worth it, the actual purpose not so much. It's more of the celebrity stuff that could have been rolled into Late Night and the expansion slot used for something more meaningful. The careers are well done and fun to watch but it's a one and done thing. I really wish they'd ask themselves "how much replay value does this feature have?" before they decide on what they're doing with an expansion.

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Showtime is a complete waste of money?

Post by KittyTheSnowCat » August 22nd, 2019, 2:19 am

I don't know about Simfests with a Sim in one of the careers.. because I never play those. But Simfests are always empty for me. I get a notification about a Simfest starting and when my Sims go there nothing happens. I thought they could watch a show there, but maybe I am wrong about how it works. i have not tried for some time though.. I don't have any lots for Simfests anymore

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Showtime is a complete waste of money?

Post by Kukko69 » August 22nd, 2019, 8:21 am

KittyTheSnowCat: Yes! That's exactly what I meant with SimFests. I get the notion that something should be about to happen there, but nada... That's why I've been confused if they require some SimPorting nevertheless to properly function... I guess I should try them again with Register as Chain_Reaction suggested. Not sure if I have.

And whoopsie, forgot about LN and thought celebrities were part of ST instead. Two pretty similar EPs, there's really no reason for that to be honest... But since when did EA make anything right anyway... right?

About other ST content... Never played with a genie, don't really like fantasy stuff and dominoes are boring even IRL :P I recall no other reason for purchasing this EP than "gotta collect them all" (which, although, stopped at IP in my case).

Okay, I guess those careers might be worth of playing once or twice. I could give some singer or a magician a chance. Thanks all for the tips!
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