Little peculiarities of your Sims 3 gameplay «12...Next Go

PalmArrow

Is there something you often do in your Sims 3 gameplay that you don't think many other players do? Tell us what it so that we can compare our quirks and peculiarities, and possibly give each other ideas!

PalmArrow

In my case, it bothers me that the game generates the same multi-coloured umbrella for all townies. So I try to spread personalised umbrellas across my towns. The households I created and keep in my library, as well as those I shared on the Exchange, all have individually styled umbrellas. When I move a sim out of the active household, I make sure they have an umbrella in their inventory. Also, if I have a sim with a high level in handiness and nothing important to do, I will go into buy mode, buy several umbrellas, give them all different solid colours, stripes, polka dots or tartan patterns, and let the handy sim upgrade them to unbreakable. Then I put the umbrellas in the sim's inventory, and the next time they're out and about they give the umbrellas as gifts to townies.



It isn't really a lot of work, and it makes me happy when there is rain and I see townies in the street carrying unique umbrellas!

StephSteb

I have a thing where I have to make sure all of my sims are wearing socks. So, I have to check to make sure they're wearing socks if they aren't wearing sandals, etc.

I know.

I don't know why, either.

mw1525

OMGoodness, If I made a written list of all the quirky things I do in game, this site would shut down from server overload!

Familywise:
1). I make certain the parents of my Sim children (and teens) meet the parents of the Sims they play/interact with. Sometimes things happen and when they do I like having the option to have my Sim parents 'complain' about that sim (usually a teen) to their parents.

2). I have my parents pick their children up from friends' houses when it is late or dark outside. I just don't like seeing children peddling around alone at 10 o'clock at night. I don't care if the neighborhood is safe.

3). Everyone must keep a piece of fruit in their personal inventory for when they become hungry.

4). Walk! If they live close enough, I love having my Sims walk to the park or to visit neighbors in their neighborhood.

5). Speaking of walking, teens are not allowed automatic use of the family ride. They are given bicycles as their 'mode of transportation' and when they get part-time jobs or earn money through other means, they can purchase themselves a scooter to ride on (or a sloppy jalopy if they really need a car).

6). Use the WHOLE house. This place isn't just for eating, sleeping, using the bathroom and doing homework. 9 times out of 10 my sims have worked very hard turning the house they started in into a real home. I make them pay for everything, from upgrading furnishings to renovations so, every inch of that lot gets used.

*Living rooms are for visitors of adults (or adults w/toddlers) and family-time (of course).
*Front Porches/Basements/Dens/Backyards are spaces where kids and teens can entertain their visiting guests. I also keep a few toys on the front porch of families with toddlers.
*Single guests of children and teens are allowed to hang out in their bedrooms if they want.

7). I keep additional food in the fridge for the babysitter.

8). I keep a toybox in the living room for visiting toddlers and childish Sims.

9). I can all leftovers and keep the pantry stocked with ingredients (Needs the canning station & canning station overhaul mod).

10). Create and stock medicines and rejuvenators for my families. This needs SN for some elixirs, canning station overhaul mod for double boiled ginseng to cure illness and, a healthy stock of sweet grass, life fruit and death flowers.

11). This one is not family related. My sims who own a business with employees always host the annual holiday party (at a community lot).

MamaSimTee

I love all your posts. Such cool quirks and inspirational ideas!

Nikkei_Simmer

Outside of my randomly torturing premades other than River McIrish, Bebe Hart and Samantha Gray? 😁

Mareah

I always make my sims do their laundry at the laundromat, and i place one near my played households for convenience.

PalmArrow

@Mareah , I like having a laundromat in town too, although I don't always have one! It gives all the benefits of laundry, but without having those annoying piles of dirty clothes on the floor that generate when you have a washing machine at home.

Karritz

@PalmArrow those umbrellas have been a bit of an eyesore for me too. I do occasionally try to personalise the umbrellas of the sims I play.

The quirky thing I've been doing lately is turning everyone's imaginary friend real. I tried to eliminate all of the dolls in my child or older sims' inventories by making them real. That seemed to be working until I discovered some of my sims don't want to lose their dolls from their inventories. They are happy enough to offer the potion to their live imaginary friend and have them become real. But some of them just get a new doll and play with it. And if I make that doll real too then the sim just generates another one. I give up. Fortunately it doesn't happen with all of my sims. Just a very select few.

KNORear

I like to dress my sims in their favorite color( even if it is just one part of the outfit) . This helps me find them in a crowd if they are at at a party or a community lot and it’s just fun .

GraceyManor

I like this thread! I got some good idea

For me I have parents drive their kids to school and pick their kids up

PalmArrow

GraceyManor wrote: »

I like this thread! I got some good idea

I got some ideas too! For example, today my sim hired a babysitter, and I remembered what @mw1525 wrote and made sure there was food in the fridge for him. ( He didn't take any, though!)

mw1525

@PalmArrow - Great Thread! It's the frequency which sims pull out those dang umbrellas which bother me more than the lack of designs. Since I play the entire town, eventually I get around to personalizing everyone's umbrella. Although every sim will get an umbrella for rain, very few of them have one for sunshade. I also have my handy sim upgrade the rain umbrella to unbreakable because those seem to wear out the fastest.

@StephSteb - Socks are must for my children's athletic outfits. However, when it comes to the adults' wearing socks, it all depends on the outfit they are wearing and the shoe choice.

@Nikkei_Simmer - Yeah, when you're not giving your townies a fear complex, what kind of life does your actives lead?

@Mareah & @PalmArrow - Laundromats are a must in my towns as well. Only my very large households have a washer & dryer in their homes. I do place hampers in all of my homes though whether there are machines or not. I put them in places where I know a sim will change to keep those clothes from piling up on the floor.

@Karritz - I guess your Sims really like their dolls ! I don't have Generations installed so I don't get the doll. If I do change my mind and install it one day, I may just follow your lead and convert them into real Sims.

@KNORear - I like to use their favorite color in their personal space (bedrooms) or on skill objects such as the painting easel. It helps to personalize their space even more.

@GraceyManor - I tried having my sim parents take/pick-up their kids from school. In the beginning it seemed to work okay-ish but as my families began to expand or their daily lives became more hectic, I had to abandon the task. Now the only time my sim parents pick their kids up from school is if the kid stays on the schoolground playground too late.

GraceyManor

@mw1525

10). Create and stock medicines and rejuvenators for my families. This needs SN for some elixirs, canning station overhaul mod for double boiled ginseng to cure illness and, a healthy stock of sweet grass, life fruit and death flowers.

Wow! Didn't know you could make medicine
My sims only have 1-2 kids so isn't too bad for me.
Would love to try your family style play, but it seems difficult to control guests XD

mw1525

@GraceyManor - Guests are pretty easy to manipulate. The trick lies in placing my active sim in the desired space first.

Say for instance my teen has a couple of his friends over. The first thing I do is send my teen to the area of the house I want them in, like the den for example. Once my teen is there, depending on how I want them to engage, I can have my teen start a video game and invite his friends to play or, I can just use the 'call over' command to guide each of the visitors to that room.

Once there they will choose what they want to do from the things which are available. I leave them to their autonomy. Video game players will eventually stop playing after a while and look for other things to do or (just start watching tv). The only time visitors will wander is when they want to talk to another member of the household. Since I welcome all social interactions, I just view it as the visitor being polite by saying hello to the others.

Plus, there are several tricks I use when it comes to invited guest. One is I invite each guest over separately; this gives me insight into their 'real' relationship. If a 'friend' repeatedly turns down a request to hang out that lets me know they are a 'friend' in name only and not truly interested in my sim. For sims who choose to visit autonomously, I wait to see what it is they really want. Sometimes they just want to talk, use my sim's pc or just stay for dinner. I don't guide those sims, I just let them be.

Also, when multiple friends are at the house, I lock all of the bedroom doors! When a single guest is at the house the bedroom is unlocked. Each of my children and teen Sims only have enough objects/activities in their rooms to entertain only one guest.

Nikkei_Simmer

@mw1525 - my actives get filthy rich by making their dogs work like slaves. 😁

StephSteb

KNORear wrote: »

I like to dress my sims in their favorite color( even if it is just one part of the outfit) . This helps me find them in a crowd if they are at at a party or a community lot and it’s just fun .

I do this as well as decorate their rooms in their favorite color

mw1525

@Nikkei_Simmer - Glad your Sims are enjoying the fruits of your dog's labors . My pets are treated more like members of the family. While I do have them max out the hunting skill, it's basically only used for point gain when the wish to hunt pops up.

Nikkei_Simmer

mw1525 wrote: »

@Nikkei_Simmer - Glad your Sims are enjoying the fruits of your dog's labors . My pets are treated more like members of the family. While I do have them max out the hunting skill, it's basically only used for point gain when the wish to hunt pops up.

I’m a cat person so my cats tend to get spoilt. Likewise with my Sims’ cats. 😁

mw1525

@Nikkei_Simmer - IRL, Me too !

Here's another thing I do in game, not for all my sims but mainly for those who have to travel great distances. I put a MP3 player in their inventory and turn it on while they are driving, it gives the illusion of having a radio in the car. I also do this with my long-distance cyclists as well.

Trust me, when you have the 'slow down' car speed mod in your game and your Sim lives on one end of Monte Vista and has to travel to the opposite end for work, having a few tunes playing does seem to make the miles go faster.

Mikezumi

@KNORear I also like to dress my sims in their favourite colour!

I am sure there are things that I do in every save that might be considered peculiarities but, off the top of my head, I can't think of any other than, as mentioned above, dressing my sims in their favourite colours.

MamaSimTee

I like to dress and decorate (wall color, carpet, some furniture) in my SIMS favorite colors often.

I think I may use some of the ideas that @mw1525 posted about families. I think that would be interesting.

Archivist

I put identical bathrooms all over my Sims' houses.

This is because I'm too lazy to make cool and interesting bathrooms just for my Sims to befoul with poop. I'm no servant, enjoy your exact same bathroom and stop desperately yelling icons at the sky like you didn't eat leftover pancakes straight from the refridgerator for every meal since Saturday. These little twerps are constantly pooping and almost always have to go at the same time, and if you're playing without mods it can sometimes take 40 in-game minutes or longer for a Sim to properly vacate their bowels. Your family has no time for that, Hank.

So I give them bathrooms galore, as many bathrooms as there are living members in the household, and never a different bathroom: same exact bathroom everywhere, all the time. Sometimes if a premade bathroom is too large, I slice it into even sections like a Sicilian pizza and it becomes 3-4 identical bathrooms (maybe with different paintings, I'm not cruel). If there's no realistic way for every bathroom to have a door, I'll install a ladder up or down from another floor and watch a Sim navigate the house like a rat in a maze just to get to an available toilet in however much time they have. But there's no cheese reward for them at the end of that maze. Just poop.

Theirs.

What's that you say, I could just make it so my Sims never have to poop? What kind of god would I be if I used that power??? No, the weird twilight zone "there are identical bathrooms everywhere in town and I joyfully berate my Sims in front of my own daughter" thing is much healthier, I think.

Karritz

Sometimes, when I have several children sharing a bathroom, instead of addjng the usual bssthroom fittings I add 4 or more all in one bathrooms. Saves me time and thgey can all go at once in a 4x4 room.

HillyBeth

Blue is my all-time favorite color and I tend to use that color a lot when painting the inside of my sims' homes or creating new sims. Mostly the powder blue though. LOL!

mw1525

I am not a huge fan of designing or building bathrooms for my Sims. Even the largest of my households won't have more than two and a half bathrooms. And, unless their profession calls for it, I don't use any of the rewards such as 'steel bladder' and the likes on them.

However, I do keep handy a few of those 'shower-in-a-can' for certain times such as after working hard in the garden. And I always keep a couple of cans in my Sims gym bag for when they visit the gym .