Need help with different Sims 3 gameplay!

NidhiB777

Hi all! I need some help in trying to figure out how to have fun with the Sims 3 game again cause it got too boring.
My play style is to always create Sims from scratch, absolutely no backstory (it doesn't even cross my mind!) and plop them onto a lot with a house I built from scratch. I always make them master their skills and reach the top of their careers and honestly have no other life beyond that. By that I mean my Sims are always losing the three friends they manage to make, don't remember the last time they hosted or attended a party, barely have a good relationship with their family... I also like playing tough challenges like The Apocalypse Challenge. But it has gotten so boring now!
I desperately want to change my gameplay style, something along more creative, story based lines. I realised I really like Sims lore and the history of the different households etc. I wanted to try playing pre-made Sims/townies of Sunset valley but.... Idk I'm so lost??
I wanna see how their story unfolds and don't want to "interfere" in their story progression as I learn more about their lives and relationships with the rest of the town. At the same time, playing them is so boring because almost nothing is happening even with High free will. I end up really resisting the urge to start making them into Super-skilled Sims.

How do y'all play townies? Please give me an in-depth insight into how you play, what your thought process is, how you enjoy the wild things that happen without interfering or instigating anything.... Thank you for reading this far!!!

texansky

@straydogblues

Your gameplay sounds a lot like mine. I am constantly focusing on skills and the household and rarely have outside relationships, which is why I avoid a political career and any others that require a high charisma. When building, it's common for me to forget to put mirrors in the house.

I found the 10-generation challenge fits well with my gameplay. My Sim families typically have two or more children and they stayed in the household until they were young adults and the next generation's heir took over. The only exception to this were the first two generations of my Forsythe Legacy Family challenge where they both had an only child. Sometimes the others didn't move out at all unless I ran out of room. (I use the mod for overstuffed households now. I have the nursery on the first floor and put all of the bedrooms in the basement. Skill items for science, logic, sculpting, alchemy, etc go into the sub-basement under the bedrooms. My main floor just has the living room, kitchen, laundry, and library.)

By playing multiple families in the same household, there is so much going on. I like to share my stories, so I pause the game a lot and use the TAB key to try to get the perfect shot. I don't have any goals in mind other than fulfilling immediate wishes and lifetime wishes. I love the personalities of the different Sims. They keep me entertained with their antics.

The only townie I have played is Bella Bachelor because she married my 2nd generation's heir. I didn't even think about how that would affect Mortimer and the future of the town in that regard. I didn't follow the townies during that time, so I have no idea who he ended up marrying.

The father of my 2nd generation's heir was Gobias Koffee. I never controlled him as the rules of the challenge prevented my Sim from marrying a rich Sim, so she hid her pregnancy from him until their son became a teenager.

Welcome to the forums. I hope you enjoy your time here. (I gave you an awesome on all of your posts to help you get to full member status sooner.) Happy Simming!

ts1depot

What EPs do you have? I ask because what EPs you have make all the difference in the types of things you can do with your sims. For instance, with Ambitions, University and Showtime, you get a wider variety of careers, professions and goals.

Karritz

When my games were getting boring and repetitive I started looking at the badges that are available and trying to get some of them. Some badges are difficult or impossible to get, but when trying to get them I got a lot of different ideas about game play and learned things I had never thought of before. There are badges that come with each Expansion pack. So whatever you have installed will have badges.

For some examples of how I play the game when trying for badges I have several YouTube videos that I've made while doing that. The link to my channel is in my signature. The play lists that are about badges include Caroline and Friends (Island Paradise badges); 30 Grandchildren badge (generations I think). Caroline got all the necessary badges, 30 Grandchildren failed to get the badge but a lot of fun was had and I started having more fun with Imaginary Friends than ever before in that game. I've started a new series of Caroline and Friends at University where they are trying for University Life badges. I have other videos as well, but not all are based on badges. The Isla Paradiso Bunch started out chasing badges in Island Paradise but they all failed, then, in the second playlist they did all of the tombs in the three World Adventure Worlds. I'm always looking for new ways to play the game. There are some badges that I will probably never try because they don't appeal to me. I almost never play vampires. I tried once and my vampire kept killing itself. I gave up after that one. Although I do occasionally add one to a game.

I hope you find a way to enjoy the game and have fun. Happy Simming

stickykisses

Hello! I recently returned and found a channel on YouTube called Sim Lore. It's seriously good. Whoa the devs got seriously in-depth and devious with their back stories! How could I have ever missed that, really glad I found that channel.

https://www.youtube.com/@TheSimsLore

Lenny_Ogg

You answered your question already by yourself, you just don't know how to achieve it -
if I got it right (?)

I would suggest to start to play with a premade household from sunset valley and read about their lore on sims wiki.

Things I would change are:
(and that's what helped me to change my gameplay and have more fun)

- look what they do and ask 'why' do they do it. Same goes for the lore.
For example:
Working Friends household.
About Ayesha (from sims wiki):
'She is the only one in the household who does not have the Snob trait, which may be why she does not care about her appearance and is depicted as less "girlish" than her roommates, meaning she does not fit in with the rest of the household.

That is a good start imo.
Why did she end up in this household?
How did she meet the others and why did she decide to move in with them?
Which obstacles do they have to face due to their differences in character?
How do they manage to get along?
Which expieriences changed their life and relationship?
Do they have a hot neighbor? I bet they do!

- if you have difficulties giving character to a sim, pick a character you know from a book, movie, series.
How would they act? What would they do?
(For me it all stands and falls with my attachment to the sim, i like my sims a lot and can't wait to log in and see what they are up to.
Like a conversation.
If you talk with your boring neighbour who tells you about his medical history, you might just want to run away.
But if you had the chance to talk to, let's say, Joel Miller (insert a charakter you like) you could listen for hours and hours.
Make your sim your Joel Miller (insert a charakter you like).

- Sims is endless possibilities
You can do everything you can't do in real life. And you can do everything better/different/worse than you can do in real life.
What would you like to do? Which kind character would you like to follow? Barney Stinson or Elizabeth Bennet?

- start with slices of their life to get to know them better and see where the story might go.
Look for occassions which might lead in different directions.
There is a whole multiverse waiting to discover!

lizzielilyy

Hi!

I’ve always been invested in a good storyline and write stories of my games on the odd occasion but could never get far with a legacy because I would make my sims too skilled and they’d be too rich so it would get boring. When it comes to townies, I’ve been playing since the original Sims so I’ve kept up to date and invested in the lore that spans across each iteration. I’d say Sims 2 is where the bulk of Sims 3 lore really comes from, so you can look up things like Sims wiki where it contains the lore for each Sim and will go back as far as possible not just within the realms of Sims 3.

For me I like to recreate previous games or play Sims 3 until I reach the timeline of Sims 2 because it is set much earlier on. I once played a rotation of the Goths, Bachelors, Landgraabs and Altos in Sunset Valley and really enjoyed playing just one sim week in each household and then letting them do what they liked in the other 3 weeks I was with the other households. I think I got to the stage where Cassandra Goth had a great grandchild marrying into the Landgraab family before I got distracted

What I would say is that Nraas Story Progression mod (including the relationship mod) makes a huge difference to what happens to everyone you aren’t playing. It can be a bit much initially and I definitely took my time deciding what I liked as settings because at one point nobody could stay in a relationship for more than 5 minutes but it was enough time to have a baby! I don’t think I’d go back to EA story progression now, nothing ever happened that I didn’t control.

When it comes to story based play and creating my own storylines to enjoy what happens and not interfere, I like to feed into what the game gives me. An example being from my latest story thanks to the mod Nancy and Geoffrey had another son after Malcolm, Edmond. My sim met him as a teen but later on I saw his name had changed from Landgraab to Alto. Knowing the families’ vicious rivalries I couldn’t believe he would marry into the family who were his parents’ sworn enemies. So I considered the lore and decided it must have been because Malcolm was named the heir to their fortune that he “switched sides” and married the enemy’s daughter. Since then he’s been divorced because she’s married Alexander Goth and I haven’t decided what I’m doing with that yet

I hope this helped anyway! Feel free to ask questions and I’ll try to help where I can

Lacey1234

> @NidhiB777 said:
> Hi all! I need some help in trying to figure out how to have fun with the Sims 3 game again cause it got too boring.
> My play style is to always create Sims from scratch, absolutely no backstory (it doesn't even cross my mind!) and plop them onto a lot with a house I built from scratch. I always make them master their skills and reach the top of their careers and honestly have no other life beyond that. By that I mean my Sims are always losing the three friends they manage to make, don't remember the last time they hosted or attended a party, barely have a good relationship with their family... I also like playing tough challenges like The Apocalypse Challenge. But it has gotten so boring now!
> I desperately want to change my gameplay style, something along more creative, story based lines. I realised I really like Sims lore and the history of the different households etc. I wanted to try playing pre-made Sims/townies of Sunset valley but.... Idk I'm so lost??
> I wanna see how their story unfolds and don't want to "interfere" in their story progression as I learn more about their lives and relationships with the rest of the town. At the same time, playing them is so boring because almost nothing is happening even with High free will. I end up really resisting the urge to start making them into Super-skilled Sims.
>
> How do y'all play townies? Please give me an in-depth insight into how you play, what your thought process is, how you enjoy the wild things that happen without interfering or instigating anything.... Thank you for reading this far!!!

I need to know how to put some puppys up for adoption in sims 3 for ps3

Lacey1234

I want to put some puppys up for adoption I have it for ps3

Deshong04

Ever since The Sims (2000), I primarily play with high free-will on because I prefer the whole core of TS as being an open-ended interactive soap opera.

Out of all The Sims games I've played TS/TS2/TS3, The Sims 3 is the most advanced and improved in most areas but not in other areas. The seamless open neighborhood makes it so that all the various Sim A.I.'s are connected to each other in a big play area without loading screens to get immersive gameplay.

My playstyle consists of mostly observing the Sim A.I.'s to get to know their personalities beyond traits. I learn a lot, things like who their love interest(s) is/are and whether it's reciprocated or not, their wants beyond the wish system, etc. I also play rotationally and while I do tend to spend a lot of time with some families more than others, I tend to switch households. In that way I get more information about the different Sim perspectives than if I only play just one household. It helps to get a better picture of how Sims interconnect and is like collecting puzzle pieces for the entirety of the neighborhood to get the overall picture of their evolving lives. This is one of the best features in TS3 that keeps me entertained endlessly.

Besides playing rotationally household wise, I also play rotationally neighborhood wise. Some families are too large to keep in one neighborhood so I manually balance that out by moving some Sims to another neighborhood. I currently have six worlds I'm playing in: Moonlight Falls, Bridgeport, Hidden Springs, Monte Vista, Roaring Heights and Sunlit Tides. I've been changing for how long each round is played, right now it's 2 Sim years but I'll be changing that back to 1 Sim year. My custom seasons/year/lifespans:

Seasons
Spring - 93 days
Summer - 94 days
Autumn - 89 days
Winter - 89 days
Year - 365 days

Infants - 93 days (0-3 months)
Toddlers - 1,095 days (1-3 years)
Children - 2,555 days (4-10 years)
Teenagers - 2,555 days (11-17 years)
Young Adults - 8,030 days (18-39 years)
Adults - 9,125 days (40-64 years)
Elders - 13,140 days (65-100 years)

-kHoursOfPregnancy.......6,574/9 months
-kHoursToShowFullyPregnant.......5,843/8 months
-kHoursToShowPregnantBuff.......1,460/2 months
-kHoursToStartContractions.......6,572/2 hours
-kHoursToStartPregnantMotives.......730/1 month
-kHoursToStartWalkingPregnant.......5,847/8 months (I have a mod now to disable the pregnant and elder locomotions)


TS/TS2/TS3 are all based on psychology/Maslow's hierarchy of needs and I pick up on stuff like that so it's easy to see how realistic the Sim A.I.'s behave and how the A.I. driven stories are based on Sim's free will and a part of the interactive soap opera. For anyone who has a skill and/or perceptive about reading people that does translate to reading virtual people too. I remember telling the stories about my Sims without specifying it was from TS3 and no one initially picked up on me talking about a video game. That's how good TS3 A.I. is, I don't need to create my own storylines though it's very much possible to a certain extent as Sims were never meant to be like marionettes and have their own thoughts, emotions, morals, wishes, etc.

For a game released in 2009, I still find it good looking.







Though I do like to use mods for more options, more content and more realism.



I'm also a family-orientated player so a mod that allows more than 8 Sims per household is hectic but all so much fun. So far my largest family has 15 children, 27 grandchildren and 3 great-grandchildren. They are not all living together but they are in different neighborhoods. The family tree is broken but I use a mod or a workaround to reconnect should some family members be within the same neighborhood. I keep track of all my Sims generations in Microsoft Excel.




There's a lot of interesting ideas with a capable computer to use more than 8 Sims.



I haven't gotten around to it yet but I've been wanting to create an adoption center for any of my Sim's kids who get neglected by their parents instead of being taken from the game's social worker. I had two parents who neglected their children and the social worker came to take all the kids so I restarted the game and the other family I had them become foster parents. So now they have their 3 sons, their 3 daughters (triplets) and their two foster children (older sister and younger brother).

NidhiB777

Whoa I didn't expect to get so many replies! This is very insightful, I'm excited to play the game again :-D
I'll definitely try out all of your ideas, the badges one is something I never thought of because I generally don't play connected with WiFi. @Deshong04 I can't believe you can manage to play the game with the age span set so long but wow!
Anyways I really like the idea of observing the Sims and finding more about their lives and personality, the other day Agnes went fishing for the first time and she tripped and fell over trying to cast her fishing rod... It's never happened to any of my other Sims before.
Again thanks everybody for your ideas, I don't know if I should keep this thread updated with what I do or just let it be idle but this has helped me a lot :-)