How do you play The Sims? «123...Next Go

starrling33

I create families very much like the family I wanted, the family I (and all kids) deserved. It's cathartic and fun. But then again, I also throw in the bully here and there to torment those families, but in THIS case, the families all come together. Very much opposite of my youth and young adulthood. It makes me smile, though. That is my aim... to find a little happiness and creativity, but to also work through the abuse I received as a child, and then a young adult when I foolishly married someone very much like my abusive parent. I have learned so much, though. I hold that new knowledge close.

Anyone else care to share?

lzbthnndgls

@starrling33 Thank you for sharing! Cathartic is definitely a really good way to describe playing ts4

I play in a variety of ways. In one save, I unleash my inner serial killer and definitely play god. In another save, I complete challenges on difficult level. In a few saves, I just build worlds in different ways and populate them with sims I never have the time to play.

In my favorite save, I put my simself and populated the world with a mix of interesting normal characters and complete weirdos. My simself adopted 23 stray dogs, got abducted by aliens 4 times, had 17 children, ran a restaurant, fell in love with a vampire whose day job was gardening, and then cloned myself 12 times so I could fall in love with all the other wacky characters without cheating on my one true love, the vampire formerly known as Howly Bloodlust (He wears a top hat and I think it's really hot. Been trying to get my irl bf to wear one)

My favorite part about the sims is that it's NOT online. There is no one else playing with you, making snide comments about how you play. You play by yourself for yourself, judgement free. EA is considering making TS5 online and to me, that would undermine the entire reason why I play. They want to bring in competition, but I'd rather have collaboration. I love the forums and the gallery. Everyone is so sweet. There are a few bad eggs here and there, but for the most part, the sims community is very supportive. After all, where else can you be a rocket scientist, actor, professional guitar player, and have 100 children? The game has given people the ability to live out their dreams without someone looking over their shoulder saying that's not cool or that's ugly. It makes me a little scared for the future direction of the sims' franchise, but if the community stays supportive and kind, it'll all be good.

I think the sims is the ultimate sandbox game. It's something I've been looking for my whole life (I started playing last year). I've always wanted to build castles and restaurants and run a vet clinic or live on a farm with a dozen dogs. It really lets me unleash my inner creativity, my inner storyteller, and my inner weirdo that I don't let a whole lot of people see. I use TS4 as an outlet for all of this and I never share it with anyone else in my life. It's just for me.

DanceSingLoveLive

My favorite way of playing Sims is to create large families and let the Sims take the lead on character development, relationships, etc. I like free will and always randomize traits (and sometimes aspirations, unless they have a personality well-suited to a specific one). My favorite point in any Sims game is after 3-4 generations where there is a massive family expanded all over that particular universe, and I am really happy that Sims 4 story progression allows for non-active-household Sims to get on with their own lives and go in their own direction. In Sims 3, I was constantly having to progress other households to keep up with the family members (i.e., make couples get married, have children, etc.).

My current Legacy family is at Generation 4, and the Founder boasts like 16 great-grandchildren so far. They're totally taking over the neighborhood and I love it!

On a psychological level, this might be because my extended family isn't particularly close. Whoops.

Sharonia

I play with all the premade families and a few of my own making on a rotation. Family play is what I enjoy the most.

Babykittyjade

It's a combination of personal and impersonal. On a personal level I always like to create an extremely big and close knit family like I always wanted. And I stick with the same families for years with aging off that I rotate between. Their life stories intertwine in different ways. I sort have created this safe space for them but there cannot be a safe space without danger in my opinion. Which ts4 seriously lacks.

So on the other hand on a non personal level I always got this horror story/outbreak/zombie apocalypse storyline going on trying to bring on a feel of danger😆
Thanks for sharing.

ElliDiLo

I am a micromanaging crazy person so I use mod to rid the entire game of premade up houses and sims and create everything from scratch on my own. Problem is that the game auto-generates stuff all the time and I loose my 🐸🐸🐸🐸 MIND.

Coley666

Mostly I spend 10 hours building a house, 4 hours creating a family, 30 minutes playing with the family.

ArcherDK

For me, it's a only a few, but very well developed characters who enjoy living in comfort and luxury and observe what happens around them.

My first sim ends as my primary one, whom I control 99% of the time. From that point, I complete aspirations, careers, explore the world and so on.AS for families, I do end up getting married, but as a user of certain mods, I'm not above pursuing companionship of other sims. AS for children, I never have my own biological ones. There are more than enough kids who need parents.

My main past time is wander around and help out families with their own kids

In short, a couple of power-leveled sims who achieve a lot and then spend time doing basically whatever.

SERVERFRA

My building ideas are:
Different shapes, themes, Underground, High Above the trees, Split Levels, Towers, Mansions, Castles, Tiny Cottages, Cabins, Teepees, Pyramids, Ancient Greek Homes, Tiny Caravans, Cantina, Starship Home, Celestrial House, Outdoor Domes, Military Barracks Home, Scientist Home,
Alien/Borg House, Alien Apartment, Gothic Vamp/Magical Homes, Elves Tree Cabin Home, Fairy Flower Tree Home, Treehouses.
(No mods).

My CAS ideas are:
Hybrids, Story, Family, Single, Pets, Historical, Futuristic, Fantasy, Fairy Tales, SciFi, Pop Culture, Gothic, Mythology, Supernatural, Opposites, Holiday Themes & Naughty Themes like the my Black Widow Bachlorette & the poor 5 guys that she marries, as well as my Science Guy befriending alot of Aliens so that he can be abducted & have an Alien baby. Lol.
(No mods).

Smellincoffee

I play it like I'm a reality tv show producer: give me DRAMA! No marriage is safe. I will clone you and have your wife fall in love with the doppelganger if that's what it takes for the fur to fly.

duhboy2u2

I give all my families really nice, colorful houses. I grew up as a military dependent (my father was a soldier) so we had a lot of small, plain houses/apartments with really strict decoration rules (nothing hanging on walls that will make holes, plain white walls that weren't allowed to be painted any other color, no lawn decor, etc) They were always structurally sound and well built, but very plain and boring. So I nearly always give my sims bright, colorful homes with lots of cozy decorations they can enjoy. I wish we had tree houses in the Sims 4! My sim kids would get them all the time.

xeno_genesis

I love making big households with mostly adults, 1 or 2 couples and sibling pairs, then giving them a boatload of money, beautiful houses with plenty of skill-building accessories, and just kind of letting them develop. I usually get jobs for a few, to mix it up and give some direction to the game when I'm bored of everyone being happy all the time lol. But I know that $$$ safety and free time that I give them is something I have little of, so it's what I'm always drawn to when I play.

I'm also horrendous at builds, and lose patience after setting up one room. Would love to improve in that area.

PearLady

It depends on what kind of story I'm telling. Sometimes, I play with the pre-mades, sometimes sims I created either recently or long ago; sometimes do a challenge of some sort (usually the skill-based ones); sometimes I want to build what I see IRL or in a plan or even because of a challenge presented from simmers' communities.

becks1112

I almost always start with a single young adult woman, spend a ton of time planning her outfits, then move her into a starter home. I never use money cheats, I like them to struggle with money for a while. I get her a job, have her do fun activities, and eventually meet a guy, sometimes get married, always have a kid. Then I do family play.

texxx78

I play legacies. I start with a couple (i used to start with a single sim, but i find boring to play with only one sim), randomize traits (even before there was an in game randomizer, i used a randomizer app to do it) and choose aspirations according to traits. Then i start playing and building their story in my mind as it goes. They always have or adopt kids. I like to see the family tree grow and how the family unfolds generation after generation. I take screenshots and make an album in word with a small description in each screenshot so that i can come back to the family history because i used to forget how the first sims were. I almost never leave the same house. I start with one of the starter homes and expand it according to what is needed. Let's say i have a music lover that pursues music as his/her living. I will most problably build a music room in the house. When i get back to my legacy screenshots album i will remember how the house was at the beginning, rooms that were completely remodeled, old rooms that aren't there anymore, besides of the sims.
That being said, this is my favourite way to play The Sims since i started decades ago and what im atm doing in sims 3, but i could never pass the second generation on sims 4.

Kellogg_J_Kellogg

I begin with a theme for the whole game. So I have one game set in a retro-futuristic setting (where I had to alter the decor and outfits of every single building and in built character), another which follows just one family, another which is a regular rotational game where every 7 game days a new character is moved in and another loosely based on the old Two Ronnies TV sketch "The Worm That Turned". I find the themes set the tone for each game.

Then I create the characters; I try not to make them all personality clones of each other, and then pitch them into the world! There's work/life balance, finding Mr or Mrs Right or at least Right Enough, working towards aspirations and trying to get enough money to buy those really big mansions. I tend not to micro manage my Sims and let needs and chance dictate play.

Right now, in the game set around just one family, the teenage son is finding it really hard trying to meet teenage girls. Older ladies seem to take a shine to him but he's waiting for a bunch of little girls he was at junior school with to age up. In the meantime he has to fend off all the old ladies and middle aged vamps.

ChampandGirlie

I have a big rotation with a bunch of different sims. It's mostly comprised of my own sims or townies that I edited and added with some pre-mades, mostly from Get Together in my case. At this point, it's a few generations in, so it's more about the growing up children of the households I previously established. They are all going off in their own directions and figuring their lives out.

I have some dramatic soap opera households and some totally functional happy families. Recently I've been on a break but I plan to go back to it. Honestly, I have a lot of fun with my game. I set up a bunch of characters and it has all basically come together. When I consider starting a different save, I just end up playing it because I want to see where it goes. I guess I spent a lot of time developing my own characters, so they have their own personalities and quirks. At this point, they all have back stories and run into each other around the worlds.

I gradually edited the save so that I have numerous lots that are specific to my own game. I downloaded or downloaded and edited some but I've also built or created my own. I view the entire save as one integrated world. I have some rules specific to the different places in the game.

So basically, I've set up something that I enjoy. Sometimes I'll go in and build or edit. I also edit some townies that I want to keep and do my own culling. Sometimes I'll go in and build or edit lots. For example, I recently edited some of the bars to be more fitting for my sims. I added a pool to the Willow Creek gym and made the art gallery double as a wedding venue. I built a huge gym in Oasis Springs called Oasis Lifestyle Fitness with the Fitness Stuff pack. Those are just some examples. It's a cool game and I play it but I also take breaks and then come back.

Sindocat

I very seldom play premade Sims, and nearly always create my own. I am less proficient with the CAS tools in TS4, however, and often let the randomizer help get me started, then fine-tune.

I like to start in a starter house, and build my income and skills, maybe with an initial injection of funds just so my guys don't suffer too much from subpar appliances. Nookstone, in Oasis Springs, is a lot I love for a single Sim, or even a couple, but it is simply inadequate as a family space. I ended up moving my guys across the street to Sandtrap Flats, and added on a second story home office and nursery, before they bought a bigger lot and I built essentially the same house on a grander scale for their growing brood.

My pitfall is that I cannot discard a Sim. My founders are probably ready to be Elders - I plan that transition to coincide with the fourth grandchild, who I already have plotted (Drama! Second son's kid by third son's spouse!) but am not there yet. I now have branching saves following the three grown children and a sister in law (Cassandra Goth) at Britechester University. My intended "heir" ended up less interesting than his younger siblings, so I jump around a lot, progressing one or the other households in play.

Favorite careers so far, for flexibility, have been Style Influencer (Trend Setter branch) and Freelance Digital Artist. I have yet to have Sims explore Law or Education, though both of those have been careers on my wish-list for a while - if only I could divert myself from adulterous shenanigans among my spares (it's for genetics, honest)!

Stutum

I normally play rags to riches, usually as a vampire, then I have him/her search the internet for vampire secrets until he/she's a grand master so I can get all the useful powers, and finally write books until the cows come home.

I've gotten a bit tired of this though, so now I have a mortal sim, I still had her start as a teen on the empty off-the grid lot in Sulani with zero simoleons, only this time my goal is from rags to doing okay. Per now she had just made enough to get my favourite house in Willow Creek (she lived in the gremlin flat in the city before that), just had a son, and is currently studying cooking at the university.

starrling33

Thank you, everyone, for your great answers! It's nice to see so much diversity in play! With the current "stay home" mandate, I find myself broadening my play style. I've got 60s style houses now, with Brady Bunch type families installed. I've got an old fisherman who lives off the fish he catches, and socializes only with his cat. I've got lots of Uni grads now, which is fun to see how it affects their careers. I do have a couple of grumpy Sims in each 'hood because that's more realistic to me. Oh! I also created a house very similar to the rental I lived in the last years of my childhood. It's tiny and weird because the real house was tiny and weird. LOL. I tried to make a Sim me but... meh. I suck at CAS.

Huiiie_07

I like to play young adults and teens, either living together as roommates or with their parents (I usually ignore the parents in the latter case), and just let them have wacky adventures (usually by bringing misery to random townies or premades I meet).

Sindocat

So I had another realization about a thing I very, very typically do when I have a new pack to explore.

I'll start that with a brand new Sim, and explore it enough to see how it all works - not uncover every secret, but the functional basics - and then I look at my sprawling legacy family of founders and children and spouses and offspring and see who is the best fit for the new world.

Most recently, it occurred to me that Sulani might make a relaxing retirement home for my Founders. With three grown sons, and now three grandsons, the oldest a Teen, it was time to let my Founders become Elders. Not a life stage I have played much - this couple were child-free perpetual Young Adults in TS3. But in TS4 they have produced a very successful family, and I am finally feeling brave enough to let them be old.

alexandrea

I don't. Thanks to the horrible job EA did with TS4, I've fallen out of love with The Sims.

But on a serious note... I make families and see how long I can get their family tree before I get bored. Other times I just take pics with my sims and make a story or two.

KookieSpring

.........

Colton147147

Justine Keaton, Sexy Linda, Trevor Phillips.

Vanesa1118

I am a huge FAMILY PLAYER! I started playing this one family that I created around Christmas last year and im on the third generation now (they are kids). I play on really long (custom life span leinght with mccc).
But, I keep it really interesting!