Forum Announcement, Click Here to Read More From EA_Cade.
How do you like to play?
magic_cat_tree
Posts: 292 Member
I'm super-curious about the different little quirks and individual preferences when it comes to people's gameplay. Tell me some things about the way you like to play.
For example:
- I have one save file where I make all my families, that way they all know each other and become friends.
- I play on x2 speed and pause the game every time my sims have finished all their interactions, so I can line up new ones. I'm pretty controlling like that.
- Because I play in a single save file, I only allow the active household to age, whilst everyone else stays frozen in time until I rotate back to playing their family. Again, controlling lol
- I like to come up with stories for the sims I play, but I also follow the flow of the game, so e.g. if I am playing with a girl sim and have someone in mind for her love interest, but then she meets a random NPC who starts checking her out, I might abandon the original plan and see if she has some chemistry with the said NPC.
So yeah do you guys relate to anything I do or do you do things differently? Tell me anything you like, I would love to know
For example:
- I have one save file where I make all my families, that way they all know each other and become friends.
- I play on x2 speed and pause the game every time my sims have finished all their interactions, so I can line up new ones. I'm pretty controlling like that.
- Because I play in a single save file, I only allow the active household to age, whilst everyone else stays frozen in time until I rotate back to playing their family. Again, controlling lol
- I like to come up with stories for the sims I play, but I also follow the flow of the game, so e.g. if I am playing with a girl sim and have someone in mind for her love interest, but then she meets a random NPC who starts checking her out, I might abandon the original plan and see if she has some chemistry with the said NPC.
So yeah do you guys relate to anything I do or do you do things differently? Tell me anything you like, I would love to know
Drummer in Seize The Day
10
Comments
I only play in one save and I have every family/family-line I have ever created in that save. They don't all know each other, but many of friends and some are enemies. I have a language mod which makes it harder to communicate with sims from what is perceived as other countries, but they have the opportunity to learn other languages.
-I am starting to realize that there is no way to make my sims behave like I think they should without intervention so I'm going to have to do more role-playing. I randomize traits so when I have a mean sim that never does anything mean and gets along with everyone, I lose interest. So I'm going to have to actually make her do mean interactions.
-i play on rotation and keep aging off for everyone except the active family.
-I tend to let the stories create themselves through organic gameplay. I keep track of who's who and what what through taking in game screenshots, taking family pics, and writing things down. I have over 60 families that I play. Sometimes I can't remember their names, but I do know their stories. I like some sims way better than others.
-I try not to speed up the game as much as possible because it causes my sims to stand around for periods. It's pretty smooth on normal speed. Sometimes I can play a whole gaming session and only 1 day has passed.
-I've been playing the same families since the game came out. I'm on generation 14. Some of my sims didn't age for the 4 years I stopped playing. I'm currently trying to get them aged up so we can move on with their lives.
-im having a lot of fun learning of all the features I missed while I was gone.
My play style is pretty different than yours though.
- I have at least 20 different save files (last count, I think I added a couple more since then).
- In most of my saves, I only play one household. In some of them I play several households (though I'm usually focused on only one household at a time for several irl months).
- In two saves, I am not really playing, but rather using the sims game like an art studio for getting pictures that I use in comic-book style stories I write.
- I play with aging turned off. Sometimes I say I'm planning to age some of the sims up manually, but so far I really haven't. I just like them the way they are.
- I love making sims, so I also populate the empty houses of my worlds with sims I made but don't intend to play with.
- I have three ways of playing: A meandering sim-driven mostly "happy families" way, a slightly more plot driven but still gameplay inspired storytelling way (maybe kind of like yours?), and the planned out "art studio" for a comic-book writing project way. All are fun for me.
- I never use the fast forward buttons except at night, or when doing the scripted stuff for the comic-books, to get to the next scene.
- I love to watch sims doing their activities (even if I've seen it already a thousand times). I often rotate the camera all around them while they're doing a task, zooming in and out, so I can see their animations from every angle and distance. And I frequently will pause the game multiple times mid-task just to admire a moment and get a screenshot. I do this regardless of what play style I am currently playing.
- I love taking screenshots, and I can easily take a hundred or more in one session if I play for a few hours.
- I love making my own custom poses. I use these heavily while taking my screenshots for the comic books. I also want to learn to make animations.
ooh I saw that mod, but didn't install it. It sounds really cool actually, I might try it!
It's so interesting that you play on normal speed! I mean I know people do obviously, but I just find it so hard to relate to. Also, I love that you have 60+ families and over 14 generations! I haven't played enough to have that many, but for me that kinda stuff makes the game worth playing - just knowing all the stories and the lineages and having witnessed it all from the beginning. Thanks for sharing
I have aging on for everyone in most of my saves, but I also use MCCC to have custom lifespans (with some stages shorter or longer than default ones) and also to have a slower time rate. So everyone keeps aging and their lives move on while I'm playing another household, and if I'm too slow getting back to them before major things happen, then so be it.
I have one save in which I play primarily legacy-style households (what many players may mean when they say "family play"). Families do exist in other saves as well, but they're not my primary focus, as I actually don't enjoy playing with babies and toddlers at all (those life stages have very short custom spans in my game), and although children are a bit better, I'm not highly fond of playing with them, either.
Many of my stories are "written" in large part by the sims themselves, though I usually give them some sort of foundation, as it were. I keep full autonomy on all the time, so many times I make decisions for individual sims based on what they seem to want. Ok, sometimes they want really stupid or useless things,so I don't let all of those happen, but I do let many of them play out. Sometimes it's highly entertaining or otherwise rewarding, and other times I have to shake my head and mutter at their utter and complete idiocy.
Because I can't; I keep all sigs turned off.
Oh yeah. I think that's what keeps me attached to the sims game even when I'm mad at maxis for the bugs. I still love my characters and I still can go back and look at my old pics from TS2 and know exactly what was happening in that moment. Same for TS4, I look back very fondly at all the memories.
oh and I also love pausing and taking screenshots, especially of a group of sims together. I like reminiscing of who was friends with whom and how their relationships developed. I have a stay at home dad with a family-oriented trait in one of my current families and I have taken lots of screenshots of him reading to the toddlers and playing with them, its so sweet, they have such a cute bond ^_^
@VeeDub I also have custom ages using MCCC
that's interesting, it reminds me a little of the asylum challenge, where you are only allowed to control one of the sims in a house of 8. I've never tried it myself, but I think I will in the future.
yeah, same here. I want to play with all of the babies my original families had, but that would take forever, so a lot of them haven't aged up in aaages. So many sims, so little time! lol
EDIT: I realized I contradicted myself somewhat by saying I "only" play my simself and her SO. Obviously I don't lol. I meant I only play them if I'm playing legacy style. Mulder and Scully aren't going to settle down and have babies ever after.
I have a few backups in case of file corruption. And I have one save that I made the day I got the game, that I've left mostly unplayed - and I use it to pull out 'unmodded copies' of lots or households anytime I want a reset on something.
But in the same I'm playing - I've made a stack of households and I sort of randomly rotate through them looking for what's interesting me in that moment. I'm just hitting a point where I'm thinking of deleting a few of the sims I made that don't quite speak to me, or letting them go and see what they become.
Every so often I go through the list of generated sims and cull most of them, then group a few together when I find an interesting one has taken over an empty house. Opening up cheats to adjust a few traits or alter their look a little when I do this.
Beyond that, I went through all the premade families and aged everyone up so that the youngest person was a teen and the household still made sense, and I've got the mod 'MCCC' I think, set to try to prevent the creation of anyone younger than that, and somewhere I turned off pregnancy. Then I turned off aging.
So they're a little frozen in time.
It looks like most people love to play through many generations, but for now I'm just looking to get to know these sims. I might start aging them and letting families occur later.
I've also been filling in empty lots with builds I get off the gallery or various site, that fit the 'theme' of the area or a theme together (Newcrest - I've been trying to theme the 3 areas). Over time I'll likely replace a lot of those multiple times - but I did that to have a sense of logic to the sims I kept.
I'm kind of intrigued by rotational gameplay and have dabbled with it. I started with just one family and as it grew, I began rotating between the family line. That was my first experience with rotational gameplay. In my opinion, it's probably the best way to play around with rotational gameplay because you're already invested in the family.
I just started a new save with just young adults and I'm attempting rotational play without anyone being related (well except the Pleasant sisters and the Gonzalez siblings). I've also added a lot of premades and Maxis gallery sims to this file, instead of just using my sims. I've started them all out with a small starter house. I'm only a few households in though, so time will tell how long it keeps my interest. They're all only in the base game worlds for now, but as the generations progress (if I choose to progress), I'll populate the other worlds.
I made Sulani and Mt. Komorebi vacation worlds only. I don't really play in those worlds with normal gameplay so I thought by making them vacation worlds, I would be more likely to use them; which is another idea I got from a thread on here. All the other worlds have nothing but community lots and I do allow my sims to visit them but no one lives in them. I made it this way to give myself a personal goal. To populate the entire save with descendants of the original sims.
I think as I make more sims, I may just add them to this save as well, to keep things interesting.
I attempted this a while back but I gave myself too many restrictions, and got bored before making it through my first rotation. I got overwhelmed with having to build everything before my sims could use it. Plus, my sims felt stale and boring before I even got started. They were sims I had made forever ago and never played. They felt too familiar for me to even start their stories, if that makes sense.
All in all, I enjoy trying new playstyles here and there. I love threads like this because it gives me more ideas.
Oh, I do some family play, but other than a very few specific legacy-style families, I don't generally do that sort of play for its own sake. For me family stuff is most often a means to an end or a "theatre" to play out one or more stories (or a vehicle for them). Many of my other households never marry or otherwise take partners with the intent of having children. Among those, some are shady characters who do shady things, and some are sims who simply don't tend to fit into traditional forms of "normal" society. And some just seem never to get around to it, lol.
But I can assure you, I'm really not a saint.
Because I can't; I keep all sigs turned off.
In TS3 I’m a somewhat rotational player who keeps multiple save files, both for safety and “alternate universe” shenanigans. I like having these different versions of my characters in different worlds as “side characters”. Then I let storyprogression do its’ thing (mod version, Nraas) and could see what they would get up to. In most saves I focused on certain family or families. Rotational playstyle could sometimes be rather challenging cuz then my sims would automatically mess up their relationships when I was busy playing another. On certain saves I don’t care about that though, let them ruin everything
In TS4 it seems like I’m moving towards rotational playstyle. First, I just stuck with one family although I did throw some other characters in the world but didn’t play them (at first). I let all aging go on (long life span) cuz I’m used to TS3 but kind of ended up regretting it later because TS4 does not have storyprogression so the townies don’t actually do anything interesting with their lives and now some familiar faces have already died of old age (like Mortimer, just when my vampire sim Axel accidentally started a romantic interest relationship with him cuz I forgot “enticing introduction” is romantic. Oh well, he’ll keep flirting with his ghost then lol.) I think I’m moving my playstyle more towards “let them all age when it serves my purposes” kind of thing instead of having it on all the time. Rotational playstyle will also work better here because the lack of storyprogression will kind of keep my sims in stasis so they are not messing up everything behind my back. It’s kind of like a “blast from the past” type of thing because this is how TS2 was played.
I still have multiple saves for safety reasons and “alternate universes” if there's a need for it. Like, my Homeless challenge is basically just a different version of my main hood but has the same characters. That’s because of the rules and nature of the challenge i.e. normal lifespan, aging on, plus I’m fulfilling every stupid whim my sims might have so if they wish to kiss someone then the nearest sim will be the target. I might not want that amount of drama in my “normal” game.
One of the things I do is start off with a completely empty world. I have starter sims/families that I use to populate the neighborhoods. I usually start with just a few, maybe like 6. I build them each their own custom home and keep everything else empty. As I need more things, to go places, to buy things, restaurants, etc, I add them little by little. And as their kids grow up, they move out and need a home, they get one somewhere. Sometimes the families are really close and the kids stay nearby, but sometimes the kids are like get me as far from here as possible. They may even move to a different country like my komorembei or windenburg (or however it's spelled). And little by little, I'm building up a whole world, playing and having fun with a lot of different families.
Maybe this would be something that interests you or keeps you going. You can also grab from the gallery if building isn't your thing.
In my Main play save, I play one household through the generations until I get to some point I decided on as a goal. Sometimes that's just a certain number of generations, sometimes it's getting a certain number of aspirations completed, sometimes getting through a certain number of careers, sometimes that's getting through a specific storyline that I just need the right setup to play through.
I have one save dedicated for play while waiting for Mods to update. That save I'm also kinda doing generationally, but since I only play it for 1-3 days every month - skipping some if my mods get the all clear/updates on day one, It moves slower. It's also my "general play" where I don 't play with any specific goal in mind beyond aspirations.
Then there's my "challenge" saves - Rags to Newcrest (a take on Building Newcrest), 7 Stories (Each generation I need to come up with a story based on Booker's 7 Basic Plots and finish it), "Not the 100 baby challenge" (how long I can play before I'm tired of dealing with babies and toddlers.) and Vampire Love (find love, love dies, wait for love to be Reincarnated using MCCC's Import from Tray feature) Each played slightly differently depending on the challenge parameters, though generational playing a single household does seem to be my thing.
Main save, No Mods save, Rags to Newcrest and 7 Stories are each Long life, aging on for all. Not 100 baby is Normal lifespan (for my sanity) and Vampire Love is short.
I play the save that I had since launch. Rotational, family oriented, occults are also family oriented. Everyone just go about their day. Rotational play allows me to play with the different features and objects that are constantly being added. And there are still many things I need to explore. Lately I've been dabbling in small mods such as quick shower, power napping, experimental food "servings", veggie juice in fridge if you have the produce. These help with gameplay flow. The veggie juice is a nice healthy quick meal option imho because what's provided are only applesauce, peas, or edamame? Now my alien sims can "serve" sixam pit beast for their whole family instead of being allowed only one serving at a time.
I also like to set up retail shops for certain items. If my sim need anything alien, head to the alien depot. They have specific crystals, rocks, certain elixirs, strangerville plants, fruit and alien like experimental meals. But if your sim needs voodoo dolls, potions, flying brooms, weird food, weird fish, strange toys, rare plants and etc, head over to the apothecary spellcaster depot.
Twitch jovi_jov
Twitter BarbieSimmy
Origin SimsBarbie
All the sims err'day
Hold SHIFT while using the FRIEZE tool to apply it to a single wall, and not an entire room!
** SailorCeti's Builds **
If you download one of my builds, by all means, leave me a message and tell me what you did and did not like about it.
Another interesting things about my play style is that besides the Alien save all my other saves have no alien sims in them. If I take my sims to the bar and it’s Extraterrestrial night I go home or reload the game because I do not want them suddenly walking around town afterwards because they derail the stories I’m already playing with those files.
Which is how that lone Alien save got created after a normal sim in a Legacy challenge visited the bar on Extraterrestrial night and the following day aliens popped up. I had to rework that story line into an alien invasion one but didn’t look forward to repeating that story again if it happened again.
One of the reasons I enjoy this is that it introduces me to most forms of game play within the Sims. I get to experience various careers, neighborhoods, aspirations, different sized families with all ages of Sims, and create lots of interlocking stories. I mostly play on normal speed, but do use the fastest speed for sleeping or for getting through university stuff like presentations and term papers. I play with aging off, but I do age up manually when it makes sense to do so. I don't try to synchronize the Sim year or calendar with my rotation, I just let holidays and seasons happen where they will. I do have the longest seasons though.
I alternate playing with my rotation and my Not So Berry legacy Sims. These Sims age up on the normal life span when I am actively playing them. I try to get back to them the same day of the week as when I left them, but, again, pay no attention to what season it was when I last played them. Since I spend so much time with these Sims, I am very invested in them. I like this challenge as it forces me to introduce some forms of game play that I would otherwise not choose to do. I have to deal with some bad things happening and planning out a story around those. I also have to deal with death of pets and family members more often than in my rotation. So far in my rotation, I have had only one Sim death, Jacques Villereal.