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Sticking with a household
Heathertibb
Posts: 153 Member
Hi guys, hope you all are well!
I have a really bad problem with committing to sims' family households. I always say I'll get back to playing a certain household at another time, but then I end up deleting them anyways. I go through playing households like wildfire! I even annoy myself with this habit, LOL. I really have admiration for those of you who are able to do Legacy challenges and play through entire generations!
So I'm left wondering...How do you guys stick with one household and really commit to seeing their story through? I'm all over the place and feel so disorganized with my gameplay...I know that there is no "wrong" or "right" way to play, but I'm having serious commitment issues here!
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I have a really bad problem with committing to sims' family households. I always say I'll get back to playing a certain household at another time, but then I end up deleting them anyways. I go through playing households like wildfire! I even annoy myself with this habit, LOL. I really have admiration for those of you who are able to do Legacy challenges and play through entire generations!
So I'm left wondering...How do you guys stick with one household and really commit to seeing their story through? I'm all over the place and feel so disorganized with my gameplay...I know that there is no "wrong" or "right" way to play, but I'm having serious commitment issues here!
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Comments
Have you tried playing multiple households on a rotational basis? That’s what keeps me interested in a save. They’ll often befriend each other and hang out together, their kids grow up and date one another, etc. Then some kids might stay in the family home but others will start their lives elsewhere. For me, playing 8-12 households offers enough variety while still being manageable. By the time I play each of them for a week or so, I’m ready to start over at the top and it keeps things feeling fresh. It also makes their social lives feel more alive and real.
I've tried to play rotationally, but I actually get caught up in whatever my current active household is doing/their story so I end up forgetting about whatever I set up in other households.
@elanorbreton, exactly! LOL
@babajayne and @Simmerville , rotational play does sound like a good idea. I think I'll try that!
@DaWaterRat, very insightful!
can't for life of me stay with one household for long but this keeps me from the delete button and having sims ive played before just kinda hanging out at background is fun
also like i can always continue where i left off if i feel like it
After about four years I aged Juliette to young adult. She remained in the family home for a few months while I decided how to play her. With the release of the Spa Day refresh I moved her out to her own place in Winderburg. She is currently working on the new aspirations and also owns a shop selling spa related products. Juliette was my first ever second save game.
Shortly after I aged Isabel to child. Not sure when I'll age them to teen.
Mom has been living on a farm in Windenberg since Cottage Living released in July.
Hannah and Isabel reside in the family home with Dad and Coco. I'm not playing them at all right now.
I'll be moving Mom back in in the near future and then renovate their home to include space for farm animals. This is when I'll probably age up Hannah and Isabel to teen. Then young adult and move them out. They'll probably share an apartment in San Myshuno since I've never played a sim in an apartment or done the City Native aspiration.
And for anyone interested this is Juliette's teenage story.
https://forums.thesims.com/en_US/discussion/comment/17872598#Comment_17872598
For me it enables me to switch to another family if I am getting bored of the one I am playing nonstop. It also gives me an idea of what to do with the families later on.
The other exception is a save I started on January 1st of this year. I made up a challenge for myself called One Month One World One Year. The basic rules at the beginning involved posting one daily screenshot every day for a year, similar to other photography challenges I've seen on different sites. The screenshot would be something the challenge Sim did that day, a landscape, or something else pertaining to the current world and it's aspiration(s) she was working on to complete. A short text synopsis would also be included. Each month the challenge Sim moves to a different world.
Whether they move to an empty lot, Rags to Riches style, build a house from scratch using funds they've acquired, or download one from the Gallery to use or modify is optional. The challenge Sim starts as a teen with aging off. Aging is done manually every 3 months. They can get married, have children, etc., but that's purely optional. I didn't really plan to make a story with my challenge Sim, but slowly it morphed into that and the adventures she's had with her friends, family and now husband has been incredibly fun! It sounds like a simple challenge, but it really isn't. It's tough posting and playing every, single day!
Money is not really a factor in this challenge. She's had millions for months now, it's about the daily pic post and the aspirations. And, of course the story. It's been fun trying to come up with reasons why she would need to move each month and then make a story about it involving the aspirations in the world for every month of this year. Next year I plan to simply do the challenge with one Sim and not have him get married, not tell much of a story and just work on aspirations for each month to make it simpler so I will have time to play other Sims and packs that I've put on hold for this challenge. That's the plan anyway, I have a feeling I won't be able to resist again telling stories with him. We'll see how it goes.
Note that in each of these ways I've played with one household per save. I do not rotate and have never played that way. Just a personal preference since I'm a micromanager and it would drive me crazy not being able to control what my Sims are doing when I'm not playing with them. I am thoroughly in the minority of Simmers that does not enjoy story progression for ALL Sims. Only my own. Sometimes I'll manually go into their friends or family households to do something that progresses the challenge Sims story, or just for fun. But that's it.
Before this year long challenge, my normal way of playing was/is challenges! I love them, especially Rags to Riches, the Asylum Challenge, Just One Sim, Apocalypse, and many, many others including build challenges. There isn't many listed here on the site, other than Legacies, that I haven't tried to complete. Some I have, over and over, others are on hiatus until another time, or I got bored with the repetition and just quit playing it. I have a very nasty case of restartitis. A new pack comes out and I want to play a challenge for it, or I get an idea from a thread here, a YT LP, etc. and just have to try it! The Drifter challenge and my own personal challenge are the ones I've played the longest since the beginning of Sims in 2000. So, that's my long-winded way of sharing how I have stuck to playing one household in two different challenges, but mostly this current one since January 1st.
Thanks to anyone that read this far and Happy Simming!
@Karababy52 I read it all! 😄
So glad to hear you're continuing your challenge next year. I've enjoyed reading all the stories.
* Well playing with aging on. If you get bored quickly the shorter the age span should be. That way things dont stay the same and it also challenges you. Because they die quicker
* Play some life changing events... Break Up / Affairs / another baby / loosing the job / moving /
I had once a story line where the parents wanted to move from san myshuno to sulani and that gave it a fresh start. Because i made the kid new friends in sulani and gave her new hobbies.
As far as staying conneceted
* * Come with little goals and differente ones
* Taking pictures and invision the personality. Helps me get attached to a sim and that makes me wanna continue playing
*
@Karababy52, it's funny that you mention challenges because yesterday I decided to start playing an off the grid combined with simple living challenge. It is a whole different kind of gameplay! It's challenging, exciting, and unlike anything I've ever done with a household. It also kept my interest. I'm heavily considering trying more challenges in the future because I noticed I'm more motivated to stick with the same family to complete the challenge. Thanks so much for your input!!!
@PreCiious, thanks for your input! I never even thought about setting the age span to short to make the story progress quicker. Great idea!
And I swear to goodness that as soon as I get close to where things left off after the save collapsed on me, another patch drops. Face/palm. He is still in high school in my current save, just found his girlfriend (yes, I place the same families back in each time I have to start anew). This time, I've had some great help from other players. There is a way for him to win Starlight Accolades for his music. A little mod that squelches the cool-down on licensing songs. And it has to be a song, no lyrics it seems. That limits him to the violin. But, that's okay, he's level 10 on all instruments. He is a Musical Genius, after all.
I agree that Legacy play can be a bore. I did finally complete Pinstar's Legacy Challenge for Sims4. I did it in Sims2 and it opened a whole new world for me. I learned things about that game I never knew. Plus, I had many firsts occur. A Sim got abducted by aliens, for instance and had a male child as a result. He became my heir and in Uni was kidnapped and brought into the Secret Society. Way cool stuff. It took a solid year for me to get through the Sims4 version, only because I wasn't playing every single day. But even though Erik was my Founder, he still couldn't sing. We didn't get that ability as a real skill until City Living. I got totally hooked on Erik. I think I'm addicted, in fact. LOL
Longer story short, find or create a Sim you 'fall in love' with, essentially so that everything that happens to them matters to you, too. That's how I stay in the game.
http://www.getfreeebooks.com/star-trek-original-series-fan-fiction-trilogy/
I find that playing slowly and deeply instead of widely helps my enjoyment. I keep my Sims very busy. They have lots of hobbies, jobs, friends, and relatives. They're always going out and doing things. It's not boring to me at all because my Sims always have stuff they're trying to accomplish.
Otherwise, maybe you're just that type of simmer and you might enjoy just creating families then sharing them on the gallery for others to play with
All the sims err'day
Recently in my large save I've been enjoying playing adult Zoe Patel and her family so I transferred them to their own save. Now I'll play out the "House of Patel" fashion empire inspired by the new Gucci movie and the Fashion Street kit. I'll be starting Zoe in toddlerhood, giving her siblings, and going into her parents background before they started as fashion retailers. Zoe will be competing with a brother to run the fashion empire when she gets of age and after she goes through uni(never did uni with Zoe in the other save). Not sure if I'll have her marry Salim again(I might because they already have tons of photos in the main save
Using sims from other saves and starting them at a different life stage and either following their pervious story or giving them a new path might keep you more intrested, especially of you've played a sim to old age or death. I've been able to stick with a single family longer than my norm doing it this way.
What worked for me to at least keep me to legacy 5 was to do a mix of rotational and legacy. Each generation had a few branches and I followed them in a regular rotation. When that got a little boring, I also started folding in some family friends, etc.
For this new save, I'm challenging myself to only play premades and create lore and relationships between all of them. The only new households will be for scenarios, and once the scenario is complete I won't play them anymore. The goal is to create an interesting, fleshed out "base save" that I can then back up and boot up whenever I finally decide to restart my legacy.
I find it really helps creating stories with the sims I'm playing. When making my stories, I'll always play the long game and build up to certain points. Every day my sims are working on something, whether it be key story-related events, managing relationships and careers, or working on hobbies... but everything they do I make a story out of. Maybe my sim woke up tense, let's make a story out of it! What happened in their life lately that would potentially cause them stress? How are they going to manage their emotion, and how will their loved ones in the house react? Let's say my sims peed themselves, I'll try to make a story out of that too. What if they are getting sick and will they try to hide it? Or what if a friend came over to visit and they kicked over a trash can... maybe they have something important going on in their life? What if their spouse was caught cheating? What if they got a demotion at work? Sometimes these random events inspire me to do something even bigger with it.
I'm never bored playing just one household because I feel like there is always something happening. I improvise stories from the events happening in their day to day lives. When I was playing rotationally, I'd do the same thing but then I'd also be juggling about 20 different storylines. I found it challenging (in a good way) not only to manage them but also trying to tie them together.
I'll make little things in my world for extra story potential and more management, like a grocery store and make my sims have to manage groceries. My singer physically goes to a recording studio to work on their music instead of just whipping out the guitar wherever they are standing. I don't allow my sims to buy books from the bookshelf. They have to go to the bookstore in town if they want a new book. I feel like if I just solely focused on gameplay I'd get bored sticking to one household.
or when some of us like to create so many