Forum Announcement, Click Here to Read More From EA_Cade.

Rotational Players....

«1
I need help! I have about 40 of my sim households installed and situated in my new save. My issue is that I never seem to get back to some of them to carry on their story or intertwine it the way I originally saw fit when I created them and added them to my sim community.

I guess it's because I never rotate on a set schedule or play them in a way that "keeps them alive" in my game. Especially the family units. I just go in and make the kids teens as needed, or add a kid, or something.

I've decided it's probably best if I set up a schedule, but something strict like one sim week changing on Sunday at 5 AM is something I can't seem to do because I end up getting wrapped up in a household and want to achieve something with them while I am playing them.

And with sims 4, if a baby is on the way, it's best to stay with them til the baby is born so you can name it.

I want some tips on how YOU rotate.

Thanks!

Comments

  • EnkiSchmidtEnkiSchmidt Posts: 5,334 Member
    I tried a regular shedule, but soon abandoned that idea as it gets too much in the way of my "adjust on the fly" approach.
    When I find that a family doesn't contribute enough to the overall story of my towns and really I do not feel the urge to play them, then I sometimes move them forward one lifestage without playing them. Add a kid and see if they manage to write themselves into the chronicle now... just like you wrote you do, too. So I wouldn't change anything if I was you.
    The good thing about Sims 3 and 4 is that I'll always have a copy of that neglected household for when I decided to do better on them later :)

    Or perhapsyou could take the families that you feel you do not get back to often enough into another environment (other town, other save). Maybe then inspiration what to do with them will come?
  • meekeeleekeemeekeeleekee Posts: 202 Member
    The way i rotate is I pick a household, and once i get a bit bored I change! :-P very complex i know!

    Usually i make sure every family is on a good path and wont go extinct. If i really want to get a sims career going i usually turn of all aging so i dont stuff up any other families.
  • NeiaNeia Posts: 4,190 Member
    I have a database with all my Sims and their households, I play one week at a time and report it. When I finish a week, I pick another household mostly at random, sometimes I choose.

    Some of the families I'm less interested in playing but still want to keep in sync, I switch to unplayed or change the lifespan (I've made a mod so that I choose between long, double normal or normal) and play two families a week which speed up the rotation a bit. I'm planning on switching to the double normal lifespan entirely when I finish the current week I'm in.

    If I'm in the middle of something with the household (like a pregnancy !), I just report that I've played two weeks and skip them in the next rotation.

    What you could try is making a spreadsheet with all the households and just note how many days/weeks you're playing with each. That way, you'll have a quick view of who's falling behing, who's too far ahead, that's what I did in TS2 (before we had Seasons).
  • fullspiralfullspiral Posts: 14,717 Member
    I tried a regular shedule, but soon abandoned that idea as it gets too much in the way of my "adjust on the fly" approach.
    When I find that a family doesn't contribute enough to the overall story of my towns and really I do not feel the urge to play them, then I sometimes move them forward one lifestage without playing them. Add a kid and see if they manage to write themselves into the chronicle now... just like you wrote you do, too. So I wouldn't change anything if I was you.
    The good thing about Sims 3 and 4 is that I'll always have a copy of that neglected household for when I decided to do better on them later :)

    Or perhaps you could take the families that you feel you do not get back to often enough into another environment (other town, other save). Maybe then inspiration what to do with them will come?

    Thanks. Yeah. It's not so much my background sims I am concerned about. They've basically told their stories in previous saves but I put the in new saves too. lol. I guess it's bc I never completed the doctor that one of them is. Among other things.

    I wonder sometimes that if I played them in rotation, that they might end up contributing in ways I didn't see before?
  • fullspiralfullspiral Posts: 14,717 Member
    The way i rotate is I pick a household, and once i get a bit bored I change! :-P very complex i know!

    Usually i make sure every family is on a good path and wont go extinct. If i really want to get a sims career going i usually turn of all aging so i dont stuff up any other families.

    That's kind of what I do. But then I really feel like some of the sims and their stories and why they were added to my overall community is not being told. It's like a web thing. I'm playing a family and think oh, they need such and such, and then I add such and such.....and then that needs something...it's like a snowball effect! lol
  • MVWdeZTMVWdeZT Posts: 3,267 Member
    40 sounds like a lot to me. The most I've done has been 10, and I found that unmanageable after a while.

    If you want to give equal time to everyone, you could try a 3-day rotation. And if you don't want the bother of trying to remember who needs to be aged up next, you could have aging off most of the time except when you play one particular family. For example, if the Goths are in your rotation, then you could turn aging on when you start playing the Goths, and turn it off when you leave.

    You can always change a baby's name when he or she becomes a child. What you can't change are traits (unless you use cheats), so unless you're okay with random traits, you'll want to be on hand for when they age up.

    Trying to stick to a schedule can give you an idea of which families you're interested in, and which you don't particularly want to play. Dropping those families might give you a pool from which to get restaurant employees and other NPCs.
  • fullspiralfullspiral Posts: 14,717 Member
    Neia wrote: »
    I have a database with all my Sims and their households, I play one week at a time and report it. When I finish a week, I pick another household mostly at random, sometimes I choose.

    Some of the families I'm less interested in playing but still want to keep in sync, I switch to unplayed or change the lifespan (I've made a mod so that I choose between long, double normal or normal) and play two families a week which speed up the rotation a bit. I'm planning on switching to the double normal lifespan entirely when I finish the current week I'm in.

    If I'm in the middle of something with the household (like a pregnancy !), I just report that I've played two weeks and skip them in the next rotation.

    What you could try is making a spreadsheet with all the households and just note how many days/weeks you're playing with each. That way, you'll have a quick view of who's falling behing, who's too far ahead, that's what I did in TS2 (before we had Seasons).

    I've been thinking that that may be a solution. Making some form of spreadsheet and marking how long I play them. So many of them bounce off the others though. So it makes it hard for me to decide and then I end up wondering who to play next.

    So sometimes I think maybe I should just make it a crapshoot. Go for something totally out of that story to keep it in my mind that I have so many stories in my game and all of them should stay fresh.
  • fullspiralfullspiral Posts: 14,717 Member
    MVWdeZT wrote: »
    40 sounds like a lot to me. The most I've done has been 10, and I found that unmanageable after a while.

    If you want to give equal time to everyone, you could try a 3-day rotation. And if you don't want the bother of trying to remember who needs to be aged up next, you could have aging off most of the time except when you play one particular family. For example, if the Goths are in your rotation, then you could turn aging on when you start playing the Goths, and turn it off when you leave.

    You can always change a baby's name when he or she becomes a child. What you can't change are traits (unless you use cheats), so unless you're okay with random traits, you'll want to be on hand for when they age up.

    Trying to stick to a schedule can give you an idea of which families you're interested in, and which you don't particularly want to play. Dropping those families might give you a pool from which to get restaurant employees and other NPCs.

    I never play premades. They get extincted from my game. I have a few lingering as I've been setting up, but they will be ousted soon.

    3 days seems really short. I can't accomplish much in that, let alone let a fam have a baby. When my fams have babies, I play that infant until both parents have very high friendship bars with it so that it feels more like fam when it turns in to a kid.

    But yes, I think I need some type of schedule so that I get back to the story of why they are even there to begin with.
  • MidnightAuraMidnightAura Posts: 5,809 Member
    I play 5 sim days and then rotate. 3 days goes by so quick and 7 days I felt I was missing out on the other households too much.

    I tend to Rotate at 6am before work/school to minimise interruptions.
  • fullspiralfullspiral Posts: 14,717 Member
    I play 5 sim days and then rotate. 3 days goes by so quick and 7 days I felt I was missing out on the other households too much.

    I tend to Rotate at 6am before work/school to minimise interruptions.

    I feel like I am missing out on some of my households, but I also don't think I could rotate that rigidly. Do you rotate in a set pattern of households? Like a list?
  • MidnightAuraMidnightAura Posts: 5,809 Member
    fullspiral wrote: »
    I play 5 sim days and then rotate. 3 days goes by so quick and 7 days I felt I was missing out on the other households too much.

    I tend to Rotate at 6am before work/school to minimise interruptions.

    I feel like I am missing out on some of my households, but I also don't think I could rotate that rigidly. Do you rotate in a set pattern of households? Like a list?

    At the risk of sounding incredibly 🐸🐸🐸🐸.. yes lol

    I play my original sim family and then move on to their grown up sim who lives with his wife and kids. Then I move on to the other child and so on and so forth.

    I keep a tally for the number of days and I have a spreadsheet. The only annoying thing is if my sims have lots of children then my rotation gets a lot bigger!
  • fullspiralfullspiral Posts: 14,717 Member
    fullspiral wrote: »
    I play 5 sim days and then rotate. 3 days goes by so quick and 7 days I felt I was missing out on the other households too much.

    I tend to Rotate at 6am before work/school to minimise interruptions.

    I feel like I am missing out on some of my households, but I also don't think I could rotate that rigidly. Do you rotate in a set pattern of households? Like a list?

    At the risk of sounding incredibly plum.. yes lol

    I play my original sim family and then move on to their grown up sim who lives with his wife and kids. Then I move on to the other child and so on and so forth.

    I keep a tally for the number of days and I have a spreadsheet. The only annoying thing is if my sims have lots of children then my rotation gets a lot bigger!

    lol, well some of the sims I originally started out playing when s4 came out are still in my game in stasis. None of my sims have kids who have aged to adults who have kids of their own. So that part matters little to why I want to play my households or in what order.

    The first sims I created in CAS demo are still adults and I have only aged their kids up to teens. They are just there....in my game. What could I do with that family aside from them being where they are? I guess this is my dilemma. I don't play generationally. I see no need or want for it when I can create any household at any time.

    Don't get me wrong. I am very attached to many of my sims and I wonder where to go with some of them. Frank has a girlfriend after all these years, but I still can't see him as married or having kids. Even though its part of his story right now, I can't see it going further in that way. But then sometimes I think Frank deserves to have a family. But then I think Frank is perfectly happy not having one and has a different story to tell!

    I guess what I need to do tomorrow on my day off is to drop in to every household I have to remind myself why I made them and what their story is. And then I can set something up after that. I hope!
  • MidnightAuraMidnightAura Posts: 5,809 Member
    edited November 2016
    fullspiral wrote: »
    fullspiral wrote: »
    I play 5 sim days and then rotate. 3 days goes by so quick and 7 days I felt I was missing out on the other households too much.

    I tend to Rotate at 6am before work/school to minimise interruptions.

    I feel like I am missing out on some of my households, but I also don't think I could rotate that rigidly. Do you rotate in a set pattern of households? Like a list?

    At the risk of sounding incredibly plum.. yes lol

    I play my original sim family and then move on to their grown up sim who lives with his wife and kids. Then I move on to the other child and so on and so forth.

    I keep a tally for the number of days and I have a spreadsheet. The only annoying thing is if my sims have lots of children then my rotation gets a lot bigger!

    lol, well some of the sims I originally started out playing when s4 came out are still in my game in stasis. None of my sims have kids who have aged to adults who have kids of their own. So that part matters little to why I want to play my households or in what order.

    The first sims I created in CAS demo are still adults and I have only aged their kids up to teens. They are just there....in my game. What could I do with that family aside from them being where they are? I guess this is my dilemma. I don't play generationally. I see no need or want for it when I can create any household at any time.

    Don't get me wrong. I am very attached to many of my sims and I wonder where to go with some of them. Frank has a girlfriend after all these years, but I still can't see him as married or having kids. Even though its part of his story right now, I can't see it going further in that way. But then sometimes I think Frank deserves to have a family. But then I think Frank is perfectly happy not having one and has a different story to tell!

    I guess what I need to do tomorrow on my day off is to drop in to every household I have to remind myself why I made them and what their story is. And then I can set something up after that. I hope!

    I know what you mean! I have that issue with two of my sims, they are young adults (twins) and I have no clue what to do with them. I have no story for them and they don't have any friends or desires or appear to move out anytime soon. One of them got a townie pregnant but he's not into her or the kid. Maybe a deadbeat dad should be his story lol

    The sim story I'm currently writing for my blog I had a different plan for my sim, she's got the friend of the world aspiration but as she's met a guy she keeps getting whims to try for baby which I didn't vision.

    I'm amazed you can handle that many houses. I have 10 in the sims 4 and I'm struggling lol
  • fullspiralfullspiral Posts: 14,717 Member
    fullspiral wrote: »
    fullspiral wrote: »
    I play 5 sim days and then rotate. 3 days goes by so quick and 7 days I felt I was missing out on the other households too much.

    I tend to Rotate at 6am before work/school to minimise interruptions.

    I feel like I am missing out on some of my households, but I also don't think I could rotate that rigidly. Do you rotate in a set pattern of households? Like a list?

    At the risk of sounding incredibly plum.. yes lol

    I play my original sim family and then move on to their grown up sim who lives with his wife and kids. Then I move on to the other child and so on and so forth.

    I keep a tally for the number of days and I have a spreadsheet. The only annoying thing is if my sims have lots of children then my rotation gets a lot bigger!

    lol, well some of the sims I originally started out playing when s4 came out are still in my game in stasis. None of my sims have kids who have aged to adults who have kids of their own. So that part matters little to why I want to play my households or in what order.

    The first sims I created in CAS demo are still adults and I have only aged their kids up to teens. They are just there....in my game. What could I do with that family aside from them being where they are? I guess this is my dilemma. I don't play generationally. I see no need or want for it when I can create any household at any time.

    Don't get me wrong. I am very attached to many of my sims and I wonder where to go with some of them. Frank has a girlfriend after all these years, but I still can't see him as married or having kids. Even though its part of his story right now, I can't see it going further in that way. But then sometimes I think Frank deserves to have a family. But then I think Frank is perfectly happy not having one and has a different story to tell!

    I guess what I need to do tomorrow on my day off is to drop in to every household I have to remind myself why I made them and what their story is. And then I can set something up after that. I hope!

    I know what you mean! I have that issue with two of my sims, they are young adults (twins) and I have no clue what to do with them. I have no story for them and they don't have any friends or desires or appear to move out anytime soon. One of them got a townie pregnant but he's not into her or the kid. Maybe a deadbeat dad should be his story lol

    The sim story I'm currently writing for my blog I had a different plan for my sim, she's got the friend of the world aspiration but as she's met a guy she keeps getting whims to try for baby which I didn't vision.

    I'm amazed you can handle that many houses. I have 10 in the sims 4 and I'm struggling lol

    lol, like I said earlier....it snowballs! But then something drops suddenly and intertwines them even more. It's why I play the way I do.

    For instance, I originally created Harry Littlejohn to be an antagonist to a group at my country bar with his group of meanies. But then Harry's story of his wife and son intrigued me more. In a prior save his wife was deleted and the rumor was that the townsfolk believed Harry had something to do with her disappearance. Shawn suffered then too. But in this save, she's back and the two of them make Shawn's life miserable. So their story snowballed from deciding to create a character for another story! lol

    I just want all their stories to be told. Some of them have changed over the years.
  • slynnskislynnski Posts: 2,316 Member
    edited November 2016
    I play a sim week for each family, ending at Monday at like 2:00am for each one.

    I go in a specific order, too. Right now in TS4 I only have 3 households I'm rotating between, so it's easy to remember. But for my towns in TS2, I need a spreadsheet because there are so many different households that I play. Throw University into the mix and it gets really complicated and confusing lol
  • fullspiralfullspiral Posts: 14,717 Member
    slynnski wrote: »
    I play a sim week for each family, ending at Monday at like 2:00am for each one.

    I go in a specific order, too. Right now in TS4 I only have 3 households I'm rotating between, so it's easy to remember. But for my towns in TS2, I need a spreadsheet because there are so many different households that I play. Throw University into the mix and it gets really complicated and confusing lol

    I get that. I.m playing out the only pregnant household in my game right now and then after that, I need to go in and visit each one for a couple of sims days. Then I will remember better where they stand and what/who needs to be in rotation.

    After that, I will work out the rotation pattern.

    Thanks everyone for your input! It's helped me focus a bit better.
  • fullspiralfullspiral Posts: 14,717 Member
    lol. They just had twin daughters. I'm wondering why the father has such a higher bar with his daughters while the mother is very low? Never seen that before. Now I have to get her up to an acceptable level in order to age the twins. I like both parents to be full bars with their kids before aging. Just never seen the mother lower than the father.
  • mustenimusteni Posts: 5,403 Member
    This is a fascinating thread. I haven't played my main rotational save for six months. I stopped with DO patch and I know I could return now because rotational play without mods is possible again (hooray!). I've been thinking about it a lot. Will I continue having aging on normal on active household only, will I set it long or turn it off? Will I make a schedule instead of randomness? Will I remove some families from rotation to make it more dynamic? What kind of stories do I want to I tell in my blog? Also I'm really caught up with my current save that I made to try something different, so I'm not completely sure when I'll be going back.
  • NeiaNeia Posts: 4,190 Member
    Seasons could help a lot with the pacing of rotational gameplay. In TS2, I rotated with the seasons so I kept everybody in sync age-wise and seasons-wise. I hope when/if seasons come, we'll be able to customize the length and have some settings like for the aging options.
  • friendlysimmersfriendlysimmers Posts: 7,542 Member
    thats why i keep for 1 thing aging fully off and never rotate i always play the same sims
    If you went the sims5 to remain offline feel free to sign this petition http://chng.it/gtfHPhHK please note that it is also to keep the gallery



    Repose en paix mamie tu va me manquer :

    1923-2016 mamie :'(
  • turmalina007turmalina007 Posts: 118 Member
    I usually rotated after a week,sunday 4am. The problem I had was with lifespan. First 2 weeks I wanted to have them on long lifespan,so I could work on job and finding love. Then I`d turn to normal lifestyle and play more relaxed type,but the problem is my game refuses to keep all sims at same age when you switch. So some have 4 days to age up and other a week. It kind of ruins everything lol
  • MoonsKisuMoonsKisu Posts: 97 Member
    I only rotate 4 families. I don't like doing any more than that. I usually play them Mon 6 am - Mon 6am. I have the lifespan on long. I set up the rest of the households when starting the new save & then just let them do their own thing.
  • GalacticGalGalacticGal Posts: 28,294 Member
    I tried a regular shedule, but soon abandoned that idea as it gets too much in the way of my "adjust on the fly" approach.
    When I find that a family doesn't contribute enough to the overall story of my towns and really I do not feel the urge to play them, then I sometimes move them forward one lifestage without playing them. Add a kid and see if they manage to write themselves into the chronicle now... just like you wrote you do, too. So I wouldn't change anything if I was you.
    The good thing about Sims 3 and 4 is that I'll always have a copy of that neglected household for when I decided to do better on them later :)

    Or perhapsyou could take the families that you feel you do not get back to often enough into another environment (other town, other save). Maybe then inspiration what to do with them will come?

    My 'just-on-the-fly' approach gets me stuck in neutral. I often can't choose which household to play, which is the foremost reason back in Sims2, that I began rotational play. Today, I'm stuck. I wanted so much to complete my Legacy Challenge game so that I could move on and that finally came to an end yesterday afternoon, blog and all. Today, I have pretty much all day. So, what am I doing? Playing around over here hoping to make up my mind which of two families to play. Face/palm.

    To the OP, when I do play rotation style, I play for three Sim days, ending at midnight (or as close to it as possible) then I switch households. I made a nice chart, where I can fill in the squares using a highlighter. I have the households in rows, so that I start top left on the page, move to the next household in that row and so on and so forth until each household has been played. If I have to stop for that session, the color of the highlighter shows me which household to start up with again. Once a 'round is complete, I switch colors on the highlighter. Works for me. Yes, some families are just more dynamic than others, so it can become hard to break away. When that happens, I just remind myself why I started this manner of play.
    You can download (free) all three volumes of my Night Whispers Star Trek Fanfiction here: http://galacticgal.deviantart.com/gallery/ You'll need to have a pdf reader. New websites: http://www.trekkiefanfiction.com/st-tos.php
    http://www.getfreeebooks.com/star-trek-original-series-fan-fiction-trilogy/
  • slynnskislynnski Posts: 2,316 Member
    @GalacticGal I like your hilighter method. Thanks for sharing.
  • GalacticGalGalacticGal Posts: 28,294 Member
    You're welcome. :)
    You can download (free) all three volumes of my Night Whispers Star Trek Fanfiction here: http://galacticgal.deviantart.com/gallery/ You'll need to have a pdf reader. New websites: http://www.trekkiefanfiction.com/st-tos.php
    http://www.getfreeebooks.com/star-trek-original-series-fan-fiction-trilogy/
Sign In or Register to comment.
Return to top