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Playstyle Ideas?
AHolyToilet
Posts: 870 Member
I'm tired of only returning to this game whenever there's a new EP or GP coming out that interests me. The new EP looks fun (primarily, the Mermaids), but I just know that after a few days of playing with them, I'll get bored again. I want to have fun and play the game, but I never know what to do, so I've been trying to think of a new playstyle for me to try out. Perhaps you guys have an idea? What are some playstyles/challenges/rules, etc I could try out? Mods are acceptable suggestions as well. I've already done family play multiple times and have had a Sim rise to Global Superstar, then drop back down to being forgotten. How do you keep things fresh and interesting?
I'm ultimately looking for something my Sim can strive and work hard for, something to manage while other Sims in the household can complete aspirations. My main Sim has completed all of them and I'm never going to get rid of him, so I'd like something for him to do instead of twiddling his thumbs and doing random things around the house.
Thanks for reading.
I'm ultimately looking for something my Sim can strive and work hard for, something to manage while other Sims in the household can complete aspirations. My main Sim has completed all of them and I'm never going to get rid of him, so I'd like something for him to do instead of twiddling his thumbs and doing random things around the house.
Thanks for reading.
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Comments
So, here's a few things I'm currently playing:
a) Military base: I have 6 Sims (5 now actually but they're looking to recruit), 5 in the military career and one in the scientist career. The goal is to have them each max out their careers but they always need to work from home (except the scientist of course, I follow him to work about once a sim week). They need to complete their daily tasks, and the highest one in rank orders them around. They also go to festivals together sometimes, celebrate important annual events (like Christmas), and also together solved the Strangerville mystery.
b) Asylum challenge: this is a new thing I was trying out. You can look up the rules easily on the forums. However, I'm not 100% sold on it yet because I think I'm too much of a control freak. Having only one sim to play with may not be my thing, but you can try. There's really good lots for it on the gallery.
c) Orphanage: I downloaded Deligracy's orphanage and her sims. I love the lot so much, deleted one of the kids, aged up the vampire. But the rest is the same. The idea is that all kids have some supernatural powers. There's a ghost, an alien, a vampire, one sim that never sleeps, one that is a savant and another very creative kid. The headmistress adopted them all as care dependants. I love playing this SO much! Technically the goal is to complete their aspirations before they age up (to either teenagers or young adults). I do that but I'm not very strict in game. I just love having all these young sims around learning to deal with their powers. I've never even really played aliens or ghosts before, so it's quite new haha. I'm even thinking of setting up my own magical school when we have witches! There's also mods so they don't have to go to school if you're interested.
Challenges can be interesting too. But I think you mostly need to find ways to stop always playing families. Play only adults, or only teens, maybe only supernaturals, just try something you usually don't do! That's how you keep the game fresh. I still have two regular families in this save should I feel like playing them - and for about 2 weeks I've visited them maybe twice 😂
Ask and ye shall recieve! Whoa! These are some fantastic ideas! I'm especially loving the orphanage one, that sounds awesome! I could do an X-Men kind of thing with that one. I could absolutely do this asylum challenge because out of all the Sims I have in my library, there's only one that I use constantly. The military base sounds the least interesting, but I'll give that one a shot first after I finish my own ideas.
If you or any others have more ideas, please share. I'm actually getting excited to play again.
Here are my current challenges/fun saves and a challenge I want to do at some point:
1. Legacy challenge: self explanatory I’m sure but playing with families through generations is my favorite. I also never use money cheats with any family, it helps for sure. I’m currently in generation 3. It’s a common one I know but I personally randomize traits and aspirations to keep things interesting.
2.100 baby challenge: this is really a big and hard challenge. I have four tots right now and am losing my mind, but it’s a fun save for sure. My sim is at the beginning and has very little money right now which is also super hard. It’s again a common challenge but is really fun.
3. Evil vampire: I never play occult’s or evil sims so why not combine the two 😂. That sim is already a bit crazy and I love her.
4. Not so berry challenge: new thing I want to try. Seems like a lot of fun because it pushes you as the player to do things you haven’t done before.
I just always try and mix it up. That’s the best advice I can give. Keep your saves different and try new challenges. It keeps the game fun for me. I love the game anyway but I take less breaks than ever playing like this
So, in my current game, I started with 3 separate households. All in living in different worlds and with a bit of a backstory, my goal was to have them connect to each other and/or the premades by marriage or friendship. I'm currently in generation 2.
Although I don't do challenges, I did like the idea of an orphanage. So in one game I put down a big house (link below) and found/made a childless adult couple to run it. My goal was to have some of the kids get adopted by premades or townies I created and follow their lives, while others would grow up there and go out on their own for me to play.
https://www.ea.com/games/the-sims/the-sims-4/pc/gallery/738C105F2FEE11E480718FF12688DE2F?category=lots&searchtype=ea_origin_id&sortby=downloads&time=all&searchquery=Maxis&max=50&maxis=false
I did this once as well and it was super fun! They all lived on the island of Windenburg (the save is literally called "The Windenburgs") and they had to be a really intimately involved community. Their kids had toddler play dates, they all had to have really good relationships with each other, they had clubs, they'd attend each other's birthdays - if Seasons had been out already, they would've celebrated Christmas together and everything. I adored the sims from that save! So much I've since kept on using a few of them in other saves as well. It really made me feel super connected to them all, so I definitely second this idea
Make an evil family or club and just go all out with being evil!
Honestly I hardly ever play truely evil sims but when I do, it's so much fun, tormenting the worlds.
For example my evil doers had high aspirations becoming a crime boss, becoming mayor etc. basically everyone had to become somebody with power/influence.
Vampires come in handy for that but they're not needed.
Build venues with the mean vibe and grody traits, restaurants with the grody trait are especially wonderfull
Make a family/ household with only bad mannered sims, lazy, mean, evil, erratic and so forth.
The goal won't be to turn children into wonderful adults but the opposite, they should get all the negative traits from parenthood when they turn into young adults.
Build themed venues where you have to use sims (their skills) to fill them up, for example, I am currently building a museum for the abstract art so I have my painter sims paint abstract paintings like crazy till I got ALL of them plus the quality has to be at least excellent (gonna do this for other painting styles as well).
For me it's the mix of building and playing that really does the trick to keep me interested and always finding new things to do, or old things to do differently.
Sometimes I have a specific idea for a venue but no played sims that would fit as visitors, so I create new sims that would go there and the other way arround.
I have sims collecting only what fits them, for example "spooky" sims only want the spooky fish in their fishtanks and for some of them you'd need quite a high fishing skill (anglerfish), my "nature"witch really needed the treefish, same thing.
But I never do everything with the same sim, hmmm...maybe if I ever want a "Supersim" so to speak, but it would bore me cuz there is no point for me, my sims all have their own characters by which I decide what they do, it's more diverse and more fun for me.
And I also have all my households know each other, for now they are all friendly, since my recent game has no evil sims yet but that will soon change (evil mermaids!).
Anyway, I don't know if this helped, maybe hopefully...just do what you like, it's a sandbox game after all
Thanks for sharing, but I'm afraid legacy gameplay interests me the least. I may try it someday, but not anytime soon.
I greatly enjoy supernaturals, so this is a great idea to try once the new EP comes out and we get Mermaids. I'll be sure to check out the build as well.
While I prefer TS4 pets as opposed to TS3 pers (primarily because they can't be controlled), I'll admit the pet rehoming idea doesn't appeal to me much. Maybe one day. A save where all Sims are vampires and aliens sounds pretty fun, though. I'll definitely consider that. Aging down all the premades, though... that could have some amusing potential.
The celeb was fun to max out. It's amusing when every Sim on the lot swoons over yours, so I've been thinking about doing it again sometime. Rags to Riches... that'll be a step out of my comfort zone. I've never been a "Rags" type of player. Could be good for me. And perhaps I should stop bum-rushing content whenever it releases. That is a problem for me.
Legacy challenge, I won't do anytime soon as mentioned before. 100 babies... I love TS4 toddlers, but there are times I get extremely fustrated with them. It's to the point where I refuse to keep high chairs in my Sim's house anymore. We'll have to see about that one. The Evil idea, I'll mention a bit later.
Oooh, please share the disaster one when you can. That sounds awesome. Never heard of the Supersim challenge, though.
XD I'm clearly a lot different. I enjoy setting rules in my life-simulator games, it helps keep things more focused on what I enjoy. The idea of having multiple households become connected sounds very intriguing. I may try that out.
You know, I was just starting to go for the idea of making my Sim an absolutely terrible person. I did make him a semi-good person, but now I want him to be the kind of guy you wish was dead. He steals, he hurts others, he intimidates them, etc. I think bringing a lot of chaos to the game would entertain me greatly, so that's what I've been doing ever since last night, especially with the help of certain mods. Becoming mayor, though. Is that a mod or a career?
The thing is, I WOULD do everything with the same Sim. I'm the kind of player who will create one Sim and have him do everything and always use him forever. To have the Sim world revolve around him. For example, the supernatural orphanage idea. My main Sim is going to run it. The military idea. My Sim will be a part of it. That's what primarily appeals to me. I suppose I could do a legacy challenge, but just have my main Sim NOT die and have him outlive all his children and fill the game with said children. That would be tons of fun for me.
Building evil venues sounds like a fantastic idea to me. That helps a lot. I don't think my Sim could own them, though like you could in TS3. Which annoys me a bit.
sorry I meant president, it's a path of the politician career.
My sims never got that far though, unfortunately that savefile broke before I really could explore it (so I don't know how well it goes with mean/evil sims), think I am gonna try that again soon, I soo want an evil politician.
Well if one sim doing it all is what you like, go for it, to each their own
Have you tried going after the collections? It's 1000x harder than just maxing the skills or related aspirations. I'm trying to complete all of them with my supersims alien family, they really take it seriously the mission of exploring our planet
Haha me too! And they're a really great bunch. Really liking aliens a lot better now. I love that they can take over other sim's feelings, that's a neat trick. I just wish they could also empathize with children but well. But their little colors vibes are super pretty and, this alien sim at least, I kind of play as a very soft-natured empath who just wants to find her real place in the world, but that's not an easy thing to do surrounded by a bunch of supernatural misfits. She gets along with the kids though. I even like them all so much that out of the 6 orphans, 2 have completed their aspirations (I have never had kids or teens complete an aspiration
Anyhoo, if you play it, let me know if you enjoy it!
ETA: Also! The kids from the orphanage are my first kids ever with clearly negative childhood traits. Hype!
I run a Council House, every 5th year there is an election, and the 5 Councilors are given either Department Law & Justice, Trades & Taxes, Culture & Entertainment, Health & Welfare or Science & Education. One of them (most often the one at Law & Justice) will be the Mayor.
I don't necessarily play out the Council in detail, but I found this routine to work well when I want to add something, or to make sure existing routines are kept active. Say, when I want to build and equip a Retirement Home, the Health&Welfare Councilor will take the job of organizing it.
I also have photographers specializing on family portraits, celebrity promo portraits, or even pet photos. Any sim who has a job will specialize according to the community. Say, a sim will not just be in the Business career, but will also have defined goals and tasks - like working with timber import, happy to reach level 5.
I have a social status system too, making it a bit harder to find spouses. Most high status families will want to secure their status through the main heir's marriage, and those on lower levels might dream of climbing a bit.
I have a very old tradition when naming a baby, a system I used ever since TS1. In short, the baby gets first and last letter from grandparents, but whatever in between is open. There is also a system to pick traits, securing that most kids will get one trait from each parent - but not always.
All in all, giving my sims (families) a community function, some history and some hopes for the future, makes the game feel more established. Even if I take a few weeks break, I know most of the residents pretty well, and can quickly look them up in my residents registry, too.
PS: There are several videos with more detail from how I play on my Youtube channel. The "As Sims Go By" series is based on my Council.
Yes! I currently have a save dedicated to playing as an awful (but loving) father who aims to mold his son into the ultimate villain to take his place, and it is so much fun!
Also, this is My Story, the Sims are just empty husks, to fulfill certain roles of characters. I don't have to conform to "the Lore of the Sims" I can play this game my Way. you know I don't call things like So this was a major realization to have more fun.
So at Birthdays, Weddings, Events and Active Careers, I do what I want to have a successful event, so getting Bronze, Gold or silver means absolutely nothing.
I don't strive for sims to reach top level career promotions.
My Sim, Ursula Hudson Originally, I wanted her to own a 5-Star Restaurant, but while she was humble she was fine with that, until she met her ex-husband, He will corrupt her in many ways, to be more ambitious and at the same time try to "domesticate" her. and that is why he is going to be her ex-husband.
Same thing with other sims, My Police Sim all he wanted, career wise, was to be a Detective. So Becoming Senior Detective, will be his highest promotion.
For me to have more fun I had to strip the game of all Premades, and Create and rebuild Sims, Homes, and Lots, and Fully Customize the worlds to my own needs. It really helps make going to Places like working at the Hospital, Police Station, or Science Labs more enjoyable. Seeing familiar faces, instead of random townies, wearing random outfits and such.
Using Mods, CC, and Cheat to your absolute disposal. especially if you are a story teller, and a control freak like me, It's okay to make your sims wealthy from the get go. I have Several characters who are Mansion Barons and Fabulously wealthy, and they have several more aspirations to get, but to Start us off, I wanted my Characters to have certain Skills, and backgrounds in order before I start playing.
Other Challenges, I think helped is the History Challenge and Supernatural Aspect. because It domino'd into the Generational/Legacy aspect.
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