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Story Progession
Simmer2500
Posts: 247 Member
Do you prefer to play the game with the story progression on or off? I had been playing the game with the story progession on for most of the game this time around but I turned it off before Christmas. I wanted to play some of my other Sims in my current family line without others Sims in the family line getting old or passing away before I got back to them so I thought if I turned off the story progression then that wouldn't happen. But, it doesn't work that way because they still do. I guess the townie Sims just can't move into the neighborhood by themselves and stuff with the story progression off. The problem is that I switch active households to one of the other members of the family line and figure I'll get back around to the others but then get playing the active household for a long time and then next thing I know my Sims are getting a call on their phone saying the Elder Sims are getting old and maybe I should visit them before they pass away and then a few or several Sim days later another call saying that they passed away. It says keeping the story progression on is suppose to keep the neighborhood balanced. I know there are a lot that use mods to manage the story progression the way they want it to be but I don't use mods in my game though.
If you have mostly played the game with the story progression on do you think that it really does balance out the neighborhood to a certain extent or not? When I did still have the story progession on I was alright with it on except when I wanted to move Sims out into the neighborhood and switch active households. I'm not sure if I like having the game taking care of them with story progression for a long length of time while I'm playing another household because last time when I switched back to one that had been taken care of by story progression for a long time a couple things didn't seem quite right. I guess if I want to balance it out better to get back to other households then I'll have to play each household a less amount of time even if I wanted to keep playing the active household I am on right now. But, oh well... such is the way of Sim life I guess.
If you have mostly played the game with the story progression on do you think that it really does balance out the neighborhood to a certain extent or not? When I did still have the story progession on I was alright with it on except when I wanted to move Sims out into the neighborhood and switch active households. I'm not sure if I like having the game taking care of them with story progression for a long length of time while I'm playing another household because last time when I switched back to one that had been taken care of by story progression for a long time a couple things didn't seem quite right. I guess if I want to balance it out better to get back to other households then I'll have to play each household a less amount of time even if I wanted to keep playing the active household I am on right now. But, oh well... such is the way of Sim life I guess.
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EAXis progression had problems with overstuffing the wrong houses with babies and pets and killing off Sims I'm befriending for too long
Story Progression and Aging are different things. If you want to avoid sims getting old or dying of old age, turn Aging off.
I having aging Off, I like to age the sims up myself : ) At their age up I like to see what they like and how they've changed and if I would let a set aging do it, I might miss that! And yes it makes some townies have to wait to find someone special or to advance or get fired from a job, but time is irrelevant to my sims, and I know they like my attention on them
I felt like you until someone nice advised me to try it another way! I'm so glad because I love it this way! It does not make the funny and fun things stop happening at all! Good Luck!
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Also, SP has the tendency to just kill off at random even when the population is below 80 in my then game and I don't like that. I don't want any of my Sims dying needlessly and would rather manage the population myself which I have been doing since I don't use SP.
And yes, playing with SP off does not affect the A.I. or the A.I. driven stories but does mean that Sims cannot autonomously do certain things. So there's a mod to allow those romantic autonomous options, etc back in without turning SP on or one can micromanage it all. Personally, I prefer giving Sims as much autonomous freedom as possible because the best entertaining moments to me are always those that are completely unscripted by the A.I.
Still.Not.Bored.
Stand a little taller
Doesn't mean I'm lonely when I'm alone
What doesn't kill you makes a fighter
Footsteps even lighter”
If I want to play multiple households I have a few different strategies.
1. I rotate play through different households and try to make sure I do it before various sims are about to age up automatically. I keep a spreadsheet to warn me when a sim is close to aging up.
2. I play a single household, but rotate sims through it. This works well for large families.\
3. I use NRAAS Traveller mod. The households I want to play but not change while I'm playing other households get moved to different worlds. They can still interact with each other by visiting and their friendship and family trees stay intact. I have the mod set to ensure only the sims in the currently played world are affected by story progression or aging.
When I play with sims in a variety of worlds, it is important to stop them from aging while you are playing in other worlds or you run the risk of arriving in other worlds in the game to find everyone has died of old age and the world is now empty.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCuW44b3uCMtCSaq4gwC8EZg
Yeah, I realize now it doesn't work that way. I don't want to turn the aging off though because I still want them to age transition and if I turn it off then none of the Sims will at all. I think I just want to try to balance it out better so I get back to the other members of the family line before they get old or pass away if they were well into the Elder stage but like I said I get playing the active family for a long time and don't end up getting back to all of them.
I think your first one is probably what I might try to do except I'm not going to keep track of it on paper. I have only played in Sunset Valley neighborhood so far but I have thought some about how if I did play in another neighborhood too how much those Sims would progress while playing in another neighborhood for a long time and like you said one could come back to an empty neighborhood. If you don't want that to happen then does turning aging off only affect the Sims in that one neighborhood?
The traveller mod seems to be set by default to stop the sims in other worlds from progressing. More info could be found on the NRAAS site.
I've found various settings in Options seem to work in only the world in which you set them and other options seem to work in all worlds. I always have to check what's going on. But, I do know for sure that if I change the length of life stages and my sims go to a different world I get asked if I want to get the manager to change the life stage settings in the world in which I've just arrived and I usually say yes unless there is a problem that I'm aware of and that's only happened once.
With turning aging on and off, I've had problems with that as sometimes sims have got stuck as never aging even when I want them to age and I've eventually got them to age but it's been a long and difficult procedure. Basically, what I found I had to do was go to City Hall and turn off aging for the entire town and then turn on aging for the entire town and then my problem sims were fixed and aging again. I always used to play with aging off so this sort of problem didn't bother me, but once I decided to turn it on it took me a while to get it all working again.
The reason I decided to turn aging on again for the whole town was my sims were aging because I aged them up with cake but the rest of the town just stayed the same for ever. And I didn't want to have to go around town all of the time just to individually age up all of the townies.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCuW44b3uCMtCSaq4gwC8EZg
Oh, I see. I don't use mods in my game but from what you said about problems after turning aging on and off I'm not sure I really want to mess with that setting just to not have them progress too much while playing in another neighborhood. I have always kept the aging setting on and prefer to let my Sims age transition automatically on their own... I just would usually like to be playing them as the active household when they do so I don't miss it. I don't use the Birthday cake much except for with the baby Sims. But, I have had a similar glitch in my game previously where my Sims age bars did not work right which kept me from playing the game for long time and so I don't think I want to mess with the aging setting and possibly get that problem in my game again. I already thought I might have this problem back in my game again when I changed my active household to a Sim that had been taken care of by story progression for a long time and when I came back to him his job seemed to be glitched and every time I told him to go to work it kept cancelling out and he wouldn't go. Finally I got him to go to work but then when he got there he wouldn't go in the building and so I finally just told him to quit the job. Then his age bar seemed to be stuck and so I was concerned this glitch was back. I went back to the previous house that had been the active household before I switched households and was concerned that their age bars weren't working right either and so I went back to an earlier save of that game before I had switched to that other Sim and also decided to moved the other Sim who was their relative into this house too and everything seemed to be fine again.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCuW44b3uCMtCSaq4gwC8EZg
Oh, I see. The age bar glitch I had started after a Sim couple came back from a vacation when I had the World Adventures expansion installed in the game and the age bars just got stuck and wouldn't move at all like it was suppose to. It's suppose to go down at a certain time at the end of each Sim day like mid-night I think until it gets down to their Birthday and it wasn't doing that. What ever the case though neither of those glitches are good to have in the game.
Oh, I see. It would be a lot of them to switch between if a bunch moved into the neighborhood. I currently have it off but I'm not sure I necessarily want to play all the Townie Sims either that decided to move into the neighborhood when I still had the story progression on.
For me I don't think turning it off is even a consideration. I like that it's part of the Sims 3 and with being open world I couldn't imagine it not evolving around my family.
In other saves that are usually for short-term, I sometimes play with nraas story progression.
Yeah i really love story progression and they dont seem too random in my opinion, sometime i get notification that Sims A and Sims B is being seen walking together, when i click on their sims avatar and there they are, really walking together but at graveyards lol.